"Detestable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attacked, they retaliate; and yet, lest further ill should arise, they at once endeavor to come to terms. They think that party acts most creditably, which is the first to propose terms of peace; that it is disgraceful to be anticipated in so doing; and that it is scandalous and detestable to refuse peace to those who ask for it, even though the latter should have been the aggressors: all the neighboring people unite in destroying such refusers of peace as impious and abominable. Hence they mostly pass their lives in peace and leisure. Robberies and murders ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... decorations—a travesty the most heartless of the motives for which good and pure people decorate. There is nothing honest or straightforward about them. They are a mean confusion of all the symbols of joy. They are put up for some cruel and detestable purpose——" ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... Dean of Westminster went so far, we know, in his scruples as to exclude an epitaph from the Abbey, because it contained the name of Milton:—"a name, in his opinion," says Johnson, "too detestable to be read on the wall of a building dedicated to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... think I was such a spoiled baby that I couldn't be courteous to a stranger even if she was a detestable little vamp? You're not to bother about it any more. She'll come into my room with me of course. You didn't expect me to sail through life without any sacrifices at all did you, Motherie? Suppose I had gone to Africa as I almost did last year? Don't you fancy there'd have been some things ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... door to open or shut, and no springs." On two or three wooden seats, suspended in leather straps, the passengers were perched. The behaviour of the better sort, in a journey from Niagara to Hamilton, is described by this writer as consisting of a "rolling and tumbling along the detestable road, pitching like a scow among the breakers of a lake storm." The road was knee-deep in mud, the "forest on either side dark, grim, and impenetrable." There were but three or four steamboats in existence, and these were not much more expeditious. ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... are to-day in the artistic youth so much life, power, and, so to speak, predestination, that in our schools of architecture in particular, at the present time, the professors, who are detestable, produce, not only unconsciously but even in spite of themselves, excellent pupils; quite the reverse of that potter mentioned by Horace, who dreamed amphorae and produced ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... loss how to describe in a few words what I—and, I expect, most of us—mean when we talk of a sneak. He is a mixture of so many detestable qualities. There is a large amount of cowardice in his constitution, and a similar quantity of jealousy; and then there are certain proportions of falsehood, ingratitude, malice, and officiousness to complete his ugly anatomy, to say nothing ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... instrument of art to all those who know how to use it.[502] Consider also in the case of the enemy, if he is in other respects injurious and intractable, he somehow or other gives us a handle to make use of him by, and so is serviceable. And many things are unpleasant and detestable and antagonistic to those to whom they happen, but you must have noticed that some use even illnesses as a period of rest for the body, and others by excessive toil have strengthened and trained their bodily vigour, and some have made exile and the loss of money a passage to leisure and philosophy, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... sensible in the better sense, plays the part of confidante to her brother's mijauree of a widow much too indulgently; a M. Barton, Leonce's mentor, who, despite his English-looking name, is not (one is glad to find) English, but is, to one's sorrow, one of the detestable "parsons-in-tie-wigs" whom French Anglomania at this time foisted on us as characteristic of England; a sort of double of his, M. de Lerensei, a Protestant free-thinker, who, with his divorcee wife, puts up grass altars in their garden with inscriptions recording the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... those forces are distributed, and in a considerable measure may be influenced by the way in which the boundaries of constituencies are drawn. Such a system invites and encourages gerrymandering, both in its original and modern forms, but this detestable practice can be made of no avail and the results of elections rendered trustworthy if we so reform present methods as to give due weight to the strength of each political party irrespective of the way in which that strength may ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... losing both itself and friend,' don't he? But our bottle; is it glued fast? Keep it moving, my dear Frank. Good wine, and upon my soul I begin to feel it, and through me old Polonius—yes, this wine, I fear, is what excites me so against that detestable old dog without ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... very bad habits here, he obeys no one, he thinks himself perfectly free to do as he likes, he hits everybody and nobody dares to hit him back. He ought to be placed in the midst of his equals, or he will grow up with the most detestable temper." ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... not like him. 'In-law' kinsmen and kinswomen are generally detestable. Look at my brothers-in-law, Mr. Harry Sandal and Mr. Stephen Latrigg; and my sisters-in-law, Mrs. Harry Sandal and Miss Charlotte Sandal; a pretty undesirable ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... soon expect to be released by the death of his crazy wife. The doctor, he said, had been severely shaken by the monstrous assault made on him, and had been most unrighteously handled. The doctor was an inoffensive man in his private life, detestable and dangerous though his teachings were. Outside politics Mr. Tuckham went altogether with Beauchamp. He promised also that old Mrs. Beauchamp should be accurately informed of the state of matters between ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... she had she ridiculed me. When I reproached her with her brutality she became angry, and sneered at me for being what she called a fine gentleman. One sunny afternoon we were standing at the gate of her uncle's house, she looking down the dusty road for the detestable Langan, I watching the spotless ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw
... preferred them more simple and shorter, we could wish that they had reached us without details which awake all sorts of suspicions,[8] but it is very seldom that a witness does not try to prove his affirmations and to prop them up by arguments which, though detestable, are appropriate to the vulgar audience to which he ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Every man in Great Britain will be contaminated and must be corrupted, if you let loose among us whole legions of men, generation after generation, tainted with these abominable vices, and avowing these detestable principles. It is, therefore, to preserve the integrity and honor of the Commons of Great Britain, that we have brought this man to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... missed by his eccentric friend, which he described to me just before he left Italy. "I saw last night an old palazzo of the Doria, six miles from here, upon the sea, which De la Rue urged Fletcher to take for us, when he was bent on that detestable villa Bagnerello; which villa the Genoese have hired, time out of mind, for one-fourth of what I paid, as they told him again and again before he made the agreement. This is one of the strangest old palaces in Italy, surrounded by beautiful woods of great trees (an immense rarity here) ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... order. Nor was this indifference and apathy of her manner thrown away on the purchasers who crowded towards the Ghetto. It stood her in better stead than the most manifest anxiety could have done; it placed her apart from that detestable crowd. I observed many persons stop and make purchases of her on whom all importunity would have been thrown away. There was not one of the buyers who did not look back with hurried gaze at that pale and glorious face, which did not even glow with ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... fate—sense of power, delight in performing a difficult and dangerous action, delight in the exercise of artistic skill—are not at all evil things. We sympathise with one or other of them almost every day of our lives. And, accordingly, though