"Shocking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reinforced, are committing shocking devastations in Culpepper and Orange Counties. His brutal orders, and his bragging proclamations, have wrought our men to such a pitch of exasperation that, when the day of battle comes, there will be, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... put to death like gladiators for their diversion. While the soldiers were intent on slaughter, these miscreants were employed in plundering. The greatest part of the booty fell to their share. Rome presented a scene truly shocking, a medley of savage slaughter and monstrous vice; in one place war and desolation; in another bathing, riot, and debauchery. The whole city seemed to be inflamed with frantic rage, and at the same time intoxicated with bacchanalian pleasures. In the midst ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... I do forgive you. We will never misunderstand each other again—never. And now I want to talk to you. What distressed me so much just now was not anything that you said or thought about me, but the shocking way you treat yourself and what is best in you. Can't you understand it? You know how I believe in you and hope for you, and it was your affectation of indifference to things which are a religion to me—as they are to you—that cut me to ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... "Shocking! it's the truth. This religious talk on such matters,—why don't they carry it a little further, and show the beauty, in its season, of a fellow's taking a glass too much, and sitting a little too late over his cards, and various ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... be good enough to look at Mr. Clifford's hand? I am sure his thumb should be attended to at once: it really is in a shocking state." ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... sounds of altercation from the anchored vessel; and we saw the flash of pistols, and dark objects presently in the sea. To the surprise of us all, the launch returned after that; and when our men came aboard, they presented a shocking spectacle. "Roaring John" was covered from head to feet with a thick, black, oleaginous matter; two of the others had their faces smeared in tar; the rest were like drowned rats, and were chattering until their teeth clashed with ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... etc. Their masters generally allot them wives from amongst their female domestics, and many of them acquire the affection and confidence of their superiors. The price of a slave in Sarawak is from thirty to sixty dollars, but as the trade is being as quickly repressed as possible, without too much shocking the prejudices of the inhabitants, they have of late become very scarce, and difficult to be bought. The price of a girl varies from thirty to one hundred dollars, but at Sarawak they are even more difficult than ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... for an instant of a fierce night-wind, which then ruthlessly sweeps on, somewhere else to repeat the capricious act. It is also reported to have been the strangest sight, this same Oberlus, of a sultry, cloudy morning, hidden under his shocking old black tarpaulin hat, hoeing potatoes among the lava. So warped and crooked was his strange nature, that the very handle of his hoe seemed gradually to have shrunk and twisted in his grasp, being a wretched bent stick, elbowed more like a savage's ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... fill with all sorts of pamphlets and miscellaneous literature, suddenly finds himself reformed out of knowledge, his pamphlets tucked away into pigeonholes and corners, and his slippers put in their place in the hall, with, perhaps, a brisk insinuation about the shocking dust and disorder ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... heard of my adverse fortune, and the shocking incident that has attended me since I had the pleasure of seeing you in November last. Anticipating your impatience to be made acquainted with a more circumstantial detail of my extraordinary adventures, I shall not on account of the interest which ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... admiring him as a prodigy of genius, though I find the most shocking absurdities in his plays—absurdities which no critic of ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... is not the point; it is of no importance who the man may be, he is a man, that is enough; and she was out with him—alone—a whole day and night; it is certainly very bad indeed; shocking, if it is true—is ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... got all of us down, not long after he was married, to what he called a housewarming. He had inherited a few pleasant acres in Virginia, and the house was two hundred years old. He had never lived in it until he came with Elise. It was in rather shocking condition, but Elise had managed to make it habitable by getting it scrubbed very clean, and by taking out everything that was not in keeping with the oldness and quaintness. The resulting effect ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... Entresol in retailing the goods piled upon his shelves and counters. And why should one be "original" because he handles a peck-measure, while another is comme il faut in wielding a yardstick? Why did M. Karr's thread-bare coat and shocking bad hat fling such a cloud of dust in the eyes of passing friends, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... screamed so she took me out and kissed me and gave me pie. Can't think why papa called Sally 'Something' for spilling the ink over his papers, and when I called the gardener the very same for robbing my flowers, all their hands and eyes went up, and they said I was a shocking girl. Can't think why papa giggled the next moment, if I was a shocking girl: ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... face appeared much fairer and smoother when he looked on me from the ground than it did upon a nearer view, when I took him up in my hand and brought him close, which he confessed was at first a very shocking sight. He said he could discover great holes in my skin; that the stumps of my beard were ten times stronger than the bristles of a boar, and my complexion made up of several colors altogether disagreeable: ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... especially gave her much pleasure. Having often worn man's clothes when riding and hunting at Nohant, and remembering that her mother used to go in the same guise with her father to the theatre during their residence in Paris, she felt quite at home in these habiliments and saw nothing shocking in donning them. Now began what she called her literary school-boy life (vie d'ecolier litteraire), her vie de gamin. She trotted through the streets of Paris at all times and in all weathers, went to garrets, studios, clubs, theatres, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the Scriptures which he thought he could pervert to his purpose, and would readily quote them to prove that slavery was contrary to the laws of God; that slaves were bound to attempt their emancipation, however shocking and