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More "Monstrous" Quotes from Famous Books



... Sheldon warned, as the first blast of the squall shrieked through the palms. They joined hands and staggered up the path, with the ripe cocoanuts thudding in a monstrous rain all around them. They gained the veranda, where they sat in silence over their whisky, each man staring straight out to sea, where the wildly swinging riding- light of the Minerva could be seen in the lulls ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... infinite variety of irregular under-standing, so the amicable accommodation and alliance between several virtues and vices produce an equal diversity in the dispositions and manners of mankind; whence it comes to pass, that as many monstrous and absurd productions are found in the moral as in the intellectual world. How surprising is it to observe among the least culpable men, some whose minds are attracted by heaven and earth with ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... when he turned to look after him in the bed. He had just secured his situation when the door gently opened, and the man of the house entered with the noiseless tread of a cat, bearing a dark lantern in one hand and a monstrous knife in the other. Stealthily he approached the bed, and then gradually lifted the shade and threw the light around the room to be sure his victim was not out on the watch; then he gently parted the curtains and slowly brought the ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... monks dwelling together), that exists now upon the face of the earth, or mayhap that ever did exist." (Ib. p. 354.) He also speaks, like Odoric, of the "cloister at Campsay, in that most famous monastery where they keep so many monstrous animals, which they believe to be the souls of the departed" (384). Perhaps this monastery may yet be identified. Odoric calls it Thebe. [See A. Vissiere, Bul. Soc. Geog. Com., 1901, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... down, up and down, in a fever of restlessness, Avery walked. She felt trapped. The gloomy, tapestried room seemed to close her in like a prison. The whole world seemed to have turned into a monstrous place of punishment. One thing only was needed to complete the anguish of her spirit, and that was the presence of ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... off him. But he wore one wondrous garment—a gigantic cloak that fell from collar-bone to heel—of pale pink silk, wrought all over in cunningest needlework of hands long since dead, with the loves of the Hindu gods. The monstrous figures leaped in and out of the light of the fire as he settled ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... connivance of the court he entirely escaped from all judicial punishment.[58] Yes, torture was long continued in England itself, though not always by means of thumbscrews and Scottish boots and Spanish racks; the monstrous chains, the damp cells, the perpetual irritation which corrupt servants of a despotic court tormented their victims withal, was the old demon under another name.[59] Nay, within a few months the newspapers furnish us with examples of Americans ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... faith, who set about putting it to more practical use than to gild an hour with an old legend. They told how the spook of the Spanish captain haunted the wreck, and that the gold was guarded by a dragon in the shape of a monstrous horned and mottled frog, or some other devil of the sea, to which the diver did seriously incline, but not to make him give up the undertaking. He prudently, however, consulted with an old Indian witch, and so received the devil's good word, and piously got a bottle of holy water from the priest, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... that neither dread so long either presense nor absence of the Sunne, nor those foggie mists, tempestuous windes, cold blasts, snowes and haile in the aire; nor the unequal Seas, where the Tritons and Neptune's selfe would quake with chilling feare to behold such monstrous Icie Islands, mustering themselves in those watery plaines, where they hold a continuall civill warre, rushing one upon another, making windes and waves give back; nor the rigid, ragged face of the broken landes, sometimes towering themselves to a ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... morals, as in architecture, this particular phase in the civilization of the time has already become evident even in the course of these small wanderings in a single province, and if only this transition period is realized in all its meaning, with all the "monstrous and inform" characteristics that were inevitably a part of it, the mystery of this strange sixteenth century in France is half explained, of this "glorious devil, large in heart and brain, that did love beauty only" and would have ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... on which a large "stranger" had formed, cast but a dim light in the immense hovel, the brazier had grown dull, and all those monstrous heads cast misshapen shadows on ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... inferred from the allegorical description of Typhoeus, given by Hesiod. Typhon and Typhoeus, were the same personage: and the poet represents him of a mixed form, being partly a man, and partly a monstrous dragon, whose head consisted of an assemblage ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... any kind. His soiled and stained development trays were scattered about a large table amidst dirty cups and saucers and plates and dishes, while at the other end of the table, surmounting a pile of thumbed and greasy magazines and newspapers, lay the monstrous mail-order catalogue with pencilled indications of further ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... this monstrous competition is to continue the directors only know, but the loss must be frightful on both sides. Chaplin and Horne had 10s. a ton for collecting and delivering the goods at the London end of the London and North-Western Railway, and, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... thought about it, the more outraged he became. It was monstrous! He sat up and glared into the black darkness. He talked to himself, he talked to the world outside, to the universe which had forgotten his existence. He stormed, he wept. He got on his feet and flung himself about the cell, which was six feet square, and barely tall enough for him to ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... to the other end of the room, and stood under a Venetian mirror—it shone like a monstrous jewel above her head—looking at him, her hands clenched, her eyes flashing through the tears that ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... domestic; sober of diet, simple of habit, frugal, painful, a good counseller to me, that keeps me from cruelty, pride, or other more delicate impertinences, which are the nurse-children of riches. But let them look over all the great and monstrous wickednesses, they shall never find those in poor families. They are the issue of the wealthy giants and the mighty hunters, whereas no great work, or worthy of praise or memory, but came out of poor cradles. ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... asleep among the black pines of its sterile shore. Have you seen Ravenna, Madame? It is an enchanted tomb where sparkling phantoms appear. The magic of death lies there. The mosaic works of Saint Vitale, with their barbarous angels and their aureolated empresses, make one feel the monstrous delights of the Orient. Despoiled to-day of its silver lamels, the grave of Galla Placidia is frightful under its crypt, luminous yet gloomy. When one looks through an opening in the sarcophagus, it seems as if one saw the daughter ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... rising amidst its waters, like the island queen of all the loyalty, and industry, and reasonable worship that have made her sons the admiration of past and present time; and before me, to the north, Lough Derg, with its far-famed isle, reposing there as the monstrous birth of a dreary and degraded superstition, the enemy of mental cultivation, and destined to keep the human understanding in the same dark unproductive state as the moorland waste that lay outstretched around. I was soon ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... the day when the strange, and surely monstrous, suspicion first made my head tingle. We had been blown, the three of us, to my rooms by a gust of rain; it was also, I think, the first time Paterson had entered them. "Take the sofa, Mr. Paterson," I ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... was clear, he must see Miss Farwell again. She must listen to his explanation and apology. She must somehow understand. For apart from his interest in the young woman herself, there was that purpose of the minister to win her to the church. It was a monstrous thought that he himself should be the means of strengthening her feeling against the cause to which he had given his life. So he had gone to Judge Strong's home early that evening determined to see her. But at the gate, when he saw Dr. Harry turning in as ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... of Venus, far from where Venus then was, so that she scarcely seemed larger to them; Earth was but little bigger than the Evening Star, looking dim in that monstrous daylight. ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... fine, downy, bright yellow little thing, but it had a monstrous big nose and feet, and such an ungainly walk as she knew no other instance of in her well-bred and high-stepping family. And as to behavior, it was not that it was either quarrelsome or moping, but simply unlike the rest. When ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing

... for him more refined tortures, more exquisite nerve- racking. Ah! that must have been a good one, from the way Ivan screamed. The squaws bending over him stepped back with laughter and clapping of hands. Subienkow saw the monstrous thing that had been perpetrated, and began to laugh hysterically. The Indians looked at him in wonderment that he should laugh. ...
— Lost Face • Jack London

... sail, the tiller broke, and the coxswain who was steering, fell overboard. He was a good swimmer, and struck out for the ship, not thirty yards distant, while the boat fell off rapidly to the leeward. In less than half a minute, a monstrous shark rose to the surface, seized the poor fellow by the body, and carried him instantly under. Two hundred men were looking on, without the power to afford assistance. We beheld the water stained with crimson for many yards around—but the victim was seen no more! ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... his consistency, his strength of will and highmindedness as they deserved, but he was never tired of preaching and demonstrating to Wilhelm that all these admirable qualities had been turned out of their proper course by a disturbing morbid influence. It was monstrous, he contended, that a system of philosophy should arm you for suicide. What if the premises should prove false? Then your voluntary death would be a frightful mistake which nothing could retrieve. One has no right ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... tenderly; and too much like yourself To mean a cruelty; which would make monstrous Your Sex: yet for the loves sake, which you once Pleas'd to pretend, give my griev'd Father leave To urge his own revenge; you have no cause For yours: keep peace ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... the monstrous relation that existed between the dominant and the subject nationalities, not in Greece only, but in every part of the Ottoman Empire where Mohammedans and Christians inhabited the same districts. The second great and general evil was the extortion practised by the tax-gatherers, and ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... the British army wins what our infamous Press would call a "glorious victory"—then all that is evil in the life of the nation is encouraged and justified. It is then that the diplomatists who lied and schemed to bring on the monstrous event, that all the politicians who exploit and foster the nation's madness and misery to enhance their own reputations, that those who batten on the slaughter, and that those who glorify the carnage at a safe distance ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... monstrous good young man; and as modest and affable, as if he had been bred up a ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman

... beneath his charge. It is easy for a judge to stand indifferent between a great man and a little when the feelings of the world around him are in favor of such impartiality; but it must have been hard enough to do so when such conduct seemed to the noblest Romans of the day to be monstrous, fanatical, and pretentious. ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... Whereupon Harry dismissed the matter then and thereafter from his thoughts, and, like a light-hearted good fellow as he was, gave himself no more trouble about his board-bills. Philip paid them, swollen as they were with a monstrous list of extras; but he seriously counted the diminishing bulk of his own hoard, which was all the money he had in the world. Had he not tacitly agreed to share with Harry to the last in this adventure, and would not the generous ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... wretched Barabas! Sham'st thou not thus to justify thyself, As if we knew not thy profession? If thou rely upon thy righteousness, Be patient, and thy riches will increase. Excess of wealth is cause of covetousness; And covetousness, O, 'tis a monstrous sin! ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe

... unexpected defeat depressed him greatly. "A governor," he wrote, "is really to be pitied in the discharge of his duty to his king and country, in having to do with such obstinate, self-conceited people.... I cannot satisfy the burgesses unless I prostitute the rules of government. I have gone through monstrous fatigues. Such wrong-headed people, I thank God, I never had to do with before."[164] A few weeks later he was comforted; for, having again called the burgesses, they gave him the money, without trying this time ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... the top of a high mountain just sticking up out of the water," said Gard, fascinated by the ceaseless rush of those monstrous waves in an ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... matter and another shaped it into verse; but, the personal insolence displayed in this poem to his Sovereign, which was probably the true reason for concealing the writer's -the principles of genuine taste which abound in it—the bitter and sarcastic strain of indignation against a monstrous mode of bad taste then beginning to prevail in landscape gardening, and, above all, a vigorous flow of spirited and harmonious verse, all concur to mark it as the work of our independent and uncourtly bard," The above letter settles the long-disputed point, and fixes the sole ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... story of fears, suppressions, monstrous imaginations, symbolic replacements. I don't remember much of that sort of thing in my own case. It may have faded out of my mind. There were probably some uneasy curiosities, a grotesque dream or so perhaps; I can't recall anything of that sort distinctly now. I had ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... flowers of the intercrossed plants. The tendency to sterility in these same plants was also shown by the first-formed flowers, after they had been carefully fertilised, often dropping off, in the same manner as frequently occurs with hybrids. The flowers likewise tended to be monstrous. In the fourth generation of Petunia, the pollen produced by the self-fertilised and intercrossed plants was compared, and they were far more empty and shrivelled grains ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... there she may tell; I cannot. I stood by the bulwark with my boots full of water, my eyes full of salt spray, and my heart full of the most poignant regret that ever I was born. Alas! was that channel a channel at all? Had it two shores? Was England over there, where I saw nothing but monstrous, leaping, maddening billows, saying, "We are glad of it; we want you; come on here; we are waiting for you; we ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... stipulate anything!" he barked. "My clients, here, are victims of a monstrous conspiracy, a conspiracy to conceal the true facts of the death of Silas Cumshaw. They ought never to have been arrested or brought here, and if the prosecution wants to establish anything, they can do it by testimony, in the regular and lawful way. This practice ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... actually on the increase among us there is good reason for a novel like "The Bar Sinister," which tells us the story of certain converts to the peculiar tenets of the saints and introduces us into the every-day life of Salt Lake City. That our families and our institutions are in peril from this monstrous and ridiculous evil it would not be easy for us to believe. Yet it is impossible to read this book without a conviction that the author could easily substantiate his facts by proofs, and that intelligent men and women have been and are still being led ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... torment me a little," he said, smiling, "but the forces arrayed against you are too strong, and you have not a chance on your side. It would be monstrous to suppose that you should go on making me miserable for ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... says Capt. Jones, that the fort on the big hill, or Genundewah, near the head of Canandaigua lake, was surrounded by a monstrous serpent, whose head and tail came together at the gate. A long time it lay there, confounding the people with its breath. At length they attempted to make their escape, some with their hommany-blocks, and ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver

... her decision, he loved her all the more for her refusal. There was a certain sweet wistfulness on her face that tore at his heart, and at last he realised that he was failing her, and failing her badly. It was a monstrous thing from one point of view that such a sacrifice should be possible—but it came to Vane with cynical abruptness that life abounds in ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... "a monstrous man crushing a tender slug under his clumsy hoofs. Birds I can tolerate. They are not so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various