in Iago they are combined with something detestable and so contribute to evil, our perception of them is accompanied with sympathy. In the same way, Iago's insight, dexterity, quickness, address, and the like, are in themselves admirable things; the perfect ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... Scotchmen, having no caution." Rough national verdicts are apt to be superficial. Mr. Leslie Stephen, in a review of Hawthorne, has commented on the extent to which the nobler qualities and conquering energy of the English character are hidden, not only from foreigners, but from ourselves, by the "detestable lay figure" of John Bull. In like manner, the obtrusive type of the "canny Scot" is apt to make critics forget the hot heart that has marked the early annals of the country, from the Hebrides to the Borders, ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... dull hours spent in idle and diffuse conversation on the dimly lighted veranda! Oh, the detestable peppered jam in the tiny pots! In the middle of the town, enclosed by four walls, is this park of five yards square, with little lakes, little mountains, and little rocks, where all wears an antiquated appearance, and everything is covered with a greenish mold ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... of the murder, perhaps as an accomplice or otherwise, and may also suppose that, from motives of remorse for the action, or of enmity to those who had committed it, he entertained a wish to bring them to justice. But through the whole Highlands there is no character more detestable than that of an informer, or one who takes what is called Tascal-money, or reward for discovery of crimes. To have informed against Terig and MacDonald might have cost MacPherson his life; and it is far from being impossible that he had recourse to the story of the ghost, knowing well ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... improve other people's characters at the expense of his own. Nobody can do a wrong without injuring himself; and no young man can do a mean, cowardly wrong like this without suffering severest injury. It is the very spirit of the slaveholder, a dastardly and detestable, a tyrannical and cruel spirit. If young men are so blinded by custom and habit that a meanness is not to them a meanness because it has been practised for years, so much the worse for the young men, and so much the worse for our country, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... of a great portion of the human race has been materially affected by the belief in the examples of their alleged lives. Something similar may be said of the alleged earliest history of the Chinese with its model emperors and detestable tyrants, the accounts of which, whether based on reality or not, have exercised much influence on the development of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... she, "since you will not hear the voice of supplication, hear that of reason and truth. Do not entertain a doubt, no, not for a moment, that if I am urged—driven—to this marriage, hateful and utterly detestable to me as it is, I shall hesitate to marry this man. I say this, however, because I tell you that I am about to appeal to your interest in my true happiness for the last time. Is it, then, kind; is it fatherly in you, sir, to exact from me the fulfilment of a ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... your Person: Do not imitate some finical Petit Matre in his Toupet, much less in more detestable Effeminacies. ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... more remarkably well-acted sweetness, he retired in more than common disgust at the fatigue he had been obliged to endure, to make himself appear properly agreeable. He gets into bed, and instantly tucks up his legs with his knees nigh to his chin, and—detestable little wretch!—throws out a kick with his utmost power against his fair, fat, substantial partner. What is the result? He did not calculate the "vis inertiae," that a little body kicking against the greater is wont to come off second best—so he kicks himself out of bed, and here ends the comedy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... said Isolda, thoughtfully: 'polygamy might be acceptable to the superfluous woman who can't marry under present conditions—the discontented spinster to whom the single state is so detestable that even polygamy would be preferable—but it would never be acceptable to the woman who can and ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... of the Spanish kings," he observed to Gerald Burke, "to plant their capital at Madrid in the centre of a barren country, when they might make such a splendid city as this their capital. I could see no charms whatever in Madrid. The climate was detestable, with its hot sun and bitter cold winds. Here the temperature is delightful; the air is soft and balmy, the country round is a garden, and there is a cathedral worthy of ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... and to accompany me in the capacity of private chaplain to the other side of Kaf. I politely accepted the "bruederschaft," but many reasons induced me to decline his society and services. In the first place, he spoke the detestable Egyptian jargon. Secondly, it was but prudent to lose the "spoor" between Alexandria and Suez. And thirdly, my "brother" had shifting eyes (symptoms of fickleness), close together (indices of cunning); a flat-crowned head and large ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... I see. That's why there is such a stuffy smell here. (With animation.) I don't know what we're coming to with these infection notions. It's just detestable! They seem to have forgotten the Lord. There's our master's sister, Princess Mosolova, her daughter was dying, and, will you believe it, neither father nor mother would come near her! So she died without their having taken leave of her. And the daughter ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... Double dealing is always detestable. The man that blows hot and cold at the same time is not worthy to be trusted; the sooner we part from ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... his most ironical tones. "Rastignac was not of your way of thinking. To take without repaying is detestable, and even rather bad form; but to take that you may render a hundred-fold, like the Lord, is a chivalrous deed. This was Rastignac's view. He felt profoundly humiliated by his community of interests with Delphine ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... not bad of blood will always be glad to mention one of the few good sides of a generally detestable character; and a person of humour must always chuckle at some of the ways in which Calvin's services to French ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... vocation. They secretly introduced one of the most beautiful and most insinuating young strumpets of the country into his chamber, promising her a considerable reward in case she could draw him into sin. She employed all the arms of Satan to succeed in so detestable a design. The saint, alarmed and affrighted at the danger, profoundly humbled himself, and cried out to God most earnestly for his protection; then snatching up a firebrand struck her with it, and drove her out of his chamber. After this victory, not moved with pride, but blushing with confusion ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... memories, and we must not risk her having a bad night—of course not. Ah, my dear, memory, like one's teeth, is a very doubtful blessing. Far more trouble than pleasure when you have it, and yet a dreadful nuisance when you have not—But what's this I hear about Adrian? Gone back to that detestable island of his again! I left him and Molly smiling into each other's eyes, clasping each other's hands like two turtle-doves. Why, she could not as much as swallow a mouthful of soup, unless he was beside her to feed her—And ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... combined learning and wit and genius with industry, perseverance and ambition. They laid the foundation of a work which has outlived all its rivals and contemporaries; but they have left few to inherit and emulate their disinterested devotion to the cause of letters.... England, that detestable country where everyone has been starving for the last century, where everyone has been crushed by the load of taxes, and everyone has been flying from home to avoid the oppressions of the Ministry, prints several thousand copies of a magazine, and the whole edition ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... taken aback. He lacked a clue to the course of reasoning pursued by Watusk's mongrel mind. However, he quickly reflected that it was only by exercising his wits that he could hope to help Nesis. He took the