"Atrocious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... death, as was expected, he was offered his life by the Puritan colonel, Hewson, on the very steps of the scaffold, if he would inculpate the late King Charles in the rising of 1641. This he "stoutly refused to do," and the execution proceeded with all its atrocious details. Whatever may have been the excesses committed under his command by a plundered people, at their first insurrection—and we know that they have been exaggerated beyond all bounds—it must be admitted he died the death of a Christian, a soldier, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... "Atrocious, sir! I give you my honour, as a real gentleman, sir. Why, would you believe it, Captain Truck, the steward is a downright nigger, and he wears ear-rings, and a red flannel shirt, without the least edication. As for the cook, sir, he wouldn't pass an examination for Jemmy Ducks aboard here, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... hundreds of boys in khaki, demanding in English and atrocious French to know where ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Dr. Royce's ineffectual "criticisms" with indifference. But when he insinuates to the uninformed public that these same "criticisms" have the weighty sanction of Harvard University, it is quite another matter. That calls upon me to defend myself against so atrocious ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... occasion to deal with the contents of this Christmas Number when I explain our second Indictment; which, I repeat, as there is general misunderstanding on the subject, was tried before the first, and resulted in Judge North's atrocious ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... life, Stanley, I'll acquaint Mr. Wylder this evening with what you meditate, and the atrocious liberty you presume—yes, Sir, though you are my brother, the atrocious liberty you dare to take with my name—unless you promise, upon your honour, now and here, to dismiss for ever the odious ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... at last, despairing of more ivory, turned homewards. From first to last they were extremely kind to me, and showed all due respect to the Sultan's letter. I am glad that I was witness to their mode of trading in ivory and slaves. It formed a complete contrast to the atrocious dealings of the Kilwa traders, who are supposed to be, but are not, the subjects of the same Sultan. If one wished to depict the slave-trade in its most attractive, or rather least objectionable, form, he would accompany these gentlemen subjects ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... vile, desperate fellow. Persons guilty of murder, or other atrocious crimes, are frequently, after execution, hanged on a gibbet, to which they are fastened by iron bandages; the gibbet is commonly placed on or near the place where the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... the most tender-hearted woman I have ever met. She loved all living things, even an atrocious little dog called Fifi, half blind, wholly deaf, and given to wheezing horribly. Only once did I see her really angry. A neighbour went away from home for two days, leaving a dog tied up without food or water in his yard. We ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... being the expression of the natural instinct due to the economic situation of the working classes, is properly to be designated as the principle of the working classes,—this is what the public prosecutor has construed into an atrocious crime, and has accused me of urging the working classes to aim at making their own class the masters of the other ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... administrative protection would inevitably awaken in them a spirit of insubordination, and hence it was ordered that those who presented complaints should be punished with the knout and sent to the mines.*** It was only in extreme cases, when some instance of atrocious cruelty happened to reach the ears of the Sovereign, that the authorities interfered with the proprietor's jurisdiction, and these cases had not the slightest influence on ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... as a fresh relay of criminals entered, two of them with faces atrocious enough for any crime, and passed out of the courtyard of the Yamun through the "Gate of Righteousness," where the prisoners, attached to heavy stones, were dragging and clanking their chains, or lying in the shade full of sores, and though the red sunset light was transfiguring ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... myth of the Phaedo they are carried down the river Acheron to the Acherusian lake, where they dwell, and are purified of their evil deeds, and receive the rewards of their good. There are also incurable sinners, who are cast into Tartarus, there to remain as the penalty of atrocious crimes; these suffer everlastingly. And there is another class of hardly-curable sinners who are allowed from time to time to approach the shores of the Acherusian lake, where they cry to their victims for ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... bromo-seltzer. As a rule lynchings are conducted in quite as orderly and humane a manner as legal esecutions. It is true that cases have occurred, when the public patience had become exhausted by repeated offenses, or the crime committed was peculiarly atrocious, wherein respectable God-fearing men were seized with a murderous frenzy, and whole communities noted for their culture, united in torturing or burning at the state the object of their displeasure; but these were usually instances where failure to enforce the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... another is bound to restitution by the most imperative obligations; that usury should be restrained; that all injuries should be repaired; that cattle and slaves should be protected from malice and negligence; that atrocious cruelties in punishment should not be inflicted; that malicious witnesses should be punished; that corrupt judges should be visited with severe penalties; that libels and satires should subject ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... to devise some new dish,—"a conglomerate," as he used to say; but these generally turned out such atrocious compounds that he was ultimately induced to give up his attempts in extreme disgust. Not forgetting, however, to point out to Jack that his failure was a direct contradiction to the proverb which he, Jack, was constantly thrusting down his