bloody might be the consequences; and that such efforts would not only be pleasing to the Almighty, but were absolutely enjoined, and their success predicted, in the Scriptures. His favorite texts when he addressed those of his own color were Zech. xiv. 1-3, and Josh. vi. 21; and in all his ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... that the shocking thing which we know as Comstockery, goes back into the centuries for its origin; being, indeed, the perfect flower of that asceticism, which was engrafted on the degraded Christianity which took its name from Christ without in the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... Grantline building! The Erentz double walls would withstand it for a time, I was sure. But it would blast an Erentz fabric suit, no doubt of that. Like a lightning bolt, it would kill—its flashing free stream of electrons shocking ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... from his Dulcinea of Tabora—to be, bereft of all enjoyment now, nothing but marches—hard, long marches—to go to the war—to be killed, perhaps, Oh! Inspired by such feelings, no wonder Bombay was inclined to be pugnacious when I ordered him to his place, and I was in a shocking bad temper for having been kept waiting from 8 A.M. to 2 P.M. for him. There was simply a word and a savage look, and my cane was flying around Bombay's shoulders, as if he were to be annihilated. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... very shocking one, Ursula; but, really, if he had died a natural one, you could scarcely have regretted it, for he appears to have ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... legislator! (Legislator, n. One who makes laws for a state: vide dictionary) believing at last that his face must in fact be swollen, since several other travellers, who were in the plot, also spoke to him of his shocking appearance, got up from the table and went out to the barroom to consult the looking glass, such luxuries not being placed in the chambers. But there was no glass there. After some time he found the landlady, and she told him that the barroom glass was broken, but she could lend ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... informed that his children were to be sold; to prevent this shocking fate, he was prompted to escape. Several months previous to finding a chance to make a safe flight, he secreted himself with his children in Norfolk, and so remained up to the day he left, a passage having ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... unblushingly with knights, dragons, sorcerers, hermits, and personified vices and virtues. The "machinery" of Homer and Vergil—the "machinery" of the "Seven Champions of Christendom" and the "Roman de la Rose"! This was not shocking to Spenser's contemporaries, but it seemed quite shocking to classical critics a century later. Even Milton, the greatest scholar among English poets, but whose imagination was a strong agent, holding strange ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... reason had they to conclude it was a spirit, unless they had approached, and spoken to it?' 'O ma'amselle, I cannot tell. How can you ask such shocking questions? But nobody ever saw it come in, or go out of the castle; and it was in one place now, and then the next minute in quite another part of the castle; and then it never spoke, and, if it was alive, what should it do in the castle if it never spoke? Several parts of the castle ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... accused of blasphemy, for saying that "He and his Father are one;" and in reply, he quotes the verse, "I have said, Ye are gods," as his sufficient justification for calling himself Son of God; for "the Scripture cannot be broken." I dreaded to precipitate myself into shocking unbelief, if I followed out the thoughts that this suggested; and (I know not how) for a long time ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... a very refined young lady) smiled contemptuously, and turned down the corners of her pretty little mouth in a manner that made the unsuccessful duck-farmer boil with suppressed fury, as she remarked that she had heard of some of the shocking stories he had been telling the accountant and cashier of the characters of the people in the South Seas, and she quite understood why he wished to return there and re-associate with his vulgar and wicked companions. Now, she added, had he stuck bravely to work with the ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... writes with a hot heart upon events which are still recent one is apt to lose one's sense of proportion. At every step one should check one's self by the reflection as to how this may appear ten years hence, and how far events which seem shocking and abnormal may prove themselves to be a necessary accompaniment of every condition of war. But a time has now come when in cold blood, with every possible restraint, one is justified in saying that ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... "You make me feel quite nervous. What a shocking thing it would be if I ever did anything to forfeit ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... letters may fall, and our own noble defenders are as severe in suppressing the knowledge of the true facts of the battles and movements of the forces as any enemy could possibly be. However, the game is with the English still.... If only Ladysmith is held, the Colony is safe. This shocking flight of women and children from town after town is too awful to witness. Shame on the British Government to make our Colony the scene of this bloody struggle, and leave the handful of soldiers sent out ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... read the whole story, with the type dancing and leaping before me. It took some hours for it to seep in, even after that, and for years I recalled every word of the damned lie as if it had been branded on me with hot irons. They called it a shocking crime, the most brutal murder California had ever known, and in the head-lines was my name in letters that struck me between the eyes like a hammer. Mrs. Dan Bennett had been foully murdered by me, in a fit ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... I a thousand bodies, a thousand lives, I could give all of the first to unmitigated suffering, lay down all the last to avert so shocking a calamity. Do you think the ladies are ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... there was no sound, no motion, no sign of any design on the part of Sunnysides. Then, with the swiftness and surprise of a flash of powder in the dark, a shocking thing occurred. Without a preliminary movement, either of lunging or bucking or leaping to one side, or any of the expected tactics, Sunnysides, with incredible suddenness, reared straight up into the air, threw ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... exaggerated; and Mr. Broad read all about it to Mrs. Broad on Saturday afternoon, in the interval between the preparation of his two sermons. He had heard the story on the following day; but here was an authentic account in print. Mrs. Broad was of opinion that it was shocking; so vulgar, so low; her poor dear Priscilla, and so forth. Mr. Broad's sullen animosity was so much stimulated that it had overcome his customary circumspection, and on the Sunday evening he preached from the text, "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... the rest of the cursed stuff. Everybody listened; and I saw a man who had July as plain as day on his mustache, just ready to nibble at a 'Movement.' Well, I don't know how it was, but I unluckily let fall the word 'blockhead.' Thunder! you should have seen my gray hat, my dynastic hat (shocking bad hat, anyhow), who got the bit in his teeth and was furiously angry. I put on my grand air—you know—and said to him: 'Ah, ca! Monsieur, you are remarkably aggressive; if you are not content, I am ready to give you satisfaction; I fought in July.' 