detestable hand and returned an ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... A detestable week followed. John tackled his Shakespeare alone, working doggedly. Then, quite suddenly, the giant gripped him. He had always possessed a remarkable memory, and as a child he had learnt by heart many passages out ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... thought Sepia, with a bitter laugh that even in her own eyes she should be comparable to a poor creature like Letty. The fact, however, remained that Godfrey was a little altered toward her: she must have been telling him something against her— something she had heard from that detestable little hypocrite who was turned away on suspicion of theft! Yes—that was how Sepia talked ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... dear, be happy and brave." The next day he wrote again on the same subject: "I have yours of the 27th, with those of Hortense and M. Napoleon enclosed. I have asked you to go back to Paris; the season is too bad, the roads too insecure and detestable, the distance too great for me to allow you to come so far to me when my affairs detain me. It would take you at least a month to get here. You. would be sick when you got here, and then, perhaps, you would have to start back; it would be madness. Your sojourn at Mayence is too ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... gross, coarse—well, I needn't go on with particulars. I don't like any part of it, from the beginning to the end. I find it always offensive and detestable. How do I account for this change ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a quandary. The thought of the grimy hand touching Clare's was detestable yet, if the request had been made in innocence it seemed churlish to object. Clare, who overheard, settled the question for him, by coming out and offering her hand to the Indian with ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... so was forced to go to my old lodgings, where also my wardrobe is; and there I poured out millions of curses upon the whole crew, and refused to see either Sally or Polly; and this not only for suffering the lady to escape, but for the villanous arrest, and for their detestable insolence to her at ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... from France, and especially from this General Bonaparte, who, by his glory and his wonderful battles, excites the wildest enthusiasm for the cause of the revolution, and delights the stupid masses so much that they hail him as a new messiah of liberty. Liberty, detestable word! that, like the fatal bite of the tarantula, renders men furious, and causes them to rave about in frantic dances ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... never was seen on the upper Arkansas. Of the large and fine horses with which we had left the frontier in the spring, not one remained; we had supplied their place with the rough breed of the prairie, as hardy as mules and almost as ugly; we had also with us a number of the latter detestable animals. In spite of their strength and hardihood, several of the band were already worn down by hard service and hard fare, and as none of them were shod, they were fast becoming foot-sore. Every horse and mule had a cord of twisted bull-hide ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... natural and absolute princes did sometimes take in hand wrong actions; but that men, and that of account as some of them made show of, should be carried into unjust, desperate, and wicked actions, by one that neither from God or man could claim any princely power or empire, but (was) indeed a detestable shaveling, the right Antichrist and general ambitious tyrant over all right principalities, and patron of the Diabolica fede—this I could not but greatly rest in wonder. Their fault therefore far to be aggravated by the vileness of their commander; and that at my ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... worship of the Blessed Virgin, the casuistry of the Confessional, and the like,)—and so, once more substituting the creature for the Creator?—What again is the fashionable intellectual sin of the day, but the self-same detestable offence, under quite a different disguise? The idea of Law,—(that old idea which is declared to be only now emerging into supremacy in Science,)—takes the hideous shape of rebellion against its Maker; and pronounces, now Miracles, now Prophecy, now Inspiration itself, to ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... brought up with boys than at the 'Sacred Heart.' He is a worthy son of his father there," said she, pointing to one of the portraits near the young Royal-Nassau officer; "and he was the most brutal, unbearable, and detestable of all the dragoons in Lorraine; so much so that he got into three quarrels at Nancy in one month, and at Metz, over a game of checkers, he killed the poor Vicomte de Megrigny, who was worth a hundred of him and danced so well! Some one described Bergenheim as being ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... has placed restrictions on unions that are not blessed by Heaven. Benedict XIV. has called them DETESTABLE. A sad experience has proved the wisdom of the warning. When the love that has existed in the blinding fervor of passion has subsided into the realities of every-day life, the bond of nuptial duty will be ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... "you fight like a Dator. But for your detestable yellow hair and your white skin you would be an honour to the First ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... or six feet in diameter and four or five feet high; sheep and cattle pick at it when they are hungry, but seldom touch it while they can get anything else. Its seed is like that of oats. It is an unhappy-looking grass, if grass it be. Spaniard, which I have mentioned before, is simply detestable; it has a strong smell, half turpentine half celery. It is sometimes called spear-grass, and grows to about the size of a mole-hill, all over the back country everywhere, as thick as mole-hills in a very mole-hilly field at home. Its blossoms, which are green, insignificant, and ugly, ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... hates the play. We both thought—detestable in his part, false in emphasis, violent and coarse. Generally the fault of the performance was, strange to say for that theater, overacting, want of repose, point, and finish. With you in essentials I was quite satisfied, but quiet—not so much movement of arms and hands. Bear this ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... absenteeism; and now the land's mine, why, I must put up with it, I suppose, and live upon it in spite of myself. But I do it against the grain. The whole place, if I tell you the truth, is simply detestable to me." ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... and from the garden. He knew me as well as I knew him; and so, in the cold, faint twilight, with a glimmer in the high glass and another on the polish of the oak stair below, we faced each other in our common intensity. He was absolutely, on this occasion, a living, detestable, dangerous presence. But that was not the wonder of wonders; I reserve this distinction for quite another circumstance: the circumstance that dread had unmistakably quitted me and that there was nothing in me there that didn't meet and ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... and adorned its walls for his amusement with all kinds of animals of the size of life, among which was the picture of a lion. When the young Prince saw this, his grief at being thus confined burst out afresh, and standing near the lion, he thus spoke: "O you most detestable of animals! through a lying dream of my father's, which he saw in his sleep, I am shut up on your account in this palace as if I had been a girl. What shall I now do to you?" With these words he ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... proof there is none. We find Giacomo Trotti, the French ambassador in Milan, writing to the Duke of Ferrara a fortnight after Roderigo's election that "the Papacy has been sold by simony and a thousand rascalities, which is a thing ignominious and detestable." ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... the frightful hour of midnight, when the Hell-demon leans over your sleeping form, and inspires those thoughts which eventually will lead you to the gates of destruction... The fiend of the Sussex solitudes shrieked in the wilderness at midnight—he thirsts for thy detestable gore, impious Fergus. But the day of retribution will arrive. H ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... flinging herself down by the table and resting her head on her hand. "Not unless we can contrive to pay off that detestable mortgage. The day grows farther off instead of nearer now that we haven't paid ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... (having the power to avoid it) to be crammed into a carriage and carried from place to place, whether I would or not, and be set down at the stated points de vue, while a detestable laquais points out what I am to admire, I shall deserve to endure again what I endured to-day. As there was no possibility of relief, I resigned myself to my fate, and was even amused by the absurdity of my own situation. We went ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Vienna. He had nothing to do with the theatre then; I did not understand what he did, but I think he was continually at a gambling house, though he was careful always about taking me to the theatre. I was very miserable. The plays I acted in were detestable to me. Men came about us and wanted to talk to me: women and men seemed to look at me with a sneering smile; it was no better than a fiery furnace. Perhaps I make it worse than it was—you don't know that life: but the glare and the faces, and my having to go on and act ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... conspicuous, and that she had betrayed herself at once by her dress as an ignoramus and an outsider. Worst of all, the lady in green was in a sacque too!—a shapeless yellow thing of the most untutored and detestable make. Mittens also! drawn laboriously over the hands and arms of an Amazon. Lucy glanced at Miss Danby beside her, then at a beautiful woman in pale pink across the room—at their slim waists, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... swallow a camel; they can believe that the world was made by chance; that God doth not concern himself with things below; will neither punish vice, nor reward virtue; that religion was invented by cunning men to keep the world in awe; with many other opinions equally false and detestable, against the common light of nature as well as reason; against the universal sentiments of all civilized nations, and offensive to the ears even ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... parish, and the thought of the confessions he would have to hear on Saturday night and of the Mass he would have to say on Sunday was bitter indeed, for he had ceased to believe in these things. To say Mass, believing the Mass to be but a mummery, was detestable. To remain in his parish meant a constant degradation of himself. When a parishioner sent to ask him to attend a sick call, he could barely bring himself to anoint the dying man. Some way out of the dilemma ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... and 'time-honoured' methods to attain the end is that of violence. The assassination of Sir Curzon Wylie was an illustration of that method in its worst and most detestable form. Tolstoy's life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of non-resistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in self-suffering. He admits of no exception to whittle down this great ...
— A Letter to a Hindu • Leo Tolstoy
... most various uses, constructed of the most different materials. As the ornamentation is always to be subordinate to the object, considerations regarding size, use, position, material, etc., must govern it. An ornament that would be admirable applied to one object, might be detestable if applied to another. A design cannot be made without reference ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... does but dream and makes an effort fruitless as imaginary to lift himself out of it, I did try to follow what my heart said I should do,—fold my dear wife in my arms, and reassure her in all things. But I did no such thing. The other spirit—I should say seven others more hateful and detestable than any which had before possession of me—conquered. I raised Eudora from her kneeling posture. I placed her on the sofa beside me. I began to hate her,—to hate her for her goodness, her gentleness, her truthfulness, her fidelity,—to hate her because ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... became the "holy languages" because they were so closely allied with the Sacred Scriptures. Throughout education a deeper sense of the value of religious teaching, a deeper conviction that sin was detestable, a greater respect for outward sobriety fastened upon the minds of those who were responsible for education, and the children whom they trained grew up to be the fathers and mothers of the intense enthusiasts, who enforced religious freedom by the execution ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... parts, destroyed by devotion to his pipe. To this day he thinks that mantelpiece vases are meant for holding pipe-lights in. We are almost certain that when he stays with us he smokes in his bedroom—a detestable practice ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... the point of forgetting, until reminded by a dig from the spur of necessity, that she was only a masquerader, acting her borrowed part in a pageant. For the first time since she had hopefully taken it up, that part became detestable. She would have given almost anything to throw it off, and be herself: for nothing less than clear sincerity seemed worthy of this day and the ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... The things could not be spoiled, but their effect was very materially marred by the swarms of tourists. Sometimes they were silly, and cracked inane and obvious jokes in ridicule of the grandest objects they had come so far to see; sometimes they were detestable and left their insignificant calling-cards or their unimportant names where nobody could ever have any object in reading them; sometimes they were pathetic and helpless and had to have assistance; sometimes they were amusing; hardly ever did they seem entirely human. I wonder ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... commission of a crime like his against civil liberty is a necessity. The American people will not tolerate a judge like this on the bench of their highest court. To do it would be to submit their necks to as detestable a tyranny as ever existed on the face. of the earth. They will not sit quietly by to see their liberties, red and radiant with the blood of a million of their sons, silently melted away in the judicial crucible of a stolid ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... with a start of surprise. "Beasley! That name is familiar to us—and detestable. My uncle complained of this man for years. Then he grew bitter—accused Beasley. But the last year ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... Cloisters, useful in the early education of modern civilization, have embarrassed its growth, and are injurious to its development. So far as institution and formation with relation to man are concerned, monasteries, which were good in the tenth century, questionable in the fifteenth, are detestable in the nineteenth. The leprosy of monasticism has gnawed nearly to a skeleton two wonderful nations, Italy and Spain; the one the light, the other the splendor of Europe for centuries; and, at the present day, these two illustrious peoples ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... miserable time of it at dinner, for he badgered Derrick almost past bearing, and I think the poor old fellow minded it more when there was a third person present. Somehow through all he managed to keep his extraordinary capacity for reverencing mere age—even this degraded and detestable old age of the Major's. I often thought that in this he was like my own ancestor, Hugo Wharncliffe, whose deference and respectfulness and patience had not descended to me, while unfortunately the effects of his physical infirmities had. I ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... Elizabeth Garrow. "It only means romping. To me all that is detestable, and I am sure it is not the sort of thing that ...
— The Mistletoe Bough • Anthony Trollope