... faded away altogether. Then despair seized upon me, and I cared not whether I lived or died. I forgot to eat, and threw myself upon the deck, where I remained for several hours, upbraiding myself for my monstrous, unpardonable folly in neglecting the opportunities which were ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... famous Mohammedan prophecy, respecting the destinies of the East, and the world in general, and everybody in particular. It runneth according to this mighty import: "The Dajal, (‮الدجال‬,) whose name is the Messiah, and who is the son of Said, and who is a monstrous fellow, with one eye, shall come upon the earth, or rather, go abroad upon the earth, and all the Jews shall flock around him, and enrol themselves under his standard, for he is their expected Messiah; and then, armed with their prowess and gold, he shall slay all ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... business understand human nature so well, that in this imperfect world we must not reckon on the wisdom, the good sense of those around us. Therefore you will scarcely be surprised to hear that these monstrous, wicked, and disreputable doctrines are becoming popular; that murder and rapine are eagerly looked forward to under such names as Socialism, revolution, co- operation, profit-sharing, and the like; and that the leaders of the sect are dangerous to the ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris

... beautified edifice, of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in folded mantles, based on light sandals; tower-up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell-out in starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four limbs,—will depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: whether Grecian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... cause for the drawing towards them of the green atlas. The moves he made, the methods of his ruling, the significance of these methods were the evidence they collected in their frequent arguments. Coombe had early begun to see the whole thing as a process—a life-long labour which was a means to a monstrous end. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... that it had grown out of the soil like some monstrous vegetable, its dreary proportions were so in keeping with the vast prospect. There were no recesses along its roughly boarded walls for vagrant and unprofitable shadows to lurk in the daily sunshine. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... Summis Desiderantes in south Germany, as to the Protestant severities in north Germany, as to the immense number of women and children put to death for witchcraft in Germany generally for spreading storms and pestilence, and as to the monstrous doctrine of "excepted cases," see the standard authorities on witchcraft, especially Wachter, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Strafrechts, Soldan, Horst, Hauber, and Langin; also Burr, as above. In another series of chapters on The Warfare of Humanity with Theology, I hope to go more fully into ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... in Antonio, how interesting it will be to hear his opinion of our money-making civilization. It will be as if he rose from the dead to tell us what he thinks of our doings. He has been represented by this critic and by that as a master of affairs, a prudent thrifty soul; now we shall see if this monstrous hybrid of tradesman-poet ever ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... discern the point whereat each successive portion has been purged away. But much has also been gained. To change the figure, it is like the continuous development of living things, amorphous at first, by and by shooting out into monstrous growths, unwieldy and half-organized, anon settling into compact and beautiful shapes of subtlest power and most divine suggestion. But the last state contains nothing more than was either obvious or ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... stopped or spoke until we sunk breathless by the tents, where the little girls had only just arrived. But it was many minutes ere we could tell the frightful scene going on above. We clung together and all drew within the tent, while Smart went to summon the captain. The poisonous breath of the monstrous creature made Serena and myself the victims of successive fainting fits, we had the greatest difficulty in swallowing anything, and only revived under the influence of strong salts, and constant fanning. Our features assumed the paleness of death, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... like it proper well! But, to be sure, now, sir general, you look like a mighty small man to fight them great big tories there, on Pedee. But daddy says as how the heart is all: and he says, too, that though you are but a little man, you have a monstrous great heart." ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... soldier's horror next morning, when, looking up, he found the huge animal standing over him! One step of his monstrous feet, and his life would have been crushed out. If he did not then and there resolve to abjure intoxicating liquor for the future, he deserved to be less fortunate another time. As he crawled out, the elephant evidently perceived the terror he was in, ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston

... bribes which he did not pay, and promises which he did not keep; and Guicciardini tells in a few words what use he made of his holy office, declaring, that, "with his immoderate ambition and poisoned infidelity, together with all the horrible examples of cruelty, luxury and monstrous covetousness, selling without distinction both holy things and profane things, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... dozen saints, all in the gayest attire, and covered with artificial flowers. The capitals of the columns are in the true Norman style. Those at St. Georges are scarcely more fantastic, or more monstrous.—Between two of the arches of the choir, on the south side of this church, is the effigy of a man in his robes, coifed with a close cap, lying on an altar-tomb. The figure is much mutilated; but the style of the canopy-work over the head indicates that it is not of great antiquity. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... professions assumed as an excuse for the most vulgar villainy, ambition glozed over by degrading humility, and sensuality all the more disgusting from the saintly robes in which it was paraded and but half concealed. My faith, already enfeebled, died of rapid decline, stifled by these monstrous fooleries. Disenchanted, revolted, disgusted, I resigned my position, and abandoned the Pope ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... directed from the being represented to the true and only God who inhabits eternity, so here the poor Indian still bows before visible representations of saints and virgins, as he did in former days before the monstrous shapes representing the unseen powers of the air, the earth, and the water; but he, it is to be feared, lifts his thoughts no higher than the rude image which a rude hand has carved. The mysteries of Christianity, to affect his untutored ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... not clear whether the new birth is merely suggested or represented in pantomime. Thus among the Binbinga of North Australia it is generally believed that at initiation a monstrous being called Katajalina, like the Kronos of the Greeks, swallows the boys and brings them up again initiated; but whether there is or is not a dromenon or rite of swallowing we ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... tricked out in the noble trappings of morality, an infamous crime disguised as patriotism. Doubtless, the excellent, God-fearing, law-abiding citizens of the doubtful States who read this and learn how the "System" defeated their will at the polls will cry, "Monstrous! Can such things be in America?" and then will resume their interrupted occupation of "letting well enough alone." However, this ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... of the distinctive aims and character of Gothic. The purpose of a good Gothic builder was to raise, with the native stone of the place he had to build in, an edifice as high and as spacious as he could, with calculable and visible security, in no protracted and wearisome time, and with no monstrous or ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... men and women whom it is monstrous to suppose ever were children, ever young, ever different from what they are now. Whatever laws of human nature may rule the birth of others, they, at any rate, like the phoenix, sprang full grown, middle aged, in a ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... demonstration I'll teach you how to make the water mount, That you may dry-foot march through lakes and pools, Deep rivers, havens, creeks, and little seas, And make a fortress in the raging waves, Fenc'd with the concave of a monstrous rock, Invincible by nature [120] of the place. When this is done, then are ye soldiers, And worthy ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... familiar one; and that, side by side with the theology of Aquinas and Bonaventura, there was working among those who influenced fashion and opinion, among the great men, and the men to whom learning was a profession, a spirit of scepticism and irreligion almost monstrous for its time, which found its countenance in Frederick's refined and enlightened court. The genius of the great doctors might have kept in safety the Latin schools, but not the free and home thoughts which found utterance in the language ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... the midst of wild movement. All about me was the same movement. I had been caught up in a monstrous flood that was sweeping me I knew not whither. Fresh air was on my cheek and biting sweetly in my lungs. Faint and dizzy, I was vaguely aware of a strong arm around my body under the arms, and half-lifting me and dragging me along. Feebly my own limbs were helping me. In front of me ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... struggle for life, he realized, was with the wind—the roaring wind that hurled its broadsides of frozen snow in monstrous waves across the maddened sky, challenging every living thing. It drove icy knives into his face and ears, paralyzed in its swift grasp his muscles and sinews, fought the stout flow of blood through his veins, and searched his very ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... to believe there is nothing you could do. Go to her as my friend. It isn't such a monstrous thing to ask. Tell her any good you know of me. At present her imagination paints me in all the lurid ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... gentlemen endeavor to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost qualify them for bedlam; not considering that humor should always lie under the check of reason, and that it requires the direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges itself in the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... were three sisters who were gray-haired from their birth, whence their name. The Gorgons were monstrous females with huge teeth like those of swine, brazen claws, and snaky hair. They also were three in number, two of them immortal, but the other, Medusa, mortal. None of these beings make much figure in mythology except Medusa, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... order after the appeal to what were called facts, came a series of arguments, which have been so long bruised and battered round in the cause of every doctrine or pretension, new, monstrous, or deliriously impossible, that each of them is as odiously familiar to the scientific scholar as the faces of so many old acquaintances, among the less reputable classes, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Vishnu absorbed in rapture (introversion) bore in this sleep Brahma, who enthroned on a lotus flower, arose from Vishnu's navel and was carrying the Vedas, eagerly reading them. (Birth of creative thought from introversion.) Because of Vishnu's rapture, however, a monstrous flood overcame the world (swallowing up through introversion, symbolizing the danger of entering into the mother of death). A demon profiting by the danger, stole the vedas from Brahma and hid them in the deep. (Swallowing of the ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... his description of a valley descending from the Col Isoard, which he calls "a complete type of a basin of reception," that is, a gorge which serves as a common point of accumulation and discharge for the waters of several lateral torrents. "The aspect of the monstrous channel," says he, "is frightful. Within a distance of less than two English miles, more than sixty torrents hurl into the depths of the gorge the debris torn from its two flanks. The smallest of these secondary torrents, if transferred to a fertile valley, would be enough ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... clad my body in gay garments, And lull myself within a lady's lap, And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks. Oh monstrous man, to harbour such a thought! Why, love did scorn me in my mother's womb; And, for I should not deal in her affairs, She did corrupt frail nature in the flesh, And plac'd an envious mountain on my back, Where sits deformity to mock my body; To dry mine arm ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith

... was to be heard but the rustling of the leaves—the deafened beating of the sea upon the rocks—and, to use the words of Lamartine, "those unknown tongues that night and the wind whisper in the air." The trees were mirrored in the rays of the moon, and the ground, at intervals, seemed strewn with monstrous giants; their hearts beat, not with fear, but with that feverish impatience ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... but would have ten; Nine, I think, was the sum he took,— Not quite certain,—but see the book. By and by the wars were still, But nothing had altered the Parson's will. The old arm-chair was solid yet, But saddled with such a monstrous debt! Things grew quite too bad to bear, Paying such sums to get rid of the chair But dead men's fingers hold awful tight, And there was the will in black and white, Plain enough for a child to spell. What should be done no man could tell, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... none other than a tall kind of men, of that vncorrupt stature and highnesse naturallie incident to the first [Sidenote: Berosus.] age (which Berosus also seemeth to allow, where he writeth, that Noah was one of the giants) and were not so called only of their monstrous greatnesse, as the common people thinke (although in deed they exceeded the vsuall stature of men now in these daies) but also for that they tooke their name of the soile where they were borne: for Gigantes [Sidenote: What Gigantes signifie] signifieth the sons of the earth: the ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (1 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed

... scattered them about and piled up a few for a pillow, was about to throw myself on this quickly-formed couch when I saw, just under the stone, what I at first took for a stick, but which then beginning to move, exhibited itself to me as a monstrous rattlesnake, with its body coiled up and its head erect, its fierce eyes glittering, and its forked tongue moving rapidly to and fro as if eager to bite me. I had disturbed it from its slumbers, and it ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... recovered from their adventure in the blizzard, and the entire party of young folk found plenty of amusement in the snow-bound camp. In one monstrous heap in the yard the boys excavated a good-sized cavern—big enough so that all the girls as well as the boys could enter it at once; and they lit it up at night with candles and held a "party" there, at which plenty of walnut taffy ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson

... do nothing of the kind!" replied Fanny, with a dignity somewhat impaired by her ebon countenance and monstrous green turban. ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... In a separate memorandum-book, Mr Anderson mentions the monstrous animal of the lizard kind, described by the two boys after they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... Fifth. You monstrous madcap, does your skin Itch for the third time to try that inn? I've had enough for my ...
— Faust • Goethe

... discovered many others growing near. Then Linda led the way past thorns and brush, past impenetrable beds of cholla, until they reached a huge barrel cactus that she had located with the glasses. Beside this bristling monstrous growth Linda paused, and reached for the axe, which Donald handed to her. She drew it lightly across ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... intellectual power. And he hated it,—hated its tremendous and perfectly calculated mechanism; hated its utilitarian stability; hated its conventions, its greed, its blind cruelty, its huge hypocrisy, the foulness of its want and the insolence of its wealth. Morally, it was monstrous; conventionally, it was brutal. Depths of degradation unfathomable it had shown him, but no ideals equal to the ideals of his youth. It was all one great wolfish struggle;—and that so much real goodness as he had found in it could exist, seemed to him scarcely ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... again. The two consuls are branded with infamy." Memmius, the popular competitor, at Pompey's instance, exposed in the Senate an arrangement which the consuls had entered into to secure the returns. The names and signatures were produced. The scandal was monstrous, and could not be denied. The better kind of men began to speak of a dictatorship as the only remedy; and although the two conservative candidates were declared elected for 53, and were allowed to enter on their offices, there was a general ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... spied on a sudden a boat in the lake, made of red sandal wood. It had a mast of fine amber, and a blue satin flag: there was only one boatman in it, whose head was like an elephant's, and his body like that of a tiger. When the boat was come up to the prince and Mobarec, the monstrous boatman took them up one after another with his trunk, put them into his boat, and carried them over the lake in a moment. He then again took them up with his trunk, set them ashore, and immediately ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... shuddered violently when a thick, gorged snake squirmed from under her feet and scrawled like a monstrous slug into a bush. She simply must talk, or drop, she thought, so attempted Jerry ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... by-gone fooleries were but spices of it. That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing; That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant, And damnable ingrateful; nor was't much Thou wouldst have poison'd good Camillo's honour, To have him kill a king; poor trespasses,— More monstrous standing by: whereof I reckon The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter, To be or none or little, though a devil Would have shed water out of fire ere done't; Nor is't directly laid to thee, the death Of the young prince, whose honourable ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare

... the Captain had met and become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their fortunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of respectability and importance, and both were typical products of the monstrous and peculiar social curriculum of their overweening and bumptious civic ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... full pardon, Besides the lives of two-and-twenty friends, Whose names are here enroll'd. Nay, let their crimes Be ne'er so monstrous, I must have the oaths And sacred promise of this reverend council, That, in a full assembly of the senate, The thing I ask be ratify'd. Swear this, And I'll unfold ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway

... in the year 1551, in a city of Savoy, a man who was a monstrous curser and swearer, and though he was often admonished and blamed for it, yet would he by no means mend his manners. At length a great plague happening in the city, he withdrew himself [with his wife and a kinswoman] into a garden, where being again admonished to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... highest peaks a lead-coloured cloud had wrapped itself turban-wise, and even as they looked the cloud turban increased in volume and height, mournful and monstrous as some djin-born vision of ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... was made by Madame Duval, who said, "It's quite a shocking thing to see ladies come to so genteel a place as Ranelagh with hats on; it has a monstrous vulgar look: I can't think what they wear them for. There is no such a thing to be ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... upon the people of the South under the policy of the Republican party, and the senator then stood here and said that the people of Massachusetts extended the public lands to relieve the people of the South from this monstrous burden. What does the senator propose to do to-day? He proposes with one stroke of the pen to double, and more than double, the illiterate suffrage of the United States. The senator says that one-half the people of the United States are represented in this measure of woman ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... not tactful, I know, but you exaggerate, Katharine. People are talking about us. She was right to tell us. It only confirms my own feeling—the position is monstrous." ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... one of them appeared without a ridiculous tie-periwig, in the style of those that usually hang over the shops of twopenny barbers. The straight boots in which the figures had been originally painted, and the other circumstances of attitude and drapery, so inconsistent with this monstrous furniture of the head, exhibited such a ludicrous appearance, that Pickle's wonder, in a little time, gave way to his mirth, and he was seized with a violent fit of laughter, which had well-nigh deprived him ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... mistakes for which they punished men. He felt this with a special force when he read his Ovid. He thought, looking at it in a direct and straight manner, that Niobe had a right to be proud of her children, and for Apollo to slay them because of that pride was monstrous. ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... and that enchanting Fairy Peri-Banou; he is the true poet alike of Abou Hassan and the Young King of the Black Islands, of Ali Baba and the Barber of the Brothers; to him I owe that memory—of Zobeide alone in the accursed city whose monstrous silence is broken by the voice of the one man spared by the wrath of God as he repeats his solitary prayer—which ranks with Crusoe's discovery of the footprint in the thrilling moments of my life; it was he who, by refraining from ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... meet the magistrates in the church on the Thursday following, for the purpose, as it was worded by the town-clerk, to take into consideration the best means of saving the king and kingdom in the then monstrous crisis of public affairs. ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... there was a fish taken, A monstrous fish, with, a sword by's side, a long sword, A pike in's neck, and a gun in's nose, a huge gun, And letters of mart in's mouth, from the Duke of Florence. Cleanthes. This is a monstrous lie. Tony. I do confess it. Do you ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... Williams and her husband. The two couples with them live on Fifth Avenue, and used to be among her exclusive friends. Her husband has just ordered the dinner. I saw him give the directions to the waiter. It is monstrous that they, who only a few months ago failed disgracefully and were supposed to have lost everything, should be going on exactly ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... do when I think of his monstrous claims," cried Wendot with flashing eyes. "Who is the King of England that he should lay claim to our lands, our homage, our submission? My blood boils in my veins when I think of things thus. And yet there are moments when it seems the lesser ill to yield such ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... the learned man stand erect upon his head. The chief characteristic of him who lives by his brains is, that he is not only able to talk consecutively upon some subject, but that he actually does so, which, in society, is accounted a monstrous crime against manners. Let him write what he wants to say, and print it; society will either not understand him at all, or will read his works with a dictionary in the secrecy of its own chamber. But if he will hold his tongue in public, society will give him a ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... the freedom of the seas ... on which he had taken a determined stand before the world. Although he refused the Rhine frontier to France, he had reluctantly given way to M. Clemenceau in the matter of the Saar Valley, assenting to a monstrous arrangement by which the German inhabitants of that region were to be handed over to the French Republic against their expressed will, as a set-off for a sum in gold which Germany would certainly be unable to pay.[194] ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... boy give up his faith with its tremor and private laughter. Because a child has a place for everything, this boy had placed the monstrous man in the ceiling, in a corner of the room that might be kept out of sight by the bed curtain. If that corner were left uncovered, the fear would grow stronger than the fun; "the man would see me," said the little boy. But let the curtain be in ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell

... darkness went out warningly to Smoke's chest, and together they listened to a groan, deep and long drawn, that came from one of the cabins. Ere it could die away it was taken up by another cabin, and another—a vast suspiration of human misery. The effect was monstrous and nightmarish. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... A monstrous dome of smoke hung over the town. Now and then a gust of sea wind tore it apart, and through the rifts we saw the silver cup of the moon and the host of stars. We lay long on the hillock. I suppose the hour and the mighty fates involved made us serious and silent. Far away seventy cannon thundered ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... mid-step. A new and terrible suspicion, too monstrous to name, was creeping up on me. Forth touched a button and the face of Jay Allison, immobile, appeared on the visionscreen. Forth put a mirror in my hand. He said, "Jason Allison, look ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... occurred to me, just then. The one thing that loomed big in my mind's eye was the monstrous injustice of the accusation. Coming right on top of what I'd lately experienced at the hands of the men who had really done that dirty job—my head still tingled from the impact of Hicks' pistol—it stirred up all the ugliness I was capable of, and a lot ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... to this reproach Mr. Martin asked that the accounts of the Association should be published. "Publish the accounts!" shrieked the well-paid gang that marred the influence and traded in the politics of O'Connell: "Monstrous!" and they silenced the troublesome purist by suppressing his letters and expelling him from the Association. In the ranks of the Confederates, however, Martin found more congenial society; amongst them he found men as earnest, as sincere, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... that it is nearly as good as finding Daisy to be with her child. But, my dear lass, you will forgive a frank old man asking you a frank question. It's all moonshine about the house being too big for you. These houses are not so very monstrous, to judge by the looks of them. You have three children, so you tell me; if you let two rooms you must be a bit crippled, put as good a face on it as ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... long-sighted man could have discerned that he was a dark fellow, lean; and from continually looking down on the earth from the elevation over which, in another sense, he always hung, his nose, his lips, his chin were pendulous and loose, and drawn down into a monstrous grotesque. ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... dear—except in their charges. I say, that's not bad. No, just put Gentlemen. But that's absurd too. They're not gentlemen, the swine! They're anything but gentlemen, they're blackguards, swindlers, liars. Seriously, Miss Tappit, I ask you, isn't it monstrous? Here am I, an old customer, with burst pipes doing endless damage, and they can't send anyone till to-morrow. Really, you know, it's the limit. I know about the War and all that. I make every allowance. But I still say it's the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various

... want, was made a factious tool, They got a villain, and we lost a fool. Still violent, whatever cause he took, But most against the party he forsook; For renegadoes, who ne'er turn by halves, Are bound in conscience to be double knaves. So this prose-prophet took most monstrous pains To let his masters see he earn'd his gains. But, as the devil owes all his imps a shame, 370 He chose the apostate for his proper theme; With little pains he made the picture true, And from reflection took the rogue he drew. A wondrous work, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... was so monstrous that I gasped. For this awful dime-novel muck to be tumbled into the middle of my family was too sickening. My sister, running away from her husband with another man and now threatening, in the hearing of ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny

... rebellion against his authority, at all events; and her hands remained in his clasp until of his own accord he opened his fingers with an exclamation. "Do you wear bracelets for rings, my fair, or what? What!" From the monstrous bauble in his palm, he raised his eyes to hers, and if she had seen their look she might have answered differently. But her gaze was still on the ring; and as she felt him start, that impish dimple ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... that is, a man of exceptional sanity who is in the right when we are in the wrong. However necessary it may have been to get rid of Savonarola, it was foolish to poison Socrates and burn St. Joan of Arc. But it is none the less necessary to take a firm stand against the monstrous proposition that because certain attitudes and sentiments may be heroic and admirable at some momentous crisis, they should or can be maintained at the same pitch continuously through life. A life spent in prayer ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... longest cue in British Columbia. The cue and the dog formed the combination which set the forty-year fuse of romance and tragedy burning. Shan Tung started for the El Dorados early in the winter, and Tao alone pulled his sledge and outfit. It was no more than an ordinary task for the monstrous Great Dane, and Shan Tung subserviently but with hidden triumph passed outfit after outfit exhausted by the way. He had reached Copper Creek Camp, which was boiling and frothing with the excitement of gold-maddened men, and was congratulating himself that he would soon be at the camps west of ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... declare myself to Eunice. Miss Ringtop was at least ten years older than I, far from handsome, (but you remember her face,) and so affectedly sentimental, that I, sentimental as I was then, was sick of hearing her talk. Her hallucination was so monstrous, and gave me such a shock of desperate alarm, that I spoke, on the impulse of the moment, with great energy, without regarding how her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... innumerable black-holeings, bread-and-water dinners, summary chastisements, and impossible tasks she inflicted upon me for offences against her too solid possessions. You will see it at Woking. It is a light and graceful cross. It is a mere speck of white between the monstrous granite paperweights that oppress the dead on either side of her. Sometimes I am half sorry for that. When the end comes I shall not care to look her in the face—she will be ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... can easily guess, that excellent Treatise being much of the same nature as Rabelais, of whom La Bruyere says, Rabelais is incomprehensible: His Book is an inexplicable Enigma, a meer Chimera; It has a Woman's Face, with the Feet and Tail of a Serpent, or some Beast more deform'd. 'Tis a Monstrous Collection of Political and Ingenious Morality, with a Mixture of Beastliness; where 'tis bad 'tis abominable, and fit for the Diversion of the Rabble, and where 'tis good 'tis exquisite, and may entertain ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon

... collections of sermons bring before the eye the last judgment and the region of hell, with its monstrous torments, its wells of flames, its ocean with seven bitter waves: ice, fire, blood ... a rudimentary rendering of legends interpreted in their turn by Dante in his poem, and Giotto in his fresco.[326] The thought of Giotto especially, when reading those sermons, recurs to the memory, of Giotto ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... unsound. It is well enough to record a dialect, nor will any one grudge him credit for his observation and diligence, but to reduce a dialect to theoretic laws and then impose those laws upon the speakers of it is surely a monstrous step. And in this particular instance the matter is complicated by the fact that Southern English is not truly a natural dialect; Mr. Jones himself denotes it as P.S.P.Public School Pronunciation, and that ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... Massachusetts politics. At the State House he was the terror of all mean and mischievous members; a sentinel always on the watch to prevent extravagance, fraud, and political chicanery. His persistent opposition to that monstrous abortion the Houssac tunnel, for which our children and grandchildren will be taxed ad infinitum, cost him an election to Congress. Upon this account he had numerous enemies, but even General Butler could not discover the smallest reproach ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... been attractive, but here we were in a paradise. Boats up and down the river; lovers went by, singing. On one shore the scene was quiet, with easy slopes and with houses here and there; but the other shore was wild with bluffs, with tangled vines and monstrous trees that storms had gnarled and twisted. Here a spring gushed out with a gleeful laugh, and lovers paused to listen, and in its flow the city ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... breakfast I read from the New York Independent that "Rum, profaneness and Sabbath breaking always go together." The editor was "sorry to find that the stockholders of the Saratoga railroad still run their cars upon the Sabbath. It is an odious and monstrous violation, not only of the laws of God, but of all the decencies of Christian society. And yet I had noticed ladies traveling in them, thundering into Saratoga on the Lord's Day. Women traveling in a public conveyance on the Sabbath. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... Changing wet clothing. Monstrous error—its evils. Clean as well as dry. A lame excuse for negligence. No excuse sufficient ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... of Japanese generosity, the attention of all was suddenly riveted upon twenty-five monstrous fellows who tramped down the beach like so many huge elephants. They were professional wrestlers and formed part of the retinue of the princes, who kept them for their private amusement and for public ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... court-yard, and when she went, all trembling, up to the window, she saw Euergetes himself, and the powerfully knit horse that was led in for him. The tyrant twisted his hand in the mane of the restless and pawing steed, and Klea thought that the monstrous mass could never mount on to the horse's back without the aid of many men; but she was mistaken, for with a mighty spring the giant flung himself high in the air and on to the horse, and then, guiding his panting steed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... gorgeous in scarlet and blue, detached himself from out the crowd. His head was hidden beneath the monstrous mask of a cardboard lion, roughly painted in brown and yellow, with crimson for the widely open jaws and the corners of the eyes, to make them seem ferocious and bloodshot. His coat was of bright crimson cloth, with cuts and slashings in it, through which bunches of bright blue paper were ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... every thing were to end here? Would it not be blasphemy to say that, upon the supposition of the thinking principle being destroyed by death, however inferior we may be to the great Cause and Ruler of things we have more of love in our nature than He has? The thought is monstrous; and yet how to get rid of it, except upon the supposition of another and a better world, I do ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... gigantic lanterns of color, the street lamps were glowing into existence, and she had lost her way. She had lost her sense of direction, and was among unfamiliar streets. She went on from street to street, and all the glory of London had departed. Against the sinister, the threatening, monstrous inhumanity of the limitless city, there was nothing now but this supreme, ugly fact of a pursuit—the pursuit of the ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... beggars, Baboushka. He recalled the remark of the Jew, that she befriended this debutante, and he was averse to believing it. That delicious creature and this hideous one in ties of communion! ridiculous, monstrous! ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... his niche, there struggled a convulsive bulk, like some monstrous worm, too large for the bore, yet writhing. Bare feet kicked him in violent rebellion, and a muscular knee jarred squarely under his chin. He caught a pair of naked ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... bottle of whisky, a siphon of seltzer, a tall glass, meat, bread, water—everything, in fact, with which the senses of the starving man could be tormented. And near him, sitting with elbows spread out on the edge of the table, was one of the firemen, grinning continually as if he had just heard some monstrous joke. The expression of Campbell was just as fixed, for his small eyes shifted eagerly, swiftly, from the food to the ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... must tell you the truth, though I had rather a thousand times not; but this change in the ship's course is monstrous unpopular!" ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... lately, but I believe without the least foundation, that Crew has lost a monstrous sum to Menil. Almack's thrives, but no great events there. I have ordered the M[arquis] of Kildare to be put up at the young club, at White's. If little Harry is come to town, he shall write to ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... and her children from the fury and longing for revenge, felt by the family of Legoix and by Caboche the skinner. The only question is, where can they be bestowed in safety? I know what you would say, that all this is monstrous, and that it is incredible that the Parisians will dare to take such steps. I can assure you that it is as I say; the peril is most imminent. Probably to- night, but if not, to-morrow the gates of Paris will be closed, and ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty

... blasphemies, errors, and horrors of the benighted Popedom have been exterminated in many kingdoms and countries. Innumerable sheep of the Lord Christ have been fed on the wholesome pasture of the Divine Word in spite of those monstrous, tearing, ravenous wolves, the Pope and his followers. The enemy of God and man, the ancient serpent, may hiss and rage. Yes, the Roman antichrist in his frantic blusterings may bite off his own ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... to carry them away and sell them across the sea. This they never attempt to justify; "they want them only to cultivate the land, and take care of them as their children." It is the same old story, justifying a monstrous wrong on pretense of taking care of those degraded portions of humanity which can not take care of themselves; doing evil that ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... frightened, and indeed so was I too; but we were both more frightened when we heard one of these mighty creatures come swimming towards our boat; we could not see him, but we might hear him by his blowing to be a monstrous huge and furious beast; Xury said it was a lion, and it might be so for aught I know; but poor Xury cried to me to weigh the anchor and row away: "No," says I, "Xury; we can slip our cable with the buoy to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe

... because they are guided by prejudice and habit. Progress comes through the gradual effect of a minority in converting opinion and altering custom. At one time—not so very long ago—it was considered monstrous wickedness to maintain that old women ought not to be burnt as witches. If those who held this opinion had been forcibly suppressed, we should still be steeped in medieval superstition. For such reasons, it is of the utmost importance that the majority should refrain from imposing its will as ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell

... work, so far as it is not taken from the tales of other travelers, is a diverting tissue of fables about gryfouns that fly away with yokes of oxen, tribes of one-legged Ethiopians who shelter themselves from the sun by using their monstrous feet as ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... of a most aggravating kind and the unspeakable cruelties attending its practical execution were followed, in the case of the Jews, by an unprecedented recrudescence of legislative discrimination and a monstrous increase of their disabilities. The Jews were lashed with a double knout, a military and a civil. In the same ill-fated year which saw the promulgation of the conscription statute, barely three months ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... no plan in mind beyond an overwhelming desire to put a bad fright into his roommate in payment for what he considered a monstrous act of duplicity. It would serve Travail right if, once he entered the secondary plane of the shell, he would be forced to stay there a while. A good scare would cause ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi

... examples of such inhumanity, and he was obliged to tell Mrs. Weldon that such facts, monstrous as they might be, were ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... idea's absurd—monstrous!" Looking at her as she leaned back among her cushions, with her air of delicate distinction, Anstice could hardly believe the story ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... Giants, in that very place where the abyss was formerly; the third covereth Neflheim, or Hell, and under this root is the fountain Vergelmer, whence flow the infernal rivers: this root is gnawed upon below by the monstrous serpent Nidhoger. Under that root which stretcheth out toward the land of the Giants, is also a celebrated spring, in which are concealed Wisdom and Prudence. He who hath possession of it is named MIMIS: he is full of wisdom, because he drinketh thereof every morning. One day the Universal Father ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... said it I seemed to experience a sense of inferiority—which was absurd and monstrous, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... fancy pictured her poor Prince forced in this monstrous disguise to wander about all night tired and shelterless, her indignation rose beyond her control. She forgot where she was, she forgot the magic power that surrounded her, she forgot everything except ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth

... big dish-pan; second, a monstrous black pot from which steam arose into the hot night; third, a stout twine, to one end of which was attached a brick; a lump of raw liver dangled at the other. By my directions the pan was balanced upon the shelf where ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... more than a few disconnected groans. He spent most of his time crouched like an animal, and hardly seemed conscious of what took place round him. Another was a deaf and dumb cretin; a third possessed a monstrous hare-lip and a deformed jaw; while two women, dried up and skinny, and a child were badly affected by goitre. For a single family that seemed ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... Greenwell. Yes! and by to-night, a most exaggerated account of the whole affair will be spread over the whole country, and we will be equally suspected by our own people. Those who spread useless falsehoods about us will gladly have a foundation for a monstrous one. Didn't Camp Moore ring with the story of our entertaining the Federal officers? Didn't they spread the report that Miriam danced with one to the tune of "Yankee Doodle" in the State House garden? What will ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... poem. It has an infinite idea which once realised makes all movements full of meaning and joy. But if we detach its movements from that ultimate idea, if we do not see the infinite rest and only see the infinite motion, then existence appears to us a monstrous evil, impetuously rushing towards ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore

... side, half-asleep, making nothing of their load of meal-sacks piled high in air; their driver walked beside, half-asleep, too. He was a giant in height (six foot six, Melody, in his stockings! I have measured him myself), and his white clothes made him look something monstrous indeed. Yvon stared and gaped, as this vision came slowly ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... full of consternation at the strangeness of the recent events. This continued till one of the decurions of the palace (which is an office of dignity) came in great haste to the standards of the Petulantes and of the Celtic legion, and in a violent manner exclaimed that it was a monstrous thing that he who had the day before been by their will declared emperor should have been ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... discretion, is founded on the simple fact of a brig seen lying at anchor in a place of common anchorage, suggesting no suspicious appearance, but as to which you are asked to infer that these seventy-six slaves were to be transported into her, and carried to Cuba or elsewhere for sale. What a monstrous imagination! What a gross libel on that brig, her officers, her crew, her owners, all of whom are thus charged as kidnappers and pirates; and all this baseless dream got up for the purpose of influencing your minds against the prisoner! It marks, indeed, with many ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton

... with difficulty be maintained by his successors. What might have become of his sons Giovanni Maria (died 1412) and Filippo Maria (died 1447), had they lived in a different country and under other traditions, cannot be said. But, as heirs of their house, they inherited that monstrous capital of cruelty and cowardice which had been accumulated from generation ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... Georgian town it would be, picturesque but dirty, built, too, with an eye to security from attack. One town is particularly noteworthy—not a very large town, but more important, doubtless, in times past than now. Out of the valley there rises a rocky butte, abrupt almost as though it were some monstrous vegetable growth. On the summit of this natural fortress some old Georgian chief had, in the good old days of independence, built a massive castle, and nestling beneath its protecting shadow around the base of the butte is the town, a picturesque town of adobe ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... instead of the Fourth of July. He says: "Republicans no longer can hail the day as exclusively theirs. Federalism has profaned it. She has formed to herself an idol in the union of Church and State, and this is the time chosen to offer its sacrifice." He sets forth "the long train of monstrous aggressions of the Federalists" under Washington and Adams; declares that they "propose a hereditary executive and a Senatorial nobility for life," and says that the "hand would tremble in recording, and the tongue falter in reciting, the long tale of monstrous aggression. But ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... all the arms! And all the arms I see! The handless wrists! The hands with shattered fingers! The monstrous harvest which a mighty wind Bends me-ward with a curse! Oh! Mercy! Mercy! Old Cuirassier, groaning with outstretched hands— Horrible agonized hands with bloody wrists!— Mercy! Poor little Private of the Guards, Who slowly raise your livid face to mine! Look not ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... tors which led to an open, grassy space flecked over with the white cotton grass. In the middle of it rose two great stones, worn and sharpened at the upper end until they looked like the huge corroding fangs of some monstrous beast. In every way it corresponded with the scene of the old tragedy. Sir Henry was much interested and asked Stapleton more than once whether he did really believe in the possibility of the interference ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle

... came to be, bringing me misfortunes and ruin, as my story will unfold. No doubt it was by my own doing that the wrath of Allah was brought down upon my head. For had not I, a follower of the Prophet, and therefore a despiser of graven images in every shape or form, come to treat this monstrous and misshapen creature, half man, half beast, as a sort of familiar, even greeting him on my entry with the words with which I might have saluted a living unbeliever, 'May your days be peaceful,' spoken in goodnatured ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... by this monstrous and unforeseen obstacle arising at the very threshold of his hopes. He felt so sad, that he determined to revive himself with a sight of Grace Carden. He pined for her face and voice. So he went up to Woodbine Villa, though it was not his day. As he ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... but said nothing. He shrank from comprehending such an impossible situation, ashamed for himself, ashamed for Athalie, resenting even the exaggerated and grotesque possibility of such a thing—such a monstrous and horrible thing playing any part in ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... For I will not outlive him. He has wound About my heart, I know not how nor why. Not for that he is King; for now his kingdom Rocks underneath his throne, and the earth yawns 180 To yield him no more of it than a grave; And yet I love him more. Oh, mighty Jove! Forgive this monstrous love for a barbarian, Who knows not of Olympus! yes, I love him Now—now—far more than——Hark—to the war shout! Methinks it nears me. If it should be so, [She draws forth a small vial. This cunning Colchian poison, which my father Learned to compound ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... not whether the belief that animals so distant as a man, amonkey, an elephant, and a humming bird, asnake, afrog, and a fish, could all have sprung from the same parents is monstrous, but simply and solely whether it is true. If it is true, we shall soon learn to digest it. Appeals to the pride or humility of man, to scientific courage, or religious piety, are all ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... received them, as men escaped from death. They plied their oars, and set their sails, and when they were got as far off from shore as a voice would reach, Ulysses cried out to the Cyclop: "Cyclop, thou should'st not have so much abused thy monstrous strength, as to devour thy guests. Jove by my hand sends thee requital to pay thy savage inhumanity." The Cyclop heard, and came forth enraged, and in his anger he plucked a fragment of a rock, and threw it with blind fury at the ships. It narrowly ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... more monstrous than that we, as we call ourselves, to some extent, an educated, a moral, and a Christian nation—at a moment when an accident of this kind occurs, before we have made a representation to the American government, before we have heard a word from ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... infamies of priggishness, but truly he ought not to go and write them down, especially to his son. And why the detail about red ink? If Franklin's son was not driven to evil courses by the perusal of that monstrous Autobiography, he must have been a man almost as astounding as his father. Now Franklin could only have written his "immortal classic" from one of three motives: (1) Sheer conceit. He was a prig, ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett

... does. He, the priest, confesses my sins to the bishop, and the bishop confesses them to the pope, and the pope sees the Virgin Mary every Saturday night, and tells her to speak to God about it." "And you really believe this monstrous story?" "Why shouldn't I? But it is no affair of mine, for, once I have confessed, all my sins are laid on the priest, and he must do the best he can to get rid of them. I am safe." Of such materials is the net composed that holds these people in bondage; and who can marvel ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... Kochel to lure Ulrich into the snare. The monstrous thing learned from the lad that day, capped the climax of all he had heard, and might serve as a foundation for the charge, that the heretical Netherlander—and people were disposed to regard all ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... his covert flew, To show the world what a Bat could do, By soaring off on a lofty flight, In the open day, by the sun's clear light! He quite forgot that he had for wings But a pair of monstrous, plumeless things; That, more than half like a fish's fin, With a warp of bone, and a woof of skin, Were only fit in the dark to fly, In view of a ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould

... was hatless and shoeless, and his shirt and trousers were dropping off him. But he wore one wondrous garment—a gigantic cloak that fell from collar-bone to heel—of pale pink silk, wrought all over in cunningest needlework of hands long since dead, with the loves of the Hindu gods. The monstrous figures leaped in and out of the light of the fire as he settled the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... in that monstrous draught, man; but sit down. You'll find the bottle on the table and a glass ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... sky, but light immediately above the horizon as the sun sank down; the appearance of her horse's ears—those ears and that tuft of wayward mane between them of which she had grown so weary; the lighted walls of the London streets; the monstrous shadows of the eaves; the flare of lights; the moving figures—these came first; and then faces—Father Campion's, smiling, with white teeth and narrowed eyes, bright against the dark chimney-breast; Alice's serene features, framed in flaxen hair; and ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... the board. The carpenter and the first mate had got their axes ready to cut them away, should such occur. At length a tremendous sea came roaring towards our weather bow. The ship struggled as if to avoid it, but she pitched headlong into the deep hollow just before her, and a monstrous sea, lifting its head half way up to the foretop, came right down on our deck, sweeping up to the main hatchway. Horner and several of the men shrieked out with terror, believing that their last moments were come. I scarcely supposed that the ship would recover ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... III., did this horrible covering disguise the beau's head; and the effect of it may still be judged of by his grandchildren, when they contemplate, not without awe, the rubicund figure of some metropolitan church-beadle with his large-caped coat, silver-headed cane, and monstrous three-cornered hat. Our modern great ladies, strange to say, seem to have an especial affection for this hat, since they take particular care to have a couple of footmen behind their carriage glorying in this capital atrocity, while on the coach-box they encourage the older ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... delegated everything, instead of looking into the actual state of affairs himself, as his uncle would have done, and as Thiers did under Louis Philippe. More than a third of his regiments were on paper alone, or dwindled in size; the monstrous corruptions of his reign had permeated every part of the country; the necessary arms, ammunition, and material of war in general were deplorably deficient; no official reports could be relied upon, and few ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... not understand what was the matter. For one moment he had an idea that the boat had been attacked by a monstrous whale; the next moment that and every other idea was washed out of him by the dark waters, which ran up his nose and thundered in his ears, as they made him ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... but very near. A moment later, Gloster enters, black as night, hisses his monstrous charge, and before noon of that same day poor Hastings ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... plaguing and tormenting the married of both sexes, fluttering about them incessantly, and giving them no peace either of mind or body until they have consented to take them under their protection. If this were not so (this at least is what they urge), it would be a monstrous freedom for one man to take with another, to say that he should undergo the chances and changes of this mortal life without any option in the matter. No man would have any right to get married at all, inasmuch as he can never tell what frightful misery his doing so may entail forcibly ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... pleasures, was nearly allied to the part which he seemed about to play in the present intrigue; but that Christian, whom he had always supposed a Puritan as strict as his brother-in-law, Bridgenorth, should be associated with him in a plot so infamous, seemed alike unnatural and monstrous. The near relationship might blind Bridgenorth, and warrant him in confiding his daughter to such a man's charge; but what a wretch he must be, that could coolly meditate such an ignominious abuse of his trust! In doubt whether he could credit for a moment the tale ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... appearance than to see a smart fellow within the compass of five feet immersed in a huge long coat to his heels with cuffs to the arm pits, the shoulders and breast fenced against the inclemencies of the weather by a monstrous cape, or rather short cloak, shoe toes, pointed to the heavens in imitation of the Lap-landers, with buckles of a harnass size? I confess the beaux with their toupee wigs make us extremely merry, and frequently put me in mind of my favorite ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... otherwise. For the purpose of suffrage they may, in the theory of our government, be equal—but we haven't yet demonstrated it. We exclude the Japanese and Chinese. We have included the negro, only within the living generation—and it's entirely evident, now, we made a monstrous mistake by doing it. Equal! Equal! ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott

... family) was Cotton Mather's boon companion, and rode around the gallows with that zealous theologian on that memorable occasion when five young women were hanged at Danvers upon the charge of having tormented little children with their damnable arts of witchcraft. Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum: it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other. Within the compass of five generations we find the Puritan first an uncompromising believer in demonology and magic, and then a scoffer at everything involving the play ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... ghosts, and genii who were personified in everything about him, religion was the most powerful factor in controlling Fijian life and politics. In fact, it entered deeply into every act the native performed. The gods were more monstrous in every way than man, but in all attributes only the exaggerated counterparts of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... and it exempted the company from taxation. Collateral bills were introduced enabling the company to widen and grade any streets, the favorite "job" of a Tammany grafter. Fortunately for the city, exposure came before this monstrous scheme could be put ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... the nearest hospital without the loss of a single moment's time. Round the monstrous building, with it's spreading maze of pavilions, he went through a court, and stopped at a doorway which opened ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine

... matters, I explained to him that I was a member of a Scottish legal body, and had stood the brunt of an examination in the very law in question. Thereupon he looked me for a moment full in the face and dropped the conversation. This is a monstrous instance, if you like, but it does not stand alone ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... could find, and surveying the amazing scene around them. For the great black storm-cloud was flying up and away, flying into the north-east, and through the torn vapors that followed in its rack a waning moon arose. A tremendous sea was running, monstrous wave breaking on monstrous wave in a mad white frolic far as the eye could see; as one billow bounded along, curling and feathering and swelling on its path, a score leaped round it to powder themselves in a common cloud of spray; and every cloud of spray as it shot upward caught ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... nimbly to their feet and drew the bolts, upon which a monstrous Form entered, exclaiming "We are come to demand the ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... method and the warrant for its revision—they mark the impossibility of progress without the guiding and restraining hand of Law. The felt exhaustion of the former method, the want of corroboration for the old evidence, the protest of reason against the monstrous overgrowths which conceal the real lines of truth, these summon us to the search for a surer and more scientific system. With truths of the theological order, with dogmas which often depend for their existence on a particular exegesis, with propositions which rest for their evidence ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... what I said. I declared it monstrous, and not to be thought of for a moment; and then she went on in her fashion that would wile a bird off a bush, declaring that no doubt the proposal was a shock, but if I would turn the matter over, I should see it was for the ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... gain which after all we are not certain he will receive, that we deprive the city of its certain benefit. Plain good advice has thus come to be no less suspected than bad; and the advocate of the most monstrous measures is not more obliged to use deceit to gain the people, than the best counsellor is to lie in order to be believed. The city and the city only, owing to these refinements, can never be served openly and without disguise; he who does serve ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... question of food," I objected, ignoring his point, which was puerile and without bearing. "The soil must bring forth vegetable life in lavish abundance to support so monstrous creations. Nowhere in the North is the soil so prolific. Ergo, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... grace! O Heaven forgive me! Are you a man? Have you a soul or sense? God be wi' you: take mine office. O wretched fool, That lov'st to make thine honesty a vice! Ob monstrous world! Take note, take note, O world! To be direct and honest, is not safe. I thank you for this profit, and from hence I'll love no friend, since love breeds ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... fiend incarnate. Between his red puffed lips his teeth showed needle-sharp and ivory-white; his eyes were as evil as a caricature from Simplicissimus, and set deep in his head, while his ears and nose were monstrous with fold upon fold of skinny flaps. It was not a living face, but a mask ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... Major. Along the shore there was a narrow line of land, hundreds of miles in length, but less than a quarter of a mile broad, which still rose slightly above the surface of the water, and this land of refuge was absolutely packed with the monstrous inhabitants of the planet who had fled hither on the first warning that the ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... Rome played in Roman society. The appalling Sixth Satire, in which he unhesitatingly declares that most women—if not all—are bad, and that virtue and chastity are so rare as to be almost unknown, in which he roundly accuses them of all the vices known to human depravity, reads like a monstrous and disgraceful libel on the sex when one turns to Pliny and makes the acquaintance of Arria, Fannia, Corellia, and Calpurnia. The characters of Arria and Fannia are well known; they are among the heroines of history. But in Pliny there are numerous references ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... four millions of men are not suddenly endowed with faculties and habits which render them capable of diverting one-third of their energies to work which is new, disproportionate, gratuitous, and supererogatory.—A fallacy of monstrous duplicity lies at the basis of the political theories of the day and of those which were invented during the following ten years. Arbitrarily, and without any examination, a certain weight and resistance are attributed to the human metal employed. It is found on trial to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... old factory went Tank A. In spite of its ruined condition, some of the walls were still firm, and seemed to offer a big obstacle to even so powerful an engine of war as this monstrous tank. ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton

... for example, when the offspring reproduces the effects produced upon the parent by accident or culture, or the changes produced by the mixture of species, as in mules; or the changes produced probably by exuberance of nourishment supplied to the foetus, as in monstrous births with additional limbs; many of these enormities are propagated and continued as a variety at least, if not as a new species of animal. I have seen a breed of cats with an additional claw on every foot; of poultry also with an additional claw and with wings ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... behind the carriage was a very large dog, but possessing a grace and a swiftness of motion unusual to his size. He was not only beautiful, but also intelligent-looking. His coat was of dark brown, and smooth as sealskin, showing every muscle of his body. His broad square head and monstrous jaw reminded the beholder of a tiger. His ears were close-cropped, which gave a compactness to his head that brought into prominence his great changeable eyes: eyes that the Davenports afterwards found so fiery sometimes that they reflected red lights; at other times so mildly ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine

... Lucius, Our civil discords have produced such crimes, Such monstrous crimes, I am surprized at nothing. —Oh Lucius, I am sick of this bad world! The daylight and the sun grow painful ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison

... against obstruction sore Tattiana o'er the stream complained; To help her to the other shore No one appeared to lend a hand. But suddenly a snowdrift stirs, And what from its recess appears? A bristly bear of monstrous size! He roars, and "Ah!" Tattiana cries. He offers her his murderous paw; She nerves herself from her alarm And leans upon the monster's arm, With footsteps tremulous with awe Passes the torrent But alack! Bruin ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... soundly throughout the remainder of the night. Strange to say, they felt a sort of security, moored alongside that monstrous mass, which they would not have experienced had their frail tiny craft been by itself alone upon the ocean. It was but a fancied security, it is true: still it had the effect of giving satisfaction to the spirit, and through this, producing ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... Man and Wife. Is that enough for you? Are you willing, before this inquiry proceeds any farther to take your husband's hand; to return to your husband's protection; and to leave the rest to me—satisfied with my assurance that, on the facts as they happened, not even the Scotch Law can prove the monstrous assertion of the marriage at ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... a glimmering of your monstrous suspicions," he said slowly. "The last man to be kicked out of an English varsity for this sort of thing, so far as I know, was Dr. Dee of St. John's, Cambridge, and that's going back to the ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... the LARGE-FLOWERED WAKE-ROBIN, or WHITE WOOD LILY (T. grandiflorum). Under favorable conditions the waxy, thin, white, or occasionally pink, strongly veined petals may exceed two inches; and in Michigan a monstrous form has been found. The broadly rhombic leaves, tapering to a point, and lacking petioles, are seated in the usual whorl of three, at the summit of the stem, which may attain a foot and a half in height; from the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... all Nature's monstrous ills; His eye darts death, more swift than poison kills. All monsters by instinct to him give place, They fly for life, for death lives in his face; And he alone by Nature's hid commands Reigns paramount, and prince ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... to have cleared himself effectually. Still the knocking continued, and night after night the accusation was repeated. He now resorted, therefore, to a radical step to convince the public that he was the victim of a monstrous fraud. ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... they begin to circle about Man, imitating in a wild, monstrous fashion the movements of the girls in the white dresses who danced at the ball. At the first musical phrase they circle, at the second they join and part gracefully and ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... is set apart as pensions of considerable amounts to the mistresses of grandees, and persons in high offices of the state, and also in order to political and other purposes, far alien to the objects of the institution. The Roman Catholics of other countries are scarcely able to credit that so monstrous an abuse of the pontifical authority really exists, it not being possible to conceive that, for a paltry sum of money, Christians can remain exempt from an obligation ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... single negro for any other purpose than his immediate emancipation. I shudder when I think that such an insignificant animal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... European misjudgment that many followed Brigham Young's doctrine, which never had been Joseph Smith's,—and the present chief, Taylor, had but one. He showed us many cabinet photographs of Salt Lake City, his own family, leading Mormons, and the like: especially of the Old Tabernacle, like a monstrous tortoise, and one from a finished drawing of the new, of even more tasteless architecture, being the most gigantic piece of perpendicular ever perpetrated, and full of unsightly windows. When asked about the golden book,—well he had never seen ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... head. I do not wish to defend it in any way, but I do, for the honour of humanity, wish to offer all that can be said in extenuation of this atrocity: and I think Miss Martineau, when she held up to public indignation the monstrous punishment, was bound to acquaint the public with the cause of an excitable people being led into such an error. This unfortunate victim of popular fury was a free coloured man, of a very quarrelsome and ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... though a creditable future lay in store for "The Giant," its monstrous and unwieldy car was condemned, and presently removed to the Crystal Palace, where it was daily visited ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... man is out to-night!' Unless you were a nervous, high-strung brat yourself, you can't imagine the effect of that on me. I crept off to bed shivering, and lay awake half the night. Every time the wind shook my windows, I pictured some monstrous, hoary-headed creature trying to get in and gobble me up!" She laughed a little. "It gives me a grue to think of it even yet. I discovered the explanation of the phrase the next ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... a horror; it set my teeth on edge; it made me think of scrap-iron—heaps, heights, pinnacles of scrap-iron. Don't ask me why scrap-iron! Go and look at that photograph and you will understand. Below those monstrous cliffs the lower roofs were like broken foot-hills; the streets were chasms, gulches, gashes. It looked as if there had been a conflagration, and the houses had been burned into the cellars; and the eye sought the nerve-racking tangle of pipe and wire which ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... antiquity, but she interprets it at her own convenience and by her own authority. We cannot claim exemption from mistakes, from deviations from our own standard and principles, any more than Rome; but while she remains as she is, and makes the monstrous claims of infallibility and supremacy, there is nothing for English Churchmen but to resist her. Union is impossible. Submission is impossible. What we have to beware of for our own sake, as well as for our cause, are false arguments, unreal objections, ignorant ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... say "so-called" not by way of offence, but as a protest against the monstrous assumption that Catholic Christianity is explicitly or implicitly contained in any trustworthy record of the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... building up to its maximum speed. The whole laboratory quivered from its vibration. The dynamo hummed and whined and the night silence outside seemed to make the noises within more deafening. Tommy Reames ran his eyes again over the power-leads to the monstrous, misshapen coils. Professor Denham bent over one of them, straightened, and nodded. Tommy Reames nodded to Evelyn, and she threw ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... crane's, and the petticoats were so short as to reach almost above his knees. Shoes and stockings he had none. His long hair was platted and matted with the salt water, and one side of his head was shaved, and exhibited a monstrous, half-healed scar. ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... the constraints incident to a young person in such a situation—the situation, namely, of sedentary passiveness, where one is acted upon, but does not act. The music, in fact, was all that continued to delight me; and, but for that, I believe I should have had some difficulty in avoiding so monstrous an indecorum as yawning. I revise this faulty expression, however, on the spot; not the music only it was, but the music combined with the dancing, that so deeply impressed me. The ball room—a temporary erection, with something of the character of a pavilion about it—wore ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... followed the line of the outstretched hand until they picked up the dark menacing lump in the ground twenty feet away. Sombre, grim, apparently lifeless, outlined against the night sky—it appeared almost monstrous in size to the men who lay on the edge of a shell hole, with every nerve alert. A bullet spat over them viciously, but they did not alter their position—they knew they were not the target; and from their own lines came the sudden clang of a shovel. All around them the night was full of vague, indefinable ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... circumstances produced such an impression upon the French as to deprive them for a moment of the powers of volition and action. Rooted to the ground, they stood aghast with astonishment and indignation at the appalling scene. Was it a dream—a wild delirium of the mind? But no—the monstrous reality of the vision was but too apparent; and they threw themselves among the Indians, supplicating them to cease their horrible sacrifice to their gods, and joining threats to their supplications. Owing to this intervention, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... lack of decorum, are directly traceable to the commercial enterprise which ministers to pleasure in order to drag it into excess because excess is more profitable? To thus commercialize pleasure is as monstrous as it is to commercialize art. It is intolerable that the city does not take over this function of making provision for pleasure, as wise communities in Sweden and South Carolina have taken the sale of alcohol out of the hands of ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... forward to protest to us during the adjournment. "This is monstrous." . . . "Never have I seen evidence so disregarded." . . . "This is a tragic ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... the English Church as a whole was unpleasantly varied here and there by instances of grave and monstrous scandal. The system of Pluralities left isolated parishes in a condition of practical heathenism. Even bare morality was not always observed. In solitary places clerical drunkenness was common. On Saturday ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... darted forward, seized three-year-old Johnny and Harry in his arms, stuffed one head-first, the other legs-first, into the monstrous pack. ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.