'Though ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... intellect, or whose spirits and good-humour amuse me, I wish neither to see the high, the low, nor the middling class of society. This is a feeling without the least tinge of misanthropy, which I always consider as a kind of blasphemy of a shocking description. If God bears with the very worst of us, we may surely endure each other. If thrown into society, I always have, and always will endeavour to bring pleasure with me, at least to show willingness to please. But for all this "I had ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... to the other Italian princes? What was its real meaning for the Pope? The unity of Italy could only be achieved either by submitting the whole peninsula to the Roman Pontiff or by depriving him of the temporal power. And the speaker ended by prophesying, his only prophecy which failed, that this shocking event would not happen in the present century, whatever God might permit in ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Montfort does not like him. Very natural. Nobody likes his heir, if not his own child; and some people don't even like their own eldest sons! Shocking; but so it is. Montfort is the kindest, most tractable being that ever was, except where he takes a dislike. He dislikes two or ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... death by the halter or the axe was less shocking to the imagination than that of being burned or buried alive. In this respect, therefore, the edicts were softened by the proposed "Moderation." It would, however, always be difficult to persuade any considerable slumber of intelligent persons, that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... would probably have written "Dies"; but Mr. Sparrow, being a young and very new reporter for a rural weekly, wrote "Passes Away" as more elegant and less shocking to the reader. ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... by "trapesing off to Europe with a singer." Oddly enough that delicate modesty, like a woman's, which had made it almost impossible for the Colonel to mention the affair, did not seem to trouble her. To live with another man's wife was in the Colonel's eyes a sin little short of incest, and more shocking than many kinds of murder. But his wife, with a deeper comprehension of the powers of her sex, of the appeal of woman to man, saw in it merely a weakness that threatened to become a family disgrace. When she found after an hour's talk that her arguments made no ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the mind often operates in such moments of exciting suspense! I recall remarking a very slight stoop in Brennan's shoulders which I had never perceived before, I remember wondering where Moorehouse had ever discovered a tailor to give so shocking a fit to his coat, and finally I grew almost interested in two birds perched upon the limb of a tree opposite where I stood. I even smiled to myself over a jest one of the young officers had made an hour before. Yet with it all I remained keenly observant, and fully aware of each movement made ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... Christians or heathen now. That did not help me for I thought that only grown-up persons could be Christians, from which it followed that all children must be heathen. Must I think of Myself as a heathen, then, until I should be old enough to be a Christian? It was a shocking conclusion, but I could see no other answer to my question, and I felt ashamed to ask again. My self-invented theory about the human race was that Adam and Eve were very tall people, taller than the tallest trees ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... hastily produce anything they have—anything to conciliate the contemptuous cassowary. And as he takes it, an expression steals across the cassowary's face which seems to admit that perhaps the fellow isn't such a shocking outsider after all. When a man has nothing more nutritive about him, this form of ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of matter which is common to all living beings, and that their endless diversities are bound together by a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In fact, when first apprehended, such a doctrine as this appears almost shocking to common sense. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... marriage customs when we first settled in the islands were so shocking that I couldn't possibly describe them to you. But I'll tell Mrs Macphail and ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... Britain toward the United States our attention is necessarily drawn to the warfare just renewed by the savages on one of our extensive frontiers—a warfare which is known to spare neither age nor sex and to be distinguished by features peculiarly shocking to humanity. It is difficult to account for the activity and combinations which have for some time been developing themselves among tribes in constant intercourse with British traders and garrisons without connecting their hostility with that influence and without recollecting ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... and took the baby out of his cradle, lest any of them should steal him, which, of course, seemed a very probable thing for them to do. Then she went to look for her husband, who, shocking to relate, was quite tipsy, quarrelling and arguing with the mayor, and she actually saw him box ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... carried a phrase book. They talked French that nobody could understand, and German that they could not translate themselves! The man poked at officials with his alpenstock to attract their attention, and the lady, her eye catching sight of an advertisement of somebody's cocoa, said "Shocking!" ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... the wild fellow lay lurking in other substances besides amber—such as sulphur, wax, glass, etcetera. It is now known that Electricity permeates all substances more or less, and only waits to be roused in order to exhibit his amazing powers. He is fond of shocking people's feelings, and has surprised his pursuers rather frequently in that way. Some of them, indeed, he has actually ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... whom society brands with a hot iron and designates by the term "mauvais sujets"; men who are for the most part misunderstood; whose existence may become either noble through the smile of a woman lifting them out of their rut, or shocking at the close of an orgy under the influence of some damnable reflection dropped ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... not so good as it ought to be, and, mixed up with all the rest, see her type, her beauty, her timidity, her wickedness, her notoriety and her impudeur. It's only in this country that a woman is both so shocking and so shaky." The Duchess's displeasure overflowed. "If she doesn't know how ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... xx., 27," thereby implying that the wound must have been large enough for Thomas to get his hand into it, because our Lord says, "reach hither thine hand and thrust it into my side." This is simply shocking. Words cannot be pressed in this way. Dean Alford then says that the spear was thrust "probably into the LEFT side on account of the position of the soldier" (no one can arrive at the position of the soldier, and no one would attempt to ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... judge, when able to stifle his laughter, addressing the little Hebrew, said, 'Well, Mr. Moses, what do you say?'—'Oh,' cried he, holding up a pair of hands not over clean, and very different from those encased in lavender gloves which graced the plaintiff, 'it ish poshitively shocking, my lord; I should have been ashamed to turn out such a thing from my establishment.' The rest of the jury accepted his view, and Sir Edwin, apparently relieved from suffocation, entered his own coat with a look of relief, which again convulsed ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... the wigwam, at a distance of perhaps twelve feet from the floor, were the scalps of his enemies. Judging from the great quantity of these ghastly trophies, my master was a man of immense valor and shocking brutality. ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... paint for the eyebrows. The noses were most delicately made, of a bladder, I think, and these, with the other disguises, rendered it impossible to recognize the face, and yet did not produce any shocking appearance. All this being accomplished, nothing remained but to give notice to the fortune-teller; we waited for a little excursion to Paris, which Madame was to take, to look at her house. I then ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... from her own eyes, from the eyes of her husband and her child, from the eyes even of the doctor who attended her, and whose business it was to penetrate to the truth. Her head, from which the greater part of the hair had fallen off; would have been less shocking to see than the hideously youthful wig by which she tried to hide the loss. No deterioration of her complexion, no wrinkling of her skin, could have been so dreadful to look at as the rouge that lay ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... than she was a masked highwayman, his first thought was that this must be some innocent foreigner stumbling in upon the ambush. In alarm for her safety his eyes searched the road beyond her, the hedges on either side. If she remained for an instant longer he feared she might be the witness to a shocking tragedy, that she herself might even become a victim. But the road lay empty, in the hedges of spiked cactus not a frond stirred; and the aged man who had led him to the rendezvous sat ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... this was bad, and shocking, and had a sort of unhuman sound; but when you once hear the war-whoop, you will never mistake it for anything else. Well, Uncas!" speaking in Delaware to the young chief as he re-entered, "what see you? do our lights ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... Mounted high overhead, and looked down from a tree. Then out came the Spider, with finger so fine, To show his dexterity on the tight line. From one branch to another his cobwebs he slung, Then quick as an arrow he darted along. But just in the middle, oh, shocking to tell! From his rope in an instant poor Harlequin fell. Yet he touched not the ground, but with talons outspread, Hung suspended in air at the end of a thread. Then the Grasshopper came with a jerk and a spring; Very long was his leg, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... new Paris is the great work of a great reign; but I entertain the hope that your improvements have not yet had the finishing touch.'—'What is left to be done, now, in your opinion?'—'First of all, to remedy the course of the Seine, whose irregular curve is positively shocking. The straight line is the shortest distance between two points, for rivers as well as boulevards. In the second place, to level the ground and suppress all inequalites of surface which seem to say to the Government, ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... cost of their maintenance from their poor-rate, neither they nor their relatives feeling that to do so was any disgrace. The system must have been fearfully vicious that produced such depravation of moral feeling, and such a shocking want of self-respect. ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... unconsciousness will not suffice to account for all the injustice of chance. Its three most iniquitous acts are the three disasters—the most terrible of all to which man is exposed—that habitually strike him before birth: I refer to absolute poverty, disease (especially in the shocking forms of physiological degradation and incurable infirmities, of repulsive ugliness and deformity), and intellectual weakness. These are the three great priestesses of unrighteousness that lie in wait for ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... come in her eyes, and one of them dropped on my hand when she leaned over me and looked so sorry because I was in pain. It's a pity she ain't English and lived somewhere at home where one might expect to see her again. It is very sad and shocking to have to live ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... fingers before she unclasped them. That twice-flung taunt rankled still. It was monstrous to have been called a snob. A snob!—he, whose readiness to form what would certainly be regarded as a shocking misalliance ought to have stifled the charge, not merely vindicated him from it! He had forgotten, in the blindness of his love, how shocking the misalliance would be. Perhaps she, unloving, had not been so forgetful? Perhaps her refusal had been made, generously, for his own sake. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... said one of the guests; "it's shocking to think of. Only last night, I am quite sure I had such a fright that it added at least ten years ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... was so overcome by the fury of the seething waters, that he tried to throw himself from the rails at the quarter-deck, and to end in death a scene he felt too shocking ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... sides was broken and precipitous, this tumult threw many down to an immense depth, some even of the armed men; but the beasts of burden, with their loads, were rolled down like the fall of some vast fabric. Though these disasters were shocking to view, Hannibal however kept his place for a little, and kept his men together, lest he might augment the tumult and disorder; but afterwards, when he saw the line broken, and that there was danger that he should bring over his army, preserved to ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... had enjoyed awhile the writhings of agony and the tears of anguish, which were drawn from these suffering victims, one, stepping within the circle, ripped open their bodies and threw their bowels into the flames. Others, to emulate [78] this most shocking deed, approached, and with knives, burning sticks, and heated irons, continued to lacerate, pierce and tear the flesh from their breasts, arms and legs, 'till death closed the scene of horrors and rendered its victims insensible ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... themselves in so artful a manner, that I am very positive, the coldest and most rigid pride upon earth, could not have looked upon them without thinking of something not to be spoke of.—I suppose you may have read that the Turks have no music, but what is shocking to the ears; but this account is from those who never heard any but what is played in the streets, and is just as reasonable, as if a foreigner should take his ideas of English music, from the bladder and string, or the marrow-bones ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... Hill to those who live opposite; he is part and parcel of the street view, and must make a part of the picture whenever it is painted, or else it wont be like. You cannot realise the idea of meeting him elsewhere; it would be shocking to your nerves to think of it: you would as soon think of seeing the Obelisk walking up Ludgate Hill, for instance, as of meeting him there—it could not be. Where he goes when he leaves his station, you have not the least notion. He is there so soon as it is light ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... desecrate thy bed, And bear thee off,—as foemen take their spoil,— Far from thy friends and family to roam; Forced, like a Hessian, from thy native home, To meet destruction in a foreign broil! Though thou art tender, yet thy humble bard Declares, O clam! thy case is shocking hard! ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... very near farce: in everything people then went to extremes. Certain merry scenes were as famous as the rant of Herod, and they have for centuries amused the England of former days. The strife between husband and wife, Noah and his wife, Pilate and his wife, Joseph and Mary, this last a very shocking one, were ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... found, Looking round. It was shocking! In his stocking, There was nothing, you must know, But a big hole ...
— The Nursery, January 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... little wonder if I slept no more. Why had I been locked in? What had passed? Who was the author of these indescribable and shocking cries? A human being? It was inconceivable. A beast? The cries were scarce quite bestial; and what animal, short of a lion or a tiger, could thus shake the solid walls of the residencia? And while I was thus turning over the elements of the mystery, it came into my mind that I ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... anything tease you, Annoy, or displease you, Remember what Lilly says, "Animum rege!" And as for that shocking bad habit of swearing,— In all good society voted past bearing,— Eschew it! and leave it to dustmen and mobs, Nor commit yourself much beyond ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... through life. I wish you could for many reasons. A continual change of partners, for instance, would it not be refreshing? You would scarcely have time to grow tired of them. And how much more polite our husbands would be if they thought we were only fleeting joys! What am I saying? I am shocking everyone I am afraid; the little matron who advocates married life, the newly-made brides whose ideal men are realized in their husbands—I am shocking them all! I humbly plead forgiveness. You see, I am not married myself. I can only give my impressions as a looker-on, and, ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... in the same sense and manner with Christ himself, and enjoyed thereby a glorious immunity from the trammels of all laws human and divine. Inwardly transported by this blissful persuasion, though outwardly presenting in their aspect and manners a shocking air of lunacy and distraction, the sectaries roamed from place to place, attired in the most fantastic apparel and begging their bread with wild shouts and clamour, spurning indignantly every kind of honest labour and industry ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... attack excited, had provided no surgeons; so that, when our men boarded the captured ships, they found many of the mangled and mutilated Danes bleeding to death for want of proper assistance—a scene, of all others, the most shocking to a brave ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... have gone out the next season in London with the Duchess, she came down one morning, just before they were to set off for town, and declared that she bad heard such a quantity of scandal since she had been there, and such shocking things of London society, that she had resolved not to go out with the Duchess, and not to go to town at all? So ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... was a shocking and extraordinary violation. Shaughnessy believes that some personal jewels may have been buried with Phelps and that the thieves were after them, that they fought over the loot, and in the midst of ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... the building of the proposed new School of Divinity is in 1423, when the University picturesquely says it was intended 'ad amplianda matris nostrae ubera' (so many things could be said in Latin which would be shocking in English). In 1426 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Chichele, is approached and asked 'to open the torrents of his brotherly kindness'. Parliament is appealed to, the Monastic Orders, the citizens of London, in fact anybody and everybody who was likely to help. Cardinal Beaufort ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... "bottom to 'em" than before. The sun blazed out, and the sap ran faster, and, after Jonathan had fully enjoyed them, the blue and white bibs were taken off. Somehow in the clear March sunshine they looked almost shocking. By the next day we had syrup enough to try ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... deny it later, when the whole community had learned of it. He went with Apostle John Henry Smith to see Mr. P. H. Lannan, proprietor of the Salt Lake Tribune, to ask him not to attack the Church for this new and shocking violation of its covenant. Mr. Lannan had been intimately friendly with my brother, and he was distressed between his regard for his dead friend and his obligation to do his public duty. I do not know all that the Smiths said to him; but I know that the conversation assumed that Joseph