throat, namely, that "where ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... hand the printed history of an outrage of the grossest character, where a number of young official gentlemen in this town assembled together and committed a noonday burglary, by breaking into the private house of William Lyon Mackenzie, and destroying his property. This atrocious outrage, please your Lordship, was proved on the floor of this Court, in the presence of His Majesty's Attorney-General. The perpetrators were identified and sworn to, yet no indictment has ever been brought against them, while the Attorney-General ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... recognise the commune in return for a substantial payment. But he further recouped himself by debasing the local currency, till it was practically worthless; and he gratified his spite against the citizens by an atrocious crime. Professing to have discovered a conspiracy against his life, he arrested the Mayor and caused the unhappy man to be blinded by a black slave, whom he employed as his bodyguard and executioner. The friends of the Mayor complained to the Pope; but the bishop got before ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... that time a single day of my life when it would have been safe for me to go south of Mason and Dixon's line in my own country, and all for one reason: my solemn, earnest, persistent testimony against that which I consider to be the most atrocious thing under the sun—the system of American slavery in a great free republic. (Cheers.) I have passed through that early period when right of free speech was denied me. Again and again I have attempted to address audiences that, for no other crime than that of free speech, visited ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... a state of torpor, neither the tumultuous stoppage at Poitiers, nor the noise of voices which had continued ever since they had started off again. Prostrate on the seat, she had not opened her eyes, but still and ever slumbered, tortured by atrocious dreams. And, with big tears still streaming from her closed eyes, she had caught hold of the pillow which had been forced upon her, and was closely pressing it to her breast in some nightmare born of her suffering. Her poor arms, which ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Once the youth rose, in answer to the summons of the front-door bell, and admitted Mr. Paul Isaacs, shoemaker and parish councillor, who had also received a pressing invitation to The Warren. With an atrocious assumption of courtesy, which a Borgia could hardly have outdone, the secretary escorted this new captive of his net to the head of the stairway, where ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... of superhuman sagacity, and (upon the flimsy foundation of a wild and extravagant fancy, backed by a mere chance resemblance, which after all might prove to be no resemblance at all if Richards could once be confronted with Monsieur Le Breton) was about to insinuate a charge of the most atrocious character against an officer holding a responsible and honourable position—a man who doubtless was the soul of honour and rectitude. A moment's reflection sufficed to convince me of the utter impossibility of the same man being in command of a pirate-brig one day and an officer of ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... this; no man can see as he sees, that has not suffered and striven as man seldom did.— Apropos of this, Have you got Miss Martineau's Hour and Man? How curious it were to have the real History of the Negro Toussaint, and his black Sansculottism in Saint Domingo,—the most atrocious form Sansculottism could or can assume! This of a "black Wilberforce-Washington," as Sterling calls it, is decidedly something. Adieu, dear Emerson: time presses, paper is done. Commend me to your good wife, your good Mother, and love me as well as you can. Peace and health under clear winter ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... criminals, who now-a-days cannot be found guilty,—especially were a law passed that the jury should have the criminal. We read in the "Scottish Criminal Trials," that a woman, clearly convicted of an atrocious murder, was, nevertheless, found not guilty. The astonished lord justiciary asked the foreman, how it was possible to find the prisoner not guilty, with such overwhelming evidence, and was answered: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... like many other people, had an unsuspected strength of character which only a great occasion could call out. "It is perfectly atrocious," said she, at length, "and I am making a grave sacrifice of my happiness; but I suppose I must do it. Are you sure ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... therefrom of Issa, the Pagans had caused the Israelites to endure more atrocious sufferings than before, and they ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... for His Majesties interest, for the crime of murder committed by them in manner at length mentioned in the indictment raised against them thereanent, which indictment maketh mention, THAT WHEREAS, by the laws of God, and of this and all other well governed realms, Murder or Homicide is a most atrocious crime, and severely punishable, especially committed with an intent to rob the person murdered, and that by persons of bad fame and character, who are habite and repute thieves, YET TRUE IT IS, and of verity, that they, ...
— Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald • Sir Walter Scott
... themselves, and not unfrequently to murder the natives or to entrap them into slavery. Christianity has won great victories in Polynesia, but no part of the globe has witnessed fouler crimes or more atrocious wickedness on the part of ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... valet to Robespierre, his fawning procured him opportunities to enrich himself with the spoil of those whom his calumnies and plots caused to be massacred or guillotined. When, as a Minister of Justice, he informed Louis XVI. of his condemnation, he did it with such an affected and atrocious indifference that he even shocked his accomplices, whose nature had not much of tenderness. As a member of the first assembly, as a Minister under the convention, and as a deputy of the Council of Five Hundred, he always ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... head and laughed—a great, frank laugh, which broke up the ordinary discontent of the face agreeably. The speaker, M. Alphonse Duchatel, had been already