... quite detestable," she told her husband later. "What on earth Olga can see to like in him is a puzzle I can never hope to solve. Noel is worth a hundred ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... of myself; —almost too much humiliated to hold up my head and say good-bye. For I began to comprehend how much harm my conduct might do you socially in your village. I would have gone to that detestable oyster-brained bore and apologized for my inexcusable rudeness to him, but that I was satisfied he was of too small a calibre to know how to receive an ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... manuscripts and printed documents relating to the subject. It was then that I pricked up my ears. They spoke at first of original sources; and I must confess they did so in a satisfactory manner, despite their innumerable and detestable puns. Then they began to speak about contemporary studies ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... for heav'n or heavenly bliss: But if in hell doth any place remain Of more esteem than is another room, I hope, as guerdon for my just desert, To have it for my detestable acts. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... out of life from the gallows with the settled air of a man who feels he has lost the game at which he played, and that he may as well pay the stake calmly? There was a true British composure about the unutterable atrocity of this villain—murderer he was, and a most detestable murderer too—but his character belongs to our country as fully as that of our heroes. Hunt and Probert were pitiful wretches, fit for the Bicetre. Doubtless the agony of Hunt's feelings until his reprieve ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... neglecting his studies and "going to Rome," if he doesn't in the course of the week go to Wilson and carry him the Church papers and take a look at the Wilson prize-pigs. So good Mr. Herbert never fails, in due attestation of his "abhorrence of the Bishop of Rome and his detestable enormities," to foot it over the rocky hill and down across the rickety little bridge and past the poor-house farm, (where he stops on a little private business of his own, that perhaps makes a few old hearts and certainly one old coat-pocket the lighter,) and so on, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... I would not seek to force upon other nations our principles and our liberty if they did not want them. I would not disturb the repose even of a detestable despotism. But if an abused and oppressed people will their freedom; if they seek to establish it; if, in truth, they have established it,—we have a right, as a sovereign power, to notice the fact, and to act as circumstances ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... by Aunt Belle, who was coming in to see what her brother was roaring about, and down those detestable gilded curlicue stairs to seek out his wife and try again to make her realize that for once he was determined on what should come to pass as regarded their future together, to force her to realize even if ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... with the past her bitterness becomes extreme. 'J'ai eu autrefois,' she writes in 1778, 'des plaisirs indicibles aux operas de Quinault et de Lulli, et au jeu de Thevenart et de la Lemaur. Pour aujourd'hui, tout me parait detestable: acteurs, auteurs, musiciens, beaux esprits, philosophes, tout est de mauvais gout, tout est affreux, affreux.' That great movement towards intellectual and political emancipation which centred in the 'Encyclopaedia' and the Philosophes was the object of her particular detestation. She saw Diderot ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... did Rebekah gain by this detestable contrivance? She saw, indeed, her favourite son inheriting the blessing; but this would have descended upon him without her interference, according to the predeterminations of Providence. She saw also a just recrimination ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... again invaded by the man whom they called, in the blindness of their rage, pirate and renegade. Professor Houghton, a serious-minded historian, writing of Jones said: "His moral character can be summed up in one word—detestable." English comment on Paul Jones may be summed up truthfully in one word,—envenomed. Jones's exploits, moreover, greatly increased the prestige of young America, and made of himself a still greater hero at home and particularly in France. For the rest of his life, indeed, ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... to facilitate matters, about settles the question of "sport." I should like to ask Charles Payne, or Goddard, their opinion of "pricking" a fox. However, to ride straight and fast over such a country would be simply impossible; their detestable snake-fences meet you everywhere, with their projecting "zigzags" of loosely-piled rails; you can hardly ever get a chance of taking them in your stride, and they are a fair standing jump with the top bar removed, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... her produce effects such as a clever woman might have laboured for and only attained by a stroke of genius. As, for instance, when she had met for the first time after her engagement, a certain particularly detestable woman of rank, to whom her relation to Walderhurst was peculiarly bitter. The Duchess of Merwold had counted the Marquis as her own, considering him fitted by nature to be the spouse of her eldest girl, a fine young woman ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hated the hands that had held him, the feet that had gone with him, the lips that had touched him, the eyes that had looked at him to love him. Him she detested, not so much on his own account, as because he had made her detestable to herself. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... Elsie, stamping her little foot passionately on the carpet. "How dare you speak of a fraud so black, of treason so detestable! I am his sister, sir, and have something of his courage, frivolous as people think me. Persecute her or provoke me too far and I will ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... and he hurried away, his intention being to call upon Dora Stanhope and see how she was faring. Although Dick would not admit it, he thought a great deal of Dora, and he was sorry, that she was in danger of having the detestable Josiah ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... and state. In a letter to Madame Geoffrin she insists, as we have already seen her doing with Falconet, on being treated to no oriental prostrations, as if she were at the court of Persia. "There is nothing in the world so ugly and detestable as greatness. When I go into a room, you would say that I am the head of Medusa: everybody turns to stone. I constantly scream like an eagle against such ways; yet the more I scream, the less are they at their ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... coincidence. She had always KNOWN that there was something in occultism, supernaturalism, so-called superstitions, what not. But she had never expected to prove the faith that was in her by such a homicidal act on her own part. It was detestable of Charlie to have mentioned the thing at all. He had no right to play with fire. And as for her husband, words could give but the merest rough outline of her resentment against Stephen. A pretty state of things ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... sports in other countries, and by the same reckless disregard of mercy towards the poor brutes who suffered in the conflict. It is to be hoped, however, for the honor of human nature, that the good sense of the community will not permit this detestable custom to prevail. ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... in a vision, came to me the short-haired and detestable dogs, and the way seemed plain. By the wisdom of Otsbaok, my father and a strong man, had the blood of our own wolf-dogs been kept clean, wherefore had they remained warm of hide and strong in the harness. So I returned to my village and made oration to the men. 'This ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... produce of violence and robbery; the hides are the simple sun-dried skins of oxen; the senna grows wild upon the desert; the gum arabic exudes spontaneously from the bushes of the jungle; and the bees'-wax is the produce of the only industrious creatures in that detestable country. ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... saw primroses. They were everywhere: they fawned on me in wreaths and festoons; swarmed over me like parasites; flew at me like flies; till it seemed that the whole world had conspired to suffocate me under a sulphurous canopy of those detestable little atoms. Can you imagine the horror of it, Doctor, to a sane—a ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... order, and when they are confronted with the duty of defending hearth and home, their courage ends in vapour." He avers that they "cannot lose honour, as they have none to lose," and yet he makes no serious effort to unshackle himself from a detestable position. Emma, the Queen, and King of Naples, and others, have a deep-rooted hold on him, and he cannot give up the cheap popularity of the Neapolitans. He persuades himself that the whole thought of his ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... prospect before us, at the seeming departure of our invaluable liberties. But some sign of life appearing, Liberty was not deposited in the grave; it was rescued by a number of her sons, the motto changed to Liberty revived, and carried off in triumph. The detestable Act was buried in its stead, and the clods of the valley were laid upon it; the bells changed their melancholy sound to a more joyful tone." (1. Annals of ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... been very short-lived. But he contrived to attach two clever rascals to himself, who helped to prolong the fraud and to victimise the public. They were both convicts, but convicts of a high intellectual type. One was Larcher, a revolutionary priest, and a man of detestable life; while the other was a forger named Tourly. These worthies acted as his secretaries. On the 3d of March 1816, the priest wrote a letter to "Madame de ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... manners at the time will account for much: but the wiser apologists will simply say that Fielding's attitude to certain deviations from the strict moral law was undoubtedly very indulgent, provided that such deviations were unaccompanied by the graver and more detestable vices of cruelty, treachery, and fraud—that to vice which was accompanied by these blacker crimes he was utterly merciless; and that if he is thus rather exposed to the charge of "compounding by damning"—in the famous phrase—the things that he damned ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... had enough of this, Mr. Ford," said the broker, coldly. "Your guilt is evident. In robbing your stepmother you have committed a serious crime; but in attempting to throw the guilt upon an innocent boy, you have been guilty of an offense still more detestable, and one which I cannot forgive. You cannot remain in my employment another day. If you will call at the office in the morning, I will pay your salary to the end of the month. That will end all ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... of fifty degrees! That is to say, from above 100 degrees to 50 degrees! A brickfielder is a southerly wind, and it takes its local name from the circumstances of its blowing over, and bringing into town the flames [sic] of a large brick-field: it is nearly as detestable as ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... perfectly horrid just now," she said; "I can't think what has come over him; and considering that you have been coaching him every day, and getting him shooting and fishing, it seems to me quite detestable! I oughtn't to say that; but you mustn't be angry with him, Mr. Kennedy. I think he is feeling very independent just now, and he said to me that it made him feel that he was back at school to have to go up with his books to ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Orders, or the presentation of any one to an ecclesiastical benefice for money, gift, or reward. Canon 40 calls it "the detestable sin of simony," and every person on being instituted to a benefice has to swear that he is not guilty of it. It is so called from the sin of Simon Magus (Acts viii. 19), though Paley states that the resemblance is ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... extra talent does sometimes make people jealous. They become irritated by perpetual attempts and failures, and it hurts their tempers and dispositions. Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essentially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wineglass spoil a draught of fair water. No wonder the poor fellow we spoke of, who always belongs to this class of slightly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... you laugh at that detestable old woman?" he exclaimed on encountering Bertha later in the evening. "I wonder that M. Villefort would permit her to talk to you. She is a wicked, cynical creature, who has the hardihood to laugh at her sins instead ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ceremonies by reference to a man punished by extreme suffering for wickedness, and to the deadly wood of the cross, bestows fitting altars upon reprobate and wicked men, that they may worship what they deserve. Now the story of their initiation of young novices is as detestable as it is well known. An infant covered with meal, so as to deceive the unwary, is placed before him who is to be defiled with their rites; this infant is slain with dark and secret wounds by the young ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Paul agreed. The police were very unpopular in Budge Street—almost as unpopular as Paul. In all probability the Buttons were only too glad to be rid of him. If he found no favour in the eyes of Mrs. Button, in the eyes of Button he was detestable. Occasionally he spoke of them to Barney Bill on his rare appearances in London, but for prudential motives the latter had struck Bludston out of his itinerary and could give no information. At last Paul ceased altogether to think of them. They belonged to a far-distant ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Here we are forced to beg for alms, and, besides, you are so ugly and vile and despicable that very soon they will be tossing us bread as if we were dogs. Ah, my poor people, take pity on us! Take pity on me! I have n't deserved my lot, and never had woman a more dirty and detestable husband. Help me to pick him up, else the wagons will run over him as they run over broken bottles, and I shall be a widow, and that will end by killing me with grief, though all the world says it would ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... watch; they made a whole that had features, shades of expression, a complicated aspect that could be remembered by the eye, and something else besides, something invisible, a directing spirit of perdition that dwelt within, like a malevolent soul in a detestable body. He was anxious to make this clear. This had not been a common affair, everything in it had been of the utmost importance, and fortunately he remembered everything. He wanted to go on talking for truth's sake, perhaps ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... indirectly, by whatsoever Combination, Perswasion, or Terror, to be divided and withdrawne from this blessed Union and Conjunction, whether to make defection to the contrary part, or to give our selves to a detestable indifferency or neutrality in this Cause: According to which Article, mens Reality and integrity in the Covenant, will be manifest and demonstrable as well by their omissions, as by their commissions; as well by their not doing good, as by their doing of ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... call in the spirit of bigotry,' the Author of this Apology would not for all the treasures of India stand in the shoes of these men, whose whole time and energies are employed in generating and perpetuating that detestable spirit. But when your Rylands, and Balguys and Beatties, and Watsons and Halls make a merit of abusing those who cannot believe as they believe, what can be hoped or expected from the tribe of illiterate canters, who ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... of which the preface (L'Imprimeur aux lecteurs, dated June 25, 1577) shows that it was written before the death of Charles IX., but the publication of which was from time to time deferred in the vain hope that the authors of the inhuman massacre might yet repent. The new and "more detestable perfidy, fury, and impetuosity" of which the Huguenots were the victims in the first years of Henry III.'s reign, finally brought it to the light. The Archives curieuses contain only ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... school, he attacks the "licentious Tobacconists [smokers] who spend and consume, not only their time, but also their health, wealth, and witts in taking of this loathsome and unsavorie fume." He admits the popularity of the herb, but expresses his own personal objection to the "detestable savour or smack that it leaveth behind upon the taking of it"; from which one is inclined to surmise that the doctor's first pipe was not an entire success. With an evident desire to be fair, Venner, notwithstanding his dislike of the "savour," refuses to condemn tobacco utterly, because of what ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... the last feast which ever Timon made, and in it he took farewell of Athens and the society of men; for, after that, he betook himself to the woods, turning his back upon the hated city and upon all mankind, wishing the walls of that detestable city might sink, and the houses fall upon their owners, wishing all plagues which infest humanity, war, outrage, poverty, diseases, might fasten upon its inhabitants, praying the just gods to confound all Athenians, both young and old, high and low; so wishing, he went to the woods, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of her good City of London struggled in an agony with one boot on and one off. At last he became beside himself, and cried wildly, "For God's sake put that boot on again." He only got it on in time to make his obeisance to her Majesty. He had to wear the detestable boots till the banquet; just before it, he was successfully ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... wrecked on the island Miranda was fifteen years old. We can hardly suppose that she had ever seen Ariel, and Caliban was a detestable object whom her father took good care to keep as much out of her way as possible. Caliban was like the man cook on a back-country run. "'Tis a villain, sir," says Miranda. "I do not love to look on." "But as 'tis," returns Prospero, "we cannot miss him; he does make our fire, fetch in our wood, ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... are capable of calm judgment. Here the atmosphere is simply detestable. Everybody has knuckled under to sentiment. Perhaps your deliberate opinion could influence . ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... contrived to elude her observation, and slipping out of the door, walked rapidly away. What was to become of me, I knew not, nor cared, in my joy at having escaped from such an abode of hypocrisy as my parents' house—for of all the vices which can disgrace humanity, I regard hypocrisy as the most detestable. ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... race would, of course, if wanting vitality, crave for stimulants. But if the stimulants, and not the original want of vitality, combined with morals utterly detestable, and worthy only of the gallows—and here I know what I say, and dare not tell what I know, from eye-witnesses—have been the cause of the Red Indians' extinction, then how is it, let me ask, that the ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Irish rebels found they were reserved for execution by martial law. The Italian general and some of the officers were made prisoners of war, but the garrison was butchered in cold blood; nor is it without pain that we find a service so horrid and detestable committed to Sir ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... in the country—I do not mean the country adjacent to cities—feels and sees what would escape vulgar eyes, and draws suitable inferences. This train of reflections might have led me further, in every sense of the word; but I could not escape from the detestable evaporation of the herrings, which ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... but he departed from life and never kept his word. A frequent source of grief to me has been to see objects of great value, illustrating some point in archaeology, seized as "curiosities" by ignorant wealthy folk. The most detestable form of this folly is the buying of incunabula, first editions or uncut copies, and keeping them from publication or reading, and, in short, of worshipping anything, be it a book or a coin, merely because it is rare. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... intellectual-looking creature it was, carving a bit of broccoli or cabbage in his plate, as if it had been the substantial wing of a chicken. In a few minutes Shelley opened the conversation by saying in the most feminine and gentle voice, "As to that detestable religion, the Christian—" I looked astounded, but casting a glance round the table, I easily saw that I was to be set at that evening vi et armis.... I felt like a stag at bay, and resolved to gore without mercy. Shelley said the Mosaic and Christian dispensation were inconsistent. I swore ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... some tooth-powder and tincture of myrrh, by Waite, &c. Ricciardetto should have been translated literally, or not at all. As to puffing Whistlecraft, it won't do. I'll tell you why some day or other. Cornwall's a poet, but spoilt by the detestable schools of the day. Mrs. Hemans is a poet also, but too stiltified and apostrophic,—and quite wrong. Men died calmly before the Christian era, and since, without Christianity: witness the Romans, and, lately, Thistlewood, Sandt, and Lovel—men ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... rebellion and its connection with German intrigue propaganda, and in view of the great loss of life and destruction of property resulting therefrom, the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief has found it imperative to inflict the most severe sentences on the known organizers of this detestable rising and on those commanders who took an active part in the actual fighting which occurred. It is hoped that these examples will be sufficient to act as a deterrent to intriguers and to bring home to them that the murder of His Majesty's liege subjects ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... the people, he thus addressed them: "What you have so often wished for, Campanians, the power of punishing an unprincipled and detestable senate, you now have, not at your own imminent peril, by riotously storming the houses of each, which are guarded and garrisoned with slaves and dependants, but free and without danger. Take them all, shut up in the senate-house, alone and unarmed; nor need you do any thing precipitately or blindly. ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... poetry to this day, is mainly the continuation of this manner of Shakspeare's. It was a manner much more turbid and strewn with blemishes than the manner of Pindar, Dante, or Milton; often it was detestable; but it owed its existence to Shakspeare's instinctive impulse towards STYLE in poetry, to his native sense of the necessity for it; and without the basis of style everywhere, faulty though it may in some places be, we should not have had the beauty of ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... every nerve revolted at the thought, she was finally convinced, unwillingly, but assuredly, that her husband was here. Indeed, if it were not so, how could she for a single moment have accepted the possibility that he was a stranger? He seemed to haunt, like a ghostly emanation, this strange, detestable face—as memory supplies the features concealed beneath a mask. The face was still and stony, like one dead or imaged in wax, yet beneath it dreams were passing—silly, ordinary Lawford dreams. She was almost alarmed at the terribly ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... intercept any blow that should be aimed at him; "I owed my life to him this morning—my life, which was endangered solely by my having sheltered you; and to shed his blood when he can offer no effectual resistance, were not only a cruelty abhorrent to God and man, but detestable ingratitude both to him ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... have had three stoves put up, and henceforth no light of a cheerful fire will gladden us at eventide. Stoves are detestable in every respect, except that they keep ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... twenty years ago, and wrecked it more surely than if she had torn out her own eyes, that made her heart sick within her now. She, who loved dignity, who loved purity, who loved strength, must carry to her grave the knowledge of her own detestable weakness! She must instruct her daughter, guarding the blue eyes and the active mind from even the knowledge of life's ugly side, she must hold the highest standard of purity before her son, knowing, as she ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... the Englishman is born illogical. As a matter of fact, I am inclined to believe that the English care more even than the French for simplicity; but the constitution is not logical. The complexity we tolerate is that which has grown up. Any new complexity, as such, is detestable to the English mind. Let anyone try to advocate a plan of suffrage reform at all out of the way, and see how ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... beasts. Then he noticed that wherever these villainous gentry passed the dead behind them were shoeless, their bare, white feet exposed, devoid of covering, and he saw how it was: they were the tramps and thugs who followed the German armies for the sake of plundering the dead, the detestable crew who followed in the wake of the invasion in order that they might reap their harvest from the field of blood. A tall, lean fellow arose in front of him and scurried away on a run, a sack slung across his shoulder, the watches ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... by a formal agreement, the entire body itself undertaking to see to their observance. It is quite possible that strong religious profession, and even sincere profession, might be accompanied, as it was in the Spaniards, with everything most detestable. It is not sufficient of itself to prove that their actions would correspond with it, but it is one among a number of evidences; and, coming, as they come before us, with hands clear of any blood but of fair and open enemies, their articles ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... O vile, O detestable deed! Thieves, neighbours! come forth, away, abroad