F. Smith ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... the rock on which I split. I never got over the patronage of the Fantadlin family. It became the vogue to abuse the theatre and declare the performers shocking. An equestrian troupe opened a circus in the town about the same time, and rose on my ruins. My house was deserted; my actors grew discontented because they were ill paid; my door became a hammering-place for every bailiff in the county; and my wife became ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... to you; I can see you will in your eyes. Go down, please, and talk to Mr Smith, who has got a headache or something, and wants to see you. You need not trouble yourself seeing Susan, who is cross, of course. I don't wonder at her being cross; it must be very shocking, you know, to feel one's self of no use, whatever happens. Thank you; I shall be ready in a minute, as soon as you have done talking to ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... into an endless war of extermination. Although he really believed that great city of Paris to be the world's brain, entrusted with the task of preparing the future, he could not disguise from himself that with all its folly and shame and injustice it still presented a shocking spectacle. Was it really ripe enough for the work of human salvation which he thought of entrusting to it? Then, on trying to re-peruse his notes and verify his formulas, he only recovered his former ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Mrs. Waltham, waving aside her son's vehemence, 'you don't seriously tell us that the working people have no religion? Surely that would be too shocking!' ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... continued. "Nor do I relish condescension on the part of my social betters. It does not suit me. I prefer to remain within my own borders. Still, there is the tie of long association with these merchant princes and their undertakings, and this, I own, influences me strongly. It would be shocking to me to witness the failure or ruin of those with whom I have been in daily intercourse. Then, too, there is a certain challenge in the present position which appeals to the fighting instinct in me. If not altogether by nature, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... soon as this thought took possession of me, I felt my whole being elevated and purified by it, and I was enabled to put aside with contempt the selfish considerations that had occurred to me at first. At first the difference between our ages was very shocking to me; for I had always imagined it would be some one young; but when this light broke upon me, I saw that he was young, younger even than I, as a man is at the same age with a girl. Sometimes with my experiences, ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... spirit of independence infused by the nature of our government, the unrestricted intercourse of all classes with each other, and that robust training of thought which it is impossible that any American woman should fail to receive, will forever place us above the shocking contingencies to which the poor laborious Englishwoman is exposed. If, in common with her, we are compelled to work, our labor will keep us respectable, though it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... time she had arrived at the back door of the house, the axe-blows were renewed, loud, immediate, shocking palpably on her ear. She knocked, but knew that the ringing clamor of the axe drowned out the sound. Through the screen-door she saw old Mrs. Powers, standing by the table, ironing, and stepped in. The three children were in the pantry, beyond, Ralph spreading some ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Receding and speeding, And shocking and rocking, And darting and parting, And threading and spreading, And whizzing and hissing, And dripping and skipping, And hitting and splitting, And shining and twining, And rattling and battling, And shaking ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... "We're all terribly tired of it. Tanya's given up going to the English hospital now, and is just meaning to be as gay as she can be; and Zinaida Fyodorovna had just come back from her Otriad on the Galician front, and she says it's shocking there now—no food or dancing or anything. Why doesn't every ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... whom it is absolutely impossible to work amicably. There is Munro, who helped him in that Scottish survey, declares that nothing would induce him to again put himself in Mr Butler's power; and you will remember what a shocking report Mr Butler gave of Munro's behaviour during the survey. Yet the rest of us have found Munro to be invariably most good natured and obliging in every way. Then there ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... shocking change, the Council of People's Commissars hammered at the scaffolding of the Socialist order. Decree on Social Insurance, on Workers' Control, Regulations for Volost Land Committees, Abolition of Ranks and Titles, Abolition of Courts ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... surprised to feel how far she had travelled from the Joan who was part of Nancy and the sunken room. It was quite shocking to find that she was not missing Nancy. She wondered if she were heartless and selfish? But after all, how could one be missed from a life in which she had never, could never, have part? And full well Joan realized that in this big venture ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... His heart, however, was bent on a nobler object. That he did not under-rate the difficulties he would have to encounter in his arduous work, appears from a letter written about this time; but he knew likewise where his strength lay. "Every one here," says he, "paints the Esquimaux in the most shocking colours; but I think they are men, and the word of the death of Jesus, which has produced such amazing effects on other barbarous nations, cannot fail to have an ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... templars in France to be committed to prison, and imputed to them such enormous and absurd crimes as are sufficient of themselves to destroy all the credit of the accusation. Besides their being universally charged with murder, robbery, and vices the most shocking to nature, every one, it was pretended, whom they received into their order, was obliged to renounce his Savior, to spit upon the cross,[*] and to join to this impiety the superstition of worshipping a gilded head, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... in town, when he is running a political campaign. Well, sir, I had to jump from one thing to another from three o'clock in the morning till nine at night, pitching hay, driving reaper, raking and binding, shocking wheat, hoeing corn, and everything, and I never got a kind word. I spoiled my clothes, and I think another week would make a pirate of me. But during it all I had the advantage of a pious example. I tell you, you think more of such a man as ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... meditation. The results were admirable, for in a little time the table in the waiting-room had been transformed into a dining-table, and Tom and I were ravenously devouring a big omelette, and bread and cheese, and drinking a most shocking sour wine as though it were Chateau Yquem. A facchino served us, with clumsy good-will; and when we had induced our nervous old host to sit down with us and partake of his own hospitality, we succeeded in forming ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... getting its desert of respect, your character supposedly remaining intact. The insult offered is intended to effect this purpose. Again, all contumely presupposes the presence of the party affronted; the affront is thrown in one's face, and therein consists the shocking indecency of the thing and its ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... the provost marshal, William Cunningham, a coarse and brutal man who has left a shocking record of cruelty to his prisoners. Hale asked if he might have a minister with him, but Cunningham refused. Then he asked for a Bible, but that, too, was forbidden. How he spent the night we cannot tell; part of it, no doubt, in prayer, ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... could not have known. Could not have known that this thing he wrought spelled at once Beginning and End: that no such shocking departure remains long sole-possessed, either shaft or fire or mushroom-shape: that with each great thing of man's devising comes question and doubt and ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... death's-heads, carcasses, and similar objects, if they strike upon the view too much, will be as disgusting in a picture as they are in nature; and that grimaces, hideous or monstrous deformities, whether moral or physical, will be as shocking in the one as the other. Events which are sufficiently unnatural, barbarous, and cruel, to shake violently the soul, and cause it to tremble with insurmountable horror, create an agitation too frightful for it to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... something once—something which had upset him completely. The boy had got it from George Forsyte, he believed, who had seen Bosinney in the fog the day he was run over—something which explained the young fellow's distress—an act of Soames towards his wife—a shocking act. Jo had seen her, too, that afternoon, after the news was out, seen her for a moment, and his description had always lingered in old Jolyon's mind—'wild and lost' he had called her. And next day June had gone there—bottled up her feelings and gone there, and the maid had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sight of misery? Indeed we do. Do we forget all about it when we have turned the corner? Frequently that is so. Do we expect to be put to open shame at the Great Day of Judgment? We should be terribly frightened of this did we not cling to the hope that amidst the shocking revelations then for the first time made public our little affairs may fail to attract much notice. Judged by the standards of humanity, few people are either good or bad. 'I have not been a great sinner,' said the dying Nelson; nor had he—he had only ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... hear that, Milly, for I have something shocking to tell her about myself, that will surprise her, if it does ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... my man in the studio—my marble pointer, you know. Bruno Rocco, and nobody was ever so rightly named. A big, shaggy, good-natured bear, always singing or growling or laughing, and as true as steel. A terrible Liberal, though; a socialist, an anarchist, a nihilist, and everything that's shocking." ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... things are worst in their degradation, was the condition of the monasteries. I am here on delicate ground. The accounts of those institutions, as they existed in England and Germany at the time of their suppression, is so shocking that even impartial writers have hesitated to believe the reports which have come down to us. The laity, we are told, determined to appropriate the abbey lands, and maligned the monks to justify the spoliation. Were the charge true, the religious orders would still be without excuse, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... extracted. Impossible to doubt the source whence these treasures flowed: had there been no other indication, one condemning and traitor peculiarity, common to them all, settled the question—they smelt of cigars. This was very shocking, of course: I thought so at first, and used to open the window with some bustle, to air my desk, and with fastidious finger and thumb, to hold the peccant brochures forth to the purifying breeze. I was ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... you, Sir Doctor, to go out walking Is at all times honor and gain enough; But to trust myself here alone would be shocking, For I am a foe to all that is rough. Fiddling and bowling and screams and laughter To me are the hatefullest noises on earth; They yell as if Satan himself were after, And call it ...
— Faust • Goethe
... his letter by telling her of the catastrophe, with the usual amount of epithets. It was very terrible, awful, shocking—the saddest thing that had ever happened! The poor widow was in a desperate state, and all the Claverings were nearly beside themselves. But when this had been duly said, he allowed himself to go into ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... success, by which the Spanish monarchy became master of the whole Pyrenean peninsula and its many colonies in East and West, it was all the more necessary for the other two powers to hold together. Many causes of quarrel indeed arose between them. How could the shocking event of the night of St. Bartholomew fail to awaken all the antipathies of the English, and indeed of Protestantism in general! Elizabeth did not let herself be prevented by her treaty from supporting ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... conducted with a degree of passion that had scarcely been equaled in America before that day. To the well-ordered spirit of the conservative classes the tone which the Republicans assumed appeared shocking. Boldly sectional in their language, sweeping in their denunciation of slavery, the leaders of the campaign made bitter and effective use of a number of recent events. "Uncle Tom's Cabin", published ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... learn with delight," writes Hobhouse from Cambridge, May 12, 1808, "from Scrope Davies, that you have totally given up dice. To be sure you must give it up; for you to be seen every night in the very vilest company in town—could anything be more shocking, anything more unfit? I speak feelingly on this occasion, 'non ignara mali miseris, &c'. I know of nothing that should bribe me to be present once more at such horrible scenes. Perhaps 'tis as well that we are both acquainted with the extent of the evil, that we may be the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... shocking one. It meant, as he knew, that he was to all intents and purposes a doomed man. Despairingly he gazed about him and almost uttered a shout as at a distance of not more than a mile or two he made out the outlines of a queer-looking ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... 