turned out of two ateliers for a series of the most atrocious charges on record. He was now with Taranne, on trial, the authorities keeping ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... spectator—it is as trivial as if a painter should put real gold upon his canvas instead of representing gold by means of paint; or as if a sculptor should tinge the cheeks of his statue to make it more like a human face. We have seen tin pans so well represented in painting that the result was atrocious. For, if the object intended is really a tin pan, and not the pleasure produced by a conscious representation of one, then why not insert the veritable pan in the picture at once? If art is only a more or less successful ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... national kings we not unfrequently find among the women a hideous mixture of ambition, revenge, and bloodthirstiness, which brings kings and kingdoms to ruin. In England it appears, despite of Christianity and monastic discipline, in its most atrocious form after the death of Edgar. His eldest son, for some years his successor, was treacherously murdered by his stepmother (who wished to advance her own son to the throne), at a visit which he paid her as he returned ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... assaults seemed to come in groups. Days would pass without a single outbreak. Then would come a veritable carnival of abuse—due almost invariably to the attendants' state of mind, not to an unwonted aggressiveness on the part of the patients. I can recall as especially noteworthy several instances of atrocious abuse. Five patients were chronic victims. Three of them, peculiarly irresponsible, suffered with especial regularity, scarcely a day passing without bringing to them its quota of punishment. One of these, almost an idiot, ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... the specific acts are better known. Let us look first at the tribunal set up in Rome for the trial of all crimes against the State. And let the reader bear in mind, that offences against the Church are crimes against the State, for there the Church is the State. A secret, summary, and atrocious tribunal it is, differing in no essential particular from that sanguinary tribunal in Paris where Robespierre passed sentence, and the guillotine executed it. The Gregorian Code[6] enacts, that in cases of sedition or treason, the trial may take place by a commission ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Lane, in 1740, when a riot took place in consequence of the non-appearance of Madame Chateauneuf, a favourite French dancer, a noble marquis deliberately proposed that the theatre should be fired, and a pile of rubbish was forthwith heaped upon the stage in order to carry into effect this atrocious suggestion. At the Haymarket Theatre, in 1749, the audience, enraged at the famous Bottle Conjurer hoax, were incited by the Culloden Duke of Cumberland to pull down the house! The royal prince stood up in his box waving his drawn sword, which someone, however, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the fault be so atrocious as to deserve whipping, and the parent be resolved on this exemplary punishment, the child ought not, as I imagine, to come into one's presence without meeting with it: or else, a fondness too natural to be resisted, will probably get the upper hand of one's ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... rejoined, "his manner was atrocious! I could not—I would not if I could—give you any idea of its animality; yes, that is the very word! it makes my blood creep to think of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... religious papers, to rail at him, these shepherds who live on five thousand a year and pretend to follow One who hadn't a home or a second coat, and whose friends were harlots and sinners, though he was no sinner himself—it's infamous, it's atrocious, it raises my gorge against their dead creeds and paralytic churches. Whatever his faults, he is built on a large plan, he has the Christ idea, and he is a man and a gentleman, and I'm ashamed that I took advantage of him. That's ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... her with the delinquencies of her mother with a coarseness that would have been cruel enough if she had been responsible for them and a gainer by them, but against one of her tender years, innocent toward both, and injured by both, it was inconceivably atrocious. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the wanton brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin. The commutation of his death sentence had been due to some doubts as to his complete sanity, so atrocious was his conduct. Our wagonette had topped a rise and in front of us rose the huge expanse of the moor, mottled with gnarled and craggy cairns and tors. A cold wind swept down from it and set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... received from Governor Eyre, and published; also an unofficial account of the trial of Mr. Gordon, from the pen of a reporter who was present. It is to be regretted that these papers do not relieve the authorities from the charge of atrocious and illegal cruelty in the slightest degree. Neither does the evidence in any way justify the legal or illegal murder of Mr. Gordon. While in November there was an evident desire to boast of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... replied, laughing gaily, "I never thought you one bit handsome, or witty, or dreamed that you had one good quality. I only married you, you know as well as I do, to get away from school, and from the atrocious tyranny of my music-mistress there. You need not look fie! at me, Valerie, for I'm too big to be put in the corner, now, and he won't let ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... these arguments with his looks fixed on the ground, and his brow so knitted together as to bring his bushy eyebrows into one mass. But when Crevecoeur proceeded to say that he did not believe Louis either knew of, or was accessory to, the atrocious act of violence committed at Schonwaldt, Charles raised his head, and darting a fierce look at his counsellor, exclaimed, "Have you too, Crevecoeur, heard the gold of France clink?—Methinks it rings in my ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... excuse me as a soldier for jesting with you at parting, I am sure that you also wish to be out hunting on such a fine day as this. And I will acknowledge that I should myself be disposed to view a prisoner's case as very atrocious who kept me needlessly in court in such weather as this. As to the learned counsel, their hunt is in the court: and undoubtedly, by making so few doubles, I have afforded them but poor sport. I shall not even take exception to the name by which I am indicted. But the lawyers (though I feel for ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... Ellieslaw's party, said aloud, "Although I am unconscious of any circumstance in my conduct that can authorize such a suspicion, I cannot but observe, that Mr. Vere seems to believe that I have had some hand in the atrocious violence which has been offered to his daughter. I request you, gentlemen, to take notice of my explicit denial of a charge so dishonourable; and that, although I can pardon the bewildering feelings of a father in such a moment, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... she was quite satisfied that the disappearance of Fenwick's past was an accomplished fact. Once satisfied of that, he became to her simply the man she had loved twenty years ago—the man who did not, could not, forgive her what seemed so atrocious a wrong, but whom she could forgive the unforgiveness of; and this all the more if she had come to know of the ruinous effect her betrayal of him had had—must have had—upon his after-life. He was this man—this very man—to all ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... sole law of conduct. He could show, on occasion, moderation and mercy; but when he had to put down an obstinate resistance, or when a long and arduous effort had irritated him, he had no hesitation in employing atrocious severity and perfidious promises. During his first campaign in Belgica, (A. U. C. 697 and 57 B.C.), two peoplets, the Nervians and the Aduaticans, had gallantly struggled, with brief moments of success, against the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... warned her that caddies inevitably become cynical toward all people of the sort one cares to meet. Compelled by a rigid etiquette to silent, unemotional formality, they boil interiorly with contempt for people of the better sort, not only because their golf is usually atrocious—such as every caddie brilliantly surpasses in his leisure moments—but because the speech provoked by their inveterate failures is commonly ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... with tall wax tapers, and remained a long while. She was disturbed by a sudden ringing report below; it was Cesare practising with a dueling pistol. Lavinia remembered, from laughing comments in Florence, that her husband was an atrocious shot. The sound was repeated at irregular intervals through an ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... this, and said: "I would that Odysseus might come this very moment to chastise these atrocious fellows. Woe to them if he should appear at the door with his helmet and shield and two tough spears, just as he looked when I first beheld him in my own home. Then these suitors would find a bitter marriage-feast and a speedy end. Vengeance, ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... who is disgusted by the new mechanical methods of cookery in the great hotels of Continental "resorts," returns to London, and finds the same atrocious system at work—not only in the public restaurants, but in his club. Nowhere in London can you rely on being served with really fresh fish, however highly you may pay for it. Rarely it is fresh, usually it is not. The ice ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... And my honored father killed at the battle of Bunker Hill! Atrocious libeller! to slander one's family at the start ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... citizens? I think not, Gentlemen, and I will therefore avoid the cruelty and poignancy of chaining the thoughts for a long time on such scenes; I will prove that by rendering the drama a little less atrocious, I have only sacrificed imaginary details, which are the envenomed fruits of the spirit of ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... the influence of these committees when we see moderate deputies forced to patronise the anarchical destroyers of arsenals, to ally themselves with anti-militarists, and, in a word, to obey the most atrocious demands in order to ensure re-election. The will of the lowest elements of democracy has thus created among the elected representatives manners and a morality which we can but recognise are of the lowest. The politician is the man in public ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... struck in the face by splinters, the aide-de-camp in their carriage also being severely wounded on the head; while their escort and attendants were struck down on all sides, ten being killed and above one hundred and fifty wounded.[306] It was soon found out that the authors of this atrocious crime were four Italians, of whom a man named Orsini was the chief, and that he, who had but recently escaped from a prison in Mantua, had fled from that town to England, and had there concocted all the details of ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... to-day, frown upon this atrocious proceeding? No! so far from that she affirms that these States have a right to do what they have done. She boasts that she has armed her people, that she has raised five millions of money, and that she will use both to prevent the interference of the National Government with these States, ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... fell; but luckily against the door, so that in a moment or two I became conscious of Aunt Elizabeth standing over me and regarding me as a culprit caught red-handed in some atrocious crime. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... importance, no fine effects of costume are to be attained without broad masses of pure and positive tints. These, however, may be enlivened with condimental garniture of broken and combined colors. But dresses striped, or, yet worse, plaided or checkered, are atrocious violations of good taste; indeed, party-colored costumes are worthy only of the fools and harlequins to whose official habits they were once set apart. The three primary, and the three secondary colors, red, yellow, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... a single year; 500 were executed at Geneva in a single month. Under the reign of Francis I. more than 100,000 witches are said to have been put to death, and for hundreds of years this superstition controlled the Church. In Scotland the most atrocious tortures were invented, and women died "shrieking to heaven for that mercy denied them by Christian men." One writer casually mentions seeing nine burning in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in plenty, whose waiters must be smoothly shaven: and moreover, at the time when Hippolyte came into his own, the porte Maillot station of the Metropolitain had already pushed its entree and sortie up through the soil, not a hundred metres from his door, where they stood like atrocious yellow tulips, art nouveau, breathing people out and in by thousands. There was no lack of possible custom. The problem was to turn possible into probable, and probable into permanent; and here the seven ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... crowd of gapers. But she managed, somehow, to reach home again on her own tortured feet, and an astounded and protesting Mary opened the door to her. Rain was descending. She was frightened, then, by the hardihood of her adventure, and by its atrocious results on her body. An appalling exhaustion rendered her helpless. But the deed ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... strait-jacket, or knocked on the head as a useless beast. If it were not for Mrs. Armitage and her little son, I would like to kill the sweep. His treatment of that poor fellow Amona, who is so devoted to the child, has been most atrocious." ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... had already been complaining to the whole city. Some few indeed seemed to credit me; but more to suspect; and none heard of my treatment with that glowing detestation which my feelings required. Were I to tell this new tale, incredibly atrocious as it was, what would men think, but that I was a general calumniator, a frantic egotist, and a man dangerous to society? The total inability that I felt in myself, to obtain ample and immediate ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... United Kingdom. A pickpocket or a burglar is as easily convicted in Ireland as elsewhere; the persons who lamentably enough are either left unpunished, or if punished may count on popular sympathy, are criminals whose offences, atrocious and cruel as they constantly are, are connected in popular opinion with political, and at bottom, it must be added, with agrarian questions. For more than a century there has existed an hereditary conspiracy against ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... that the drawing of the shepherd is atrocious, and that the figures are of disproportionate sizes. Such failings, they say, cannot be laid to a great master's charge. This is an appeal to the old argument that it is not good enough, whereas the true ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... when, at the crack of the black negro-driver's whip, and not unfrequent application of the lash, the flagging gang of exhausted slavery has ever and again set up that chant of revelry, run mad, and danced that dance of desperation, which was to persuade the atrocious dealers in human flesh how sound of wind and limb they were, and the bystanders ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... that she was under the necessity of finding a refuge from an atrocious persecution, and had determined to apply to him (on reading his pamphlet, and recognising a kindred mind) to find her a retreat where she could be concealed from the indefatigable ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... to the first thought of spite and vengeance succeeded another: if he who had made the famous waxen effigies of the Earl of Warwick were now to be found guilty of some atrocious and positive violence upon Master Adam Warner, might not the earl be glad of so good an excuse to put ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flash Dave Darrin sprang to the megaphone, swinging it around at the enemy, and bawling this atrocious pun: ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... alarming extent, particularly in the eastern states; we wish to arouse your zeal on the occasion and to incite your diligence and activity in carrying into rigorous execution the laws of the states and of the general government against such atrocious offenders. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... alone, he gradually became enraged. He thought: such a rude person... and at intervals: How upset the cow had become. How jealous she is of me. One of the few women who please me... and she goes and chooses the little animal Mechenmal. That is atrocious. ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... Although suitors of noble birth were ready to espouse these ladies, they were married against their will to two men, poor and outcast, and far below them in rank. Their mother, who was a widow like themselves, was present at the marriage, but did not venture to cry out or express her sorrow at this atrocious act. Afterwards, Theodora, repenting of what she had done, endeavoured to console them by promoting their husbands to high offices to the public detriment. But even this was no consolation to these young women, for their husbands inflicted incurable and insupportable ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... was no calumny, and yet I remember well, somewhere far back in the late seventies, that the crew of that ship were, if anything, rather proud of her evil fame, as if they had been an utterly corrupt lot of desperadoes glorying in their association with an atrocious creature. We, belonging to other vessels moored all about the Circular Quay in Sydney, used to shake our heads at her with a great sense of the unblemished virtue of ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... that craft," Mr. Gibney shouted to the helmsman. The schooner had hove to and when the Maggie also hove to some thirty yards to windward of her Mr. Gibney informed the Mexican, in atrocious Spanish well mixed with English, that if the latter so much as lifted his little finger he might expect to be sunk like a dog. "Down below, everybody but the helmsman, or I'll sweep your decks with ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... I said, stepping in and laying my hand on his cool forehead. It proved to me that this atrocious absurdity was rooted in the man himself and not in the disease, which, apparently, had emptied him of every power, mental and physical, except ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... of poetical justice might have been preserved, and a valuable moral inculcated, had the conduct of OEdipus, in his combat with Laius, been represented as atrocious, or, at least, unwarrantable; as the sequel would then have been a warning, how impossible it is to calculate the consequences or extent of a single act of guilt. But, after all, Dryden perhaps extracts the true moral, while stating our insufficiency to estimate the distribution of good ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... Whispering is atrocious, and cannot be tolerated. It is almost as bad to endeavor to draw one person from a general conversation into a tete-a-tete discussion. Private affairs must ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... revere your scruples," said Mr Monckton, "even while I consider them as causeless; for causeless they undoubtedly were: the man who could act so atrocious a part, who could so scandalously pillage a young lady who was his guest and his ward, take advantage of her temper for the plunder of her fortune, and extort her compliance by the basest and most dishonourable arts, meant only to terrify her into compliance, for ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... Copertino remained for five years without eating bread, and ten years without drinking wine, contenting himself with dried fruits, which he mixed with various bitter herbs. The herb which he used for Fridays had such an atrocious taste, that one of the brethren, by simply putting his tongue to it, was seized with vomiting, and for several days thereafter everything he ate excited nausea. He fasted for forty days seven times every year, and during these periods ate nothing at ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... our sandwich. If he passed into the corridor and walked this way or that he was seen by me or by my man in advance; all his movements while within his own compartment were supervised every moment. So we travelled. He did himself well that spy so atrocious. He partook of his dejeuner in the buffet du train, and we all three took our dejeuner there also. That was the last meal of which I ate before this my supper here. The journey was without incident, but when he arrived ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... "By Jove! there she is—on a horse-car, too! How atrocious! One might as well expect to see Minerva driving in a grocer's wagon as Miss Hollister in a horse-car. Miserable, untactful world to compel Minerva to ride in a horse-cart, or rather Miss Hollister to ride in a ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... goods of the rebels were publicly auctioned, without any warrant of a civil court. During all these proceedings, the "jovial Duke," as he was called, was making merry at Fort Augustus in a manner which, if possible, casts more odium on his memory even than his atrocious and unpunished cruelties.[292] ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... injured by the couple obtaining this information? And if nobody was injured, and everybody concerned was benefited, then why should the imparting of such information be considered a felony, punishable like the most atrocious of crimes? ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... call at Mohair on a certain afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the track. The three returned wondering and charmed with Mrs. Cooke; they were sure she had had no hand in the furnishing of that atrocious house. Their example was followed by others at a time when the master of Mohair was superintending in person the docking of some two-year-olds, and equally invisible. These ladies likewise came back to sing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... us to trace, with the aid of authentic documents, and reliable evidence, the most atrocious, treacherous, and cowardly domestic crime of which the record has come down to us. The murder whose circumstances we are about to relate can only be compared to that committed on the night of the 9th March, 1449, on the person ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... know, a detestable correspondent, and write to no one person whatever; you therefore cannot attribute my silence to any thing but want of good breeding or good taste, and not to any more atrocious cause; and as I confess the fault to be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... of glove with amputated fingers, and gave me a stately, "I hope you are well, sir," that rather made me feel sick. She looked full at me in her steady and commanding way, as much as to say, "Well, you have committed no atrocious crime yet, I suppose; but I am ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... brothers in crime. Doubtless, some years hence, the penitentiary system, with its prisons in common (true schools of infamy), with its galleys, its chains, its pillories, and its scaffolds, will appear as corrupt, as savage, as atrocious as the old method of treatment for the insane appears to us ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... half-caste gentleman there, who described himself as the manager of a coal-mine; which sounded civilized and progressive till you heard that the mine could not be worked at present because it was haunted by some particularly atrocious ghosts. I had heard of him in a place called Dongola, in the Island of Celebes, when the Rajah of that little-known seaport (you can get no anchorage there in less than fifteen fathom, which is extremely inconvenient) came on board in a friendly way, with only two attendants, and drank bottle ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... subjects were church discipline, rites and ceremonies, apostolical succession, the duty of reverence and obedience to the clergy, the atrocious criminality of dissent, the absolute necessity of observing all the forms of godliness, the reprehensible presumption of individuals who attempted to think for themselves in matters connected with religion, or to be guided by their own interpretations of Scripture, and, ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries leaving Ireland under forced deportations, in a practical selling into slavery. The sum total of this loss to Ireland cannot be less than 5,000,000 souls. The earlier deportations were carried out under the most atrocious circumstances. Families were broken up and scattered to distant and separate colonies, such as Barbados, the New England States, and later to the ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... was followed by Scood, and, as the boat glided off, yielding to the stream and the impetus, a miserable yelp came from the rocks above, followed by two dismal howls in different keys. Then there was an atrocious trio performed by the three dogs, each of which raised its muzzle and its eyes skyward, and uttered an unmusical protest against ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... my temperament? To have my private affairs forced upon strangers in this way tortures me with the pains of hell. I am naturally reticent and retiring—too much so, I dare say—and no misery could have been devised for me more dreadful than this. Her accusations are atrocious, such as could only come from a grossly impure mind, or at the suggestion of vile creatures. You she hates with a rabid hatred—God only knows why. She would hate any one who was my friend, and whose society relieved me for a moment from ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... not expected to know how matters stood, when I had taken so much pain to conceal the truth. I was sorry I had not held my peace a little longer, or altogether. Men never can understand a woman's right to resent selfishness, however atrocious; even when they are knowing to it, which in this case they were not. I might as well have held my tongue, since every unguarded speech of ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... 1870 France accepted a money payment for the atrocious massacre at Tientsin, because the Second Empire was entering on a life-and-death struggle with Germany. If she makes things easy for China this time, will it not be because the Republic is engaged in mortal combat with ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... and Mr Hyde, the popularity of which, especially in America, was immense. It deals with man's dual nature, and while Dr Jekyll embodies the good side of it, Mr Hyde, with whom he is compelled continually to exchange bodies, as well as souls, is the evil side, and commits crimes so atrocious, that the miserable doctor is well-nigh driven to despair. It is a powerful subject, powerfully treated, and contains in its small compass more moral teaching than a hundred sermons. It has, particularly in America, been used ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... Mortimer and Dubois. In the way of anecdotes these two would have been rivals had it not been for the latter's fancy for more serious discussions. Still, in the invention and collection of the most atrocious, they both employed the energy and patience of the entomologist. A chance word, out of which a racy story might be extracted, was pursued like a rare moth or a butterfly. Dubois's were more subtle, but Mortimer's, being more to the point, were ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... playwright of real ability and one whose tragedies were unusually popular. Influenced greatly by Seneca, he brought to its climax the 'tragedy of blood'—a type of drama in which ungovernable passions of lust and revenge lead to atrocious crimes and end in gruesome and appalling murders. His famous Spanish Tragedy was the forerunner of many similar plays, of which Titus Andronicus was one. He probably wrote the original play of Hamlet, which was elevated by Shakespeare out ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... unimaginative art, held in the fetters of a servile imitation, copying the letter rather than the spirit of antique design. It was the mistaken and abject worship of precedent which started architecture upon its downward path and led to the atrocious ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... others, thus enlightened, might have exposed the horror and defeated it; but HE, the one weaponless and defenceless spectator, the one whom none of the others would believe or understand if he attempted to reveal what he knew—HE alone had been singled out as the victim of this atrocious initiation! ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... later life. "On one occasion," says Miss Stisted, "when seized with inflammation of the bladder, a fact he tried to keep to himself, he continued to joke and laugh as much as usual, and went on with his reading and writing as if little were the matter. At last the agony became too atrocious, and he remarked in a fit of absence 'If I don't get better before night, I shall be an angel.' Questions followed, consternation reigned around, and ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... silence about us; not even a breeze was stirring. A thin crescent moon was out, silvering the river and the trees. The road was atrocious; on one dark stretch the car, rocking into a rut, jolted us viciously and brought my teeth together on the ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... ferocious acts of the inhuman Alva performed. In the spring of the terrible year, 1568, no less than twenty-five Flemish nobles were executed here, and in the June of the same year the patriots Lamoral, Count Egmont, Philip de Montmorency, and Count Hoorn were put to death. This atrocious deed is commemorated by a fountain with statues of the heroes, placed in front of the Maison du Roi, from a window of which the Duke of Alva watched his orders ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... her exit with the word: "No, merely atrocious." A pause ensues, in which Campbell ...
— Five O'Clock Tea - Farce • W. D. Howells
... "It is atrocious!" said Virginia, a tall, graceful, languishing girl. "How could they send me to such a place, where it is winter all the spring? Why, at home the violets are in blossom, the trees are coming out, the ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... gold, emerald, blue and purple. They are the humming-birds of the insect-world, the Chrysis-wasps, or Golden Wasps, another set of exterminators of the larvae overcome with lethargy in their cocoons. In them, the atrocious assassin of cradled children lies hidden under the splendour of the garb. One of them, half emerald and half pale-pink, Parnopes carnea by name, boldly enters the burrow of Bembex rostrata at the very moment when the mother ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... The atrocious attempt of Lewis XIV. to convert the Protestants in his dominions to the Roman Catholic faith by quartering dragoons upon them, with license to misuse to the uttermost those who refused to conform, this 'booted mission' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... what he saw, was what he heard. A storm that stirred nothing, and whose gusts he himself could not feel, howled over the glen, paused suddenly, as if listening to itself, and then broke out again with added fury. Atrocious cries thronged from the pit; then a flock of countless birds of prey ascended from its bowels, spread like a pitch-black pall across the gulf, and fell back again into night. The screeches sounded to the huntsman like the ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... having some grievance against Cyaxarus, King of the Medes, revenged themselves by serving up the limbs of one of his children, whom they had murdered, at a banquet as rare game. The scoundrels who committed this atrocious crime took refuge at the Court of the King of Lydia, who was ill judged enough to protect them. War was accordingly declared between the Medes and Lydians, but a total eclipse of the Sun occurring just when the battle ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... is far from bearing hard against Richard, even though he wrote under Henry the Seventh, who would have suffered no apology for his rival, and whose reign was employed not only in extirpating the house of York, but in forging the most atrocious calumnies to blacken their memories, and invalidate ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... had a poor opinion of him, but I have never had much to do with him," said Harry; "still, I should not have thought him capable of entering into a conspiracy so atrocious as this must be, if the story be ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... bible, is filled with passages equally horrible, unjust and atrocious. This is the book to read in schools in order to make our children loving, kind and gentle! This is the book recognized in our Constitution as the source of ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Catholics. That those men had not only transgressed the instructions they received, from his predecessor, but all those laws that go to the security of life and property. That they were guilty of several cruel and atrocious murders, arsons, and false imprisonments, for which they were never brought to account; and that, in fine, they were steeped in crime and blood, because they knew that his predecessor, ignorant, perhaps, of the extent ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... he had alighted at his palace, retired with the vizier alone, and commanded him to relate the particulars of the atrocious conduct of his wife; upon which he said, "My lord, the sultana in your absence despatched to me a slave, desiring me to visit her, but I would not, and I put the slave to death that the secret might be hidden; hoping she might repent of her ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... to learn the lesson of endurance; or rather, if we hold firmly to the sense of law, minute, pervading, unalterable law, to welcome every step we make in the direction of courage and hopefulness. In the midst of atrocious sorrow and suffering there is no sense so blessed as the sense that dawns upon the suffering heart that it can indeed endure what it had represented to itself as unendurable, and that however sharply it suffers, there is still ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... panic. The alarm aroused by the recent atrocious 50 crime and by Otho's well-known proclivities was further increased by the fresh news about Vitellius.[86] This news had been suppressed before Galba's murder, and it was believed that only the army of Upper Germany had revolted. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Americans and Frenchmen were on the water, and expected daily; that China had invaded and occupied England, and that only a small corner of that country still resisted. These are the men who are terrifying their own people. I could instance hundreds of cases to show their atrocious conduct. Notorious thieves and cowards are allowed to clear isolated farmhouses of every valuable. Widows whose husbands have been killed on commando are not safe from their depredations. They have even set fire to dwelling-houses while the inmates ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... Holy Virgin of Succor!" she cried, raising both her hands to her head and pressing it between them with the gesture indicative of desperation, "is it possible that I deserve such atrocious insults? Pepe, my son, is it you who speak to me in this way? If I have done what you say, I am indeed ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... speak slowly and very quietly. It took the women servants nearly two minutes to realize that he was using the most atrocious language. Then they fled. The three footmen stood their ground a little longer. Mr. Donovan raised his voice a little. He felt old powers returning to him. He became fluent. One by one the footmen slank ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... captain; "but we are well armed. It may be, as Mark says, some kind of monkey. They can make atrocious noises. How are ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... moon's shadow was, on August 9, 1896, dogged by atrocious weather. It traversed, besides, some of the most inhospitable regions on the earth's surface, and afforded, at the best, but a brief interval of obscurity. At Novaya Zemlya, however, of all places, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... Nevertheless, no fair-minded person will dispute that there are qualities or predispositions, for which—hideous as they may be—we are no more responsible than we are for being born with an unprepossessing face. Men are born with certain attractive qualities and certain atrocious qualities, but moral goodness and badness consists not in having these predispositions, but rather in consenting to them and adopting ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... to be counted on. Du Tillet has had a narrow escape. Roguin tormented him for a month to get into that land speculation, but happily all his funds were tied up in an affair with Nucingen. Roguin has written an atrocious letter to his wife; I have read it. He has been making free with his clients' money for years; and why? for a mistress,—la belle Hollandaise. He left her two weeks ago. The squandering hussy hasn't a farthing left; they sold ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... schools. Nay, he venomously resented them, though they had long ceased to incommode him. They were connected in his memory with atrocious tedium, pietistic insincerity, and humiliating contacts. At the bottom of his mind he still regarded them as a malicious device of parents for wilfully harassing and persecuting inoffensive, helpless children. And he had a particular grudge against them because he alone ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett |
