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Atrocious   Listen
adjective
Atrocious  adj.  
1.
Extremely heinous; full of enormous wickedness; as, atrocious guilt or deeds.
2.
Characterized by, or expressing, great atrocity. "Revelations... so atrocious that nothing in history approaches them."
3.
Very grievous or violent; terrible; as, atrocious distempers. (Obs.)
Synonyms: Atrocious, Flagitious, Flagrant. Flagitious points to an act as grossly wicked and vile; as, a flagitious proposal. Flagrant marks the vivid impression made upon the mind by something strikingly wrong or erroneous; as, a flagrant misrepresentation; a flagrant violation of duty. Atrocious represents the act as springing from a violent and savage spirit. If Lord Chatham, instead of saying "the atrocious crime of being a young man," had used either of the other two words, his irony would have lost all its point, in his celebrated reply to Sir Robert Walpole, as reported by Dr. Johnson.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Atrocious" Quotes from Famous Books



... explanation of this confession. What can be more atrocious than the whole story, which is yet but the common story ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... he insisted, with his voice full of tears, "I don't even know what I said to you, but I know that the whole thing was atrocious. You standing there like a big angel, with your innocent arms full of flowers, and I barking at you like ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... The French language, disengaging itself from its Latin idioms, had become the language of legislation; it was that of the Assises, or laws of the kingdom of Jerusalem. The poetry of the troubadours had perished in the atrocious crusade against the Albigeois, but, "north of the Loire, the trouveres were still composing the chansons de geste, veritable epic poems which were translated or imitated by Italy, England, and Germany. So that we are quite justified in saying that, from the twelfth century, the intellectual ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... burned on the champan, as related above. It seems that they have inherited such disasters, for their father—a Portuguese gentleman, and a gallant soldier—after serving his Majesty in Africa, had to flee to Ytalia, because of committing an atrocious crime, which was as follows. Another gentleman insulted a relative of this gentleman. The insulted man, either for lack of ability to do more, or because he was a good Christian, did not take vengeance for the insult. The father of these Cardosos was very angry, and, with the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various

... "Atrocious," said Mr. Jackson Hyane. "There's plenty of money in Town, but it's absolutely impossible to get at it. I haven't touched a mug for two months, and I've backed more seconds than I care to think about. Still," he mused, "there's ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... were absolutely prostrated; his outlook on life was not dimmed by any affections, and pity was a sensation which to him was entirely alien. In this record of his deeds the reader has been spared all mention of the atrocious tortures he was in the habit of inflicting on his victims for any or no provocation, and many of them are as incomprehensible as they are sickening. That in which he was supreme was his craft as a seaman in an age when real seamen were rare; on land he was frequently ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... to know how matters stood, when I had taken so much pain to conceal the truth. I was sorry I had not held my peace a little longer, or altogether. Men never can understand a woman's right to resent selfishness, however atrocious; even when they are knowing to it, which in this case they were not. I might as well have held my tongue, since every unguarded speech of mine militated ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... and my companions, Gabriel and Roche, had been delivered up to the Mexican agents, and were journeying, under an escort of thirty men, to the Mexican capital, to be hanged as an example to all liberators. This escort was commanded by two most atrocious villains, Joachem Texada and Louis Ortiz. They evidently anticipated that they would become great men in the republic, upon the safe delivery of our persons to the Mexican government, and every day took good care to remind us that the gibbet was ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... description. The existence of such a body as this gigantic corporation, this political monster of two natures, subject in one hemisphere, sovereign in another, had never been contemplated by the legislators or judges of former ages. Nothing but grotesque absurdity and atrocious injustice could have been the effect, if the claims and liabilities of such a body had been settled according to the rules of Westminster Hall, if the maxims of conveyancers had been applied to the titles by which flourishing cities and provinces are held, or the maxims of the law merchant ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... these revolting details, many of the atrocious features of this spectacle, as witnessed by Boone. While we read with indignation and horror, let us not forget that savages have not alone inflicted these detestable cruelties. Let us not forget that the professed followers of Jesus ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... melodramatic and clumsy—but then it was not on this occasion Lermontov's play that was the thing. But it was a masquerade, and that in a sense far from the author's intention. As I watched I remember that I forgot the bad acting (the hero was quite atrocious), forgot the lapses of taste in the colour and arrangement of the play, forgot the artifices and elaborate originalities and false sincerities; there were, I have no doubt, many things in it all that were bad and meretricious—I was dreaming. I saw, against my will ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... allies —yes, gentlemen, I must repeat it, 'allies'—though, as a Briton, I blush at the word. Shame and disgrace for ever be that man's portion, who first associated the honourable usages of war with the atrocious and bloody cruelties of the savage. Yet so it is: the Delawares of the hills"—here the Yankees exchanged very peculiar looks—"have this morning arrived at Fort Peak, with orders to ravage the whole of your frontier, from Fort George ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... I have been a dreadful monster, but I really do mean to do better in future—if not for love of virtue itself, at least to avoid seeing my charming sister put on a severe, disapproving air, at some atrocious escapade of mine. Still, I fear that I shall always be Folly, as you will ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... costing her too dearly in their levies upon strength and vitality. She, who had been always fearless, became prey to a hundred unconfessed dreads. She feared for her husband, and with a frenzy of terror for her daughter. She woke trembling out of atrocious nightmares. She was wasting to a shadow, and always pretending that the life was ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... to say if our laws relating to vagrancy and vagrants are more cruel or more absurd. If not so atrocious they would evoke laughter; if less ridiculous we should read them with indignation. Here is ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... invention of some device, by which he might yet escape the impending death, and save a life which—his good name being utterly blasted and gone, could have been but a prolonged shame—he conceived and hatched a plan, in its ingenuity, its wickedness, and atrocious baseness, of a piece with his whole character and life. In the handwriting of the Emperor, which he could perfectly imitate, he drew up a list of some of the chief officers of the army—by him condemned to death on the following day. This paper, as he was at about the eleventh hour led guarded ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... Wright, "about a bad matter. Vernon here says that there's no good working for a prize in his form, because the cribbing's so atrocious. Indeed, it's very nearly as bad in my form. It always is under Gordon; he can't understand fellows doing ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... armful of letters. There was one for her from Allister, and she tore it open first, while Ellen eagerly opened one she had received. Allister had enclosed a valentine for Christina, a horrible picture of a tall, thin, frowsy woman sweeping a house, and beneath an atrocious rhyme about the cross old maid who always stayed at home and swept and scrubbed. Christina remembered with glee that she had sent him one, quite as ugly, a fat old farmer, mean and tight-fisted, growing rich ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith

... Batavia usually employ themselves in fishing, having very neat and shewy vessels, the sails of which are most ingeniously constructed of straw. These are a most wicked and profligate people, who often commit atrocious murders for very trifling gain. They profess the Mahomedan religion, but are so absolutely devoid of moral principle, that they even make a boast and merit of cheating Christians. Their last chief was publicly whipped and branded ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... fault be so atrocious as to deserve whipping, and the parent be resolved on this exemplary punishment, the child ought not, as I imagine, to come into one's presence without meeting with it: or else, a fondness too natural to be resisted, will probably get the upper hand of one's resentment, and how ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... jurist, a statesman, a fine scholar, an eloquent orator. His polished manners and lively conversation were the delight of aristocratical societies; and none who met him in such societies would have thought it possible that he could bear the chief part in any atrocious crime. His political principles were lax, yet not more lax than those of most Scotch politicians of that age. Cruelty had never been imputed to him. Those who most disliked him did him the justice to own that, where his schemes of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... our choicest flowers of memory to the innocent victims of an atrocious cruelty, to the women, the child martyrs, to that young English nurse, guilty only of generosity, whose assassination aroused the indignation of the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... pursuit, Mr Bennett proceeds from error to error, abounding in reckless misstatements, atrocious imputations, and scattering charges void of truth. As briefly as possible, I will deal with his accusations. One of his first deliverances is as follows:—"It is, of course, an open secret that in all our Soudan battles the enemy's wounded have been killed. The practice has, ever since the ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... was in a panic. The alarm aroused by the recent atrocious 50 crime and by Otho's well-known proclivities was further increased by the fresh news about Vitellius.[86] This news had been suppressed before Galba's murder, and it was believed that only the army of Upper Germany had revolted. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... services of the State his comforts, his ambitions and his life, is the supreme model, and the estimation in which he is held is but little lowered even though he may have been guilty, like Cato, of atrocious cruelty to his slaves, or, like some of the heroes of ancient times, of scandalous forms ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... a cruel death for atrocious wrong or insult, as when a king, enraged at the slaying of his son and seduction of his daughter, has the offender hanged, an instance famous in Nathan's story, so that Hagbard's hanging and ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... elimination of waste motion, had elected to tell the stupid head weaver a few things he did not know about his business. And the head weaver, with Captain Jamie present, had me called to the table where atrocious weaving, such as could never have gone through my loom, was exhibited against me. Three times was I thus called to the table. The third calling meant punishment according to the loom-room rules. My punishment was ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... wish that atrocious woman over there with the paradise plume would keep her hat out of the way. Ah, that is better! How lovely she looks to-night! What an exquisite pose of head! And what are those two damned foreigners saying to her, I wonder. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... nature, its inefficacy, even for the exclusive purposes of morality, is now surely exposed beyond all theory or controversy: and the religion of God has received a testimony as clear of its moral influence, by the atrocious acts of the Convention since it has been cast aside, as of its divine, in the voluntary sacrifices offered up at its shrine by those who still adhere ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney

... atrocious, and in June building the Astronomical Hut and digging ice-shafts on the glacier absorbed a good many hands. In July, despite the enthusiasm and preparation for sledging, much was done. On August 10 the long looked-for top-mast of the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... French are responsible for these atrocious cruelties, for the Indians are their allies, instigated to war by their influence, fighting under their banner, and paid by their money. The burning of our men under the very walls of their fort must have been done by ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... confounded, did not know what answer to return to these arguments of Antonona, more atrocious than her former pinches. Besides, it was repugnant to him to discuss the metaphysics of love with ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... harden them in their iniquities; and while they frequently became perfectly callous to the infliction of punishment, they were debased to the incarnation of fiends, merely wanting in the opportunity to perpetrate the most atrocious villanies in retribution. ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... facts as these, the cry of persecution will not do; it is unwise to make it, because it can be so very easily, and so very justly retorted. The business is to forget and forgive, to kiss and be friends, and to say nothing of what has passed; which is to the credit of neither party. There have been atrocious cruelties, and abominable acts of injustice, on both sides. It is not worth while to contend who shed the most blood, or whether death by fire is worse than hanging or starving in prison. As far as England itself is concerned, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... what a maze hast thou permitted my unhappy feet to be entangled! With intentions void of blame, have I been pursued by all the consequences of the most atrocious guilt. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... houses? Is it presumable, that every man, the instant he took his seat in the national Senate or House of Representatives, would commence a traitor to his constituents and to his country? Can it be supposed that there would not be found one man, discerning enough to detect so atrocious a conspiracy, or bold or honest enough to apprise his constituents of their danger? If such presumptions can fairly be made, there ought at once to be an end of all delegated authority. The people should resolve to recall all the powers ...
— The Federalist Papers

... church discipline, rites and ceremonies, apostolical succession, the duty of reverence and obedience to the clergy, the atrocious criminality of dissent, the absolute necessity of observing all the forms of godliness, the reprehensible presumption of individuals who attempted to think for themselves in matters connected with religion, or to be guided by their own interpretations ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte

... Valier. Fanchon, who knew something and suspected more, spoke out; an investigation into the cause of death of the husband resulted in the discovery that he had been murdered by pouring melted lead into his ear while he slept. La Corriveau was arrested as the perpetrator of the atrocious deed. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... sometimes take you to the play. He will give you a hundred francs a month for pocket-money, and fifty francs for housekeeping.'—I know Bijou; she is myself at fourteen. I jumped for joy when that horrible Crevel made me his atrocious offers. Well, and you, old man, will be disposed of for three years. She is a good child, well behaved; for three or four years she will have ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... driven mad by all this singing and playing! One would think the steamboats were driven by the force of song, and that atrocious orchestras were a new kind of motive power. From morning till night there is no cessation ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis

... put a horrible paragraph into one of the newspapers saying that I got so "flogged" that I haven't been able to stir since. It is an atrocious falsehood, as is all the rest of the newspaper account. I was not touched. He was not nearly so bad a customer as the bull, and seemed to take it all very quietly. I must acknowledge, though, that he didn't get such a beating as ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... road, and assured me that he knew it perfectly. We pushed on, however, as fast as we could go, wishing to get in before dark, as my companion confided to me the fact that he felt not a little nervous about the bushrangers, of whose atrocious deeds the young Masons had been telling him—the murders they had committed, the huts they had attacked, and the number of people they had stuck up. I could not disprove the statements, though I believe the accounts greatly exaggerated, and ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston

... son to whom the Protector could look for support in case of broil or disturbance, and the Buccaneer was ignorant of the strong and friendly ties that had united the families for so long a series of years. He had fancied that fear would compel Sir Willmott Burrell to press his suit; but the atrocious attempt upon his life assured him that there was nothing to expect from him but the blackest villany. When, therefore, he despatched, with all the ferocity of a true Buccaneer, the head of Jeromio as a wedding-present to Sir Willmott, he at the same time transmitted to the Protector, by a trusty ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... "You atrocious imp! Look here! You don't know what a scrape you've got us into. You'll just have to own up and get us out of it ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil

... were quiet enough. Occasionally a door opened in the passage and a pair of boots was thrown out, or a bagman walked past humming to himself, and outside, from time to time a cart thundered over the atrocious cobble-stones, or a quick step ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... an atrocious idea. You are worse than a savage to talk of such a loathsome prison to me. Ah! mon Dieu! what is to happen to me! would I were back again in my ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... situation upon which we were forced to drop the curtain. Lady BELLEDAME, the hardened Grandmother of Little ELFIE, has, under the influence of that angel-child, just vowed to amend, when, in the person of her minion, MONKSHOOD, she is reminded of the series of atrocious crimes she had been contemplating through his instrumentality. Struck with remorse, she attempts to countermand them—only to find that her orders have already been executed with a too punctual fidelity! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various

... tea, good quality—yours is generally atrocious, Mrs. Oswald—that's the next thing on the list,' said poor trembling, shaky Miss Luttrell, the Squire's sister, a palsied old lady with a quavering, querulous, rasping voice. 'Two pounds of best black tea, and mind you ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... the eye of the law to dispose of the house on the Coal-hill, I now hoped to find, if not a purchaser, at least some one foolish enough to take it off my hands for nothing. I have since heard and read a good deal about the atrocious landlords of the poorer and less reputable sort of houses in our large towns, and have seen it asserted that, being a bad and selfish kind of people, they ought to be rigorously dealt with. And so, I daresay, they ought; but ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... so sprightly, as a page; And everybody but his mother deemed Him almost man; but she flew in a rage[45] And bit her lips (for else she might have screamed) If any said so—for to be precocious Was in her eyes a thing the most atrocious. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... He was a negro from the Dutch West Indies, a veritable bull, with a huge body and a black, bald physiognomy, made to stand outside a tent at a fair, and be his own crier to the public. His conversation was one incessant brag, in atrocious French. Although he had lived seventeen years in France, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... first at the tribunal set up in Rome for the trial of all crimes against the State. And let the reader bear in mind, that offences against the Church are crimes against the State, for there the Church is the State. A secret, summary, and atrocious tribunal it is, differing in no essential particular from that sanguinary tribunal in Paris where Robespierre passed sentence, and the guillotine executed it. The Gregorian Code[6] enacts, that in cases of sedition or ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... external point of view, does not belong to the history of the United States. Yet is it pertinent thereto, as showing of what enormities the English of that age were capable. Their entire conduct during this French war was dishonorable, and often atrocious. Forgetting the facts of history, we often smile at the grumblings of the Continental nations anent "Perfidious Albion" and "British gold." But the acts committed by the English government during these years fully justify every charge ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... adorned with jewelry of the same material. He had recently graduated from the State Prison, where he had served a term of ten years for manslaughter, as the jury termed it; although it was universally regarded as one of the most cold-blooded and atrocious murders ever committed. To sum up the character of this man in a few words, he was a most desperate and blood-thirsty villain, capable of perpetrating the most enormous crimes; and dark hints were sometimes thrown out by his ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson

... He raged against a public world that he believed was going to the devil. "I am not surprised," he wrote in 1776, "at the idea of the devil being always at our elbows. They who invented him no doubt could not conceive how men could be so atrocious to one another, without the intervention of a fiend. Don't you think, if he had never been heard of before, that he would have been invented on the late partition of Poland?" "Philosophy has a poor chance with me," he wrote a little later in regard to America, "when my warmth is stirred—and ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... of twenty-two years of age, of a very amiable temper, humane and brave, possessed of the most unbounded obedience to my will, and of the most filial affection for my person. This, my son, was murdered in the most atrocious manner by a bloody monster of an Indian. My poor boy had arrived the evening previous to the bloody act, from a voyage to Red Lake. Early the next morning he sent off all the men he had to Lake Winnipeck, excepting one Frenchman, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... statuary became much worse, when some monster murderer had been tried and found guilty, the judge, putting on the black cap, should say, 'Prisoner at the bar, a jury of your countrymen having found you guilty of a most atrocious crime, you must be hanged until you are dead, and then a statue shall be erected to perpetuate your memory, and God help your soul.' Carlyle assented, but not in any hearty manner. No doubt I had ventured a little out ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... pang of disappointment. She failed to soar to the heights he had expected of her. She was evidently infected by the stilted manner of her ridiculous lover. There was an atrocious lack of sincerity about her words. They touched his mind, but left his heart unmoved. Perhaps this was because of his antipathy to M. Leandre and ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... of it. Further, she was incensed, violated. Every fiber rebelled, almost in a nausea; yet she maintained cool control and stroked Sarah's forehead and hair with slow, soothing movements. Soon, with one arm around her, she managed to win the first diminution in the strident, atrocious, unceasing scream. A few minutes later, sobbing heavily, the elder woman lay in bed, across her forehead and eyes a wet-pack of towel for easement of the headache she and Saxon tacitly accepted ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... reason that Sister Helen made a little man of wax,—and nail it, with nails not less than five inches long, to some tree in a temple-grove at the Hour of the Ox (2),—and if the person, imaginatively represented by that little straw man, should die thereafter in atrocious agony,—that would illustrate one signification of nazoraeru... Or, let us suppose that a robber has entered your house during the night, and carried away your valuables. If you can discover the footprints of that robber in your garden, and then promptly ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn

... that the farther east he could arrest me the nearer I should be to a British consul and tide-water. I went ahead of him into the station and out to the Pittsburg sleeper. I dropped my bag into my section—if that’s what they call it in your atrocious American language—looked out and saw him coming along the platform. Just then the car began to move,—they were shunting it about to attach a sleeper that had been brought in from Louisville and my carriage, or whatever you call it, went skimming ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... and Cunningham were together, either in New York or in Philadelphia, the most atrocious cruelties were inflicted upon the American prisoners in their power, and yet some have endeavoured to excuse General Howe, on what grounds it is difficult to determine. It has been said that Cunningham acted on higher authority than any in America, and ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... study the causes to which the annual recurrence of crimes in all countries is due. These are natural causes, which I have classified under the three heads of anthropological, telluric and social. Every crime, from the smallest to the most atrocious, is the result of the interaction of these three causes, the anthropological condition of the criminal, the telluric environment in which he is living, and the social environment in which he is born, living and operating. It is a vain beginning to separate the meshes of this ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri

... pursued with impetuosity by the sagacious commons, who knew the importance of a favorable moment in all popular commotions. The terror of their authority they extended over the whole nation; and all opposition, and even all blame vented in private conversation, were treated as the most atrocious crimes by these severe inquisitors. Scarcely was it permitted to find fault with the conduct of any particular member, if he made a figure in the house; and reflections thrown out on Pym were at this time treated as breaches of privilege. The populace without doors were ready to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... knowledge of the question in all its bearings and eventual consequences; that the course deliberately adopted by Her Majesty's Government, and announced to the principal Courts of Europe previously united in reprobation of the late impolitic and atrocious executions, was not to be receded from; and that any opening to a compromise on so vital a point could only encourage resistance and endanger the most important interests. I, therefore, rested entirely on the terms of your ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various

... for the week, whose duty it was to recite selected passages from the most approved Hebrew writers; she appears to be a good deal outraged, possibly at the faulty intonation of the reader, which she has long tried vainly to correct; or perhaps she has been hearing of the atrocious way in which her forefathers had treated the prophets, and is explaining to the young ladies how impossible it would be, in their own more enlightened age, for a ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... very dexterous in small matters of mechanics. He was more interested in the science of the bow than in the sport of it. Also he would only shoot at a mark, for he thought it cruel to kill beasts and birds, and atrocious to kill men. When he left the king he had gone out into the wood and tried all sorts of tiresome experiments about the bending of branches and the impact of arrows; when even he found it tiresome he returned to the house of the four ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... wry-faced, puny villain," gasped old Lobbs, paralysed by the atrocious confession; "what do you mean by that? Say this to my face! Damme, I'll ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... it all. The front room down-stairs is to be your study and our dining-room (poor papa!), for, you know, we settled mamma is to have as cheerful a sitting-room as we can get; and that front room up-stairs, with the atrocious blue and pink paper and heavy cornice, had really a pretty view over the plain, with a great bend of river, or canal, or whatever it is, down below. Then I could have the little bed-room behind, in that projection at the head of the first flight of stairs—over ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Badger sternly, "it appears that you have not only made an atrocious assault on my son, but lied deliberately about it. You shall have neither dinner nor supper, and tonight I will give you a flogging. Now, go ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... and by aiding, assisting, abetting, and comforting the generals and other officers, civil and military, of the said King, to enforce his authority in and over this State, and the good people of the same: And whereas the aforesaid treason, and other atrocious crimes, justly merit ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... alone, you great, mean thing! I'll tell ol' pap on you, see if I don't," cried Flaxen, her eyes filling with angry tears. And as they proceeded to other and bolder remarks she rushed out, feeling vaguely the degradation of being so spoken to and so touched. It seemed to become more atrocious the more ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland

... Gibney shouted to the helmsman. The schooner had hove to and when the Maggie also hove to some thirty yards to windward of her Mr. Gibney informed the Mexican, in atrocious Spanish well mixed with English, that if the latter so much as lifted his little finger he might expect to be sunk like a dog. "Down below, everybody but the helmsman, or I'll sweep your decks with another muzzle burst," ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... into the slave trade with New Spain. Except for the fact that both Portugal and Spain allowed no trade with their oversea possessions in any ships but their own, the circumstances appeared to favor his enterprise. The American Indians were withering away before the atrocious cruelties of the Portuguese and Spaniards, being either killed in battle, used up in merciless slavery, or driven off to alien wilds. Already the Portuguese had commenced to import negroes from their West African possessions, both ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... when your fountain is choked up and polluted the stream will not run long, or not run clear, with us or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done in France. Excuse me therefore if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious spectacle of the 6th of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day,—I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As things ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... Fra Paolo. The collections of Maxims which this bold monk drew up at the request of the Venetian Government, for the guidance of the Secret Inquisition of State, are so atrocious as to seem rather an over-charged satire upon despotism, than a system of policy, seriously inculcated, and but too readily and ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... to the world as real "Vril"? The experiment of silently willing a subject to act in a manner not suggested by speech or sign has been repeatedly tried and succeeded in London drawing-rooms; and it has lately been suggested that atrocious crimes have resulted from overpowering volition. In cases of paralysis the Faculty is agreed upon the fact that local symptoms disappear when the will-power returns to the brain. And here I will boldly and baldly state my theory that, in sundry ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... at the baseball field, he played a butter-fingered game. He could not hold the ball, and his throws to bases were atrocious. ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger

... a candidate," ascribed to his brother Quintus, who was himself to be a candidate for the praetorship in the next year (B.C. 63). We may see from this essay that Pompey was still regarded as the greatest and most influential man at Rome; that Catiline's character was so atrocious in the eyes of most, that his opposition was not to be feared; that Cicero's "newness" was a really formidable bar to his election, and that his chief support was to be looked for from the individuals and companies for whom he had acted as counsel, and ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... kindness, lamented the poverty of their country, and promised to assign them more fertile lands, if they would meet him in three bodies, with their wives and children, in three places which he fixed upon. The simple people believed him. But he meditated one of the most atrocious acts of treachery and cruelty recorded in history. He fell upon each body separately, and butchered them, men, women, and children, without distinction. Among the very few who escaped was Viriathus, ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... their blood for the Union, accompanied by the declaration that they were still slaves, and, upon the termination of the war, such as survived would be restored to their masters, with whom their wives and children must still remain in bondage, would be an atrocious crime, as well as the climax of all absurdities. No; it is only by emancipation that the services of the slaves can or ought to be obtained for the suppression of the rebellion. The Emancipation Proclamation then of the President, with compensation to loyal masters, is most clearly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... which prevail at the present time are atrocious and help to make criminals. The worst crimes have not even a name yet, much less a punishment. What about the crime of working little children and cheating them out of an education and a happy childhood? There is no name for it! What about misrepresenting ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... no fine effects of costume are to be attained without broad masses of pure and positive tints. These, however, may be enlivened with condimental garniture of broken and combined colors. But dresses striped, or, yet worse, plaided or checkered, are atrocious violations of good taste; indeed, party-colored costumes are worthy only of the fools and harlequins to whose official habits they were once set apart. The three primary, and the three secondary colors, red, yellow, and blue, orange, green, and purple, (though not in their highest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... The whole idea is nothing less than atrocious; and, in our judgment, the Adapter's actual purpose in putting it forth is to make his own superlative goodness seem proved ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... inspector, to trace this libel; he came soon after to say that he had found out the place where the work was being printed, and that it was at a country house near Yverdun. He had already got possession of two sheets, which contained the most atrocious calumnies, conveyed with a degree of art which might make them very dangerous to the Queen's reputation. Goupil said that he could obtain the rest, but that he should want a considerable sum for that purpose. Three thousand Louis were given ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... believing that the character of Richard the Third was not so atrocious as is generally supposed? Rowton, p. ...
— Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Debate Index - Second Edition • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

... pernicious counsels of the companions who had, by pretended sympathy and flattery, obtained that place in his confidence which no parental kindness had ever secured? Those historians who are zealous for the glory of Peter the Great, have eagerly refuted, as a most atrocious calumny, the report of his having had any part in the mysterious death of his son. But how will they apologize for the Czar's neglect of that son's education, from which all the ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... Sometimes the commandos had to break through the lines and leave the women behind alone; and when the burghers later on returned they would perhaps find that the women had been driven from their houses, and, in some instances, treated with atrocious cruelty. ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... his very consistently. Through all the things that we have examined, the view of national boundaries, the view of military methods, the view of personal honour and self-defence, there runs in their case something of an atrocious simplicity; something too simple for us to understand: the idea that glory consists in holding the steel, ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton

... defendant] may bring a counter-plaint for abusive language,[50] or personal trespass,[50] or for acts of atrocious violence.[51] On behalf of each party, a surety, competent to meet the result of the suit, shall ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya

... a Journal lost in the destruction of Kolobeng (September, 1853) by the Boers of Pretorius." Livingstone appears to have kept journals from an early period of his life with characteristic care and neatness; but that ruthless and most atrocious raid of the Boers, which we shall have to notice hereafter, deprived him of all them up to that date. The treatment of his books on that occasion was one of the most exasperating of his trials. Had they been ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... wolf-like gleam. As he played, he drew the bow across with a swift jerk, thrust it back with another, threw his shoulders from one side to the other in abrupt time to the music. And the music! Thorpe unconsciously shuddered; then sighed in pity. It was atrocious. It was not even in tune. Two out of three of the notes were either sharp or flat, not so flagrantly as to produce absolute disharmony, but just enough to set the teeth on edge. And the rendition was as colorless as that ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... stood this torture, a thing almost unheard of, seeing that it cut the flesh of the wrist to the bone and dislocated the limbs, weights were attached to the feet, thus doubling the torture. This last form of torture was only applied when an atrocious crime had been proved to have been committed upon a sacred person, such as a priest, a cardinal, a prince, or an ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... order to emphasize the same point of the value of observation, prepared a little cupful of kerosene, mustard, and castor oil, and calling the attention of his class to it, dipped a finger into the atrocious compound and then sucked his finger. He then passed the mixture around to the students who all did the same with most dire results. When the cup returned and he observed the faces of his students, he remarked: "Gentlemen, ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... some noblemen developed the unpleasant custom of inviting to their courts men who were reputed to have found the stone, and then imprisoning the poor alchemists until they had made a certain quantity of gold, stimulating their activity with tortures of the most atrocious kinds. Thus this danger of being imprisoned and held for ransom until some fabulous amount of gold should be made became the constant menace of the alchemist. It was useless for an alchemist to plead poverty once it was noised about that he had learned the secret. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... digestion reported in the same ancient newspaper of a Truro porter, who, for a bet of five shillings, ate two pairs of worsted stockings fried in train oil, and half a pound of yellow soap into the bargain. The losers of this wager might have been more cautious had they known that the same atrocious glutton once undertook to eat as much tripe as would make himself a jacket with sleeves, and was accordingly measured by a tailor, who regularly cut out the materials, when, to general surprise, the voracious fellow ate up the whole in twenty minutes. Compared with these performances some of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... this Mark was intrusted by his chief with the work of discovering a man who had committed a very atrocious murder, and was, it was tolerably certain, hiding in the slums of Westminster. It was the first business of the kind that had been confided to him, and he was exceedingly anxious to carry it out successfully. He dressed himself as a street hawker, and took a small lodging in one of the lanes, ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... since it probably prevented the document from attracting the attention and resentment of a community which, at the time, by no means held the opinion that there was either "injustice" or "bad policy" in the great "institution" of the South. It was within a few months after this very time that the atrocious persecution and murder of Lovejoy took place in the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... with gods playing at being human, or at being half god and half human. The time has come when, to prolong its usefulness, the Church must concede—nay, proclaim—the manhood of Jesus; must separate him from that atrocious scheme of human sacrifice, the logical extension of a primitive Hebrew mythology—and take him in the only way that he commands attention: As a man, one of the world's great spiritual teachers. Insisting upon his godship can only make him preposterous ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... voluptuousness is but breathed, never named, and the heart is always in every mouth; all these properties could not fail to recommend such tragical miniatures to the world of fashion. There is an unsparing pomp of noble sentiments, but withal most strangely associated with atrocious baseness. Not unfrequently does an injured fair one dispatch a despised lover to stab the faithless one from behind. In almost every piece there is a crafty knave who plays the traitor, for whom, however, there is ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... in the entrance, behind the ticket-office, a huge negro was grinding out discord from an organ as big as an upright piano. We defy creation to produce another exhibition so entirely and profoundly atrocious as this. It consisted chiefly of wax figures of most appalling ugliness. There were Webster, Clay, General Scott, and another, sitting bolt upright at a card-table, staring hideously; the birth of Christ; the trial of Christ; Abraham Lincoln, dead and ghastly, upon a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... patriotism seldom develops itself out of purple and fine linen. Flood, however, may be taken in exception to this inference; his father was a Chief Justice of the Irish King's Bench. When elected a member of the Irish House, his first public effort was for the freedom of his country from the atrocious imposition of Poyning's Law. Unfortunately, he and Grattan quarrelled, and their country was deprived of the immense benefits which might have accrued to it from the cordial political ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... a delicious piece of nonsense, serious neither in style nor intention, filled with puns so atrocious as to make the reader admire the author's audacity, the recklessness of which adds much ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... whether as a people we are prepared to seize on a neighboring territory for the end of extending slavery? I ask whether as a people we can stand forth in the sight of God, in the sight of nations, and adopt this atrocious policy? Sooner perish! Sooner be our name blotted out from the record of nations!" William Lloyd Garrison called for the secession of the Northern states if Texas was brought into the union with slavery. John Quincy ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... one of those atrocious exhibitions for months," announced Beth; "nor have I any desire ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne

... The morality of the Anarchists is that of persons who look upon all human action from the abstract point of view of the unlimited rights of the individual, and who, in the name of these rights, pass a verdict of "Not guilty" on the most atrocious deeds, the most revolting arbitrary acts. "What matter the victims," exclaimed the Anarchist poet Laurent Tailhade, on the very evening of Vaillant's outrage, at the banquet of the "Plume" Society, "provided the ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... abominable superstition of witchcraft. Abominable, unquestionably, the evil was; but justice compels us to add that the remedy of relentless and ruthless persecution with which it was sought to remove the pest was a reign of abhorrent and atrocious cruelty. Into the question itself we dare not enter, lest we should be ourselves bewitched. We know that divination by supposed supernatural agency existed among the Hebrews, that magical incantations were ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... time ago) of a "Party given by the Duke of Pork!" Another paper, of "Proceedings in the Court of Common Fleas!" and the Morning Chronicle of Tuesday last speaks of "an atrocious Bobbery!" The cream of this criticism on others is, that the very same paper has the following paragraph:—"Fleet Prison, Dec. 26th. Died last night, about 12 o'clock, the Rev. Mr. Chaundy, in the meridian of life. This makes the ninth death which has happened in the Fleet since the 29th ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various

... a mere accident gave to the world one of the most gruesome and remarkable pieces of literature that has ever perhaps been seen. A convict named Fury confessed to having committed a murder of an atrocious character. He was brought from prison, put on his trial at Durham, and condemned to death. Every chance was given him to escape his doom; but he persisted in providing the authorities with the most minutely ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... the bumping of obnoxious ushers, and the "barring out" of tyrannical masters. A school of this description was a complete place of torment for the orphan, the unfriended, and the deserted. Lads then stayed at school till they were eighteen and even twenty, and fagging flourished in all its atrocious oppression. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... Dr. Stanhope's than at the rectory. She began to think that she was getting tired of clergymen and their respectable, humdrum, wearisome mode of living, and that after all, people in the outer world, who had lived in Italy, London, or elsewhere, need not necessarily be regarded as atrocious and abominable. The Stanhopes, she had thought, were a giddy, thoughtless, extravagant set of people, but she had seen nothing wrong about them and had, on the other hand, found that they thoroughly ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... little jacket that he could only stagger back to the basket, where Rags and Lady Gay were snuggled together, fast asleep. He anxiously scanned Gay's face; moistened his rag of a handkerchief at the only available source of supply; scrubbed an atrocious dirt spot from the tip of her spirited nose; and then, dragging the basket along the path leading to the front gate, he opened it and went in, mounted the steps, plied the brass knocker, and waited in childlike faith for a summons to enter and make ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... whom I found sitting with him one morning, said, that in his opinion the character of an infidel was more detestable than that of a man notoriously guilty of an atrocious crime. I differed from him, because we are surer of the odiousness of the one, than of the errour of the other. JOHNSON. 'Sir, I agree with him; for the infidel would be guilty of any crime if he were inclined ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... outrageous conduct not only violates the rights of humanity, but also endangers the public peace, and it highly becomes the honor and good faith of the United States to pursue all legal means for the punishment of those atrocious offenders: ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson

... astonishing influence of plain and simple goodness more strikingly displayed, than in the deference and respect which this private and meek individual received, not only from foreign and imperious Rulers of the Earth, but from hardened and atrocious wretches, on whom Justice herself could hardly make any mental impression, though armed with all the splendour, and all the violence of power. Two particular examples of the influence I am speaking of, I shall mention here, not only as ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley

... disposed to treat their ponies and any other property which they might possess as legitimate prize of war. There was, in fact, during the middle eighties, open and undisguised warfare between red and white throughout the region whose eastern border was the Bad Lands. It was, moreover, a peculiarly atrocious warfare. Many white men shot whatever Indians they came upon like coyotes, on sight; others captured them, when they could, and, stripping off their clothes, whipped them till they bled. The Indians retaliated horribly, delivering their white captives ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... Governor Eyre, and published; also an unofficial account of the trial of Mr. Gordon, from the pen of a reporter who was present. It is to be regretted that these papers do not relieve the authorities from the charge of atrocious and illegal cruelty in the slightest degree. Neither does the evidence in any way justify the legal or illegal murder of Mr. Gordon. While in November there was an evident desire to boast of the number and severity of the punishments which had been inflicted upon the unfortunate blacks, there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... week one more such letter reached us—from Mr. Philip Waite, this time—claiming that there was "an atrocious flaw" in two stories of Captain S. P. Meek's. This we could not let go unanswered, first because of the strong terms used, and second because the objection would sound to many like a true criticism; so we turned the letter ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... been tried by a jury of your countrymen, upon the charge of receiving stolen goods, to which you have added the most atrocious crime of intended murder. You have had a fair and impartial trial, and have been found guilty; and it appears that, even had you escaped in this instance, other charges, equally heavy, and which would equally consign ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... consolidation corresponded to our interests—which has led us to support a great Poland and a great Bohemia and to combat the Ukraine, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, Spain, to whose destinies the French, but not we, were indifferent."[238] A press organ of Bologna denounced the atrocious and ignominious sacrifice "which her allies imposed on Italy by means of economic blackmailing and violence with a whip in one hand and a chunk of bread in ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... this country and these times to those with which the author compares them? France, a country just recovered out of twenty-five years of the most cruel and desolating civil war that perhaps was ever known. The kingdom, under the veil of momentary quiet, full of the most atrocious political, operating upon the most furious fanatical factions. Some pretenders even to the crown; and those who did not pretend to the whole, aimed at the partition of the monarchy. There were almost as many competitors as provinces; and all ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... respects, in the most shameless manner. Even civilized men, in war, will often retaliate, by punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. It is not strange that untutored Indians, having received atrocious wrongs from one band of white men, should wreak their vengeance on the next band ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... "scrazing" the tops of mahogany tables over which better folks than themselves had had to—suffer a waste of tissue through evaporation. She was not scrubbing indiscriminately, for there would be further dirt of the same atrocious kind made by people who had still to fetch away their purchases; but she was bent on bringing the parlor, where that "pipe-smoking pig," the bailiff, had sat, to such an appearance of scant comfort as could be given to it by cleanliness and the few articles ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... derived the cult of ancestors. At the present day we see immorality of this kind in the Russian patriarchism among the peasants; the fathers have the custom of misusing their sons' wives. Patriarchism thus degenerates into atrocious tyranny on the part of the chief of the family, who becomes looked ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... Whispering is atrocious, and cannot be tolerated. It is almost as bad to endeavor to draw one person from a general conversation into a tete-a-tete discussion. Private affairs must be delayed ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... lines contain nothing remarkable, still, they are workmanlike and pleasant to read; but the two concluding lines are atrocious, and almost every stanza has similar blemishes. A little more labour, even without much poetic skill, could easily have produced a better result. But Burton was a Hannibal, not a Phormion, and no man can be both. He is happiest, perhaps, in the stanzas containing the legend of St. Thomas, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... the thought away, for though Nutter was not a joker, nor a songster, nor a story-teller, yet they liked him. Besides, Nutter might possibly turn up in a day or two, and in that case 'twould go best with those who had not risked an atrocious conjecture about him in public. So every man waited, and held his tongue upon that point till his ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... harm, was sitting in her house with her children around her when a soldier came up, leveled his musket at the window, and shot her dead on the spot in the midst of her terrified family. On the intercession of a friend the dead body was permitted to be removed when the house was set on fire. This atrocious deed excited such general horror and detestation that the British thought proper to disavow it, and to impute the death of Mrs. Caldwell to a random shot from the retreating militia, though the militia did not fire a musket in the village. The wanton murder of the lady ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... of day. Floggings and scourgings will be universal, lettres de cachet an institution. Why not? Where the god has no sense of justice, why should man? Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of victims will perish at the stake and in the flames in atrocious agony because they are wizards or witches or have had dealings with imaginary devils. Why not? The god does worse than all this. He keeps his victims alive for the sole purpose of glutting his ire and ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... having some grievance against Cyaxarus, King of the Medes, revenged themselves by serving up the limbs of one of his children, whom they had murdered, at a banquet as rare game. The scoundrels who committed this atrocious crime took refuge at the Court of the King of Lydia, who was ill judged enough to protect them. War was accordingly declared between the Medes and Lydians, but a total eclipse of the Sun occurring just when the battle was imminent, had the happy effect ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... and sound to their native land seven Japanese who had been driven by hurricanes in continued succession into the Pacific, and had ultimately been saved from death by British sailors. Our wise government at home were well aware of the atrocious inhospitality practised systematically by these cruel islanders; and what course did they take to propitiate them? Good sense would have prescribed the course of arming the British vessel in so conspicuous a fashion as to inspire the wholesome respect of fear. Instead of which, our government ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... be aware of the precise historical connexion of the incidents of Otway's play with the events of history. They are taken, in the main, from an atrocious conspiracy formed at Venice in 1618. Sir Henry Wotton, then English ambassador at Venice, writes as follows on the 25th of May, in the above year:—"The whole town is here at present in horror and confusion upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various

... Burr, one day, and of his wonderful strength of character and keenness of observation, he broke away suddenly, called him an "atrocious scoundrel," and then asked me about his life and history. Then it was that the kind-hearted, benevolent old man underwent a sudden transfiguration. He trembled all over; his clear eyes lighted up; his white hair was like a glory about his face; and he seemed like one of the Hebrew Prophets, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... impeccable virtue in the face of incriminating circumstantial evidence." For all their "Kultur" Germans are gross, and to the last degree inartistic. Their "nouveau art" is repulsive; their dressing outrageously ugly, and their cooking atrocious. I have watched them here year after year tramping up and down the shady walks stolidly drinking, wearing garments of ingeniously devised ugliness and blind to "l'inutile beaute." There is no variety of type nor ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson

... casket, which can easily be filled again; but that which we take from others is a jewel which a man never has but once, and which stolen can never be replaced. Are we not, then, a thousand times more atrocious plunderers?" ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis

... hand, Mr. Butterfield is drawn into grave errors by his excessive partisanship of the borderers. He passes lightly over their atrocious outrages, colors favorably many of their acts, and praises the generalship of Crawford and the soldiership of his men; when in reality the campaign was badly conducted from beginning to end, and reflected discredit on most who took part in it; Crawford ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... receiving his answers in reply. Condemned to death, as was expected, he was offered his life by the Puritan colonel, Hewson, on the very steps of the scaffold, if he would inculpate the late King Charles in the rising of 1641. This he "stoutly refused to do," and the execution proceeded with all its atrocious details. Whatever may have been the excesses committed under his command by a plundered people, at their first insurrection—and we know that they have been exaggerated beyond all bounds—it must be admitted he died the death of a ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... mission furniture and Morris designs behind. They are making their own models, and making them well. They are turning their restless, beauty-loving energies into sound, constructive channels. The girl who otherwise might have painted atrocious pictures is, in the Village, decorating delightful-looking boxes and jars, or hammering metals into quaint, original shapes that embody her own fleeting fancies. The man who wanted to draw but could never get his perspective right ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... she had come to feel that his obsession was not actually evil, she accepted at the same time the conditions of an atrocious loneliness. She stood now from her husband farther than from the moon. They had no visitors. Callers were few and far between, and less encouraged than before. The empty dark of winter was before them. Among the neighbors was none in whom, ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood

... power founded on that credit, and sink under the permanent and vindictive attacks of the calumniator." This is the politics of Satan—the evil principle which regulates so many things in this world. The enemies of the Jesuits have formed a list of great names who had become the victims of such atrocious Machiavelism.[47] ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... English writers have sometimes ignored or questioned them, are not to be doubted. The art, perhaps the most terrible of all the weapons of satire, of making characters without any great violation of probability represent themselves in the most atrocious and despicable light, was never perhaps possessed in perfection except by Pithou and his colleagues and by Butler. Against these great merits some defects must certainly be set. As a whole, the poem is no doubt tedious, if only on account ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... judgment."[1] With the complications which had taken place in the world since the time of Alexander, the old Temanite and Mosaic principle became still more intolerable.[2] Never had Israel been more faithful to the Law, and yet it was subjected to the atrocious persecution of Antiochus. Only a declaimer, accustomed to repeat old phrases denuded of meaning, would dare to assert that these evils proceeded from the unfaithfulness of the people.[3] What! these victims who died for their faith, these heroic Maccabees, this mother with her ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... would yield a most amazing increase of rent. And for some time it appeared so to do, till it came to the touchstone of experience; and then it was found that there was a defalcation from these monstrous raised revenues which were to cancel in the minds of the Directors the wickedness of so atrocious, flagitious, and horrid an act of treachery. At the end of five years what do you think was the failure? No less than 2,050,000l. Then a new source of corruption was opened,—that is, how to deal with the balances: for every man who had engaged in these transactions was ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... coaxes it out by stealth, whether it be a foot thick or only a fraction of an inch. Such an example we had at our very doors during our last winter, and the untamed winds which blew as a result were atrocious. ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... I, "that you're too good to match yourself against Farrell. The harm he's done you is atrocious—I can hardly look you in the face, Jack, and speak about it. . . . All the same, Jimmy talks sense: an outsider like Farrell isn't worthy of your steel, as the ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... be out of bed so early was the Master of the Rolls, so they went and carried him off. When they got to the court there was no St. John Long, but they thought they might as well stay and hear whatever was going on. It chanced that a man was tried for an atrocious case of forgery and breach of trust. He was found guilty and sentence passed; but he was twenty-three and good-looking. Lady Burghersh could not bear he should be hanged, and she went to all the late Ministers and the Judges to beg him off. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... the other day, "a true one," that I treasured for you as racy, as characteristic of slavery and human nature. A most notoriously atrocious, dissolute, hellish slave-owner died, and one of his slaves—an old woman—said to a lady, "Massa prayed God so to forgive him! Oh, how he prayed! And I am afraid God heard him; they say He's ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... VIF," 1752—A good deal of patriotic indignation has been bubbled over at the mention of what was termed the Old World mode of punishing high treason against the State. With respect to the atrocious sentence pronounced by Chief Justice Osgood, at Quebec, in 1797, carried out on the criminal David McLane, the "disembowling and hanging" particulars (so well related by an eye-witness, the late P. A. DeGaspe, Esq.,) ought not to be considered such ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... being haunted by the ghosts of their victims. Similar instances of religious beliefs and practices are given in the accounts of other criminals, such as the Badhaks and Sansias. And the more strict and serious observances of the Thugs may be accounted for by the more atrocious character of their crimes and the more urgent necessity of finding ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... to call at Mohair on a certain afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the track. The three returned wondering and charmed with Mrs. Cooke; they were sure she had had no hand in the furnishing of that atrocious house. Their example was followed by others at a time when the master of Mohair was superintending in person the docking of some two-year-olds, and equally invisible. These ladies likewise came back to sing Mrs. Cooke's praises. Mrs. Cooke returned the calls. She took tea on the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of owner and veterinary—is experienced. The smith, whose clumsy contrivance has been the cause of all the woe, has abundant reasons to offer for the disease, and his unfailing resort of the "Bar Shoe." This atrocious fetter is supplemented with leather pads, sometimes daubed with tar, and the horse hobbles to his task. Not unfrequently the crust at the front of the hoof sinks in, adhering to the sole; circulation ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell

... fear such a result; for though you have murdered my brother in cold blood, I am too just to forget that you have proved your patriotism through a long and hitherto honourable career. It is my duty to see that the causes of your atrocious action are perfectly clear to my subjects, so that no doubt may exist even in the most prejudiced minds. Do you understand? I repeat that if I have condescended to examine you alone, I have done so only out of a merciful desire to spare an old soldier the suffering and mortification ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... with dignity. He was firmly convinced that he was a much-injured man, and if the justice of a man's cause were to be decided merely upon the demeanor of the defendant, Hastings would have been exonerated. He professed to be horrified, and he no doubt was horrified, by what he called "the atrocious calumnies of Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox." He carried himself as if they were indeed atrocious calumnies without any basis whatsoever. His attitude was that of the martyr supported by the serenity of the saint. He had lived so long in the East that he gained not a little of that Eastern ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... But in course of time the meaning of the word was extended to pain inflicted on the mind, and now coldness and neglect may almost of themselves constitute cruelty, though the English court has sometimes had the greatest hesitation in accepting the most atrocious forms of refined cruelty, because it involved no "physical" element. "The time may very reasonably be looked forward to, however," a legal writer has stated (Montmorency, "The Changing Status of a Married Woman," Law Quarterly Review, April, 1897), "when ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... six years of art in Rome and Paris, he still had a fastidious reverence for women. If she had loved her husband she would have been safe enough from him; but to be bound to a companionship that she gave unwillingly—this had seemed to him atrocious, even before he loved her. How could any husband ask that? Have so little pride—so little pity? The unpardonable thing! What was there to respect in such a marriage? Only, he must not do her harm! But now that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... for the tragedy of character. His Rhadamiste et Zenobie (1711), which has an air of Corneillean grandeur and heroism, notwithstanding a plot so complicated that it is difficult to follow, was received with unmeasured enthusiasm. To be atrocious within the rules was to create a new and thrilling sensation. Torrents of tears flowed for the unhappy heroine of La Motte's Ines de Castro (1723), secretly married to the Prince of Portugal, and pardoned ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... the worst it has gone to sleep, and will wake up again one day. Possibly you may not accept some particular form of faith, but I tell you frankly that to reject all religion simply because you cannot understand it, is nothing but a form of atrocious spiritual vanity. Your mind is too big for you, Miss Granger: it has run away with you, but you know it is tied by a string—it cannot go far. And now perhaps ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... who by this time were close at hand, that they gave immediate chase. Some of the Hungarians showed fight, but being outnumbered were compelled to flee for their lives. Nine of the brutes escaped, but four were literally driven into the surging river and to their death. The inhuman monster whose atrocious act has been described was among the number of the involuntary suicides. Another incident of even greater moment has just been ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... should judge. And those ridiculous rhymes of hers—did she learn those, also, from Professor Hinkley?" queried Mrs. Colebrook. "And as for that atrocious dinner-call of hers, it's a disgrace to ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter

... There are doubtless traits of a heroism worthy a better cause, and sometimes of a redeeming humanity, in the lives of the banditti; but one regrets to find, though happily not in the works of the English travellers who have given accounts of Corsica, a tendency to palliate so atrocious a system as blood-revenge. Vendetta, the name given it, has a romantic sound; and it is treated as a sort of national institution, originating in high and laudable feelings, the injured sense of right, and the love of family; so that, with the glory shed around ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... gang. The list of crimes for which the James Boys are amenable is too long and too horrible to enumerate here in detail. Let it suffice that there are charges of every description in the category against them, including many atrocious murders. ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"

... constitution more as lines to direct his conduct, than barriers to withstand his power; a conspiracy to erect new ramparts, in order to straiten his authority, appeared but one degree removed from open sedition and rebellion. So atrocious in his eyes was such a design, that he seems even unwilling to impute it to the commons; and though he was constrained to adjourn the parliament by reason of the plague, which at that time raged in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume



Words linked to "Atrocious" :   bad, painful, atrociousness, flagitious, abominable, terrible, horrible, horrifying, alarming, grievous



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