with speed. Where dwell ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... If Iago is detestable enough when he has business on his hands and all his engines at work, he is still worse when he has nothing to do, and we only see into the hollowness of his heart. His indifference when Othello falls into ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... of all the animals which live in the forest and its outskirts towards the savannahs! There is the singular opossum, and there is the sluggish, scaly armadillo, which loves the detestable termites—those white ants which, with their sharp mandibles, gnaw to pieces paper, clothes, wood, the whole house in fact. Then there is the climbing sloth, with its round monkey head and large curved claws. All day long it remains sleepily hanging under a bough, and only wakes up when night ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... mean that you will break your heart and die for the detestable conduct of an infamous ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... strangers, when did we ever injure our relatives? If our enemies' conduct has been adopted, to gratify their desire for power (as would seem to be the case from their having taken possession of the palace and brought an armed force into the piazza), the infamous, ambitious, and detestable motive is at once disclosed. If they were actuated by envy and hatred of our authority, they offend you rather than us; for from you we have derived all the influence we possess. Certainly usurped ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... deeply ingrained in her that even if, in a momentary fit of aberration into good taste, she condescends to a simple material about which there can be neither disguise nor pretence, she must load it with that detestable cheap finery of hers till she makes herself as vulgar in a muslin as she was ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the Doctor, now allowing his powerful voice to boom to its full compass—"if I can succeed in bringing this coward, this unmanly dallier in a sentiment which the healthy mind of boyhood rejects as premature, to a sense of his detestable conduct; if I can score the lesson upon his flesh so that some faint notion of its force and purport may be conveyed to what has been supplied to him as a heart, then I shall not have lifted this ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... disregarded, and we were forced into the service, like native levies impelled toward the foe less by the inherent righteousness of the cause than by the indisputable rifles of their white allies. This was unpardonable and altogether detestable. Still, the thing happened, now and again; and when it did, there was no arguing about it. The order was for the front, and we just had to shut up ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... of this as an example of what you ought to shun. Nothing is to be more avoided than this preposterous association of extravagance and meanness—defects which are unpleasant enough when found separately, but are particularly detestable when combined. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Count Rumford, "these detestable vermin swarmed everywhere; and not only their impudence and clamorous importunity were boundless, but they had recourse to the most diabolical arts and the most horrid crimes in the prosecution of their infamous trade. They exposed and tortured their own children, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... the single exception to the delightfulness of Shakspeare's plays. It is a hateful work, although Shakspearian throughout. Our feelings of justice are grossly wounded in Angelo's escape. Isabella herself contrives to be unamiable, and Claudio is detestable. ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... obscurantism and the furtive enemy of progress. Distrusting all those generous movements which spring from the popular desire to benefit by change, it follows from this that the diplomatic brotherhood inclines towards those truly detestable things—secret compacts. In the present instance, having been bitterly disappointed by the complete collapse of the strong man theory, it was only natural that consolation should be sought by casting doubt on the future. Never have sensible men been so absurd. The life-story ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... my widowed wife; I sue not for my ruddy drops of life, My children fair, my lovely girls and boys; I will forget them; I will pass these joys, Ask nought so heavenward; so too—too high; Only I pray, as fairest boon, to die; To be delivered from this cumbrous flesh, From this gross, detestable, filthy mesh, And merely given to the cold, bleak air. Have mercy, goddess! Circe, feel ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Campeden who was Wykeham's Master of the Hospital and who was responsible for raising the church and domestic buildings from a ruinous state to one of comeliness and good order. The mid-Victorian restorations, though fairly successful, included a detestable colour scheme which goes far to spoil the general effect of the interior and should be removed, as was done after much agitation, some years ago in St. Paul's Cathedral. It is a great pity that any attempt ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... shackled when he endeavours to write down to the comprehension of those who could not understand or feel a highly imaginative style; but they show his earnestness, and with what heart-felt compassion he went home to the direct point of injury—that oppression is detestable as being the parent of starvation, nakedness, and ignorance. Besides these outpourings of compassion and indignation, he had meant to adorn the cause he loved with loftier poetry of glory and triumph: such is the scope of the "Ode to the Assertors ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... courtesy—says General Viele—Lincoln took the paper from the author and popped it into his portfolio. He had no policy, and did not want another's. He had bottled his wasp. Seward was obedient as the spaniel. His powers were recognized by the villains who comprised him in the detestable plot. ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... also very numerous. They were the coffee-houses of the ancient day. Hot drinks were sold there, boiled and perfumed wine, and all sorts of mixtures, which must have been detestable, but for which the ancients seem to have had a special fancy. "A thousand and a thousand times more respectable than the wine-shops of our day, these bathing-houses of ages gone by, where men did not assemble to shamefully squander their means and their existence ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... this timely tuition had been that George had grown up, not a boisterous, over bearing prig, showing off his learning at every available chance, and making himself detestable, and everybody else miserable, by his conceited air, but a modest, quiet scholar, with plenty of hidden fire and ambition, and not presuming on his talents to scorn his humble origin, or be ashamed of his home and parents—on the contrary, connecting them with all ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... Allies and raising France to undreamt-of heights of power, with failing to gain peace, with exhausting the credit and the resources of England until now he had to requisition men's incomes. As for Jekyll, he called the present proposals "a detestable measure of extortion and rapacity." The debates dragged on, until, after a powerful reply by Pitt in the small hours of 5th January 1798 the Finance Bill passed the Commons by 196 to 71. The Lords showed a far better spirit. Carrington declared that Pitt's proposals ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Public Safety, denounced Madame de Fleury, in the strange jargon of the day, as "the fosterer of a swarm of bad citizens, who were nourished in the anticivic prejudices de l'ancien regime, and fostered in the most detestable superstitions, in defiance of the law." He further observed, that he had good reason to believe that some of these little enemies to the constitution had contrived and abetted Monsieur de Fleury's escape. Of their having rejoiced at it in a most ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... sailors, in white trowsers and blue jackets. Thus they are obliged to expose themselves to a multitude, while they walk to Salt Hill, where they dine. As an Eton boy, I have witnessed four Montems, and could never think of each but as a ridiculous, tedious, and detestable performance; the only good resulting is, that the captain of the collegers receives several hundreds of pounds, which are collected from the crowd by other collegers in fancy dresses, and ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M. |