'difficulty to get tolerable seats, the crowd of genteel people was so great. The unfortunate young women were in a latticed gallery, where you could only see those who chose to be seen. The preacher's text was, "If a man look on a woman to lust after her," &c. The text itself was shocking, and the sermon was composed with the least possible delicacy, and was a shocking insult on a sincere penitent, and fuel for the warm passions of the hypocrites. The fellow was handsome, and delivered ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... conversational efforts should have been at random. It was terribly hard work, this screwing up her courage. All the fine arguments which had convinced her that her intended course was justifiable and right had utterly collapsed. She could not recall one of them. What she had undertaken to do seemed shocking, hateful, immodest, scandalous, impossible. But there was a bed-rock of determination to her character; and a fixed, dogged resolve to do the thing she had once made up her mind to, come what might, had ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... hear any one so wickedly obstinate before?" cried nurse. "Isn't it shocking? and his ma that delicate and worried living all alone, like, here out in these strange parts, and him as ought to be a comfort to her doing nothing but hanker after running away to find him as is dead ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... it is this shipping of the quarter-deck face after wearing a merry and good-natured one. How can they have the heart? Methinks, if but once I smiled upon a man—never mind how much beneath me—I could not bring myself to condemn him to the shocking misery of the lash. Oh officers! all round the world, if this quarter-deck face you wear at all, then never unship it for another, to be merely sported for a moment. Of all insults, the temporary condescension of a master to a slave is the most outrageous ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... bayonet charge—who wins new territory from the powers of Darkness and the Devil. Man IS a savage, and civilization but a cloak with which he covers his ferocity as best he can. If the cloak be scant—as with the Turk—or frayed by time—as with the Spaniard—we may expect to catch frequent and shocking glimpses of the predacious animal. But Mr. Johnson is mistaken in supposing that the lynchings of which he complains evidence an abnormal thirst for blood on the part of the American ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... "he'll be chaffed about that at the Club in the delicate manner those brutes of men affect, and the Hawley Boy will tell me all about it—softening the details for fear of shocking me. That boy is too good to live, Polly. I've serious thoughts of recommending him to throw up his Commission and go into the Church. In his present frame of mind he would obey me. Happy, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... for years. Few cared. It was a "corrupt and contented" city. The corruption grew worse. Lower and meaner grafters rose to take the place of the earlier and more robust good fellows who trafficked in the city o' shame. Graft lost class, and lost caste. It was ultimately exposed in all its shocking indecency. The light and licentious town developed a conscience. Public indignation arose and reached its height, when the grafters ventured too far in the shooting of the ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... listening to a relation of what had taken place at the two others. On a sudden, we were struck by the horrifying sound of the great drum, accompanied by the timbals, horns, and trumpets of the temple of the god of war: And, shocking to tell! we could distinctly see our unfortunate companions who had been made prisoners, driven by blows to the summit of the diabolical temple. On their arrival at the platform, we could see the miserable victims decorated ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... Specifically, the group was not convinced by official reasons for the disproportionately small number of Negroes in some services, especially among the noncommissioned officers and in the officer corps. Chairman Gesell called the dearth of black officers a "shocking condition."[21-29] His group was particularly concerned with the absence of black officers on promotion boards and the possibility of unfairness in the promotion process where photos and racial and religious information were included in ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... not like to see our emotions unriddled: it is not agreeable to the proud man to find his weaknesses exposed; it is shocking to the disappointed lover to see his heart laid bare; it is a great grief to the pining maiden to witness the exposure of her loves. We do not like our fancies painted; we do not contrive them for rehearsal: our dreams are private, and when they are ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... Fancy cannot be embodied any more than a simile can be painted; and it is as idle to attempt it as to personate Wall or Moonshine. Fairies are not incredible, but fairies six feet high are so. Monsters are not shocking, if they are seen at a proper distance. When ghosts appear at mid-day, when apparitions stalk along Cheapside, then may the MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM be represented without injury at Covent-garden or at Drury-lane. The boards ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... but never contemporaneous, glories of snuff and tobacco, and note the sage's curious, but strictly truthful, account of the advantages and disadvantages of smoking. "Smoking has gone out. To be sure it is a shocking thing, blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us. Yet I cannot account why a thing which requires so little exertion and yet preserves the mind from total vacuity has gone out." Or if we demand a keener ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... Secession, and I am not sure that Messrs. Mason and Slidell were not trotted out. The Foreign and Home Secretaries, the very distinguished civil servants declared, would not unlikely be agitated when they heard of the shocking affair. Soldiers, no doubt, were by nature abrupt and unconventional in their actions, and the Foreign and Home Offices would make every allowance, realizing that we had acted in good faith. But, hang it all—and they gazed at us in ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... twitching and quivering distorted her features. "It is indeed true, I have been wickedly reviled!" she exclaimed, throwing the paper aside. "My enemies will rob me of the only thing remaining—my honor—my good name. They desire to expose me to the scorn of the world. Oh, this disgrace is more shocking than all my other sufferings. It will kill me!" She covered her face with her hands and wept piteously. The tears trickled between her fingers, and fell on her black dress as if adorning ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach |
