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Shameful   Listen
adjective
Shameful  adj.  
1.
Bringing shame or disgrace; injurious to reputation; disgraceful. "His naval preparations were not more surprising than his quick and shameful retreat."
2.
Exciting the feeling of shame in others; indecent; as, a shameful picture; a shameful sight.
Synonyms: Disgraceful; reproachful; indecent; unbecoming; degrading; scandalous; ignominious; infamous.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shameful" Quotes from Famous Books



... the clergy were in past centuries with you; the reformation which clipped the clerical wings, is the boast of that age, and the happiest event that could possibly happen; a reformation equally useful is now wanted, to relieve us from the shameful shackles and the oppressive burthen under which we groan; this perhaps is impossible; but if mankind would not become too happy, it were an event ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... either way, and be dishonest both ways. "Do you," says the one, "try on this particular case for harassing the minister. If it tells, if it sticks, then we both pitch into him. If it fails, then rise I and say:—'How shameful in an official person to throw dust in the eyes of the House by detaining it upon a miserable trifle, whilst the criminal gravities of his conduct are skulking in the rear under this artifice for misleading the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... am sure, in books, to shirk the whole subject of fear, as though it were a thing disgraceful, shameful, almost unmentionable. The coward, the timid person, receives very little sympathy; he is rather like one tainted with a shocking disease, of which the less said the better. He is not viewed with any sympathy or commiseration, but as something almost lower in the scale of humanity. ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... "It would be shameful of him if he tried," cried Miss Penny. "Just let me have a talk with him, Mr. Graeme, and I'll make him wish he'd never been born. He's really not such a bad sort, you ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... peace and amity, albeit themselves have no less part of both than we. Of which good, if so it came to pass, thyself is the only author, and so hast thou the only honour. But if it fail, and fall out contrary, thyself alone deservedly shalt carry the shameful reproach and burthen of either party. So, though the end of war be uncertain, yet this notwithstanding is most certain, that if it be thy chance to conquer, this benefit shalt thou reap of thy goodly conquest, to be chronicled the plague and destroyer of thy country. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... wild goose over there," answered Snow-White. "Is it not shameful? I don't wonder they ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... together, St. Barbara for the gunnery and God defend the right— They are stopped and gapped and battered as we blast away the weather, Building window upon window to our lady of the light; For the light is come on Liberty, her foes are falling, falling, They are reeling, they are running, as the shameful years have run, She is risen for all the humble, she has heard the conquered calling, St. Barbara of the Gunners, with ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... said my attendant. "There are the Orthobrachians, who declaim against the shameful abuse of the left arm and hand, and insist on restoring their perfect equality with the right. Then there are Isopodic societies, which insist on bringing back the original equality of the upper and lower limbs. If you can believe it, they actually practise going on all fours,—generally in ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... victims of avarice and greed. Better set free a pack of ravening wolves in a community than to change the end of medical practice to a commercial one, for physicians and pharmacists would soon degenerate into quacks and charlatans, and take shameful advantage of the community ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... lost," the cattleman went on. "But we'll get yore record straightened out, anyhow, so that won't stand against you. I know one li'l' girl will be tickled to hear the news. Joy always has stuck out that you were treated shameful." ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... my Lords, which have reduced this late flourishing empire to ruin and contempt! "But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world: now none so poor to do her reverence." I use the words of a poet; but, though it be poetry, it is no fiction. It is a shameful truth, that not only the power and strength of this country are wasting away and expiring, but her well-earned glories, her true honor, and substantial ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... coast, Where stand thy steeds, and thou art honour'd most! There most; but everywhere thy power is known, 300 The fortune of the fight is all thy own: Terror is thine, and wild amazement, flung From out thy chariot, withers even the strong: And disarray and shameful rout ensue, And force is added to the fainting crew. Acknowledged as thou art, accept my prayer, If aught I have achieved deserve thy care: If to my utmost power, with sword and shield, I dared the death, unknowing how to yield, And falling in my rank, still kept the field: ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... is; I wouldn't touch it. I knew you liked that man; but I didn't expect to find you corresponding with him. It is shameful; it isn't worthy of you. You might have left such things to ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... till the day of judgment, lying rolled in blood, with a handful of earth raked over them under the fatal Fredericksburg heights; the finest army in Federaldom hurled back upon its intrenchments; nothing but darkness covering a disastrous, if not shameful defeat; the papers crowded with dreary funeral notices, showing how, to every great city of the North, from hospital and battle-ground, the slain are being gathered in, to be buried among their own people; ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... thing like it, John? I couldn't shake the creature off. I was so thankful when you came up and took me. He's Rose's admirer, and he hardly spoke a word to her. I think it's shameful." ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... a sort of approximation to the right, is it therefore that the colonies are to recede from it infinitely? When this child of ours wishes to assimilate to its parent, and to reflect with a true filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our constitution? are we to give them our weakness for their strength, our opprobrium for their glory, and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... he set out, accompanied by the queen, his brother the Count de Provence, his sister the Princess Elizabeth, and his children. It was a strange and shameful retinue that escorted the King of France to his capital. One party of the rioters, with Maillard and another ruffian named Jourdan, the chief of the Coupe-tetes, at their head, had started two hours before, bearing aloft in triumph the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... with leisure to listen to his tirade on the shameful inadequacy of the attributes of civilization in the camp, and after one brief attempt to arouse civic indignation against Van for his acts of deliberate lawlessness, he perceived the ease with which he might commit an error and ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... not propose to follow this march of shameful events step by step, nor to speak of them in their exact chronological order, nor yet to specify to which of these magistrates the credit of any one of them belongs, inasmuch as the philosophy and method of the policy of the one and the other are absolutely identical. We have space ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... parson and his fox-chasing, wine-bibbing crew for to pull in their tongues a piece which they most wisely did, or, for a truth, they would have found themselves astride of the wrong horse. It is now time this shameful practice was for ever laid on one side for it be not for the good of our own daughters that they witness such sights even in a place called God's house, but it oft be ought but that to our shame and the ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... inasmuch as his 'airy vision' has already been completely 'dissolved' by the breath of that eminent gentleman, well known to us, who has so completely annihilated the wrong which he is so anxious to continue. But the shameful assumption that a writer, universally allowed to be the worst paid artist in creation, should not have—is not entitled to have, by every principle—of courtesy and honour, a sole and undivided right to, and in, his own productions—is so monstrous, that every editor ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... history of Napoleon, and the bibliopolist is in a great funk. I lack some part of his instinct. I have done Gourgaud no wrong: every word imputed to him exists in the papers submitted to me as historical documents[28], and I should have been a shameful coward if I had shunned using them. At my years it is somewhat late for an affair of honour, and as a reasonable man I would avoid such an arbitrament, but will not plead privilege of literature. The country shall not be ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... herself languishing for the pioneer, and of his terror at her affection for him! Her selfish and intriguing spirit was free from coarseness, and yet she could have laughed with all her heart even while engaged in the most shameful deed of her whole life. She gave the wine back ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... It was shameful, revolting! He would have liked to shout the whole story to his brother. Indeed, it was his duty, as he had come there for that express purpose. But he no longer felt the courage to do ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... brutality of forced conscription ever stood before her eyes: she beheld the young men, often the sole supporter of a large family, brutally dragged to the barracks to lead the miserable life of a soldier. She heard the weeping of the poor peasant women, and witnessed the shameful scenes of official venality which relieved the rich from military service at the expense of the poor. She was outraged by the terrible treatment to which the female servants were subjected: maltreated and exploited by their BARINYAS, they ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... on Rickie thus to meet the devil. He did not deserve it, for he was comparatively civilized, and knew that there was nothing shameful in love. But to love this woman! If only it had been any one else! Love in return—that he could expect from no one, being too ugly and too unattractive. But the love he offered would not then have been vile. The insult to ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... then?" resumed Photogen, rubbing his eyes. But with that his memory came clear, and he shuddered, and cried, "Oh, horrible! horrible! to be turned all at once into a coward!—a shameful, contemptible, disgraceful coward! I am ashamed—ashamed—and so frightened! It is all ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... worship to Lamia, "now a lady bright"? But foul-fanged here, fierce-eyed, a shape of fear, the serpent stands, revealed to general sight, A loathly thing, close knotted ring on ring, of guise unlovely, and infectious breath; And yet strong witchery draws to those wide jaws Whose touch is shameful death. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various