... provocative of acute Indian troubles and such leaders as Bacon, Lawrence, and Drummond. The new Lord Baltimore being for the time in England, his deputy writes him that never were any "more replete with malignancy and frenzy than our people were about August last, and they wanted but a monstrous head to their monstrous body." Two leaders indeed appeared, Davis and Pate by name, but having neither the standing nor the strength of the Virginia rebels, they were finally taken and hanged. What supporters they had dispersed, and the specter of ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... distinguished foreigner has travelled much; he asks whither you are going?—where you stop? if you have a great quantity of luggage on board?—and laughs when he hears of the twenty-seven packages, and hopes you have some friend at the custom-house, who can spare you the monstrous trouble of unpacking that which has taken you weeks to put up. Nine, ten, eleven, the distinguished foreigner is ever at your side; you find him now, perhaps, (with characteristic ingratitude,) something of a bore, but, at least, he has been most tender to the children and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... homage to an idolatrous temple. Ridiculed by the Press of India and England, and laughed at by the members of his own party in Parliament, Lord Ellenborough halted the gates at Agra, and postponed the completion of the monstrous folly he had more than begun ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... in the midst of a rum-selling community, and die, leaving your children exposed to the tempter's snare. It must not be endured that this infernal traffic, this shame to civilization, this slur on Christianity, shall continue amongst us. It must not be endured that men shall be clothed with the monstrous authority to demoralize neighborhoods and scatter the fire-brands of death and destruction. The power to arrest this horrible work is in your hands. Be vigilant, be active. There is resistless might in the energy of earnest wills devoted to a noble cause. Petition, remonstrate, work while ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... greatest fault, she had striven diligently to conquer it and it burst forth only at rare intervals. To-night, however, the French girl's heartless denunciation of Constance during a moment of happiness was too monstrous to be borne. In a voice shaking with indignation she turned to those surrounding her and said, "Will you please go on dancing? I have something to say to ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester

... Shakespeare? That a pen which, with zestful animation, embraces all contemporaneous things, should be studiously silent about almost every one of the dozen men of genius who illustrate his era, is a fact so monstrous, that one is driven to monstrous devices to divulge its motive. In such a case it is impossible to premise to what clouds of self-delusion an imaginative man will ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... her heart each time she thought of that—that she loved him. The idea was monstrous, of course, and yet—— Here, as always, she broke off, a hot flush blazing in her cheeks.... Nevertheless, such curious fancies pursued her through the hours. She strove her mightiest to rid herself of them, but in vain. Ever they persisted. She sought to oust them by ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... tiny grey wrens, sitting about in scores,—so small that an English wren looks monstrous beside them. Across the sunlight, and away over a hollow, there flies a flock of green and yellow paroquets, screaming as they fly. The brilliant colours of their wings flash and glitter as they ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... it is said,[169] the consent of the cabinet, sent one Oswald to Paris to open informal negotiations with Franklin. Oswald, who was wholly unfit for diplomatic work, favourably received Franklin's monstrous proposition that England should cede Canada to the Americans, though they had been driven out of the country, and the Canadians themselves desired to remain attached to England. He gave Shelburne a paper containing this proposition. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... he. "Excuse the mode of address, but I've not seen a soul all the morning, and thought I must have dropped down somewhere in Africa. It's monstrous! I ask about ten people to my house, and I never have ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope

... here was the trouble: through the whole narrative moved another character, a physician of tender heart and exquisite mercy, who practised murder as a fine art, and was regarded (by the author) as a second Messiah! This was monstrous. I read it through twice, and threw it down; then, fatigued, I turned round and leaned back, waiting for her to wake. I could see her profile against the ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... a canopy, were thirty performers on thirty diabolical instruments, which rent the air with a truly infernal discord, and suggested devils rather than their conquerors. High up on the flat projections there were groups of monstrous figures. On one a giant in brass armour, much like the Nio of temple gates, was killing a revolting-looking demon. On another a daimiyo's daughter, in robes of cloth of gold with satin sleeves richly flowered, was playing on the samisen. On another a hunter, thrice the size of life, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... frenzy, with a grinning laugh, he cried out, O Hercules, how cold your bath is! After struggling with famine for six days and to the last moment clinging to the wish to preserve his life, he paid the penalty due to his monstrous crimes. It is said that there were carried in the triumphal procession three thousand and seven pounds of gold, of silver uncoined five thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, and in coined money two hundred and eighty-seven ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... manager of the theatre where he was now playing (the Porte Saint-Martin), was obliged almost every night to send emissaries after him to the restaurant opposite the play-house, where Lemaitre was indulging in monstrous dinners and was usually hilarious with wine. Harel, it must be mentioned, was a very penurious man, who never paid his people when he could postpone it, and whose meanness of soul Lemaitre delighted to excoriate. Often when dining bountifully at his restaurant, the actor being sent for in hot haste ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... was to get across the Danube, and luckily we found a large flat-bottomed boat used for cattle. The owner demanded a ducat (about nine shillings) for taking us across. I thought it a monstrous charge, but the fellow had us in his power. I do not think the Servians are much liked by those who have to do business with them. From all I heard, Canning's lines about the sharp practice of some nearer neighbours would apply very ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... imposing. It towered above its neighbours, dwarfing the long sky-line of the Strand; its flushed cupolas mocked the white and heavenly soaring of St. Mary's. Whether you approached it from the river, or from the City, or from the west, you could see nothing else, so monstrous was it, so flagrant and so new. Though the day was not yet done, the electric light streamed over the pavement from the huge windows of the ground floor; a coronal of dazzling globes hung over the doorway ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... enough in themselves to make anyone odious. He must have been bereft of his senses. She must fatally detest and fear him. Nothing could make up for such brutality. And yet somehow he resented this very attitude which seemed to him completely justifiable. Surely he was not too monstrous (morally) to be looked at frankly sometimes. But no! She wouldn't. Well, perhaps, some day . . . Only he was not going ever to attempt to beg for forgiveness. With the repulsion she felt for his person she ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... article in the creed of modern Christianity, that Jesus was divine in his nature, and of miraculous origin and nativity. Now, no human being of ordinary intelligence, unwarped by educational bias, would ever profess to believe in such a monstrous figment, which only shows the ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... are hideous, and void of life like those of corpses; the faces of some are black, others fiery like torches, others disfigured with pimples, warts, and ulcers; some seem to have no face, but in its stead something hairy or bony; and with some only the teeth are seen; their bodies also are monstrous; and their speech is like the speech of anger or of hatred or of revenge; for what everyone speaks is from his falsity, while his tone is from his evil. In a word, they are all images of their own hell. [3] I have not been permitted to see what the form of hell itself in general is; I have ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... harmony with the next branch of the new system, which was a high protective tariff. This was to afford bounties to favored classes and particular pursuits at the expense of all others. A proposition to tax the whole people for the purpose of enriching a few was too monstrous to be openly made. The scheme was therefore veiled under the plausible but delusive pretext of a measure to protect "home industry," and many of our people were for a time led to believe that a tax which in the main fell upon labor was for ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... He might almost have been called the balance-wheel of Massachusetts politics. At the State House he was the terror of all mean and mischievous members; a sentinel always on the watch to prevent extravagance, fraud, and political chicanery. His persistent opposition to that monstrous abortion the Houssac tunnel, for which our children and grandchildren will be taxed ad infinitum, cost him an election to Congress. Upon this account he had numerous enemies, but even General Butler could not discover the smallest reproach against ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... prosperity of Ireland for some years back has been such as to alter the aspect of the country, it will probably take many years of content and good government—perhaps the passing away of more than one generation—to purge the land of the monstrous organization which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... to the share of the great Mussulman house by which it is still governed. About twenty years ago, this house, by the permission of the British Government, assumed the royal title; but in the time of Warren Hastings such an assumption would have been considered by the Mahommedans of India as a monstrous impiety. The Prince of Oude, though he held the power, did not venture to use the style of sovereignty. To the appellation of Nabob or Viceroy, he added that of Vizier of the monarchy of Hindostan, just as in the last century the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, though independent of the Emperor, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Blaine Carson was aghast at the revelation. A monstrous deed, this last one of Ianito's. He was a fit master of a world gone mad. A monster in the twisted ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... example, far up on the rim of the green basin, four hundred feet above the village; why had that memorial, that symbol of a dreadful past, been preserved for so many years and generations? and why had it been raised so high—was it because the crime of the person put to death there was of so monstrous a nature that it was determined to suspend him, if not on a gibbet fifty cubits high, at all events higher above the earth than Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite? The gruesome ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... peasants, whose terror at the sight and the sound of this strange monster from the skies was beyond description. The people assembled, and two monks having told them that the burst balloon was the hide of a monstrous animal, they immediately began to assail it vigorously with stones, flails, and pitchforks. The cure of the parish was obliged to walk up to the balloon to reassure his terrified flock. They finally attached ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... Nature unto men, I ask the stylus and the pen; What sang the bards of old? What meant The prophets of the Orient? The rolls of buried Egypt, hid In painted tomb and pyramid? What mean Idumea's arrowy lines, Or dusk Elora's monstrous signs? How speaks the primal thought of man From the grim ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... you more; there was a fish taken, A monstrous fish, with, a sword by's side, a long sword, A pike in's neck, and a gun in's nose, a huge gun, And letters of mart in's mouth, from the Duke of Florence. Cleanthes. This is a monstrous lie. Tony. I do confess it. Do you ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... building; draining, inclosing, planting! The terms of the compromise which Charles the Second had sanctioned might not be in all respects just. But was one injustice to be redressed by committing another injustice more monstrous still? And what effect was likely to be produced in England by the cry of thousands of innocent English families whom an English king had doomed to ruin? The complaints of such a body of sufferers might delay, might ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Hull knew several examples of such inhumanity, and he was obliged to tell Mrs. Weldon that such facts, monstrous as they might be, were ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... from the main wall, with immense dark and gloomy caverns. Strangely, it had no intersecting canyon. It jealously guarded its secret. Its unusual formations of cavern and pillar and half-arch led the mind to expect any monstrous stone-shape left by ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... one must pay like the devil for one's fancies. Think what Weyler paid: all the money that his country could beg or borrow; then his own reputation as a soldier, as a statesman, and as a man; ending with a series of monstrous mortgages on his own soul. For which, when it is finally sold at auction, there will not be bid so much as one ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... him as the truth; but his submission to her father, his indifference to his imprisonment, forced her interest, even as she was humiliated by the fact that he was sib to her, bound by ties of clan and blood apart from his monstrous claim of marriage. He was indeed such a man as a brainless or sensual woman could yield to with ease. He had an insinuating animal grace, that physical handsomeness which marks so many of the Tziganies who fill the red coats of a Gipsy musical sextette! He was not distinguished, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the President quite close to him; that monstrous inkstand had diminished to its natural size. Nothing was to be heard beyond the hissing of the rain but the scratching of the Judge-Advocate's quill, as he slowly dictated to himself the words "The—prisoner—pleads—'not ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... view remain just the same; the sequence, and the purposiveness in this sequence, remain untouched, only that the Greeks saw in the rational and purposive in nature the realisation of rational progressive thoughts, not the bloody survivals of a monstrous gladiatorial combat in nature. The Darwinians appear to me to resemble the Roman emperors, who waited till the combat was ended, and then applauded the survival of the fittest. The idealist philosophy, be it Plato's or Hegel's, recognises in ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller

... against the greatest wrong that the wickedness of man ever perpetrated upon his fellow-man—[loud cheers]—a wrong which, great in all ages—great in heathen times—great in all countries—great even under heathen sentiments—is indescribably monstrous in Christian days, and exercised as it is, not unfrequently, over Christian people. [Hear!] It is surely remarkable, and exceedingly disgraceful to a century and a generation so boastful of its progress, and of the institution of so many Bible societies, with ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... faces, the words upon their lips, Mark was sure that none of them had any idea what Esther was doing. He debated now the notion of warning Miriam in veiled language about her sister; but such an idea would strike Miriam as monstrous, as a mad and horrible nightmare. Mark shivered at the mere fancy of the chill that would come over her and of the disdain in her eyes. Besides, what right had he on the little he knew to involve Esther ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... Taenarus, near Lacedaemon, and there she found a hole leading to the Underworld. A ghostly ferryman rowed her over the River of Death, and took one of her copper coins. Then a monstrous dog with three heads sprang out, but Psyche fed him with one of her honey-cakes, and entered the hall of Proserpine, the queen of the dead. Proserpine filled the casket, and by means of the last honey-cake and the last copper coin, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... it, one of those black dungeons such as Piranesi alone of all men has pictured. I am sure she must have seen those awful prisons of his, out of which the Opium-Eater got his nightmare vision, described by another as "cemeteries of departed greatness, where monstrous and forbidden things are crawling and twining their slimy convolutions among mouldering bones, broken sculpture, and mutilated inscriptions." Such a black dungeon faced the page that held the blue sky and the single bird; at the bottom of it something ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... monogram, "S.S.," in the corner. The other pictures were all of the sea: brigs on blue water; a schooner overtopping chalk cliffs; a rocky island of prodigious steepness, with two tiny sailors dragging a monstrous boat up a ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... Words out of his Mouth, but he struck a Light, kindled a Torch, and set the Building in a Flame: Zadig, in the utmost Confusion, shriek'd out, and would, if possible, have prevented him from being guilty of such a monstrous Act of Ingratitude. The Hermit dragg'd him away, by a superior Force. The House was soon in a Blaze: When they had got at a convenient Distance, the Hermit, with an amazing Sedateness, turn'd back and survey'd the destructive Flames. Behold, said he, our fortunate ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... must find. In the search his soul descended again to the region of dread, the regions of phantasmagoria. The earth heaved and rocked and swam in a sea of cold and glaring light. Strange creatures, momentarily changing shape and size, glided monstrous across the middle distance. The mock suns ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... mingled with almost ridiculous feelings in contemplating the strange apparitions—strange monstrosities we had almost called them—that are pictured on the background of the illustrations. One aggregation looms forth out of the darkness like the skeleton face of some tremendous mammoth, or other monstrous denizen of ancient times, with two small fiery eyes, however, gazing out of its great hollow orbits; another consists of a central nucleus, with arms of stars radiating forth in all directions, like a star-fish, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various

... however, is soon restored. I am very sorry to hear of your gout, except that it carries off all other complaints. I am very well, thank Heaven; indeed, my health has been much better of late years: Beaufort Court agrees with me so well! The more I reflect, the more I am astonished at the monstrous and wicked impudence of that fellow—to defraud a man out of his own property! You are quite right,—certainly ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... he would condone many things that you would regard as inexcusable, even monstrous. Otherwise, he would scarcely have been ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... under another phase of its primary sense we find the epithet used to express the excellence and characteristic qualities proper to the idea or standard of its subject, to wit, genuine, thrifty, well-liking, appropriate, not abortive, monstrous, prodigious, discordant. In the Litany, "the kindly fruits of the earth" is, in the Latin versions "genuinus," and by Mr. Boyer rightly translated "les fruits de la terre chaqu'un selon son espece;" for which Pegge takes him to task, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various

... in the first place in the normal shape, and that vandals of a later time, deciding to pierce the room in the Scuola in which the picture is now once more placed with one, or probably two, additional doors, partially sacrificed it to the structural requirements of the moment. Monstrous as such barbarism may appear, we have already seen, and shall again see later on, that it was by no means uncommon in those great ages of painting, ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... her own and other lands fighting and perishing in the cause of humanity when, by voicing the conscience of her people, and declaring and making war on the Central Powers, she could most effectually aid in bringing to a speedy and victorious end this monstrous example of ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... "that Nina is very much upset about this. She takes everything calmly enough, as you know, but she's a good mother to her children—I will say that for her—and it's enough to upset any woman when her daughter behaves to her in this monstrous fashion." ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... time he felt the disabling clutch of physical fear. The life-belts were being given out, and there came to him a horrid vision of the people round him as they might be an hour hence, drowned, heads down, legs up, done to death by those monstrous yellow bracelets which they were now putting on with ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... of officials sentenced to transportation for clipping a horse or furnishing bad provender. The annals relate a curious story connected with these legislative excesses. The Tokugawa baron of Mito, known in history as Komon Mitsukuni, on receiving evidence as to the monstrous severity with which the law protecting animals was administered, collected a large number of men and organized a hunting expedition on a grand scale. Out of the animals killed, twenty dogs of remarkable size were selected, and their skins having been dressed, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... hallucination. Thinking about the past had made him imagine all that, or else he had dreamed it in the night. He went over detail by detail all that had seemed to him to happen; and even then, when it fitted reasonably together, he could not be certain. It was too monstrous that Spurling should have become like that! He would not believe it. Then his anxiety for Mordaunt sprang up and commenced to craze him. The terrible question throbbed through his mind, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... English attitude towards the war was the disposition to treat it as a monstrous joke. It is a disposition traceable in a vast proportion of the British literature of the time. In spite of violence, cruelty, injustice, and the vast destruction and still vaster dangers of the struggles, ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... Around these monstrous enemies we saw several of their engines of war. Some of these appeared to have been wrecked, but at least one, as far as we could see, was still in a proper ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... have had your fill of this the guide takes you and leads you—you still stepping lightly to avoid starting anything—to a spot from which he points out to you, riven into the face of a vast perpendicular chasm above a cave like a monstrous door, a tremendous and perfect figure seven—the house number of the Almighty Himself. By this I mean no irreverence. If ever Jehovah chose an earthly abiding-place, surely this place of awful, ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... on yon helot wretch, and, wheresoe'er, Coursing what sea, or cabled in what port, The greatness of thine eye may light on him, Crush him with thunder! Thou, too, great Neptune of the lower deeps, Heave thy wet head up from the monstrous sea; Advance thy trident high as to the clouds, And with a not to be repeated blow, Dash the sin-freighted ship of that rash man! And thou, old iron-sceptred Eolus, Shatter the bars of thine enclosed winds; Unhinge the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast,—-could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly monstrous for solution! ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... consulted Sir James Clarke, who told me that the disease was in the brain, and that I must pass three or four years abroad if I would recover from it. I believe I stared at his proposition, it seemed to me so monstrous, for he said, in fine: "Well, you may go home in a year, and think yourself well; but if you go about your studies, you will probably bring on the same trouble again; and if you do, in all probability you will never ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... later Roman republic, the draining of the provinces by robber-governors with their publicans and sinners, the building up of monstrous fortunes without any production proper, but through usury and rapine alone: all this is made to revive again through the instrumentality of the national-economic disease called a paper crisis, in a less violent form, indeed, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... will meet thousands of pilgrims who are going to the temple at Jaghernath (what your Sunday-school books call Juggernaut) for the purpose of worshiping the hideous idols which it contains; and although the English policemen accompany the procession of the Rattjattra—when the idol is drawn on the monstrous car by the frenzied crowd of fanatics—and enforce the law which now forbids the poor insane devotees from casting themselves beneath the fatal wheels, still, it cannot be denied that the devotees are there, nor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... Hindu caste system prevails, under which whole classes numbering millions and millions are regarded and treated as beyond the pale and actually "untouchable." From time to time a few enlightened Hindus recognize the absurdity of posturing as the champions of democratic ideals so long as this monstrous anomaly subsists, but, whilst professing in theory to repudiate it, the Indian National Congress has during the whole course of its existence taken no effective step towards removing it. Nor is the Congress any more representative of the toiling ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... dupes of our mistakes, we drive away the wretch who was our idol of yesterday; we take back from her the golden veils of poesy, which, on the morrow, we again cast on the shoulders of some other unknown, who becomes at once an aureola-surrounded idol. That is what we all are—monstrous egoists—who love love for love's sake—you understand me? We sip the divine liquor from the first cup that comes to hand. 'What matter the bottle, so long as ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... natural man differs greatly from the form of his spiritual man. What the form of a man's spirit is I have been shown occasionally; and in some who were beautiful and charming in appearance the spirit was seen to be so deformed, black and monstrous that it might be called an image of hell, not of heaven; while in others not beautiful there was a spirit beautifully formed, pure, and angelic. Moreover, the spirit of man appears after death such as it has been in the body while it lived therein ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... was the first effective moralist who realized what a monstrous disproportion existed between the fortune of the rich and of the poor.[15] If we read the chapter "Des Biens de Fortune" we may be astonished at his courage, and we may see in him a direct precursor of the revolution which took a little more than a hundred years ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... What monstrous apparition, Exceeding fierce, that none may pass that way? Tell me, good woman, if you ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Felsenburgh, it seemed, had employed none of those methods common in modern politics. He controlled no newspapers, vituperated nobody, championed nobody: he had no picked underlings; he used no bribes; there were no monstrous crimes alleged against him. It seemed rather as if his originality lay in his clean hands and his stainless past—that, and his magnetic character. He was the kind of figure that belonged rather to the age of chivalry: a pure, clean, compelling personality, like a ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... whole room. I would have turned and fled, but it was too late. "All is over!" thought I. "All is over! I am ruined, I am undone! Here have I been playing the fool like a ten-year-old child! What a stupid girl I am! The monstrous fool!" ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... appeared the first upon the starboard bow; almost abeam arose our destination, Nuka-hiva, whelmed in cloud; and betwixt and to the southward, the first rays of the sun displayed the needles of Ua- pu. These pricked about the line of the horizon; like the pinnacles of some ornate and monstrous church, they stood there, in the sparkling brightness of the morning, the fit signboard of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... under such a dispensation of humanity as is here indicated, with so little of duty or conscience, with so little hope or expectation of abiding affection, with so little intention of permanency as must necessarily belong to them, would be more monstrous than the world has ever dreamed of. For such a rule of married life contemplates no married life at all, and no parental relation. It destroys the family; it renders the dearest word in the Saxon tongue (home) a vague and unmeaning term; ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... sooner see mamma starving;—I am sure he would rather be starved himself, then even borrow a shilling which he could not pay. To suppose that he would take money [she had tried to write the word "steal" but she could not bring her pen to form the letters] is monstrous. But, somehow, the circumstances have been made to look bad against him, and they say that he must come over here to the magistrates. I often think that of all men in the world papa is the most unfortunate. Everything seems to go against him, and yet he is so good! Poor mamma ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... heart. His eyes glowed, his blood burned with the triumph, not so much of his daring capture of her, but of the flattering tribute that her pretty ways were paying toward his personality alone. Wary as he was, cynical of subterfuge, he did not penetrate her guard. His monstrous vanity whispered eager flattery ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... less fortunate brother is kicked into a loathsome cell. There never has been, never can, and never will be a law enacted that prevent men from drinking liquor, especially those in whom there is a dominant appetite for it. The idea of licensing men to sell liquor and punishing men for drinking it is monstrous. To be sure, they are not punished for drinking it in moderation, but no man can be moderate who has such an appetite as I have. Why license men to sell liquor, and then punish others for drinking it? What sort of sense ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson

... of office seekers, personal friends, and sightseers—to the number of ten or fifteen thousand—poured into Washington to see the old regime of Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts go out and the new regime of the people come in. "A monstrous crowd of people," wrote Webster on Inauguration Day, "is in the city. I never saw anything like it before. Persons have come five hundred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think that the country is rescued from some dreadful danger." Another observer, who was also ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... saw you (so the letter ran) seems a century, and of course I am dying to come to town. No doubt the country is very healthy, but Lud! 'tis monstrous dull after a London season. I vow I am already a lifetime behind the fashions. Is't true that prodigious bustles are the rage? And while I think of it I wish you would call at Madame Ronald's and get the lylack lute-string scirt she ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... giant mushroom shape, and died down in a monstrous ballet. Peggy felt her senses slipping under the strain. But she kept a ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... of late a vulgar fashion of having a huge mass of colored glass and beads suspended from near-brass chains in the dining-rooms of certain apartments and houses. These monstrous things are called "domes"—no one knows why. For the price of one of them you could buy a three pronged candlestick, equipped for electricity, for your dining-room table. It is the sight of hundreds of these dreadful "domes" in the lamp shops that gives one a feeling of discouragement. ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... stretches his wings like a monstrous bat; Peeks over his shoulder, this way an' that, 25 Fer to see 'f the' 's anyone passin' by; But the' 's on'y a ca'f an' a goslin' nigh. They turn up at him a wonderin' eye, To see—the dragon! he's goin' to fly! Away he goes! Jiminy! what a jump! Flop—flop—an' ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... some day would no longer love, having become part of this monstrous, lovely earth, of that cold, whiffling air. To be no longer able to love! It seemed incredible, too grim to bear; yet it was true! To become powder, and the wind; no more to feel the sunlight; to be loved no more! To become a whiffling ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... in a God of absolute and unbounded love, therefore I believe in a loving anger of His, which will and must devour and destroy all which is decayed, monstrous, abortive, in His universe, till all enemies shall be put under His feet, to be pardoned surely, if they confess themselves in the wrong and open their eyes to the truth. And God shall be All in All. Those ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley

... of June burned onward to its close, through heat, dust, thirst, and relentlessly rapid marching. In the late afternoon occurred a monstrous piling up of thunder clouds, a whistling of wind, and a great downpour of rain. It beat down the wheat and pattered like elfin bullets on the forest leaves. Through this fusillade the army came down to the west fork of the Shenandoah. Pioneers laid a bridge of wagons, and, brigade by brigade, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... of some of the strange tails borne by animals. In the Egyptian and Syrian sheep, for instance, the tail grows so large, that it is not infrequently supported upon a sort of little cart, in order to prevent inconvenience to the animal. Thin monstrous appendage sometimes attains a weight of seventy, eighty, or ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... blow over her. It had a sickening weight. If that icy and somber wind could have been traced to its source, then the mystery of life would have been clear. But that source was the cause of war, as its effect was the horror of women. A hideous and monstrous thing existed out there in the darkness. Lenore passionately loved her brother, and this black thing had taken him away. Why could not women, who suffered most, have some word in the regulation of events? ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... middle of the public square was built of bricks, of that porous, fiery sort which seem so peculiarly designed to the monstrous vagaries of rural architecture. Here in Ascalon they fitted well with the arid appearance of things, as a fiery face goes ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... mind. I am satisfied that there are many evils which can be best removed by confining our efforts to the immediate locality where such evils exist. This, however, is by no means the case with the system of slavery. It is such a giant sin—such a monstrous aggregation of iniquity—so hardening to the human heart—so destructive to the moral sense, and so well calculated to beget a character, in every one around it, favorable to its own continuance,—that I feel not only at liberty, but abundantly ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... Aesop's dog, who, being pinched and ready to starve with the cold winter, was a mind to build himself a house; but when summer came on, he lay all along upon the ground, and stretching himself in the sun thought himself monstrous big, and thought it unnecessary and besides no small labor to build him a house portionable to that bulk and bigness. And do you not observe, O Chersias, continues he, many poor men,—how one while they pinch their bellies, upon what ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... was the monstrous thought that she might have known murder was brewing, and guiltily kept silence, that haunted Trent's mind. She might have suspected, have guessed something; was it conceivable that she was aware of the whole plot, that she connived? He could ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... from the Bondage of Egypt or the Burden of Tyre There is not much in common (thank God) between my garden with the grey-green English sky-line beyond it, and these mad visions of painted palaces huge, headless idols and monstrous solitudes of red or golden sand. Nevertheless (as I confessed to myself) I can fancy in such a stormy twilight some such smell of death and fear. The ruined sunset really looks like one of their ruined temples: a shattered heap of gold and green marble. A black flapping ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... imaginary forms of horror. If you indulge these cravings of a distempered fancy, you will sink to the base level of those Flemish artists who delight in painting witches and demons, and in all fabulous and monstrous forms. You, who are nobly born, devoted to poetry and fine art, and possess manifest power in portraiture, should aim at the Heroic in painting. Make this your first and steadfast purpose. Devote to it your life and soul; and, should ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... not be supposed that this doctrine conducts to the monstrous presumption that I, the person who now write and think, am that one mind. I am but a portion of it. The words I, and YOU, and THEY, are grammatical devices invented simply for arrangement, and totally devoid of the intense and exclusive sense usually ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... perhaps his own courage, exposed him to single combat with a Sarmatian, (Anonym. p. 710,) and with a monstrous lion. See Praxagoras apud Photium, p. 63. Praxagoras, an Athenian philosopher, had written a life of Constantine in two books, which are now lost. He ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... retirement was solely due to ill-health. He has resumed his private consulting practice. But, Clayton! there was an irreparable loss! Poor boy! Some momentary imprudence must have exposed him. Thugs! Thugs! Here in New York, in broad day light! It is monstrous!" ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... withering than rage,—it is a horror that appalls. The heart does not bleed, the tears do not flow, as in woes to which humanity is commonly subjected; it is as if something that violates the course of nature had taken place,—something monstrous and out of all thought and forewarning; for the domestic traitor is a being apart from the orbit of criminals: the felon has no fear of his innocent children; with a price on his head, he lays it in safety on the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... town improbably called Bootstrap, carrying one of the most essential devices for the Platform's equipment. In the desert near Bootstrap there was a gigantic construction shed. Inside that shed men were building exactly the monstrous object that Joe pictured to himself. They were trying to realize a dream men have dreamed for decades—the necessary space platform that would be the dock, the wharf, the starting point from which ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... he, "will be deferred for the moment. I commend you meanwhile to perfect quietness; one movement, and the consequences may be fatal. A hint is sufficient. I perceive here a lady in distress. 'Tis a monstrous pity, indeed. I regret that we were unaware of the presence of a lady; had we known, we should certainly have taken our measures more fittingly. I crave your pardon. No one has yet accused Captain Lingo ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen

... of reach, a shadow upon the mist, taunting me. I followed him at an undeviating distance, firing, reloading, and firing again. I was no longer conscious of my progress. The fingers that pressed the triggers of my pistols had no sensation in them, and in my imagination were parts of a monstrous mechanism which I directed. My legs, too, felt like stilts that somebody had strapped to my body, and, instead of cold, a warm glow seemed to ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... der Lieder at the poem in his preface—the song of the sphinx in the enchanted wood ... and how it clutched the seeker, the poet, to its monstrous but voluptuous woman's breasts as it ravished his soul with kisses. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... in order that, when it shall be proved that he and his family were treated with every kind of indignity and contempt by the prisoner at your bar, the sympathy of mankind should be weakened. Consider, my Lords, the monstrous perfidy and ingratitude of this man, who, after receiving great favors from the Nabob, is not satisfied with oppressing his offspring, but goes back to his ancestors, tears them out of their graves, and vilifies them with slanderous ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... married, and yet she actually loved the man enough to think of divorcing her husband in order to marry him. Then, just when she was ready, he had turned and told her in the most heartless way that it had been all play, and that he would not marry her under any circumstances. It seemed monstrous to the innocent girl that they should even have spoken of marriage, until the divorce was accomplished. Then, of course, it would have been all right. Clare had been brought up with modern ideas about divorce in general, as being ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford

... they? That bombardments were a hollow terror I had always understood; but how hollow, not till I experienced the bombardment of Ladysmith. Hollow things make the most noise, to be sure, and this bombardment could at times be a monstrous symphony indeed. ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens

... Looking up, I saw through a lifting mist a white object that towered several hundred feet high, completely shutting off our advance. We lowered sail immediately, and none too soon. In a moment we found ourselves wedged between two monstrous icebergs. Each was crowding and grinding against its fellow mountain of ice. They were like two gods of war contending for supremacy. We were greatly alarmed. Indeed, we were between the lines of a battle royal; the sonorous thunder of the grinding ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson

... wicked and cruel Uncle. I had taken every disagreeable feature of face and body that I had beheld in another human, or in a picture, or had read of in the tales of that remarkable Mr. Dickens, who could so paint in words a monstrous person to come when the lights are out to haunt the darkness, and had carefully patched them one upon another so as to make them into an ideal of an old Uncle of great wickedness. On that very ship itself ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... with a calm smile, and apparently thoughtfully, to the voluble tradesmen who are haranguing him upon the subject, it is not improbable that he will be revolving in his mind matters much more personally interesting and important to them; viz. how he shall put a stop to the monstrous joint-stock banking system frauds, as exhibited at this moment at Manchester, in the Northern and Central Banking Company, and other similar establishments, blessed with the disinterested patronage of the chief member ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... to his consternation, he found that his ammunition had given out. He legged it up a mountain-side, and the three Modocs came after him, yelling to beat the band. Just as they were following him up the steep trail, he saw a monstrous bear come plunging out from a thicket near by. He was so upset that he hardly knew what to do, but he grabbed up a big rock and sent it at the bear. It struck the monstrous animal on the head and keeled ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer

... with great tethe, and on his backe he hathe sharpe fynnes lyke the combe of a cocke / and iagged lyke a sawe wherew{i}t{h} thys monstrous fisshe cutteth a ship thorough, & whan he seeth a shippe co{m}mynge, than he setteth vp his fi{n}nes & thi{n}keth to sayl with the shippe as fast as it / but whan he seeth that he can nat co{n}tinue / tha{n} he ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... metamorphosed{456}: thus the sepals, petals, stamens, pistils, &c. of every plant can be shown to be metamorphosed leaves; and thus not only can the number, position and transitional states of these several organs, but likewise their monstrous changes, be most lucidly explained. It is believed that the same laws hold good with the gemmiferous vesicles of Zoophytes. In the same manner the number and position of the extraordinarily complicated jaws and palpi of Crustacea and of insects, and likewise their differences ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin

... repeated Miss Larolles, "why, don't you know it was the very night of the grand private masquerade at Lord Darien's? I would not have missed it for the whole universe. I never travelled in such an agony in my life: we did not get to town till monstrous late, and then do you know I had neither a ticket nor a habit! Only conceive what a distress! well, I sent to every creature I knew for a ticket, but they all said there was not one to be had; so I was just like a mad creature—but ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... the strange spectacle to which he had just been a witness, the young officer could not help feeling a slight sensation of fear. He was a Creole, brought up consequently in the midst of ecclesiastical superstition, scarce less monstrous and absurd than that of pure paganism itself. He had heard in his youth how animals in presence of beings of the other world are seized with a shivering—such as that exhibited at the moment by his own horse—and he could almost fancy that the scene he had ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... friends on Fifth Avenue and that they would look after the saloon-keepers on Sixth Avenue. That any decent candidate should have to pass in review before the saloon-keepers and receive their approval, is so monstrous as to be grotesque. That a possible President of the United States should be the victim needs no comment. It was thoroughly characteristic of Roosevelt that he ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... that they have brought to pass the things they hoped to do. For the desire of doing evil may be attributed to our weakness, but that in the sight of God the wicked should be able to compass whatsoever they contrive against the innocent, is altogether monstrous. Whence not without cause one of thy familiar friends[95] demanded: 'If,' saith he, 'there be a God, from whence proceed so many evils? And if there be no God, from whence cometh any good?' But let ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... Miss Mohun met was Fergus, lugging upstairs, step by step, a monstrous lump of stone, into which he required her to look and behold a fascinating crevice ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to be unsound. It is well enough to record a dialect, nor will any one grudge him credit for his observation and diligence, but to reduce a dialect to theoretic laws and then impose those laws upon the speakers of it is surely a monstrous step. And in this particular instance the matter is complicated by the fact that Southern English is not truly a natural dialect; Mr. Jones himself denotes it as P.S.P.Public School Pronunciation, and that we know to be very largely a social convention dependent on fashion and education, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... do—poor little fairy princess! Down had come her house of cards with a vengeance! The whole of her life—the whole of her life! With her bringing-up and her father and all—it seemed inconceivable that she could ever survive it. And Leila had been almost callous about the monstrous business. Women were hard to each other! Bad enough, these things, when it was a simple working girl, but this dainty, sheltered, beautiful child! No, it was altogether too strong—too painful! And following an impulse which he could not resist, he made his way to the old Square. But ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... nineteen hands high, four yards long, as lately shown at Cambridge, was on view 'at the "White Horse," where the great elephant was seen;' and 'between the "Queen's Head" and "Crooked Billet," near Fleet Bridge,' were exhibited daily 'two strange, wonderful, and remarkable monstrous creatures—an old she-dromedary, seven feet high and ten feet long, lately arrived from Tartary, and her young one; being the greatest rarity and novelty that ever was seen in the three kingdomes before.' In 1710, at the 'Duke of Marlborough's Head,' ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... ask their opponents to account for the inequality of conditions, for those commercial debaucheries in which monopoly and competition, in monstrous union, perpetually give birth to luxury and misery; they reproach economic theories, always modeled after the past, with leaving the future hopeless; in short, they point to the regime of property as a horrible hallucination, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... change. The vast air about him seemed now to be perceived through frosted glass. The velvet blackness of the pine forests had faded to heavy grey, the pale glint of water and ice seen and gone again in a moment, the monstrous nakedness of rock spires and slopes, rising towards him and sliding away again beneath with a crawling motion—all these had lost their distinctness of outline, and were veiled in invisible white. As he looked ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... The policeman's drone has ended and Fanny says nothing. This is difficult. Because his honor knows suddenly there is a defense. A monstrous defense. Since there are always two sides to everything. Yes, what is the other side? His honor would like to know. Tell it, Fanny. About the crowds, streets, buildings, lights, about the whirligig of loneliness, about the humpty-dumpty clutter of ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... but one condition: that you would not rob me of my mother's respect: to her our hasty marriage would appear monstrous, heartless. You consented to be secretly happy for six months. One fortnight has passed, and you are ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... learning, runs after them like Sancho Panza after Don Quixote, is helpless and ridiculous and horribly in the way. Leo X. was intelligent and well-meaning; wisdom herself might hope from such a man. Be the throne he is sitting on as monstrous and corrupt a contrivance as it may, yet it is there, it does give him authority; he is on it and dominates the world. It is easy to say, "But the period of the Renascence closed, its glory died away." Suppose Luther had been as subtle as he was whole-hearted, and had added to his force of character ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... on on the Commercy road, there was a short halt, and during this halt there passed us the largest Tun or Barrel that ever went on wheels. You talk of the Great Tun of Heidelburg, or of those monstrous Vats that stand in cool sheds in the Napa Valley, or of the vast barrels in the Catacombs of Rheims; but all these are built in situ and meant to remain steady, and there is no limit to the size of a Barrel that has not to travel. The point about this ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... believe so myself. I suppose you have grounds, or something you consider grounds, for your monstrous suspicion. What are they? I demand to be fully informed of what you have been doing in the yard, before you bring disgrace upon me and my family by inconsiderately acting on some wild theory which ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... ill-washed heads above their gloomy garb. He had painted what he saw; fear and hypocrisy were reflected in the eyes of that world. In the jesters, fools and humpbacks immortalized by Don Diego was revealed the forced merriment of a dying nation that must needs find distraction in the monstrous and absurd. The hypochondriac temper of a monarchy weak in body and fettered in spirit by the terrors of hell, lived in all those masterpieces, that inspired at once admiration and sadness. Alas for the artistic treasures wasted in immortalizing a ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... remark those banners of an azure ground, painted with monstrous figures of human bodies, double, triple, and quadruple, with heads of lions, boars, and elephants, and tails of fishes and tortoises; these are the ensigns of the sects of India, who find their gods in various animals, and the souls of their fathers ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... emancipation was neither conceived nor executed in love; but it was for Lincoln as Vulcan for Jupiter. The proclamation is generated neither by Lincoln's brains, heart or soul, and what is born in such a way is always monstrous. 2d.—Legally and logically, the proclamation has the smallest and the most narrow basis that could have been selected. When one has the free choice between two bases, it is more logical to select the broader one. The written Constitution had neither slavery nor emancipation in view, but it is ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... Union! And, sir, permit me to say that, of all the causes which justify the action of the Southern States, I know none of greater gravity and more alarming magnitude than that now developed of the right of secession. A pretension so monstrous as that which perverts a restricted agency constituted by sovereign States for common purposes, into the unlimited despotism of the majority, and denies all legitimate escape from such despotism, when powers not delegated are usurped, converts the whole ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... towards them as they did in the world: wherefore they bargain with them; but when they are about to enjoy the bargain, the phantasy induced from heaven is taken away, and then those pretended maidens appear in their own deformity, monstrous and dark, to whom nevertheless they are compelled to cleave for a time: those harlots are called sirens. But if by such fascinations they do not suffer themselves to be draw away from that wild lust, they are cast down into the hell lying to the south and west, beneath the hell of the crafty ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg









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