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Revolting   Listen
adjective
Revolting  adj.  Causing abhorrence mixed with disgust; exciting extreme repugnance; loathsome; as, revolting cruelty.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Revolting" Quotes from Famous Books



... quite sure," said Lord Airlie, "that I could pardon anything sooner than a lie; all that is mean, despicable, and revolting to me is expressed in the one word, 'liar.' Sudden anger, passion, hot revenge—anything is more easily forgiven. When once I discover that a man or woman has told me a lie, I never care to see ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... cruelty practised on Sisera by Jael under the guise of hospitality is revolting under our code of morality. To decoy the luckless general fleeing before his enemy into her tent, pledging him safety, and with seeming tenderness ministering to his wants, with such words of sympathy and consolation lulling ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... was in every case ousted from his charge. The odium attached to his name was moreover increased by the fact, that his evidence in two cases of malicious prosecution had been proved false; for which he had been tried as a perjurer. Deprived of his chaplaincy for a revolting act of profligacy, driven from congregations he had scandalized, homeless and destitute, he in an evil hour betook himself to Dr. Ezrael Tonge, to whom he had long been known, and besought ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... Henry VI. have less of poetry and passion, and more of unnecessary verbosity and inflated language, than the rest of Shakspeare's works; that the continual exhibition of treachery, bloodshed, and violence, is revolting, and the want of unity of action, and of a pervading interest, oppressive and fatiguing; but also that there are splendid passages in the Second and Third Parts, such as Shakspeare alone could have written: and this is not denied ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... strange and unaccountable about a tow-line. You roll it up with as much patience and care as you would take to fold up a new pair of trousers, and five minutes afterwards, when you pick it up, it is one ghastly, soul-revolting tangle. ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... though my son has put it to her, I know, on the ground of her looks. "Nothing," she said, "will ever induce me to submit to that filthy, that revolting operation."' ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... position of supernumerary in a government office is precisely what the novitiate is in a religious order,—a trial. It is a rough trial. The State discovers how many of them can bear hunger, thirst, and penury without breaking down, how many can toil without revolting against it; it learns which temperaments can bear up under the horrible experience—or if you like, the disease—of government official life. From this point of view the apprenticeship of the supernumerary, instead of being an infamous device of the government ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... yet more revolting extreme. Let us inquire into the habits of the insect at breeding time, and to avoid the confusion of a crowd let us isolate the couples under different covers. Thus each pair will have their own dwelling, where nothing can trouble their honeymoon. We will not forget to ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... a little careful," he said in his revolting way. "By your hanging I become a Sergeant. That's my reward for running ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... thought it worth while to extend my translation from the Odes to the Epodes. The Epodes were the production of Horace's youth, and probably would not have been much cared for by posterity if they had constituted his only title to fame. A few of them are beautiful, but some are revolting, and the rest, as pictures of a roving and sensual passion, remind us of the least attractive portion of the Odes. In the case of a writer like Horace it is not easy to draw an exact line; but though in the Odes our admiration ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... violations of these covenants and departures from God, are no less evident discoveries, undeniable signs and pregnant convictions of the Lord's most just displeasure and indignation with the bypast and present courses of revolting and backsliding from him; which courses of declension and grievous apostatizing from God and his covenant, all the three kingdoms and in special this nation, and every individual therein capable of such a ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery

... Charles Voysey was preaching. There to my delight I found, on listening to the sermon and buying some literature on sale in the ante-room, that there were people who had passed through my own difficulties, and had given up the dogmas that I found so revolting. I went again on the following Sunday, and when the service was over I noticed that the outgoing stream of people were passing by Mr. and Mrs. Voysey, and that many who were evidently strangers spoke a word of thanks to him ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... conflati," which suggests connection with "ruptuarius, colonus qui agrum seu terram rumpit, proscindit, colic," i.e. that the ruptarii, also called rutarii, rutharii, rotharii, rotarii, etc., were so named because they were revolting peasants, i.e. men connected with the roture, or breaking of the soil, from which we get roturier, a plebeian. That would still connect our Rutters with Lat. rumpere, but ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... curious feelings by the scene they had just witnessed. They lay down upon the grass, and entered into a conversation, of which bears and alligators formed the subjects. The latter, however, with their singular and revolting habits, came in for the greater share of their talk. Many odd stories in relation to them were known to all, even to the little Francois; and Basil being an old hunter among the swamps and bayous, was acquainted with ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... beginning of July it must have been—I see him on his own lawn at his own garden-party, and—I didn't dream it this time—he was really dreadful. Instead of carrying it off with the levity that had so often saved him from perdition, there was that revolting triumph about him and an uneasy eagerness, as if he knew that his triumph wasn't quite complete. But the garden-party was, as he would have said, all right. They were all there, those people he had given three months to. He had pulled it off precisely as he had schemed ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... details with attention, and, in the examination of persons able to furnish evidence, never failed to suggest judicious questions. But still he manifested a coolness almost amounting to carelessness, which to many appeared revolting. But these people I desired to notice that all the other military students, who had been long in the army, felt exactly in the same way. In fact, the military service of Christendom, for the last ten years, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... business. And that his office of Chief-Justice should not lie dormant, he was commissioned to seek for affidavits or written testimony from any persons, for the purpose of convicting these women of a design of atrociously revolting against their son, and deposing him from the government, with a view of getting rid of the English inhabitants. This was the accusation; and the evidence to support it Sir Elijah Impey was ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... people of Abeokuta were half wild with exultation and joy, and their gratitude to their white allies was unbounded. Mr. Goodenough begged them not to lose an hour in burying their slain enemies, and the entire population were engaged for the two following days upon this necessary but revolting duty. The dead were counted as they were placed in the great pits dug for their reception, and it was found that no fewer than three thousand of the ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... looked up. Directly in range stood the strange young man, although he was at the far side of the loft. He was leaning against a window frame, his hat in his hand. She noted the dank hair on his forehead, the sweat of revolting nature. What ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... is for you to say. On behalf of the Crown, it is my duty to suggest to you that the prisoner in the dock may have carried the result of her crime to that distant spot, in several journeys, one of which happened to be seen. I must put it to you that piece by piece she accomplished her revolting task, and that she sought to hide the traces of her guilt in the sea. If you think that a rational and likely course of circumstances, no doubt you ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward

... in England in a character revolting to the later Presbyterian conscience, which he helped to educate. The State permitted no cleric to preach without a Royal license, and Knox was now a State licensed preacher at Berwick, one of many "State officials with a specified mission." He was an agent of the English ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... came. Henson whirled angrily, but he could elicit no response. He kicked the instrument over and danced round it impotently. Littimer had never seen him in such a raging fury before. The language of the man was an outrage, filthy, revolting, profane. No yelling, drunken Hooligan could have been ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... What a revolting business, this seasickness that forced me to put my head over the gunwale and make a pig of myself! I had a moment's relief, and then it began all over again. Charming! I felt as though I were in labor; the wrong way up, ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun

... each other; but Peter Cripple stepped quietly forward toward Sidsel, flung his arms around her, and they danced a whirling dance. Sophie laughed aloud at it, but Sidsel directed her extraordinary glance maliciously and piercingly toward her. Otto saw it, and the girl was doubly revolting and frightful in his eyes. With the increasing darkness the assembly became more animated; the two parties of dancers were resolved into one. At length, when it was grown quite dark, the ale barrels ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... embodied in his imagination of the Deity, that his system of beliefs was tainted throughout by them, and that the fact of his being so remarkable a logician recoiled on the premises which pointed his inexorable syllogisms to such revolting conclusions. When he presents us a God, in whose sight children, with certain not too frequent exceptions, "are young vipers, and are infinitely more hateful than vipers;" when he gives the most ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... our stand. We have no positive tests nor standards. Realism in art: realism in science—they pass away. In 1859, the thing to do was to accept Darwinism; now many biologists are revolting and trying to conceive of something else. The thing to do was to accept it in its day, but Darwinism ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... to false gods inevitably tells lies; wherefore a man who sacrifices to false gods when he is drunk, runs the risk of telling lies and speaking the truth at the same time, and is consequently a creature revolting to logic, and must be immediately destroyed for the good of the whole ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... practically put upon perjury. The pursuit of slaves became a regular business, and its operation was often indescribably horrible. These cruelties were emphasized chiefly in the presence of those who were known to be averse to slavery in any form, and they could not escape from the revolting scenes. ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... collection under the heading of Beauty are not of course a representative selection. Of the great mass of those epigrams no selection is possible or desirable. They belong to that side of Greek life which is akin to the Oriental world, and remote and even revolting to the western mind. And on this subject the common moral sense of civilised mankind has pronounced a judgment which requires no justification as it allows ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... strange coincidence, the home of James McGill's ancestors—of the land beyond the horizon from which tales of fortune and happiness came drifting across the ocean. He was a Liberal in politics and a dissenter in religion. His independent spirit was revolting against conditions in his own land. It was not easy to sever the ties which bound him to the old home and to venture alone into an unknown and far-off country. But the new land was calling, and its lure was upon him. He resolved to go to Canada where he had heard that all things were possible ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan

... makes him the more fit for the execution of his purpose. As in every thing he sees merely the hateful side, he dissolves in the rudest manner the charm which the imagination casts over the relation between the two sexes: he does so for the purpose of revolting Othello's senses, whose heart otherwise might easily have convinced him of Desdemona's innocence. This must serve as an excuse for the numerous expressions in the speeches of Iago from which modesty ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... of her age that she seems hardly possible as an historical personage, and withdraws into the myth-mists. To that region certainly belongs the ancient chronicle in which we read how the Irish Nemedians, revolting against the intolerable deal of cream and butter and wheaten meal exacted from them by their oppressors, the Fomorians, those ferocious African pirates, emigrated to Hellas, in hope of better things, but were at last driven back home to escape the heavier yoke of the ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... took a leading part in the direction of that great party. President Washington appointed him Chief- Justice of the Supreme Court, an office which he soon resigned. The most noted of all his public services was the negotiation of a treaty with Great Britain in 1794. The terms of this treaty were revolting in the extreme, both to the pride of Americans and to their sense of justice; and Mr. Jay was overwhelmed with the bitterest reproaches from the party opposed to his own. No man, however, has ever been able ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton

... Moreau was hardly human. Also he had found him incomprehensibly inconsistent. When first this spadassinicide business had been proposed to him, he had been so very lofty and disdainful. Yet, having embraced it, he went about it at times with a ghoulish flippancy that was revolting, at times with a detachment that ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... alarming. Myself, I say, for in any state of health I do not write with rapidity. Under the influence, however, of opium, when it reaches its maximum in diseasing the liver and deranging the digestive functions, all exertion whatever is revolting in excess. Intellectual exertion above all is connected habitually, when performed under opium influence, with a sense of disgust the most profound for the subject (no matter what) which detains the thoughts; all that morning freshness of animal spirits, which under ordinary ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... It was the strange, revolting difference from men in them that caused my fear. Once they may have been men, their far-off ancestors, perhaps—or in some other more recent way their bodies had been transformed, made over into creatures not human, not beast, not ghoul. What they were was not thinkable or ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... nasty, squalid. Discernment, perception, penetration, insight, acumen. Disgraceful, dishonorable, shameful, disreputable, ignominious, opprobrious, scandalous, infamous. Disgusting, sickening, repulsive, revolting, loathsome, repugnant, abhorrent, noisome, fulsome. Dispel, disperse, dissipate, scatter. Dissatisfied, discontented, displeased, malcontent, disgruntled. Divide, distribute, apportion, allot, allocate, partition. Doctrine, dogma, tenet, precept. Dream, reverie, vision, fantasy. Drip, dribble, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... you for your nephews' governess. It never crossed my mind you were an heiress. As a rule, heiresses are revolting ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... familiar sound of water gushing from the sink in to the grate, the dropping of a pail outside the door, the clink of a coal shovel, the banging of a door, the sound of voices. So many houses cheek by jowl, so many squirming lives, so many back yards, back doors giving on to the night. It was revolting. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... way held "the mirror up" to English human nature, and showed "the very age and body of the time his form and pressure," with manly boldness indeed, but with due artistic reticence also; each knew how to be vivid without being vicious, to be realistic without being revolting; and despite the sometimes offensive caricature in which the one indulged, despite the seeming cynicism of the other their influence must be pronounced healthy. Thackeray did not, like Dickens, use ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... considerable diminution in the number of crimes due to circumstances (crimes d'occasion), crimes caused principally by the social environment. But there are some crimes which will not disappear, such as revolting crimes against decency due to a pathological perversion of the sexual instinct, homicides induced by epilepsy, thefts which result from a psycho-pathological ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... furnished, they found that cause of trouble removed. Many of them had long been ill, and want of cleanliness and vermin had helped to reduce them to extreme emaciation. Their filthy clothes were replaced by clean ones, and burned or thrown into the river, their heads shaven, and their revolting appearance removed. But many a youth whom sickness and suffering had given the appearance of old age, succumbed to disease and suffering, and joined the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... should be inclined to avoid it, then," she answered, "for I always find that 'true to life' in a book means something revolting." ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... was of a revolting hideousness: his cheeks were covered by a network of blue veins, his eyes squinted horribly, his lips vanished inwards over toothless gums, and a fringe of white hair hung in matted wisps from his high, bald crown. This was ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... doubt; but that point once decided by honest criticism, to say we receive such and such portions, on account of the weight of the general evidence, and yet reject other portions, though sustained by the same evidence, because we think there is something unreasonable or revolting in their substance, is plainly to accept evidence only where it pleases us, and to reject it where it pleases us not. The only question fairly at issue must ever be whether the general evidence for Christianity will overbear the ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... indignation arose at this speech; the notion that any of the fraternity who had any hold on lionesses, particularly if they were pretty, should not use it to the utmost for the benefit of the rest, and the glory and honor of the college, was revolting to the under graduate mind. So the whole body escorted Tom to the door of the lodgings, impressing upon him the necessity of engaging both his lionesses for every hour of every day in St. Ambrose's, and left him not till they had heard him ask for the young ladies, and seen him fairly on his ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... the other Greeks, Leonidas retained with him a body of Thebans, whom he suspected of a design of revolting to the enemy. Whether he considered his decision to keep them in the pass equivalent to a sentence of death, and intended it as a punishment for their supposed treason, or only that he wished to secure their continued fidelity by keeping them closely to their ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... inclination towards me has not gratified it, and has not known me in my degradation!' She almost loving him.—Suppose, too, this touch in her could not be believed in by his mother or mistress: by some handsome and proudly virtuous woman, always revolting from her." A more agreeable sketch than either follows, though it would not please M. Taine so well. "The little baby-like married woman—so strange in her new dignity, and talking with tears in her eyes, of her sisters 'and all of them' at ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... garden-wall, to the door which opened into the building. Ah! thought I, along this desolate avenue the finest geniuses in England gaily proceeded to meet their friends;—yet within a century, how changed—how deserted—how revolting! A cold chill seized me, as the man unfastened the decayed door of the building, and as I beheld the once-elegant hall, filled with cobwebs, a fallen ceiling, and accumulating rubbish. On the right, the present proprietor had erected a copper, and converted one of the parlours ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... you wish to drive me into committing an act of the most revolting meanness! If you send me away I shall listen at ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... received the name of Prince-Bishops. But the burghers of Liege, like those of Ghent, had a will and a way of their own, and frequently rebelled against the bishops, in support of their rights; and Charles the Bold took the rulers under his protection. Still they persisted in revolting, and Charles destroyed the city, as a punishment, in 1468. Fifteen years later, William de la Marck murdered the prince-bishop, in order to obtain the mitre-crown for his son. This was the beginning of the insurrection, in which, as I have related to you before, Charles ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... and shone upon the dusky countenances of the Chipewyans, as they sat gravely on the floor, smoking their spwagans in silence. A dark shade lowered upon every face, as if thoughts of an unpleasant nature disturbed their minds; and so it was. A deed of the most revolting description had been perpetrated by an Indian of the Cree tribe, and they were about to relate the story to ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... Dreux declared, his pride revolting at what he considered a cowardly retreat. He had come along in the hope of doing deeds that would add luster to his name, and he did not intend to be disappointed. It required a vigorous muscular effort to keep him from clambering ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... desquelles il y avait des tetes de morts plantees et mangoes des corbeaux."—Relation des Decouvertes du Sr. de la Salle, MS.] Near at hand was the burial ground of the village. The travellers sickened with horror as they entered its revolting precincts. Wolves in multitudes fled at their approach; while clouds of crows or buzzards, rising from the hideous repast, wheeled above their heads, or settled on the naked branches of the neighboring forest. Every grave had been rifled, and the bodies flung down from the scaffolds ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... consider the revolting sequences of syphilis with its train of operations, and progeny of scrofulous children, it would seem to make the natural retribution for illicit intercourse infinitely outweigh any brief pleasures derived from the enjoyment of ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall

... Soyer, "formerly ate the heron, crane, crow, stork, swan, cormorant, and bittern. The first three especially were highly esteemed; and Laillevant, cook of Charles VII., teaches us how to prepare these meagre, tough birds. Belon says, that in spite of its revolting taste when unaccustomed to it, the bittern is, however, among the delicious treats of the French. This writer also asserts, that a falcon or a vulture, either roasted or boiled, is excellent eating; and ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... import, and to make no sacrifice of their interest not called for by the compact nor contemplated by either of the parties when it was entered into, nor to commit any breach of right or of humanity in regard to the Indians repugnant to the judgment and revolting to the feelings of the whole American people. I submit the subject to your consideration, in full confidence that you will duly weigh the obligations of the compact with Georgia, its import in all its parts, and the extent to which the United States ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson

... was over for that day; after Britt went away he sat idly at his desk, his mind busy with the revolting pictures called up by what he had heard of Viola. "They are destroying a beautiful soul," he exclaimed, bitterly, as he recalled the charm of her face and voice on that ride to the mine. "They are forcing a charming girl into an abominable life, they are warping her moral fibre into ugliness ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... pagan priest (it is supposed) must have been—to guide, to counsel, to exhort, as a teacher of morals. And, had that been so, the practical precepts, and the moral commentary coming after even the grossest forms of worship, or the most revolting mythological legends, might have operated to neutralize their horrors, or even to allegorize them into better meanings. Lord Bacon, as a trial of skill, has attempted something of that sort in his 'Wisdom of ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... swelling paunch overflowing now above the stays he wore to reduce it, the coarsened flesh of his neck, bulging above the edge of his collar, and the shining, baldness on the top of his head, which gave an appearance of commanding intellect to his empurpled forehead. How hideous he was, how revolting, and yet what a power! A face like his on a woman would have condemned her to isolation and misery, but, so far as one could judge, it had scarcely interfered with his happiness. His mental force had risen superior to his face, to his paunch, to his whole repulsive appearance. Greater ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... chattering. A feeling of remorse, too, sprang up in me as I remembered that for a moment I had accused these poor people of churlishness and set down the sensitiveness of their sorrow to a sulky rudeness. There must be something very revolting to the feeling of our better nature in the sense of an injustice done even in thought, for I declare I felt for a minute as if I ought to confess my ideas to my companions and beg their pardon for having wronged them, though only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... oblivion, and even restored to those who had adhered to the cause of Spain, their property of every denomination that had been confiscated, or the full value of it. Even Spain herself had twice thus acted towards the province of Catalonia—first, on its revolting from that Crown, and calling in the assistance of France; and secondly, on its refusing to acknowledge the Bourbon family, at the beginning of the last century. Though the inhabitants had forfeited life and property, yet, on their return to obedience, life, possessions, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... to fill the greedy beaks, and during their enforced absence the swallows returned in force, threw the nestlings out, and demolished the home. The sparrows sought other quarters, and the swallows triumphantly built a new nest on the ruins of the old. A German writer relates a case of revolting reprisal on the part of some swallows against a sparrow that appropriated their nest and refused to quit. After repeated failure to evict the intruder, the swallows, helped by other members of the colony, calmly plastered up the front door so effectually ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... circumstances under which the killing of a wild animal may be so wanton, so revolting and so utterly reprehensible that the act may justly be classed as murder. The man who kills a walrus from the deck of a steamer that he knows will not stop; the man who wantonly killed the whole colony of hippopotami that Mr. Dugmore photographed ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... two cities." How do these holy men reconcile so infamous a traffic among a people whom they have adorned with every virtue? a people whom they have rendered remarkable among nations for their filial piety! Is there on earth a crime more revolting against civilized nature, or more detestable to civilized society, than that of a parent selling his own child and consigning her, expressly and voluntarily, into a state of prostitution? Those unfortunate wretches who, in Europe, have by ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... all about the history of the Lazy A, though he had been very careful to hide the fact that he had heard it. Jean's glance, following that of her director, was a revealing one. She bit her lip; and in a moment she went on, with her chin held a shade higher and her pride revolting against subterfuge. ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower

... it is now populous. Procida is about three-fourths of an hour's fair rowing from Miniseolae, on the Baian side; but you may run your boat over on a fine day in half an hour. As you approach the houses, you discern the not unpicturesque frontage of a little fishing town; but all is as revolting within as fair without. Something of the Greek or Albanese costume is still preserved here, and they offer to dress up one of their families in full parure for our further satisfaction, if we will pay them. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... general idea which includes both, and in which the sensual element, though not wholly eradicated, is reduced to order and measure. We must not attribute a meaning to every fanciful detail. Nor is there any need to call up revolting associations, which as a matter of good taste should be banished, and which were far enough away from the mind of Plato. These and similar passages should be interpreted by the Laws. Nor is there anything in the Symposium, or in the Charmides, in reality inconsistent with ...
— Phaedrus • Plato

... enervating atmosphere. Nature must have been in a sportive mood when she evolved the durian. This singular Malay fruit smells like all the concentrated drains of a town seasoned with onions. One single durian can poison out a ship with its hideous odour, yet those able to overcome its revolting smell declare the flavour of the ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... more revolting features of chattel slavery has always been considered the subjection of the slave women to the lust of their masters. How was it in this respect under the rule of the rich? We read in our histories that great armies of women in your day were ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... the quality perfect throughout, even in the lowest notes of the lowest register, which are generally so disastrous to the majority of singers, who fancy they possess a contralto, and the emission of which resembles nearly always a rattle, hideous in such cases and revolting to the ear. Mlle. Alboni's vocalization is wonderfully easy, and few sopranos possess such facility. The registers of her voice are so perfectly united, that in her scales you do not feel sensible of the passage ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... said the man quickly, as though defending himself, "we have not slept for two nights, and have been travelling in a revolting conveyance. Well, of course, it is natural she should be ill and miserable, . . . and then, you know, we had a drunken driver, our portmanteau has been stolen . . . the snowstorm all the time, but what's the use of crying, Madam? I am exhausted, though, by sleeping ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... could not understand what people meant when they whispered about him or turned away fiercely. A weight was lifted from his soul when he realized that he was not as revolting as he had believed. And when people spoke kindly to him he began to know something like happiness for the first time in his life. He brought home so much in his alms-bag that the old woman ceased to beat him and gave him more liberty. He was allowed to go out at night and sleep under ...
— The Little Hunchback Zia • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... society, the sight of whom is strangely annoying to your wife; she can tolerate neither his tone, his manners nor his way of regarding things. Everything connected with him is revolting to her; she is persecuted by him, he is odious to her; she hopes that no one will tell him this. It seems almost as if she were attempting to oppose you; for this man is one for whom you have the highest esteem. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac

... listened to; it certainly did not diminish the attention of the audience. In this respect, these wild foresters deserve to become a pattern for careful imitation. They never interrupt a speaker. However incongruous or ill put together his tale, or insulting the matter or manner of his speech, or revolting his opinions to their preconceived notions and prejudices, he is heard patiently until he has said all that he has to say. And, after he has seated himself, sufficient time is given him to recollect whether he has left unsaid any thing in his opinion ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... an artificial corpulence, lest his deficiency in this respect should emphasize his disproportionate height. And in the middle of it all is the actor, shouting away, now high, now low,—chanting his iambics as often as not; could anything be more revolting than this sing- song recitation of tragic woes? The actor is a mouthpiece: that is his sole responsibility;—the poet has seen to the rest, ages since. From an Andromache or a Hecuba, one can endure recitative: but when Heracles himself comes upon the stage, and so ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... on the New Market square, as a warning and example to the others, and expiated their robberies by a summary death. But with the Austrians and Saxons it was the officers themselves who instigated the soldiers to acts of revolting barbarity, and who, forgetful of all humanity, by their laughter and applause excited their subordinates to fresh ill-treatment of the inhabitants. Disregarding the capitulation, and listening to their national ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... it was the Nigger, and perceived at the same instant that he was almost beside himself with terror. His eyes rolled, his teeth chattered, his frame contracted in a strong convulsion, and the black of his complexion had faded to a washed-out dirty grey, revolting to contemplate. He felt my touch and sprang to his feet, clutching me by the shoulder ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... the ill-fated ship, at low tide, on the reef below the cliffs. To this day, the peasantry continue to regard Pistol Meadow with feelings of awe and horror, and fear to walk near the graves of the drowned men at night. Nor have many of the inhabitants yet forgotten a revolting circumstance connected by traditional report with the burial of the corpses after the shipwreck. It is said, that when dead bodies were first washed ashore, troops of ferocious, half-starved dogs suddenly appeared from the surrounding country, and could with difficulty be driven from ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... unpleasant to wade through pools of filth, and we therefore spare the reader quotations from those Spiritualists who have not only avowed the most revolting practices of free love, but openly advocated the same, and endeavored to induce others to come out likewise, on the ground that they were only honestly and publicly admitting what the others believed and practiced in secret. For the same ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... bravado. An action entirely Spanish is conducted in the veriest patois of Antwerp. Ogier follows in his footsteps, introducing upon the stage the coarsest language. He represents vice in its most revolting forms. His theory, as he himself explains it, is, that "it is necessary to represent vice on the stage, as the Romans formerly on certain days intoxicated their slaves and showed them to their children, in order that they might at an early age become inspired with a disgust ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... discussed with an intellectual contempt, and loose-lipped old men found a frightful mirth in the cut-throat exploits of Moroccans and Senegalese, in the bestial orgies of drunken Boches, and in the most revolting horrors of bayonet charges and the corps-a-corps. It was as though they wanted to reveal the savagery of war to the last indescribable madness of its lust. "Pah!" said an old cabotin, after one of these word-pictures. "This war is ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... in order to arrive at the Esquiline, the person who was driving, being terrified, stopped and drew in the reins, and pointed out to his mistress the murdered Servius as he lay. On this occasion a revolting and inhuman crime is stated to have been committed, and the place is a monument of it. They call it the Wicked Street, where Tullia, frantic and urged on by the furies of her sister and husband, is reported to have driven her chariot over ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... ghastly, with his bandaged head and torn, mud-stained uniform, and as I looked at him, I recalled sadly the gallant figure I had met at Fort Necessity. Nor were the others better. Haggard faces, bloodshot eyes, lips drawn with suffering, hair matted with blood,—all the grim and revolting realities of defeat were there before us, and no longer to be denied. And I realized that I was ghastly as any. A bullet had cut open my forehead, leaving a livid gash, from which the blood had dried about ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... think so," exclaimed Harry, interrupting the High Priest unceremoniously, and springing from his couch to the floor. "Where is Arima? Pass the word for Arima, somebody, please—or, stay, hand me my clothes; I'll get into them myself without waiting for Arima. How many of these revolting priests are there, do ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... was carried on in a mixture of English and Italian. Lilia had picked up hardly any of the latter language, and Signor Carella had not yet learnt any of the former. Occasionally Miss Abbott had to act as interpreter between the lovers, and the situation became uncouth and revolting in the extreme. Yet Philip was too cowardly to break forth and denounce the engagement. He thought he should be more effective with Lilia if he had her alone, and pretended to himself that he must hear her defence before ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster

... even smile, for to her there was something revolting in the idea of being even teased about Henry, who was conceited enough to attribute her reserve to the awe which he fancied his "elegant presence" inspired! If Ella with all her wealth and beauty placed an invaluable ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... truth to write against no one in this world. Each of us is sick enough in this great lazaretto, and many a polemical writing reminds me involuntarily of a revolting quarrel, in a little hospital at Cracow, of which I chanced to be a witness, and where it was horrible to hear how the patients mockingly reproached each other with their infirmities: how one who was wasted by consumption ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... of it. If an Englishman were compelled to live for a season among savages, whose habits were horrible and disgusting, he would take care not to become like them. He would think of himself as being a civilized man, to whom the manners of the people were revolting, and he would endeavour, whilst avoiding their example, to set them a better. So should a Christian man be in the world. He cannot avoid seeing and hearing much that is evil. But let him take care lest, like Israel of old, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... Spanish conquerors in Latin America, by Belgians in the African Congo, by European whites in their dealings with the North American Indians, by the Nazis in Europe, or by Americans in South East Asia, have involved merciless exploitation accompanied by revolting atrocities. ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... action is so abominable that it is not, or has not been, approved by some nation. Parricide, infanticide, theft, usurpation, cruelty, intolerance, prostitution, have been allowed and even considered meritorious by some of the peoples of the earth. Religion especially has consecrated the most revolting and unreasonable customs. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... the ambuscade upon his victim, and with a yell buried a tomahawk in his brain. Then, grasping with one hand the hair on the top of his head, he made a rapid circular cut with his gleaming knife, and tore off the scalp, leaving the skull bare. The revolting deed was done quicker than it can be described. Shaking the bloody trophy in his hand, he gave a whoop of exultation which echoed far and wide through the solitudes ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... pathetic farce, and the Jewish actors in it had a sorry time. The people about the palace, taking their lead from the emperor, treated them as clowns, and hissed and mocked them, and even beat them. The scene is somewhat revolting when one conjures up the picture of the aged Jewish philosopher being roughly handled by the set of ruffians and impudent slaves who surrounded a Roman emperor. Happily Gaius jeered once too often in his mad life. One Chaerea, a Roman of position, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... morbid condition and to her poisoned imagination the act did not appear so revolting after all. She had been made familiar with it in her favorite novels. She had often seen it simulated with applause on the stage, with all the melodramatic accessories with which it is produce mere effect. Indeed, from her education, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... in the service of king Charles, and six other regiments were raised by the states of Catalonia. The count de Cifuentas, at the head of the Miquelets and Catalans attached to the house of Austria, secured Tar-ragonia, Tortosa, Lerida, San-Mattheo, Gironne, and other places. Don Raphael Nevat, revolting from Philip with his whole regiment of horse, joined general Ramos at Denia, and made themselves masters of several places of importance in the kingdom of Valencia. Flushed with such unexpected success, they penetrated to the capital of the same name, which they surprised, together with the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... differ too widely from their own, for immediate sympathy to be possible between him and them. His habits are the habits of a white man, and many little things, to which he has not yet learned to attach importance, are as revolting to the natives, as the pleasant custom of spitting on the carpet, which some old-world Rajas still affect, is to Europeans. His manners, too, from the native point of view, are as bad as his habits ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... They are not of the same mind concerning external distinctions. One does not esteem another's condition and occupation as significant and as honorable as his own. The individual sentiment apparently is: "My station is the best; all others are revolting." ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... that—did she?—wrote of marriage and her husband's last attack of hemorrhage in the same paragraph, I suppose. Michael, it is revolting! My dear boy, you must break away from her—and then do try to occupy yourself with more important things than women. Believe me, they are all very well in their way and in their proper place—to be treated with the greatest courtesy and respect as wives ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn

... irritation; it was something profound and disturbing, almost revolting!" Jack exclaimed, under the disagreeable spell of his vivid recollection of the incident. "The resemblance to you was so striking, father, especially in the profile!" Jack was leaning forward, the better to see his father's profile, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... is a highly poetic pastel that displays the soul of man surprised in the first post-mortem ambuscades. There a figure, beautiful or revolting, cries at him: "I am thyself, the ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... despite her angry denials, he told her the story of Ugo's plotting, from the hour when he received the mysterious warning to the moment when he entered her home that evening. As he proceeded hotly to paint the prince in colors ugly and revolting she grew calmer, colder. At the end she ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... you what, Jim, I wouldn't wonder if that's the very one for you," said J.C., puffing leisurely at his cigar, and still keeping his eyes fixed upon the figure in white, as if to one of his fastidious taste there was nothing very revolting in seeing Maude Remington wash the supper dishes, even though her hands were brown and her arms a ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes

... Hebrew divinity said of himself that he was "a jealous god". Throughout the time of his sway he issued through his ministers precise instructions for the most revolting cruelties, the extermination of whole nations of men, women and children, whose sole offense was that they did not pay tribute to Jehovah's priests. Thus, for example, the chief of his prophets, Moses, called ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... a dreadful image—but "inhuman to relate," is not an expression heavily laden with meaning; and the sudden, abrupt, violent, and, as we feel, unnatural introduction of ideas purely superstitious, at the close, is revolting, and miserably mars the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... not lurk in hiding like that," they said to each other, "for any reason but to foregather with the Devils, male and female, and get gold of them as the price of revolting and ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... "Revolting!" was her comment. "No wonder they look so unwell! Still, their living cannot cost much, so I should think, Sidney, if we gave the—er—foreman a gold piece to be divided amongst them, that would be ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... king, while not actually revolting openly from the dictum of the high priest, had instituted among the people a practice of private prayer that the Septennial Sacrifice of the Maidens might be dispensed with; and when during the actual year of the Septennial Festival ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... rose. "Really. They are making an exhibition of themselves on the beach. Just as well there is no one to see but some aborigines. Quite revolting. How can you bear to associate with such types, when you are so much above them yourself—but there, I must not pique you, must I, poor Claggett? I expect your wound ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... I will say little; the subject presents but few attractions; and I, gentlemen, am not the man, nor are you, gentlemen, the men, to delight in the contemplation of revolting heartlessness, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... were not permitted to save the Circus. When houses began to burn in every direction, I myself heard thousands of voices exclaiming, 'Death to those who save!' Certain people ran through the city and hurled burning torches into buildings. On the other hand people are revolting, and crying that the city is burning at command. I can say nothing more. Woe to the city, woe to us all, and to me! The tongue of man cannot tell what is happening there. People are perishing in flames ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... the house he inhabits, the pictures on his walls, and the books he gets from a library, is he better off when you teach him that the street is mean and ugly, the house an outrage on architectural taste, the wall-papers revolting, the pictures daubs, and the books trash? Upon my word I don't think so. I am afraid ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... a "damned nigger." She did not care. It made no difference. A year ago, a few weeks even, she would have shuddered with repulsion at the bare idea, the thought that a native could even touch her had been revolting, but all that was swept away and was nothing in the face of the love that filled her heart so completely. She did not care if he was an Arab, she did not care what he was, he was the man she loved. She ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... a most revolting sight to Stepan. He watched her with cold, critical eyes. As she put out her hands he noticed how the thumbs turned right back. How had he ever been able to touch her in the past! He shivered with disgust and degradation at ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... express to his opponent the general reverence and respect of which never a man was more worthy than he."—That is open assassination! That is a fearful indiscretion of Oldendorf's, that is the revenge of a journalist, so fine and pointed! Oh, it is just like him! No, it is not like him! It is revolting, it is inhuman! What am I to do! Deputations and addresses to me? To Oldendorf's friend? Bah, it is all mere gossip, newspaper-babble that costs nothing but a few fine words! The town knows nothing of these ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... stretched over a few spars of drift-wood, and were neither wind nor water tight. The tents were, as usual, filthy, but suitable to the taste of their inhabitants, who no doubt saw nothing in them that was revolting. The natives testified much pleasure at our visit, and placed before us several dishes, amongst which were two of their choicest,—the entrails of a fine seal, and a bowl of coagulated blood. But desirous as we were ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray

... short while after the young man had taken his place, and it was with painful feelings that he recognized, in the hollow-eyed and ragged monk who mounted the pulpit, a priest whom he had seen more than once drunk to imbecility, in Nesptah's tavern, And the revolting creature, who thus flaunted his dirty, dishevelled person even in the pulpit, thundered down on the trembling congregation declarations that the delay in the rising of the Nile was the consequence of their ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... which the whole tribe is collected as actors or spectators. The miserable victim is fastened to a stake, and burned at a slow fire, with all the refinements of cruelty which savage ingenuity can invent. There is a traditionary ritual, which regulates, with revolting precision, the whole course of procedure at these ceremonies. The institution has latterly declined, but we know those who have seen and related to us the incidents which occurred on these occasions, when white men were sacrificed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various

... tone of authority, so far from filling me with hope, seemed to me so revolting that all my timidity vanished in a moment. I waited for the hour when she usually went up to her room and, going out a little before her, took up my position on ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... did not believe in allowing the common people any liberty whatsoever. In 1848, an uprising occurred in Austria, and crowds in Vienna, crying, "down with Metternich," forced the aged diplomat to flee. During the same year, there were outbreaks in Germany. The people everywhere were revolting against the feudal rights of their kings and princes, and gaining greater liberty for themselves. In 1848, France, also, grew tired of her "citizen king," and that country a second time became a republic. The French made the mistake, however, of electing as their president, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet

... assailed with treachery, and, if conquered, treated with revolting cruelty." * * "A fiendish ferocity assumes full sway."—Conquest of Canada, vol. i., ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... The same custom unfortunately extends to persons, and there are instances of this evil practice among relatively civilized nations; the massacre which takes place at the death of a king of Dahomey is well known, and is revolting from the number of victims and from the mode of their sacrifice. It is therefore easy to imagine the way in which musical instruments and the sounds produced by them were personified, since these manifestations seemed to approximate more ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... somewhat less directly occupied with the same question, and though gentler in tone it excited almost as much clamour as the Pamphlets, especially in the north. The book, says Carlyle himself, was "utterly revolting to the religious people in particular (to my surprise rather than otherwise). 'Doesn't believe in us either!' Not he for certain; can't, if you will know." During the same year his almost morbid dislike of materialism found vent ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... mysteriously offensive odour in the room, entirely new in his experience of revolting smells. It was composed (if such a thing could be) of two mingling exhalations, which were separately-discoverable exhalations nevertheless. This strange blending of odours consisted of something faintly and unpleasantly aromatic, mixed with another underlying smell, so ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... of Tonga. The inhabitants are nearly black, and a very fine and intelligent race of men; but they were even more addicted to cannibalism than the New Zealanders, and their customs were of the most revolting and cruel description. Thackombau, the greatest chief among them, was also a fierce cannibal. Fully aware of the character of the people, a band of Wesleyan missionaries landed on their shores, and by great perseverance have succeeded in bringing over ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston

... of death appalled him now as at first; its revolting terror at that rope's end had no place in his thought this crowded, surging moment. Only to live, to fight and live, to run, unfeeling feet striking like wood upon the wayside stones, and run, as a maimed, scorched creature before a fire, to fall into some cool place ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... echoed the excited voice of the morio, whose appearance had undergone a transformation. The indescribable vacancy with which he had listened to the minstrel was replaced by an expression of revolting malignity. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... gifts, and this is why she cannot be said to excel as a portrait painter. One merit, however, is certain: if her earliest writings were dangerous, it was because of her wonderful power of idealization, not because she filled her pages with the revolting and epicene sensuality of the new Italian, French, and English schools. Intellectual viciousness was not her failing, and she never made the modern mistake of confusing indecency with vigour. She loved nature, air, and light too well ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... political institutions under which they now live, and which have ceased to afford them protection of any kind. In the annexation of Pegu—should it be forced upon your Lordship—there would be nothing revolting to the feelings of its people or to those of the people of England; on the contrary, both would be satisfied, after the disposition the people of Pegu have manifested towards us, that the measure was alike necessary ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... the quarter past. How long it is!—Then, an alarm! A cat that mews strangely. Then comes that little hissing sound I begin to know. Hiss—hiss! Oh, what a horrid feeling! I guess that the window is opening wider. You heard, as I did, Fandor, the revolting scales grit on the boards. But you didn't know what it was, whereas I did know it was the snake! I swear to you it needed all my pluck not to flinch, for I wanted at any cost to see it through to the end, and know whether, behind this reptile, ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain

... the mythological system should collapse when once the spontaneous play of imaginative thought gave place to self-conscious, systematising reflection. The mass of incoherent, and often contradictory myths, in which the true was so strangely blended with the false, the beautiful with the ugly or revolting, fell almost by its own weight. The more solid materials it contained were first transmuted into allegories, and then expressed in the language of science and philosophy. The original intuitions, which had been encumbered with degrading superstitions ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... to each of the guests, who, after placing the liberty cap on his own head, pronounced the word "Tyrant!" and proceeded to mangle with his knife that of the luckless creature doomed to be served for so unworthy a company! One of the democratic taverns displayed as a sign a revolting picture of the mutilated and bloody corpse ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... be the prince in the fairy tale who begins life as a revolting animal of the rhinoceros family, and ends by marrying the prettiest princess in Elfindom," he said to himself gaily, is he paced the broad walks of Kensington-gardens, where the bare trees swung their big black branches in the wintry blast, and the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... sickening, revolting; but it demanded immediate action. After prayerfully meditating for a few minutes, I called up the chief of police, asked for audience without delay, and soon thereafter was in his private office. After listening attentively to ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... we well know that the humorous, the grotesque, the sublime may use ugliness to serve their own legitimate purposes, but then that ugliness must be humorous, grotesque, or sublime, and not flat, prosy, or revolting. A blemish is by no means necessarily an ugliness. A leaf nibbled by insects and consequently discolored, a lad with ragged jacket and soiled trowsers, a peasant girl with bent hat and tattered gown, are often more picturesque ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... of the original natives of this country. I was so enraged at the language addressed to him, that I discovered myself, and apostrophising the tomb in my turn; I cried, "O tomb! why dost not thou swallow up that monster so revolting to human nature, or rather why dost not thou swallow up both the lover and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.

... realises the degrading character of the beliefs that so powerfully swayed the lives of the villagers and moorland-folk of this district, as late as the first twenty years of the nineteenth century, one can only rejoice that influences arose sufficiently powerful to destroy them. Along with the revolting practises, however, it is extremely unfortunate to have to record the disappearance of many picturesque, and in themselves, entirely harmless customs. The roots of the great mass of superstitions ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... to have dawned for the long benighted empire of Japan. That empire was as a sealed book to all Christian nations. As is well known, no traveller or merchant from any Christian land could set foot on its territory without first performing the revolting ceremony of trampling on the chief emblem of the Christian faith. At one time, nevertheless, there were many Christians in Japan, and, as will be seen, heathen prejudice and persecution had not been able to ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... on the sail, and shipped the rudder, he contrived to set Mollie at work in the forecastle, where she could not see what he was doing; for he thought his work must be revolting to her feelings, especially as it would be very clumsily performed. Having put a sling on the box, he rigged a purchase, and hoisted it out of the cabin. Then, with suitable rigging, he lowered it into the boat, placing ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic

... spoken to society; Rousseau spoke to the heart of the people. He was above all things a sentimentalist, this son of a Genevan clockmaker. Society treated him harshly; and he avenged himself by making fierce war on society. The savage state is the best—society being revolting in its falseness and shallow varnish: all men are naturally equal and free; society is nothing but an artificial contract, an arrangement by which, in the end, the strong domineer over the weak; the state of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... great importance to know; for have they not enabled them to state that the African Slave Trade never would have been permitted to exist but for the ignorance of those in authority concerning it—that at its commencement there was a revolting of nature against it—a suspicion, a caution, a fear, both as to its unlawfulness and its effects? Have they not enabled them to state that falsehoods were advanced, and these concealed under the mask of religion, to deceive those who had the power to suppress ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... imagery that belongs to them, from the legends of different nations, and the most opposite states of society; and has contrived to retain much of what is interesting and peculiar in each of them, without adopting, along with it, any of the revolting or extravagant excesses which may characterize the taste or manners of the people or the age from which it has been derived. She has transfused into her German or Scandinavian legends the imaginative and daring tone of ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... menace of reenslavement proceeded from the Senator from Delaware alone. It has been uttered even by Mr. Willey, the mild Senator from Virginia, speaking in the name of State Rights. Newspapers have taken up and repeated the revolting strain. That is to say, no matter what may be done for Emancipation, whether by Proclamation of the President, or by Congress even, the State, on resuming its place in the Union, will, in the exercise of its sovereign power, reenslave every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... friends, forty-four in number, only seventeen were marked with the g which signified that their friendship was trusted. We cannot disassociate Swift from his own time, nor can we attribute simply to a melancholy life or to mental aberration the revolting conceptions which his works contain. The coarseness and corruption which marked the private and public life of Swift's day had their share in the production of such poems as The "Lady's Dressing-Room," and such degrading views of human nature as are expressed in the "Voyage ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... spared; but he was sometimes tempted to wish that it had not been spared, for his master, the Big Chief, was a very hard man; he put him to the most toilsome labour, and treated him with every sort of indignity. Moreover, he was compelled to be a witness of practices so revolting and cruel, that he often put the question to himself whether it was possible for devils to display greater wickedness and depravity than ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne

... kettle had been put down for a minute, scraps of potato-peel caught by the strainer of the escape-pipe, and rags of a quite indescribable horribleness of acquisition, called "dish-clouts," rise in my memory at the name. The altar of this place was the "sink," a tank of stone, revolting to a refined touch, grease-filmed and unpleasant to see, and above this was a tap for cold water, so arranged that when the water descended it splashed and wetted whoever had turned it on. This tap was our water supply. And in such ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... walking along the path, side by side. His muscular hands were pendant; he had attempted no further possession of her, had not tried to kiss her. Perhaps he knew that a kiss would have fired her to revolt, and once revolting she would be lost to him. Perhaps he was not guided by policy at all, but by the instinctive touch of his power ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... way but we all die in different ways. Mr M. Mulligan (Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) blames the sanitary conditions in which our greylunged citizens contract adenoids, pulmonary complaints etc. by inhaling the bacteria which lurk in dust. These factors, he alleged, and the revolting spectacles offered by our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious ministers of all denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors, exposed scorbutic cardrivers, the suspended carcases of dead animals, paranoic bachelors and unfructified ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... Irritated by self-consciousness, revolting against a misinterpretation which would injure her vanity, though it was not likely to aim at her honour, Alma ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... was decided that the western provinces of Kordofan and Dafur should be abandoned, but that important centres like Khartum on the Nile should be preserved, at least for a time. Here all the Egyptian colonists were to congregate. If the revolting Arab tribes, called by the general name of Dervishes, would not come to friendly terms with the settlers, then, in time, it was decided that Khartum itself, and every other locality in the Sudan, should be entirely relinquished, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... example of Tazewell presents to the American mind is of yet greater significancy. If there be one unpleasant trait more revolting than another in our national character, it is the inordinate pursuit of wealth: rem, quocunque modo rem. To get money is the first lesson of childhood, the engrossing purpose of middle age, and the harassing employment ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... or evoke greater disgust than did the mere suggestion of horseflesh, even as a last resort, a possible infliction, an alternative to surrender. In no circumstances would we tolerate it. The very name of such a diet was revolting to our conservative tastes, and filled us with horror; it was bad form to mention it. If the British army ever brought us to such a pass terrible things would happen; loyalty would be a memory of the digestive past; wholesale forswearing of allegiance ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... dethrone him and to call his sister Sophia to the throne. In his treatment of the prisoners the spirit of the monster Ivan IV. seems to have entered into his soul, and the cruelty shown, while common enough in old-time Russia, is revolting to the modern mind. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... article of human merchandise, valued simply at so many miserable piastres! My fate hung upon a thread. Would I be purchased by some grandee as a new ornament for his harem, or was I destined to fall into the hands of a brutal master, to be used as a household drudge for the execution of bitter and revolting tasks? ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... assertions of St. Augustine, an all-powerful God would amuse Himself by creating living beings simply in order to burn them during all eternity, without paying any heed to their acts or merits. It is marvellous that such revolting insanity could for such a length of time subjugate so many minds—marvellous that it ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... the interior, who often come to attack them. A large boat-shaped council-house is supported on larger posts, each of which is grossly carved to represent a naked male or female human figure, and other carvings still more revolting are placed upon the platform before the entrance. The view of an ancient lake-dweller's village, given as the frontispiece of Sir Charles Lyell's "Antiquity of Man," is chiefly founded on a sketch of this very village of Dorey; but the extreme ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... slow, silent, revolting crawl. Sounds which did not concern them were plenty—distant cannonade, shells exploding here and there, scattered rifle-shots. All these they unconsciously eliminated, listening for something else, ears pressed to the ground wherever they ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... disgust to a sick person; vile food would be an abomination. A toad is to many an object of disgust; a foul sewer is an abomination. As applied to crimes, abomination is used of such as are especially brutal, shameful, or revolting; theft is an offense; infanticide is ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... and "apologies." He avails himself remorselessly of all the pretexts for verbosity, for iteration, for sophistical invention, afforded by the cumbrous machinery of the law, and its proverbial delay. Every detail is examined from every point of view. Little that is sordid or revolting is suppressed. But then it is assuredly a mistake to represent, with one of the liveliest of Browning's recent exponents, that the story was for him, even at the outset, in the stage of "crude fact," merely a common and sordid tale like ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... useless, I fear," he said abruptly, his own wishes revolting against sacrificing his companionship with Claire or ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... "Voltaire in seeming always to believe in God, never really believed in anybody but the devil, since his pretended God is a maleficent being who according to him finds all his pleasure in working mischief. The absurdity of this doctrine is especially revolting in a man crowned with good things of every sort, and who from the midst of his own happiness tries to fill his fellow-creatures with despair, by the cruel and terrible image of the serious calamities from which ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... have not only grown gray but blind in your service." He then made a touching appeal to them not to increase by example the spreading spirit of revolt. The very sight of their old commander turned the hearts of the revolting element and the officers remained loyal ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... salaries. You are not a harassed agriculturist, skulking in fear of his life, or a public servant, starving on four francs a day. Behold!" he went on, extracting a newspaper out of his pocket, "behold the latest portrait of yourself and your colleagues—you have an air of revolting prosperity. And your whole biography, too, in black and white; your wife, your children, your past career ... what it is ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas



Words linked to "Revolting" :   foul, disgustful, repelling, loathly, loathsome, disgusting, wicked, yucky, skanky, distasteful, offensive, repellant, repellent



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