... puts a stop to the combat or provokes a headlong flight that seems quite natural. As for the wounds, these are enumerated and described, sung and deplored as so many remarkable phenomena. On the other hand, the most discreditable routs, the most shameful panics are frequent; and the old poet relates them, without condemning them, as ordinary incidents to be ascribed to the gods ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck

... say that it is the daughter of the Duke. 'Young, and beautiful, and gentle,' she says—that matches well, does it not, Wilton, ha?—I Who has been torn from her father, the Duke of Gaveston, in this daring and shameful manner, and brought hither by water with the intention, as I believe, of sending her over to France in the ship that we have hired. I have seen her twice, and spoken with her for some time, and I beseech you, if ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... Sissy's feet. Time stopped, and all the world stood agape witnessing a Madigan's failure! It seemed to the third of them that she could never bear to lift her head again and meet a Comstocker's eye and see there that shameful record against the family. But she scrambled quickly to her feet when Irene came running in, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... School than any boy of his day, and had acquired by long practice the power of writing the "record" number of lines in an hour; who never told a lie, nor bullied a weaker boy, nor dropped an unkind jest, nor uttered a shameful word—Random, for whom every one in authority prophesied ruin, speedy and inevitable; who is, therefore, the best of landlords and the most popular of country gentlemen; who was the most popular officer ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... said, continued my father (availing himself of the Prolepsis), that in itself, and simply taken—like hunger, or thirst, or sleep—'tis an affair neither good or bad—or shameful or otherwise.—Why then did the delicacy of Diogenes and Plato so recalcitrate against it? and wherefore, when we go about to make and plant a man, do we put out the candle? and for what reason is it, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... art. I recognise no good or evil in art," Esme answered. "In England we have no art, just because we do recognise good and evil. Glasgow thinks it is shameful to be naked; yet even the Bible declares that the ideal condition is to be naked and unashamed; and Glasgow, being in Scotland, naturally gives the lead to England. We have no art. We have only the Royal Academy, which is remarkable merely for the badness of its cuisine, ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... also very proper to banish, both from their hearing and sight, everything which is illiberal and the like. Indeed it is as much the business of the legislator as anything else, to banish every indecent expression out of the state: for from a permission to speak whatever is shameful, very quickly arises the doing it, and this particularly with young people: for which reason let them never speak nor hear any such thing: but if it appears that any freeman has done or said anything that is forbidden before he is of age to be thought fit to partake of the common meals, let him ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle

... guiltless of this horrible charge—I am as sure of that as I am that I am a living woman. Besides, who is to know that Richard Leslie is one and the same man with him who stood in the dock charged with that shameful crime, and was pronounced guilty upon the strength of cunningly devised and manufactured evidence? No one, of course, except my father; he must know; because, Dick dear, it is my fixed determination that he shall ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... him to talk a little rational sense! It is not natur', truly, to abandon a brother in distress; and the Lord He knows that I have never yet done the shameful deed. You are right, friend, you are right; we must all be hidden, and that speedily. But what to do with the ass! Friend Doctor, do you truly value the life of ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... AND CO. six months to go wrong in, and then called for that pass-book again. My eye fell upon a paying and deducting and refunding and readjusting of an item itself so shameful that it dared only appear under its initials. Why this oscillation? I asked myself. So we engaged upon another correspondence, and another interview took place, at which I was supported by my subaltern (who could multiply and add), and the bank-man was supported by a young lady (who ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various

... that I lost one of my bedroom slippers. It went clattering on ahead of us, making a shameful racket on the bare stones, but Britton caught it up in time to save it from the clutches of the curio-vandals. My workmen were lolling about the place, smoking vile pipes and talking in guttural whispers. All operations ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... abroad that he had allowed them to sneak into his camp, seize him, disarm him, bind him, and set the fire that was to make ashes of him for the winds to blow away. It would do for him with Tim Sullivan entirely if that should become known, with the additional humiliation of being saved from this shameful death by a woman. No matter how immeasurable his own gratitude, no matter how wide his own pride in her for what she had done, the sheep country never would be able to see it with his eyes. It would be another ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... had been the instrument of the first crimes of the Revolution, was mutilated. "When," exclaimed the demagogues, "will the people execute justice for themselves upon all these kings of bronze and marble—shameful monuments of their slavery and their idolatry?" The statues of the king were torn from the shops; some broke them into pieces, others merely tied a bandage over the eyes, to signify the blindness attributed to the king. The names of king, queen, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... the work of any hand?— We had a kind of light what would ensue. It is the shameful work of Hubert's hand; The practice and the purpose of the king:— From whose obedience I forbid my soul, Kneeling before this ruin of sweet life, And breathing to his breathless excellence The incense of a vow, a holy ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... native princes. The writer therefore gave it as his opinion, that the European travellers should immediately be put to death. An alarm indeed had been spread through Sockatoo, that the English were coming to invade Houssa. The sultan irritated doubtless at the shameful result of his grand expedition against Coonia, felt also another and more pressing fear. War had just broken out between himself and the king of Bornou. Clapperton was on his way to visit that prince, and had left six muskets at Kano, supposed ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... "This is shameful," said Perkin. "I am not here to distress the English people. Rather than fill the country with misery, I will lose ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... sometimes, under the inspiration of the respectable Secretary, write like a perfect middle-class English Christian. He condemned the Sunday amusements of Hamburg, for example, remarking that "England, with all her faults, has still some regard to decency, and will not tolerate such a shameful display of vice" (as rope-dancing) "in so sacred a season, when a decent cheerfulness is the freest form in which the mind or countenance ought to invest themselves." {129a} He argued against the translator of the Bible into Manchu that concessions should not be made to a Chinese ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... still think Louis Napoleon the d—d'est rascal in Europe (for which again you will be angry with me), and that his reception the other day in London will hereafter appear in history as simply the most shameful episode in the English annals. Thinking this, you will not consider my opinion good for anything, and therefore I need not inflict it upon you. Humbugs, however, will explode in the present state of the atmosphere, and the Austrian ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... And silence sunk on all around. The air was sad; but sadder still It fell on Marmion's ear, And plained as if disgrace and ill, And shameful death, were near. He drew his mantle past his face, Between it and the band, And rested with his head a space Reclining on his hand. His thoughts I scan not; but I ween, That, could their import have been seen, The meanest groom in all the hall, That e'er tied courser to a stall, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... his knees shook; and he sank at last to the bottom of the chamber of his torture, whence, while his mother wept below, and his father clenched hands of despair beneath the tails of his Sunday coat, he was half led, half dragged down the steps by the bedral, shrunken together like one caught in a shameful deed, and with the ghastly look of him who has but just revived from the faint supervening on the agonies of the rack. Home they crept together, speechless and hopeless all three, to be thenceforth the contempt and not the envy of their fellow parishioners. For if the vulgar feeling ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... obese and drunken chief surrounded by fawning harpies was a shameful and disgusting one. One example is sufficient to show how the thing was done. A concession for gambling was applied for. The man who interpreted knew a smattering of 'kitchen' Kaffir, and his rendering of the 'monopoly for billiards, card playing, lotteries, and games of chance' was ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... who thought that Elof Ersson should have found no peace in his grave for the shameful way in which he had dealt with Karin and young Ingmar. He had deliberately made way with all of his and Karin's money, so she would suffer hardship after his death. And he left the farm so heavily ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof

... mosque about to give a theological lecture. He handed over the letter to his Master, who, after reading it, at once turned to his disciples, and uttered these words: 'To search for a roof after one has arrived at one's destination is a shameful thing. To search for knowledge when one is in possession of one's object is supererogatory. Close your lips [in surprise], for the Master has arisen; apprehend the news thereof. The sun which points out to us the way we should go, has appeared; the night of error and ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne

... ill mind. The generous man will be solicitous and inquisitive into the beauty and order of a well-governed family, and after the virtues of an excellent person; but anything for which men keep locks and bars, or that blushes to see the light, or that is either shameful in manner or private in nature, this thing will not be ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... why dost thou bear with these men? Do the people hate thee, that thou canst not avenge thyself on them? and hast thou not kinsmen to help thee? As for me, I would rather die than see such shameful things done in ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church

... an English soldier was the supreme and final expression of trained and disciplined force; and now, before their almost incredulous eyes, the flower of the British army had been beaten, and the bloody remnant stampeded into a shameful flight by a few hundred painted savages and Frenchmen. They all had been watching Braddock's march; and they never forgot the lesson of his defeat. From that time, the British regular was to them only a "lobster-back," more ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... a morbid wish to discover—to learn from her own lips—why Flossy had done such a shameful and extraordinary thing as to be unfaithful to her ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... men behind her had moved out to the doorway; she could still hear them talking and laughing together. Something within her urged her to get up and follow them to tell them that she had heard what they said, to tell them that it was all a lie—a shameful lie. But she ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... was beyond measure astonished, and cried, "Now this is shameful indeed, that I should seek a bridegroom for my daughter in ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... The door of the bunk house swung slowly open and the disgraced one appeared in all his shameful panoply. The cap was pulled well down over a face hopelessly embittered. The ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... sixty to seventy prisoners in all, of all nationalities, a considerable number being Englishmen, and all of us were dressed in those hideous San-benitos, which make the most shameful garb that a man can wear. Being drawn up in single file, our guards fastened a halter round the neck of each prisoner, and afterwards gave to each of us a green wax candle, which we carried, unlighted, in the right hand. Two Spaniards, well armed, guarded each of us, and so the ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher

... pronounced her sentence, and the sight of her roused his wrath again so vehemently that, spite of the urgent peril, he shouted to her that, whatever claimed his attention now, she certainly should not escape the most severe punishment for her shameful conduct. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... well for you, gentlemen, who work one day in the week and are masters of your time the other six during which you can view the beauties of Nature—all very well for you—but I think it shameful that you should endeavor to shut out from the toiling masses all that is calculated to entertain and instruct them during the only day which you well know ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... were beating, and the standards went waving by. This was the only appearance of parade that attended any of the removals. Three Frenchmen, seeing the group of English, came up to us, and began a conversation. They appealed to us if this was not shameful. A gentleman observed, that the horses were only going back to the place from whence the French had taken them: if there was a right in power for France, there must also be one for other states but the better way to consider these events was as terminating the times of robbery and discord. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... Mr. Heldar,' she said to herself, 'after all he's done to me and all! Well, I'm sorry for him, and if he was shaved he wouldn't be so bad to look at, but... Oh them Beetons, how shameful they've treated him! I know Beeton's wearing his shirt on his back to-day just as well as if I'd aired it. To-morrow, I'll see... I wonder if he has much of his own. It might be worth more than the bar—I wouldn't have to do any work—and just as respectable ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... originally trivial, had now, through the shameful behaviour of the volunteers, become serious. The news of the defeat spread with great rapidity among the unruly tribes on the frontier of the Colony; and a Mohammedan priest, proclaiming himself a prophet, placed himself at the head of the movement. The Governor ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis

... it a Thousand," she said to father. "The child is in shameful condition. She is never still, and she fidgits right ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... consciousness of our fundamental unity. They talk a great deal about 'the rivalries of jarring sects.' I believe that is such an enormous exaggeration that it is an untruth. There is rivalry, but you know as well as I do that, shabby and shameful as it is, it is a kind of commercial rivalry between contiguous places of worship, be they chapels or churches, be they buildings belonging to the same or to different denominations. I, for my part, after a pretty long experience now, have seen so ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... exaggerated and distorted. Every day we read in the 'Volksstem'—probably the most astounding tissue of lies ever presented to the public under the name of a newspaper—of Boer victories and of the huge slaughters and shameful flights of the British. However much one might doubt and discount these tales, they made a deep impression. A month's feeding on such literary garbage weakens the constitution of the mind. We wretched prisoners lost heart. Perhaps Great Britain would not ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... been a parasite, that is, a voluntary flunkey too lazy to work, while you've an appetite for money. She, too, understands all that now. It's awful the things she's been telling me about you, anyway. I did laugh, my boy, over your letters to her; shameful and disgusting. But you're all so depraved, so depraved! There's always something depraving in charity—you're a ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... care on him, and sent him to school every winter, when there warn't much to do; and it's shameful for him to treat me so. He hain't got no ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... convinced of the truth of what the fair Persian had said, and that there was no other way of avoiding a shameful poverty, was forced to yield to her proposal. Accordingly he led her to the market where the women-slaves are exposed to sale, with a regret that cannot easily be expressed. He applied himself to a broker, named Hagi Hassan. "Hagi Hassan," ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... to save his reputation, discovered the sheer futility of his attempt to make and keep together a government, and when it once more fell to the Conservatives to take office, Macdonald saved himself and his colleagues the trouble of standing for re-election by a most shameful constitutional quibble. According to a recent act, if a member of Legislative Council or Assembly "shall resign his office, and within one month after his resignation, accept any other of the said offices (enumerated above), ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... in Alexandria, and Scott insisted that Alexandria be invaded and occupied by night. In all probability, Ellsworth would not have been murdered if this villanous nest had been entered by broad daylight. As if the troops were committing a crime, or a shameful act! O General Scott! but for you Ellsworth ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... dwell? John, thou hast made thy wife a Jezebel: See! on her bosom rests the sign of sin, The glaring proof of naughty thoughts within: What! 'tis a cross: come hither—as a friend, Thus from thy neck the shameful badge I rend." "Rend, if you dare," said Dighton; "you shall find A man of spirit, though to peace inclined; Call me ungrateful! have I not my pay At all times ready for the expected day? To share my ...
— Tales • George Crabbe

... a national scandal. Benjamin F. Linton, United States Attorney for Western Louisiana, reported to President Andrew Jackson on August 27, 1835, that in seizing possession of Government land in that region "the most shameful frauds, impositions and perjuries had been committed in Louisiana." Sent to investigate, V. M. Garesche, an agent of the Government Land Office, complained that he could get no one to testify. "Is it surprising," he wrote to the Secretary ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... bare support. During all this time his rights were systematically violated, suits were wrongfully decided against him by various Southern courts, and he was harassed and plundered on every side. America never presented a more shameful spectacle than was exhibited when the courts of the cotton-growing regions united with the piratical infringers of Whitney's rights in robbing their greatest benefactor. In 1807, Whitney's partner died, and his factory was ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... to-day my mission is of higher importance, and should place me, in the minds of superior people, among those who devote themselves to the enlightenment of their country. The most distinguished bankers in Paris take part in this affair; not fictitiously, as in some shameful speculations which I call rat-traps. No, no, nothing of the kind! I should never condescend—never!—to hawk about such catch-fools. No, Monsieur; the most respectable houses in Paris are concerned in this ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac

... is laid in the nature of things; and he only who seeks it there, can rightly guide others in the paths of knowledge. He alone can know whether his predecessors went right or wrong, who is capable of a judgement independent of theirs. But with what shameful servility have many false or faulty definitions and rules been copied and copied from one grammar to another, as if authority had canonized their errors, or none had eyes to see them! Whatsoever is ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... first emotion upon seeing anything good is to undervalue it will never do anything good of his own. It argues a want of genius in ourselves if we fail to see it in others; unless, indeed, we do really see it, and only say we don't out of envy. This is very shameful. I had rather do like some amiable people I have known, disparage the work of a friend in order to set others ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... modern literature of all kinds, my tutor had the usual characteristic of the classical scholars of his generation, a complete ignorance and misunderstanding of the fine arts. All that he knew on that subject was that a certain picture by Titian was shameful because there was a naked woman in it; and I believe he had heard that Claude was a famous landscape-painter, but he had no conception whatever of the aims and purposes of art. One of his accusations against me was ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... life Were the only death left fearful if he bade me Die. Could his love be turned from me, and set On one less loving but more fair than I, A thrall more base than treason or a queen Too high for shame to brand her shameful, even Though sin had stamped and signed her foul as fraud And loathsome as a masked adulterous lie, Hers would I make him if I might, and yield To her the hatefullest of hell-born things The man found lovelier by my love ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... most of the witnesses "notorious swindlers, liars, and thieves," declaring that the fraudulent vote did not exceed 2,000, divided equally between the two parties. Moreover, it pronounced the investigation a shameful effort to convict the Democracy of crimes that were really the result of the long-continued misgovernment of the Republicans. If that party controlled the city, declared one critic, it would become as adept in "repeating" ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... "But before I give it to you, I tell you that I do so under protest, and that this conduct of yours shall be reported. I consider it a most shameful thing, and I do not willingly pay you for what, no doubt, you have been ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... We shall not play into the hands of the Germans by fighting on their chosen ground. We shall wait until we are ready. This is not 1870 when armies were thrown away rather than retreat to ground where the chances of victory were even, at the worst. Remember that, if you think the retreat is shameful. If, in 1870, the army of Chalons had retreated upon Paris, instead of marching to the trap at Sedan, French history ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston

... there, he had used her natural sympathy as a means whereby to exercise his hypnotic power, and all she had seen was merely the creation of his own libidinous fancy. But though she sought to persuade herself that, in playing a vile trick on her, he had taken a shameful advantage of her pity, she could not look upon him with anger. Her contempt for him, her utter loathing, were alloyed with a feeling that aroused in her horror and dismay. She could not get the man out of her thoughts. All that he had said, all that she had seen, ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... aged king: But the stern queen, unpitying, Checked not her needless words, nor spared The hero for all speed prepared, But urged him with her bitter tongue, Like a good horse with lashes stung, She spoke her shameful speech. Serene He heard the fury of the queen, And to her words so vile and dread Gently, unmoved in mind, he said: "I would not in this world remain A grovelling thrall to paltry gain, But duty's ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... man wore me out, and my soul dried up. And last year, when they had sold the villa to pay my debts, I went away to Paris, and there he robbed me of all I had and threw me over and went off with another woman. I tried to poison myself.... It was so silly, so shameful.... And suddenly I longed to be back in Russia, my own land, with my little girl.... [Wipes her tears] Lord, Lord be merciful to me, forgive me my sins! Punish me no more! [Takes a telegram out of her pocket] I had this to-day from Paris.... He begs ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov

... immoderate breadth of the features made me very much out of humor with my own countenance, upon which I threw it from me like a mask. It happened very luckily that one who stood by me had just before thrown down his visage, which, it seems, was too long for him. It was, indeed, extended to a most shameful length; I believe the very chin was, modestly speaking, as long as my whole face. We had both of us an opportunity of mending ourselves; and all the contributions being now brought in, every man was at liberty to exchange his misfortunes for ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... to show one's face; in the shade, in the background; out at elbows, down at the elbows, down in the world. inglorious; nameless, renownless^; obscure; unknown to fame; unnoticed, unnoted^, unhonored, unglorified^. shameful; disgraceful, discreditable, disreputable; despicable; questionable; unbecoming, unworthy; derogatory; degrading, humiliating, infra dignitatem [Lat.], dedecorous^; scandalous, infamous, too bad, unmentionable; ribald, opprobrious; errant, shocking, outrageous, notorious. ignominious, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... spot; Where now the wandering Arab's tent 135 Flaps in the desert-blast. There once old Salem's haughty fane Reared high to Heaven its thousand golden domes, And in the blushing face of day Exposed its shameful glory. 140 Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed The building of that fane; and many a father; Worn out with toil and slavery, implored The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth, And spare his children the detested task ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... many difficulties only to lie down here silently, uncomplainingly, and give up their lives, all stirred Dermot strangely. And when the thought of the incalculable wealth that lay in the vast quantity of ivory stored in this great charnel-house flashed through his mind, he felt that it would be a shameful desecration, inviting the wrath of the gods, to remove even one ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... tell me that your shameful mother is more to you than I am!" the enraged woman went on. "It shows the class you have sprung from. I took you out of the gutter. I should have left ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... and to its great disgrace, this employment of the dog has been accompanied by such wanton and shameful cruelty, that the Legislature—somewhat hastily confounding the abuse of a thing with its legitimate purpose—forbade the appearance of the dog-cart in the metropolitan districts, and were inclined to extend this prohibition through the whole kingdom, it is much to be desired ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... windows. Peggy, however, was more terrified than damaged; but the gentry that were in the chaise, being termagant English travellers, swore like dragoons that the streets should be indicted as a nuisance; and when they put up at the inns, two of them came to me, as provost, to remonstrate on the shameful condition of the pavement, and to lodge in my hands the sum of ten pounds for the behoof of Peggy; the which was greater riches than ever the poor creature thought to attain in this world. Seeing they were gentlemen of a right ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... considerable suspicion, wondering what new mischief he was hatching. But Tinker looked like a guileless seraph pondering the innocent joys of the Islands of the Blessed, to a degree which made such a suspicion a very shameful thing indeed. Partly reassured, Sir Tancred returned to his brooding: he was angry with himself because he felt helpless in an impasse. On the one hand, he could not bring himself to fly from Dorothy; on the other, he could not bring himself to abate his pride, and ask her to marry him. ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson

... graduates, educated Hindus like our old friend the schoolmaster, all would admit in private that to take a child to the temple and "marry her" there was wrong. But very few have much desire to right the shameful wrong. ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... He had since considered them; but he could not prevail upon himself to retract them; because, if any gentleman, after reading the evidence on the table, and attending to the debate, could avow himself an abetter of this shameful traffic in human flesh, it could only be either from some hardness of heart, or some difficulty of understanding, which he really knew not ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... place then allotted to convicts cast for death. There were as many as sixty or seventy sometimes within these narrow limits, and most were kept six months and more thus hovering between a wretched existence and a shameful death. Men in momentary expectation of being hanged rubbed shoulders with others still hoping for reprieve. If the first were seriously inclined, they were quite debarred from private religious meditation, but consorted, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... really are in need of all your energy. For years I have submitted to your shameful service. I have been at the beck and call of one of the greatest roues and villains in France. Years of such association would somewhat soil any nature. Another thing, my lord, I must tell you, since you and I are settling our last accounts. For years ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... the best thing for 'em isn't to die,—of course after they have repented, Mr. Fenwick. You see, sir, it is so very low, and so shameful, and they do bring such disgrace on their poor families. There isn't anything a young man can do that is nearly so bad,—is there, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... of madness for three men to pursue ten times as many Indian warriors; but the blood of Carson was up and he told Godey it was too soon for them to turn back. The eyes of both flashed, when they reflected upon the shameful outrage, and they meant that the marauders should not ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... of a perpetual falsehood, you would not be so much surprised. There is one unspeakable blessing in American law. It is quite easy to obtain a divorce. One can get free without sacrificing everything except bare existence. I do not care what anybody may argue to the contrary, our marriage laws are shameful. ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... regard to others as well as himself, and only secondarily and accidentally to what is evil. Thus, though men, to avoid the shame of one villainy, are sometimes guilty of a greater, yet it is easy to see that the original tendency of shame is to prevent the doing of shameful actions; and its leading men to conceal such actions when done is only in consequence of their being done; i.e., of the passion's not ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler

... More shameful still is this retrogression when the item of police expenditure is considered, for this exceeds outright the appropriation for the Department of Education, and has grown more rapidly than the expenditure for schools. It appears that, under existing conditions, when property appreciates ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... thinks it shameful to raise a department clerk's salary from $1500 to $1800 a year, but every man who draws a salary himself says: "That's all right. I wish it was me." And he feels very much like votin' the Tammany ticket on election ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt

... truer love of their country, protested strongly against such an illegal and shameful surrender. One of these, General Olivier of the Rouxville Commando, called his burghers together and told them plainly what he thought. He warned them not to place too much credence in British promises, and ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... would not be justified by Baptism because they are not sufficiently advanced in the use of reason to enable them to "apprehend" the external righteousness of Christ. The first of these inferences runs counter to common sense and experience. The second, which Luther clothed in the shameful exhortation, "Pecca fortiter et crede fortius et nihil nocebunt centum homicidia et mille stupra,"(953) is repugnant to the teaching of Scripture and destructive of morality.(954) The third consistently led to the ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... And what I devised to save me harmless; Do not I speak now? [is] not this my hand? Be not these my feet that on this ground stand? Did not this other knave here knock me about the head? And beat me, till I was almost dead? How may it then be, that he should be I? Or I not myself?—it is a shameful lie. I woll home to our house, whosoever say nay, For surely ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley

... much," said the woman. "He's bigger, and he ought to have known better than to get into such a shameful disturbance.—What's that?—Lor' bless me, no, my dear! Why should I take a mark for a mug of cold water? Put it in your pocket, my dear; you'll want it to buy cakes and apples. I don't want to be paid for ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn

... made-dishes from Mutton's; how the family who had taken Mrs. Bugsby's had left as usual after the very first night, the poor little infant blistered all over with bites on its little dear face; how the Miss Learys was going on shameful with the two young men, actially in their setting-room, mum, where one of them offered Miss Laura Leary a cigar; how Mrs. Cribb still went cuttin' pounds and pounds of meat off the lodgers' jints, emptying their tea-caddies, actially reading their letters. Sally had been told so by Polly ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and have been obliged to threaten, three or four times already, to resign. As it is, I have only been able to get four ships out of a dozen ready, and even these, with the exception of this ship, are in a shameful state, and deficient in every necessary. What is worse, I cannot even rely upon the crews, which I always could do in the Chilian service. Well, before you begin your story I must tell you that I did not forget you, but tried every means in my power to effect ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... my 'Philothea'[44] that it was forbidden to enjoy any bodily pleasure, except in lawful wedlock; this teaching recurred to my mind; the sensations I had experienced could certainly be described as pleasurable; I had, therefore, committed a sin, and, indeed, a sin of the most shameful and grievous character, because it was the sin most of all displeasing to the Lamb without blemish and without spot. Great disturbance of mind, prayers and penances; how could I avoid a repetition of the offence? ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... mechanically forward, in the shadow, toward a point where she could see through the window and remain screened from observation. So intense was her interest in what she heard, that she stood with her hand on her heart, not even conscious that she was doing a shameful thing. ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... of the Commune is piteous, disheartening, shameful, and terrible. It seems as if during three months of 1871 "human nature," as Carlyle says of it in his "French Revolution," "had thrown off all formulas, and come out human!" It is the story of those whom the French call "the people,"—we "the mob," or "the populace,"—let ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... Anathoth, and the murder in your hearts. Ye that have worshipped the shameful thing and burned incense to Baal—shall I cringe that ye devise against me, or not rather pray to the Lord of Hosts, 'Let me see Thy vengeance on them'? And He answereth, 'I will bring evil upon the men of Anathoth, even the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... you done that I am yours, and right great joy have I thereof. Now see to it that the thing be kept secret, as it should be. For I am one of the ladies of the world who have the fairest fame, and if my praise grew worse through you, then it would be a foul and shameful thing." ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... house, and on coming out into the open air, the wine flew into his head. He told us all about it when he got sober, half an hour afterward. I never saw a man so vexed as he was. He wept, and stammered: "The father of a family, and at my age too! Oh! it is shameful! What shall I say to my wife? What will the ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... who has the shameful distinction of having lent his name to the idea of which he is the willing and probably the fit exponent, may be dismissed without further consideration, since he is, after all, only the inevitable as he is the deplorable result of that for which ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various

... behind the blackness of the picture, and had shown himself at seasons of public calamity to more than one of the royal governors. Shirley, for instance, had beheld this ominous apparition on the eve of General Abercrombie's shameful and bloody defeat under the walls of Ticonderoga. Many of the servants of the province-house had caught glimpses of a visage frowning down upon them at morning or evening twilight, or in the depths of night while raking ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... have referred, it is spread all over the whole of our dying Puritan civilisation. For instance, social reformers have fired a hundred shots against the public-house; but never one against its really shameful feature. The sign of decay is not in the public-house, but in the private bar; or rather the row of five or six private bars, into each of which a respectable dipsomaniac can go in solitude, and by indulging his own half-witted sin violate his own half-witted ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... Their daughters there to see, Pronounce the "dancing thing" No better than she should be, With her skirt at her shameful knee, And her painted, tainted phiz: Ah, matron, ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... and apologize," said Mrs. Drane, "for this shameful intrusion, and then you must drive us out of the grounds immediately. We do not wish to stop to look at anything," and with this she stepped from the little phaeton and walked back ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton

... whose consequences the descendants have to bear. There is physical relation between the act of the father, whereby he has undermined his health, and the consequent suffering of the son; but the son's suffering will be the same whatever the intentions or motives of the father, be these heroic or shameful. And, further, the area of what we call the justice of physical heredity would appear to be very restricted. A father may have been guilty of a hundred abominable crimes, he may have been a murderer, a traitor, a ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... in heart over the remembrance of Sylvia's words, 'I can niver forgive him the wrong he did to me,' that night when Hester had come, and clung to her, making the sad, shameful confession of ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell

... multitude of men, and an enemy came out against me with eight hundred men, whilst I had eight hundred thousand. I trusted in the number of my troops, whilst mine enemy trusted in God; so he defeated me and routed me and I was put to a shameful flight and hid myself in one of the mountains, where I met with a recluse, [who had] withdrawn [himself from the world]. So I joined myself to him and complained to him of my case and acquainted him with all that had befallen ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... is in the nature of man an aversion to the shameful and the obscene, and this the more powerful in the best and well-educated natures. All obscene ideas offend this sense of shame to such an extent that they are regarded as alien to nature, ugly, and uncivilised. Nor does it matter that some corrupt souls laugh at them. ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole

... she heard I was going, and I felt myself obliged to commit the shameful deception of talking about baby bears and my ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton

... had cost that painted poppet's life! So it still lived and howled in unwelcome reminder and perpetuation of that brief but shameful episode. 'Grow dumb like your mother,' she murmured resentfully. What a bequest of misery Henry Elkman had left behind him! Ah, how right she had been to suspect him ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... pure abstract reasoning about Time, we may see many instances of the relativity of Time in our everyday experiences. We all know that when we are interested Time seems to pass rapidly, and when we are bored it drags along in a shameful manner. We know that when we are happy, Time develops the speed of a meteor, while when we are unhappy it crawls like a tortoise. When we are interested or happy our attention is largely diverted from the changes occurring in things—because we do not notice ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... you," she says, "to take this will to the hilltop, and urge law-makers in our next legislature to free the State record from the shameful story that no mother can control her child unless it is ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... cultivated, but it has displayed in matters of public sanitation a carelessness simply criminal: a sensible people, among whom education is more widely diffused than in any other country, supinely acquiesces in conditions often shameful beyond expression. The solution of the problem is not very difficult. What has been done elsewhere can be done here. It is not so much in the cities, though here too the death rate is still high, but in the smaller towns and rural districts, in many ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... already begun to share my property, of which they never rendered me an account. Poor Sonntag was arrested as a spy, imprisoned, ill treated for some weeks, and, at last, when naked and destitute, received a hundred florins, and was escorted beyond the Austrian confines. The worthy man fell a shameful sacrifice to his honesty, could never obtain an audience of the Empress, and returned poor and miserable on foot to Berlin, where he was twelve months secretly maintained by his brother, and with whom he died. He wrote an account ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... half to herself. "To think of this network of treachery spreading through and through us, lying in wait for us, leading us on, buoying us up with false strength, sham elasticity—and then collapsing like a toy balloon, leaving nothing but a rag, a tatter of humanity. Oh, it is shameful! it is disgraceful! Look at me! what business have ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards

... nests agree: And 'tis a shameful sight, When children of one family Fall out, and chide, and fight. (From "Love ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... of Liberty, and not degrade and destroy it? The theory of our institutions is our pride. But it is a pitiful truth that our public life has become synonymous with knavery. If a politician is introduced, you feel of your pockets. It is shameful that it is universally conceded that the best men, the men of intelligence and probity, generally avoid politics, and that the word itself has come to mean something not to be touched without defilement. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... was found clothed and in its right mind—the noxious weeds having been cast out by Constance's gentle hands. In this delightful scene Constance always stood by smiling in a deprecatory way, and he was always gently upbraiding her—"Now, Constance! Why, this is shameful! The idea of your doing such a thing! It wasn't right of you! You must promise me you will never, never do anything of this sort again!" and ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... for that word! You did not come to command my obedience in such a shameful thing: you had some small regard left for the unfortunate Caroline. Say you will not command me to go up there," added she, looking at him with eyes of pitiful pleading, such as no Italian art ever portrayed on the face of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... the 24th, both the Persians and English began to pillage in a most shameful manner, so that I was both grieved and ashamed, yet could see no means of remedy. The Persians drove out the poor sick, wounded, and scorched Christians, who were not able to help themselves, so that my heart yearned with compassion to see their woeful plight. In the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... as a party interested when we lament with surprise that the heroic behavior of the garrison at Vera Cruz in its valiant defense has been aspersed by the general who has just been routed and put to shameful flight at Buena Vista by a force far inferior to his own. The same general rewarded the insurgents of the capital, promoters of civil war, and heaped outrage upon those who had just acquired for themselves singular ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... but in the contrary he delighted more than any filthy fellow alive. He robbed and pillaged with as much conscience as a godly man would make oblation to God; he was a very glutton and a great wine bibber, insomuch that bytimes it wrought him shameful mischief, and to boot, he was a notorious gamester and a caster of cogged dice. But why should I enlarge in so many words? He was belike the worst man that ever was born.[37] His wickedness had long been upheld by the power and interest ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... reader, it is presumed, will not form his opinion of the bibliomaniacal taste of this great man, from the distorted and shameful delineation of his character, which, as a matter of curiosity only, is inserted at p. 237, ante. He will, on the contrary, look upon Cecil as a lover of books, not for the sake of the numerous panegyrical dedications to himself, which he must ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... Herein appears the shameful ingratitude of men, that, though they have in their own persons a factory where countless operations of God are carried on, instead of praising Him, they are the more inflated with pride. How few are there among us ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... him and gazing full upon him). Hast thou tears only for thy friend's distress? Say, where were you when he—my noble Tell— Was bound in chains? Where was your friendship then? The shameful wrong was done before your eyes; Patient you stood, and let your friend be dragg'd, Ay, from your very hands. Did ever Tell Act thus to you? Did he stand whining by, When on your heels the Viceroy's horsemen press'd, And full before you roared the storm-toss'd lake? ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... wedding clothes. And with the overseer and with Phyllis. She'd tried to run away again, in Saint Louis, but she couldn't do it without my mother's help, and my mother, though she declared the laws were shameful, wouldn't ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... the flunkey's. What criterion ought one to adopt, in order to judge one's fellows? After all, there was not a single one of the people whom he knew who might not, in certain circumstances, prove capable of a shameful action. Must he then cease to see them all? His mind grew clouded; he passed his hands two or three times across his brow, wiped his glasses with his handkerchief, and remembering that, after all, men who were as good as himself frequented the society of M. de Charlus, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... respected far and near. If any of our clients needs a guide or servant, we know where to send for one who may be trusted. We tolerate no lickspittle-rogues, no beggars. Remember the abominations of thy father and the extraordinary unchastity of thy mother, and take thy shameful face ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... thing to be a fast, reckless, swaggering, drinking, swearing reprobate: Thinking it is manly to do right, and shameful to do wrong. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... legally; his act would be seen blameless as a man's, even while still punishable as a soldier's; but to purchase immunity for himself at the cost of bringing the fairness of her fame into the coarse babble of men's tongues was an alternative, craven and shameful, which never even once glanced ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... doubled the dose of the anodyne? Probably the fellow was abusive. It might have been some shameful extremity that had forced upon her this act in self-defence. But such a situation would have called for violence, some swift blow. The man had died in insidious calm. He had counselled it, believed in it. But ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... the dining-room unperceived; but who can describe the agony of my aunt Kate, when she clapped her eyes upon five such close-clipped scarecrows. She vowed vengence of all sorts and descriptions against the impudent, unnatural, shameful monster! Terms which Mikey Brian, in the back-ground, appropriated to himself, and with the utmost difficulty restrained his rising ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... scullery like a presence. He and the old man were alone together in that presence, and he was abashed. He was conscious of awe. The old man's mien accused him of an odious crime, of something base and shameful. Useless to argue with himself that he was entirely guiltless, that he had the right to be the betrothed of either Mr. Haim's daughter or any other girl, and to publish or conceal the betrothal as he chose and as she chose. Yes, useless! He felt, inexplicably, a criminal. He ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... the shameful recountal of the injuries committed by the British upon the American flag on the high seas. Even while the United States was at war with France, and thus aiding the British, the outrages never ceased. American sailors were still impressed. American vessels ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot



Words linked to "Shameful" :   inglorious, ignominious, dishonorable, immoral, shamefulness, black



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