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Horrible   Listen
adjective
Horrible  adj.  Exciting, or tending to excite, horror or fear; dreadful; terrible; shocking; hideous; as, a horrible sight; a horrible story; a horrible murder. "A dungeon horrible on all sides round."
Synonyms: Dreadful; frightful; fearful; terrible; awful; terrific; shocking; hideous; horrid.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Horrible" Quotes from Famous Books



... and spectacles of murder were continually presenting themselves. In one place I saw some ten or twelve soldiers with a number of unfortunates whom they had tied back to back in a batch. With volley after volley they despatched them, and proceeded to mutilate their bodies in the usual horrible fashion. Nobody was spared, man, woman, or child, that I could see. The Chinese appeared to offer no resistance. Many of them prostrated themselves on the ground before the butchers with abject submission, and were shot ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... become of them? Who had taken them? And why? Supposing somebody had stolen in and stolen them? Supposing that was why he was sleeping in the library? Yet, if there had been thievery there, wouldn't he have kept awake, to watch? Supposing—here a horrible thought crept into her mind—supposing he, himself, had been the thief! She was southern born and had the southerner's racial distrust of a "nigger's" honesty; yet—as soon as thought she was ashamed of the suspicion. Aunt Betty trusted him with far more than she missed now. She would go ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond

... darkness—shrouds the whole scene; as if through a horrid rift in a murky ceiling, a rainy deluge—'sleety flaw, discolored water'—streams down amain, spreading a grisly spectral light, even more horrible than that palpable night." ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... the world will be flooded with some of the most dramatic, horrible, and romantic of narratives—the life-stories of the British soldiers captured in the early days of the war, their gross ill-treatment, their escapes, and attempts at escape. I claim to be the only unofficial neutral with any large amount of eye-witness, hand-to-hand knowledge ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... a horrible enthusiasm about this reasoning devil as he spoke thus; his crest rose, his breast expanded. That animation which a noble thought gives to generous hearts kindled in the face of the apologist for the darkest and basest of human crimes. Lucretia shuddered; ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... nucleus are neither so individually agreeable nor in any true sense enthusiasts of the drama. Indeed, being painted on the proscenium, with their backs to the stage, the effect they produce is one of studied indifference. Nay more, a horrible suspicion about them refused to be banished from my thoughts; it was based partly upon the costumes of the ladies, partly on the undeniably Teutonic suggestion in the gentlemen's uniforms. However, I said ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various

... have been very ill with a slow fever, which at last took to flying, and became as quick as need be.[131] But, at length, after a week of half-delirium, burning skin, thirst, hot headach, horrible pulsation, and no sleep, by the blessing of barley water, and refusing to see any physician, I recovered. It is an epidemic of the place, which is annual, and visits strangers. Here follow some versicles, which I made one ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... that horrible 'Chopin,'" said Amy irrelevantly; "that is, I could, if—oh Miss Pepper," she broke off suddenly and brought her flushed face very near to the one above her, "could you help me play it—just hear me, you know, and tell me things you did, over again, about ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney

... no deliverance for me," said the lady. "Every hope is dashed. There is no kindness in holding out new hopes to me. My enemies will not let me stay here now my friends know where to find me. I shall be carried to Saint Kilda, or some other horrible place; or, if they have not time to take care of me while they are setting up their new king, they will murder me. Oh, I shall never live to see Edinburgh again: and my husband and Lovat will be lording ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau

... know my daughter again," said he, and gave her his horrible paw, the which she kissed very humbly, and that matter was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... he gave a blood-curdling laugh, and the horrible truth burst upon the listener's dazed senses. She was alone with a maniac. All the stories she had ever read rushed to her memory, and the only clear idea she had was the conviction that she must, if possible, humor his vagaries ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... best that you should go somewhere, Harry, but Peru seems to be a horrible place." "Barnett speaks of it in high terms. You know he was four or five years out there. He describes the people as being delightful, and he has nothing to say against ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... he had seen nor would any return a reply or aught of address would supply; and said they, 'O King of the Age, verily appearances in dreams hit the mark at times and at times fly wide; for when a man is of a melancholic humour he seeth in his sleep things which be terrible and horrible and he waxeth startled thereat: haply this vision thou hast beheld may be of the imbroglios of dreams so do thou commit the reins to Him who all overreigns and the best Worker is He of all that wisheth and willeth He.' Now when Al-Mihrjan heard these words of the Sages and the Star-gazers ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... to blame?" she said, bursting into tears. "I have had such a horrible day with my thoughts. I don't see how I could help it; yet it was my fault, ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... and the most horrible of calamities. Even a war for liberty itself was rarely compensated by the consequences. "Yet the common judgment of mankind consigned to lasting infamy the people who would surrender their rights and freedom for the sake of ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... much oblige me by drinking it, if he thought he could do it safely, but by no means otherwise. When he did throw his head back and take it off quick, I had a horrible fear, I confess, of seeing him meet the fate of the lamented Mr. Topsawyer, and fall lifeless on the carpet. But it didn't hurt him. On the contrary, I thought he seemed ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... words, and says, 'Come unto Me, and I will give you rest'; does that not draw? We are all in the bog. He stands on firm ground, and puts out a hand. If you like to clutch it, by the pledge of the nail-prints on the palm, He will lift you from 'the horrible pit and the miry clay, and set your feet upon a rock.' God grant that all of us may say, 'Draw us, and we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... with her eyes full of tears, "I do feel so sorry. I am afraid we have come too late. Poor Mollie will think I have broken my promise. What could have happened to her? Do you think her horrible old father has put her in an asylum? She told me that he often threatened her, unless she did whatever ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers

... to our camp, whose station was about six miles further up the creek, in one of the valleys amongst the ranges. He had heard from the natives that they had killed a "white man, gentleman," as they said, and he added a number of horrible particulars of the alleged murder of Mr. Cunningham by the aborigines which subsequent accounts however proved to have been ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... Allen's feet, enduring the most horrible tortures because of the irons, but never complaining for fear that he might be ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan

... to do that. I told her at the beginning—I mean, she understood—it wouldn't do. But there's lots of things I'd like to do, if mother wasn't afraid. I should like to ride, or at least to have a tricycle. It's about the only thing to make life bearable in this horrible place. Such weather! ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth

... the one that made it necessary? Who was the one that brought me to such a pitch of desperation that I was ready to do any thing, however wild or frantic? Who? Why, you yourself—you, who come to me now, and with a solemn voice ask me to calm myself. Is it not possible for you to see what a horrible mockery all this must be to me? But I will do what you ask. I will be calm in spite of all. Come, now, I will meet you on your own ground. I will ask you one thing. How much money will you take ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... "You 've helped me out of a horrible scrape. Now, go and take him to the hotel and see him comfortably located, and tell them to ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... guilty of the horrible deed we suspect, I don't think that they will escape," said Jack. "Even if they do get free of us, Heaven will inflict on them the punishment they ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... with all mankind. He is greedy for victims to be forever enclosed in his great and gloomy domain. Destruction is his one and single object; nothing can withstand his attack. Armed with a sword, his favorite time for stalking about is at night, when he strikes his unerring blows. Horrible demons of pestilence and of all manner of disease constitute his train, who are sent out by him on missions of death. The favorite titles by which he is known appear in a hymn[1207] addressed to him, as god of the lower world. He ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... smiling in spite of myself. "I have not been picking, or stealing, or abducting any young woman, or courting my neighbour's wife; but I am worried and perplexed. When I sleep I have dreadful dreams—horrible dreams," I added, shuddering. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... uncontrollable, Menace all life within their giant grasp; Leaping and raging in their frantic glee, Dashing their spray aloft, as on they rush In wild confusion to the dreadful steep. An instant on the verge they seem to pause, As if, even in their frenzy, such a gulf Were horrible, then slowly bending down, Plunge headlong where the never-ceasing roar Ascends, and the revolving clouds of spray, Forever during yet forever new. The sun appears. And, straightway, on the cloud Which veils the struggles of the fallen wave In everlasting secrecy, and wafts Away, like smoke of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... get just as much for it as they possibly can—that is the labor question." It did my soul good, as a teetotaler, to hear his scathing denunciation of the liquor traffic. He was fierce in his wrath against "the horrible and detestable damnation of whuskie and every kind of strong drink." In this strain the thin and weird looking old Iconoclast went on for an hour until he wound up with declaring, "England has joost gane clear doon into an abominable cesspool of lies, shoddies and shams—down to a bottomless ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... I followed him, I had time to note the number, 14a. It communicated with a suite of rooms almost identical with our own. The sitting-room was empty and in the utmost disorder, but from the direction of the principal bedroom came a most horrible mumbling and gurgling sound—a sound utterly indescribable. For one instant we hesitated at the threshold—hesitated to face the horror beyond; then almost side by side ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... Chases are coming to-night—Neil and Dorothy, on their way somewhere. Isn't it horrible? What do you suppose they'll think ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... too. O Dudley! I have been ill!—very ill, since we last met!—for I call not this morning's horrible vision a meeting. I have been in sickness, in grief, and in danger. But thou art come, and all is joy, and health, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... his agony, took part in his struggle to regain his freedom. She clinched her small hands and set her teeth. She held her breath, trying to feel exactly as he was feeling. And then suddenly she lifted her hands up to her face, covering her nostrils. What a horrible sensation it was, this suffocation, this pressing of the life out of the body, almost as one may push a person brutally out of a room! She could bear it no more, and she dropped her hands. As she did so the boy's dark head rose ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... howdahs, and the shouts of the beaters and shikarries, distracted his attention for a moment. He stood whirling his tail to right and left, with half dropped jaw and flaming eyes, half pressing, half grabbing the fleshy arm of the senseless man beneath him—impatient, alarmed, and horrible. ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... guilt seized her, the horrible possibility of having been a wife only in name. She did not weigh the matter calmly enough to feel quite as distinctly as she ought to have done that she could not be touched or denied in the faintest degree by a sin that was not her sin. Still she raised her head as she could not have ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... man give a loud scream, then to my surprise there he was, running by my side, grinning and making horrible grimaces. ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... A horrible curse fell from the thick, loose lips of Blind Charlie Peck. Blake, his sickly pallor deepening, stared ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... counterfeit matron; It is her habit only that is honest, Herself's a bawd. Let not the virgin's cheek Make soft thy trenchant sword; for those milk paps That through the window-bars bore at men's eyes, Are not within the leaf of pity writ, But set them down horrible traitors. Spare not the babe, Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy; Think it a bastard, whom the oracle Hath doubtfully pronounc'd thy throat shall cut, And mince it sans remorse. Swear against objects; Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes, Whose ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... so!" he burst out. "It's horrible!" It was in the first hours after Ewbert's return from Hilbrook's death-bed, and his spent nerves gave way in ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... alone could open. There were 'Bocche di Lioni' in several places at the head of the Giant's Staircase, and in others. The mouths are gone, but the holes remain. Though the interior of the Ponte di Sospiri is no longer visible, the prisons are horrible places, twenty-four in number, besides three others under water which the French had closed up. They are about fourteen feet long, seven wide, and seven high, with one hole to admit air, a wooden bed, which was covered with straw, and a shelf. In one of the prisons are several ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... on my hip was so inflamed that I could only sleep in a sitting posture. Seated with my back against a tree, the smoke from the fire almost enveloping me in its suffocating folds, I vainly tried, amid the din and uproar of this horrible serenade, to woo the drowsy god. My imagination was instinct with terror. At one moment it seemed as if, in the density of a thicket, I could see the blazing eyes of a formidable forest monster fixed upon me, preparatory to a deadly leap; at another I fancied that I heard the swift approach of ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts

... doth not admit any violent passions, such as proceed from the greatest extremity, and usually accompany despair; yet because Despairing Love is not attended with those frightful and horrible consequences, but looks more like grief to be pittied, and a pleasing madness, than rage and fury, Eclogue is so far from refusing, that it rather loves, and passionately requires them. Therefore an unfortunate Shepherd may be brought ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin

... breast, they had to be forcibly fastened down at the wrists by a band of spun—yam to the buttons of his jacket. His right hand was shut, with the exception of the forefinger, which was extended, pointing upwards; but the whole arm, from the shoulder down, had the horrible appearance of struggling to get free from the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... the suspicion of their being concerned in the affair in question. "When Napoleon saw the matter in its true light," said Savary, "when I proved to him the palpable existence of the odious machination, he could not find terms to express his indignation. 'What baseness, what horrible villainy!' he exclaimed; and gave me orders to arrest and bring to Paris the infamous writer of the letter; and you may rely upon it his orders shall ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... of combatants. The little girls parted to let me through. I saw then that the contending parties were Angel and a boy whose tousled head was fully six inches above my brother's. He had gripped Angel by the back of the neck with one hand, while with the other he struck blows that sounded horrible to me. Angel was hitting out wildly. When the boy saw me, he hooked his leg behind Angel's and threw him on his back with deadly ease, at the same time administering a kick in the stomach. He turned then to me with ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... though not intimately, acquainted with the deceased, took upon himself all the necessary arrangements, and superintended the funeral; after which ceremony, Howard returned to London; and in Paris, as in the grave, all things are forgotten! But still in De Montaigne's breast there dwelt a horrible fear. As soon as he had learned from Maltravers the charge the maniac brought against Vargrave, there came upon him the recollection of that day when Cesarini had attempted De Montaigne's life, evidently mistaking him in his delirium for another,—and the sullen, cunning, and ferocious ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... useless, Graham," panted the Colonel at last; "these sheep hamper every movement. We can do nothing in this horrible darkness. I am going to give the order for every man to make for the walls, where we must defend ourselves with the bayonet as the fellows attack us. We must wait for morning, ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... reverberated among the ice-cliffs. Smoke burst in a huge volume from the heart of the berg. Masses, fragments, domes, and pinnacles were hurled into the air, and fell back to mingle with the blue precipices that tumbled, slid, or plunged in horrible confusion. Only a portion, indeed, of the mighty mass had been actually disrupted, but the shock to the surrounding ice was so shattering that ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... present to his mother by request. When the telegram told him briefly that she had been hurt in a motor accident, he had thought with agony that it might have been in the car he had given. He was thankful that it had not been so. That would have seemed too horrible—as if he had killed her. Now he would hear how it had really happened. Every nerve was tense as if he were awaiting ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... know of. He is too full of Rowley the priest, and Mr Walpole's horrible rudeness to him, to be much in love. Of course he talks about my eyes, and my grace, and all such rubbish, but that is not love, ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall

... he had horrible thoughts of being scrubbed for the deadly sin of losing touch with the flotilla and meandering about the ocean like a lost sheep looking for his next ahead. If he did not succeed in finding her somebody's blood ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling

... Wandsworth without delay, as a most amazing thing had happened. A box marked 'From Abdul ben Meerza' had been delivered there, of all astonishing places. The message concluded by saying that as it was such a horrible night, the Captain, her father, would not hear of his returning, so begged him to bring his effects, and come prepared ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... his pace, 'I don't know what John will think has become of me. He'll begin to be afraid I have strayed into one of those streets where the countrymen are murdered; and that I have been made meat pies of, or some such horrible thing.' ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... f. n.? fetter, figuratively of a strong gripe: dat. pl. heardan clammum, 964; heardum clammum, 1336; atolan clommum (horrible claws of the mother of ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... and they wore me out. If we had not ordered the Saint-Bartholomew, the Guises would have done the same thing by the help of Rome and the monks. The League, which was powerful only in consequence of my old age, would have begun in 1573.' 'But, madame, instead of ordering that horrible murder (pardon my plainness) why not have employed the vast resources of your political power in giving to the Reformers those wise institutions which made the reign of Henri IV. so glorious and so peaceful?' She smiled ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... my mind, my inspiration, broke loose. I rose to my super-self. And now if a horrible thing had stood grey at my elbow, unmoved, I would have looked it ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... most horrible orgies imaginable. Men, women, and even children, became speedily intoxicated, and entirely forgetful of their fears and awful position. They were, in fact, like the fiercest savages, and, like them, danced and shouted and sang, till some of them fell ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... a coquettish smile; "you are flattering, sir road-agent. You, at least, are not beautiful, in that horrible black suit and villainous mask. You remind me of a picture I have seen somewhere of the devil in disguise; all that is lacking is the horns, tail ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler

... the book which Horvendile had made comes presently a garbage-man, newly returned from foreign travel for his health's sake, whose name was John. And this scavenger cried, "Oh, horrible! for here is very shameless mention of a sword and a spear ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell

... thousand murders have been committed; and of these, two hundred remain mysteries to-day, their perpetrators having gone free and undetected. In the past year, seventeen women have been murdered in Chicago, some under circumstances too horrible to mention. In a list of fifty murders by unknown parties during the last few years, the whole gamut of dastardly crime has been run. The slaughter list is appalling. The story of this killing of women is so repellant that one turns to the bloodiest deeds of Western personal ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... earliest dawn the splendid Highland Brigade appears to have stumbled into a horrible snare, and in such close formation as to render them absolutely helpless against their foes. Instantly their general fell, mortally wounded; for a moment the whole Brigade seemed in a double sense to have lost its ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers

... through the night he sat with bowed head, alternately planning rescue attempts and cursing himself for bringing Ora to this horrible end. Detis was dead; the Nomad was hopelessly beyond repair for many days, even if they could make their escape and locate it; Nazu had saved his own skin, and they were left to the mercy of these vibration-crazed brutes who waited ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent

... "what a plague have we got to be grateful for? I suppose you think we ought to tell you you are the best friend we have, because you have scrouged us, neck and crop, into this horrible hole, like turkeys fatted for Christmas. 'Sdeath! one's hair is flatted down like a pancake; and as for one's legs, you had better cut them off at once than tuck them up in a place a foot square,—to say nothing of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... which drove her deeper and deeper into sottishness,—caused her one day to have a miscarriage, and she fell half dead on the floor. Such a frightful tearing away of the veil we have worn over our eyes is like the examination of a pocketful of horrible things in a dead body suddenly opened. From what we have heard I suddenly seem to realize what she must have suffered for ten years past: the dread of an anonymous letter to us or of a denunciation from some dealer; and the constant trepidation on the subject of the money that was demanded ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... me in the face every waking hour, like a grisly spectre with bloody fang and claw, is the extermination of species. To me, that is a horrible thing. It is wholesale murder, no less. It is capital crime, and a black disgrace to the races of civilized mankind. I say "civilized mankind," ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... hesitating for an hour between Yes and No, "it shall, at any rate, be the last. Since I have gone so far as to see what he wrote to his friend, why should I not know what he says to her? If it is a horrible crime, is it not a proof of love? Oh, Albert! am ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac

... "You are always jesting. But you do not know—you cannot read the horrible thoughts in my mind. I cannot resolve their meaning even to myself. There is some truth in your light words; I feel, I know instinctively, that the woman I love has an attraction about her which is not good, but ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... that a boy climbed a cornstalk to see how the sky and clouds looked and now the stalk is growing faster than the boy can climb down. The boy is clear out of sight. Three men have taken the contract for cutting down the stalk with axes to save the boy a horrible death by starving, but the stalk grows so rapidly that they can't hit twice in the same place. The boy is living on green corn alone and has already thrown down over four bushels of cobs. Even if the corn holds out there is still danger that the boy ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... this country, any record of infection being propagated from them afterwards. The experiments of Doctor Henry are as simple and beautiful in themselves, as they promise to be useful and important, for now even the horrible contagion of hospital gangrene would appear to be under the controul of the pure agent he has been describing; and the principle now established of light and heat, the grand vivifying powers of the creation, being the sure and true preservers ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... violence and robbery, coarse delight and savage pain, reckless joke and hopeless death. Is it any wonder that I cannot sink with these, that I cannot so forget my soul, as to live the life of brutes, and die the death more horrible because it dreams of waking? There is none to lead me forward, there is none to teach me right; young as I am, I live beneath a curse that ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... prostration and seal her lips to speech? Why wouldn't she have dared to tell Peter what she had seen? What was this secret and how could she share it with McGuire when twenty-four hours ago she had been in complete ignorance of the mystery? Why wouldn't she talk? Was the vision too intimate? Or too horrible? ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... enforced stay, we were confronted and distressed by the most horrible and shocking spectacle. The wounded, mainly Russians, had taken refuge during the fighting in the houses which were soon set ablaze. All who could walk fled at the approach of this new danger, but the crippled and gravely injured were ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... to pity by seeing a man scourged. Again, in the early ages of the Church, during the persecutions, the Emperors used to order the Christians to be thrown to wild beasts to be torn to pieces in the presence of the people—who applauded these horrible sights. They who could see so many put to death would not mind putting one to death, even in the most ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead

... briers fly back about the gloomy opening, and they stepped back on the smooth greensward again. Ah, how bright and warm the sunshine was, after that horrible black pit! Hilda shivered again at the thought of it, and then laughed at her own cowardice. She turned and gazed at the waterfall, creaming and curling over the rocks, and making such a merry, musical jest of its tumble into the pool. "Oh, lovely, lovely!" she cried, ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... But some of the friends and comrades of these brave men never came home; their bones lie mouldering beneath the turf at White Plains, at Saratoga, at Brandywine, and at Princeton. Some perished with cold and hunger at Valley Forge; some died of fever in the horrible Old Sugar-house; some rotted alive in the Jersey prison-hulk; some lie buried under the gloomy walls of Dartmoor; and some there were whose fate was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... that in Bombay circumstances conspired to bring the crude facts of labor enslavement vividly before me. I found a vigorous agitation raging in the English press against the horrible sweating that was going on in the cotton mills, I met the journalist most intimately concerned in the business on my second day in India, and before a week was out I was hard at work getting up the question and preparing a memorandum with him on the possibility ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... of the Revolutionary Tribunal, Henriot, the commander of the National Guard, Couthon and St. Just, the tools of the tyrant, were denounced, condemned, and executed. The last hours of Robespierre were horrible beyond description. When he was led to execution, the blood flowed from his broken jaw, his face was deadly pale, and he uttered yells of agony, which filled all hearts with terror. But one woman, nevertheless, penetrated the crowd which surrounded him, exclaiming, "Murderer of my kindred! your ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... of a strong, robust man—was different from all his other stage deaths. He did really almost die—he imagined death with such horrible intensity. His eyes would disappear upwards, his face grow gray, his ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... had occurred in the habits of the citizens of Edinburgh are pourtrayed in a colloquy between an old farmer and his city friend. In 1811 appeared "Clan-Alpin's Vow, a Fragment," with the author's name prefixed. This production, founded upon a horrible tragedy connected with the history of the Clan Macgregor, proved one of the most popular of the author's works; it was reprinted in 1817, by Bentley and Son, London. His future publications may be simply enumerated; they were generally issued from ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... the bough of a great maple tree, eating gingerbread. The sight of his face filled Willy with strange feelings. What a naughty, dreadful face it was, with the purple scar across the left cheek! Willy had never admired that scar, but now he thought it was horrible. His mother was right: Gid must be a ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May

... the position he had taken. No one replied to her husband, and Mrs. Arnett continued. "Take your protection if you will. Proclaim yourselves traitors and cowards, false to your country and your God, but horrible will be the judgment upon your heads and the heads of those that love you. I tell you that England will never conquer. I know it and feel it in every fiber of my heart. Has God led us thus far to desert us now? Will He who led our fathers across the stormy winter seas forsake their children ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... attendants. Why did you let this horrible deed be done? Why did you not lay hold on her, and keep her From ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Chartist demands were political, it was the social misery of the time that drove men and women into the Chartist movement. The wretchedness of their lot—its hopeless outlook, and the horrible housing conditions in the big towns—these things seemed intolerable to the more intelligent of the working people, and thousands flocked to the monster Chartist demonstrations, and found comfort in the orations of Feargus ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... order that it may be better-known and disseminated amongst his fellow-creatures.—Being from the nature of my profession (my inclination perhaps also conducing that way) necessarily accustomed to a sedentary life, I became the unhappy victim of all those horrible maladies incident to a debility of the nervous system, augmented by inattention to myself, accompanied with a depression of spirits, verging to an almost absolute despondency. A gentleman, whose goodness ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith

... board, 'twill appear as if there were twenty; now should you wear a pair of these spectacles, and see your wife tying her shoe, you would imagine twenty hands were taking up of your wife's clothes, and this would put you into a horrible causeless fury. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... tell his mother and his father about it that night, it was such a whirling mass of wonders and glories that they could not make head nor tail of it. It is useless to speak of the Fairy Queen in her glittering white, coming to the rescue in the nick of time with her diamond sceptre, or of the horrible demons, or the trouble and excitement they made for everybody, or of the beautiful young lady who—and such leapings and twistings and climbings and tumblings as no mere human beings with bones in them could ever have performed—it is no use; it is best not to try to describe it. ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen

... a powerful hand stopped the Tartar's arm. Michael was there. He had leapt forward at this horrible scene. If at the relay at Ichim he had restrained himself when Ogareff's whip had struck him, here before his mother, who was about to be struck, he could not do so. ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... newspapers? Has the photograph proclaimed your infamous notoriety in all the shop-windows?" He dropped back into his chair, and wrung his hands in a frenzy. "Oh, the public!" he exclaimed; "the horrible public! I can't get away from them—I can't hide myself, even here. You have had your stare at me, like the rest," he cried, turning on me fiercely. "I knew it when you passed me ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... and soul. That part of the Jewish quarter which remained standing after the great fire, and which is called the Old Lane, those high blackened houses, where a grinning, sweaty race of people bargains and chaffers, is a horrible relic of the Middle Ages. The older synagogue exists no more; it was less capacious than the present one, which was built later, after the Nuremberg exiles were taken into the community, and lay ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... shore became aware of a strange, death-like stillness that had fallen over all things, a feeling of gloom and oppression in the air. The sun indeed still shone unclouded over the land, but away out at sea to the north-east there was a horrible canker of blackness that was eating up the sky, and that already had hid from sight, as by a wall, those boats that lay farthest from the land, whilst those still visible could be seen hurriedly letting everything go by the run. Then the blackness shut down over all, and men could but ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... beard in the grasp of the English knight. The strictly military business being done, and such of the garrison as did not escape put, as by right, to the sword, the good knight, Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, took no further part in the proceedings of the conquerors of that ill-fated place. A scene of horrible massacre and frightful reprisals ensued, and the Christian warriors, hot with victory and flushed with slaughter, were, it is to be feared, as savage in their hour of triumph as ever their ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to work at. Three minutes afterwards they tore away her body from the iron teeth which had destroyed her. But I, a lad of twelve, had seen her face just as the thing caught her, and if I live to be a hundred I shall never forget that face—that horrible, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... a recent, horrible murder. A trailing streak of blood led from the platform toward the door and faded when the ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves

... looketh at him in wonderment, for that he was so big that never had he seen any man so big of his body. He seeth the shield at his neck, that was right black and huge and hideous. He seeth the Dragon's head in the midst thereof, that casteth out fire and flame in great plenty, so foul and hideous and horrible that all the field stank thereof. The damsel draweth her toward the castle and leaveth the ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown

... left him. But he will not leave his station. He must do his duty. The night deepens. The burning-ground becomes still more hideous. To try the king's sense of duty, Virtue once more becomes incarnate and this time appears before the king in a horrible form. The king has never before seen such a terrible sight, but still he will not leave his station. Not one or two but myriads of such forms dance before him, but in vain. The king exclaims, "No one shall be allowed to burn any corpse without depositing rags and couches with ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta

... say that two French generals were shot for not supporting French, and then they say only one; and people come who have helped take the wounded French from the field and they won't even talk, it is so horrible; and a lady says that her own son (wounded) told her that when a man raised up in the trench to fire, the stench was so awful that it made him sick for an hour; and the poor Belgians come here by the tens of thousands, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... Great Britain had no counterpart in that country. Still, it was thought necessary to suppress another catholic convention in 1814, and to renew the insurrection act, which remained in force with one interval till 1817. It can well be imagined that a population so lawless, and so prone to horrible outrages which shock Englishmen more than a thousand crimes against property, should have excited little general sympathy by their complaints of political grievances. These grievances were justly denounced by party leaders, but in the eyes of ordinary politicians, and still more of electors, coercion ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... who met here, veterans almost all of them, and neither would yield. The superior weight and range of the Northern guns gave them an advantage in artillery, and it was used to the utmost. Dick did not see how men could live under such a horrible fire, but there were the gray lines replying, and wherever they yielded, ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... believed by many. Executed criminals were in active demand; their bodies were expeditiously transferred from the gallows or scaffold to the operating table, and their dead limbs were made to struggle and plunge, their eyeballs to roll, and their features to perpetrate the most horrible contortions by connecting nerves with one pole, and muscles with the opposite ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... him up before a magistrate, provided I could have found one. But I was in a wild place, and he had a clan about him, and if I had had him up I have no doubt I should have been outsworn. I, however, have met one fine, noble old fellow. The other night I lost my way amongst horrible moors, and wandered for miles and miles without seeing a soul. At last I saw a light, which came from the window of a rude hovel. I tapped, at the window, and shouted, and at last an old man came out. He asked me what I wanted, and I told him I had lost my way. He asked ...
— Letters to his mother, Ann Borrow - and Other Correspondents • George Borrow

... her of home as the stars, which shone upon her just as they had shone at home, and with the thought of home came a remembrance of the Heavenly Father of whom she had thought so little lately, but who had watched over her unceasingly and had helped her that day to save her little cousin from a horrible fate. ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley

... union with Lady Olivia Lovel, who was then a young widow, and the favorite niece of the most powerful nobleman in the kingdom. Upon this demand, he confessed to the earl that his affections were engaged. His lordship, whose passions were those of a madman, broke into such horrible execrations of myself and my family, that Mr. Stanhope, himself, alas! enraged, intemperately swore that no power on earth should compel him to marry so notorious a woman as Lady Olivia Lovel, nor to give me up. After communicating these particulars, ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... he would defer. There was no intelligible likelihood of his having returned to the river, and been accidentally drowned in the dark, unless it should appear likely to Mr. Sapsea, and then again he would defer. He washed his hands as clean as he could of all horrible suspicions, unless it should appear to Mr. Sapsea that some such were inseparable from his last companion before his disappearance (not on good terms with previously), and then, once more, he would defer. His own state of mind, he being distracted with ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... loaded. So we withdrew, and the merchants were called in. Staying without, my Lord FitzHarding come thither, and fell to discourse of Prince Rupert's disease, [Morbus, scil, Gallicus.] telling the horrible degree of its breaking out on his head. He observed also from the Prince, that courage is not what men take it to be, a contempt of death; for, says he, how chagrined the Prince was the other day when ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... bloody repulses; the crackle of flames rose high above the pandemonium of battle and dense smoke-clouds drifted chokingly above this hideous carnival of death. Thus for two days the armies staggered backward and forward with no result save a horrible loss of life. Once the Union forces almost succeeded in gaining a position which would have disposed of their adversaries, but Lee saw the danger just in the nick of time and, rushing a Texas brigade to the rescue, led the charge in person until his troops ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill

... Amid horrible tortures, he not only confest, but continued to triumph in his crime. His judges believed him to be possest of the devil. The next day he was executed. His right hand was burned off in a tube of red-hot iron; the flesh of his arms and legs was torn off with red-hot ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... with fire and eloquence because she spoke with authority, Seth too talked with a bitter brilliance that won the crowd and held it against its will. With biting sarcasm and horrible accuracy Seth drew a picture of Fanny as made Green Valley smile and laugh before it could catch itself and realize ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... People can never be reconciled to so fundamental a Change of their civil Constitution; and I should think that General Gage, allowing that he has but a small Share of Prudence, will hardly think of risqueing the horrible Effects of civil War, by suddenly attempting to force the Establishmt of a Plan of civil Government which must be shocking to all the other Colonies even in the Contemplation of it; but the more so, as they must consider themselves to be deeply interrested ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... are a few other charges. And quite probably I can think of more if you beat these. I'm going to make an example of you, Kennon. I'm going to drag you down and stamp on you. You're going to be a horrible example to all smart operators who think they can break contracts. It's taken a million credits and ten years' time to hunt you down, but it's going to be ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone

... well enough inclined to take a part in such a scheme— provided it did not in any way make him a party with the Zamenoys in things general against the Balatkas. It was his duty as a Christian— though he himself was rather slack in the performance of his own religious duties—to put a stop to this horrible marriage if he could do so; but it behoved him to be true to his master and mistress, and especially true to them in opposition to the Zamenoys. He had in some sort been carrying on a losing battle against the Zamenoys all his life, and had some of the feelings of a martyr, telling ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... his reputation may be, should marry (on his own account as well as that of the girl) without thorough examination by a physician. The consequences of venereal infection administered to unborn children by their parents are too horrible to allow of any risk being taken. Another bit of advice, which cannot be too highly commended, is that the prospective husband and wife, before they marry, have a plain talk with each other regarding individual sexual peculiarities ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton

... came to understand that they were Danish miles, of eight thousand yards each, he was obliged to be more moderate in his ideas, and, considering the horrible roads we had to follow, to allow eight or ten days for ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... distinguished ancestors. He studied them gravely, from Frederick I, Burgrave of Nuremburg, to that other Frederick, his own father, and husband of the fair English princess against whose country he was so shortly going to wage the most horrible warfare that has ever been waged in the whole ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji

... nothing except the guns, those guns which an ardent sportsman cannot afford to leave behind—you agree, M. d'Aigleroche—those guns which we find here, hanging in trophies on the walls!... Proofs? What about that date, the 5th of September, which was the date of the crime and which has left such a horrible memory in the criminal's mind that every year at this time—at this time alone—he surrounds himself with distractions and that every year, on this same 5th of September, he forgets his habits of temperance? Well, to-day, is the 5th of September.... Proofs? Why, if there weren't any ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... distance, that we might not encumber each other's motions, ere the triple giant-brotherhood drew near to attack us. They were about twice our height, and armed to the teeth. Through the visors of their helmets their monstrous eyes shone with a horrible ferocity. I was in the middle position, and the middle giant approached me. My eyes were busy with his armour, and I was not a moment in settling my mode of attack. I saw that his body-armour was somewhat clumsily made, and that the overlappings in the lower part had more play than necessary; ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... a hideous snake, and hung it up above Loki, so that its venom would drop into his upturned face. But Sigyn, the loving wife of the suffering wretch, left her home in the pleasant halls of Asgard, and came to his horrible prison house to soothe and comfort him; and evermore she holds a basin above his head, and catches in it the poisonous drops as they fall. When the basin is filled, and she turns to empty it in the tar-black river that flows through that home of horrors, the terrible venom falls upon ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin

... and gazed at the page marked with blue pencil. Here, under black headlines, which screamed the success of the convention of the Ladies of Honor, was a horrible blotted outrage resembling a stout negress peering through a screen door and labeled, "Mrs. Serena Sarah Dott, of Scarford, whose brilliant paper scored the success of the meeting." It was only by a process of deduction that Daniel realized the thing to be a reproduction of the ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... see much actual harm in the idea, and we were married accordingly at a registry office in London. Everything would have been well, and all would have gone as we hoped, but for the one unforeseen and horrible calamity. My wife died six months before my grandfather, on the day ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... slaughter. Nevertheless, count Saxe continued pouring in other battalions, and the French regained and maintained their footing in the village, after it had been three times lost and carried. The action was chiefly confined to this post, where the field exhibited a horrible scene of carnage. At noon the duke of Cumberland ordered the whole left wing to advance against the enemy, whose infantry gave way; prince Waldeck led up the centre; marshal Bathiani made a motion with the right wing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... allies; at hand he had easy victims—the Galla prince and his chiefs. Theodore mounted his horse, called his body-guard, and sent for those men, who had already lingered long in captivity through trusting to his word, and then followed a scene so horrible that I dare not write the details. All were killed some—thirty-two, I believe—and their still breathing bodies hurled over the precipice. It is probable that shortly afterwards Theodore regretted having allowed himself to be guided by passion. With ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... midst of this preparation, half an hour after my father had left us, we heard a great uproar in the street. At first we thought the shouts were only rejoicings for victory, but as they came nearer we heard screechings and yellings indescribably horrible. A mob had gathered at the gates of the barrack-yard, and joined by many soldiers of the yeomanry on leaving parade, had followed Major Eustace and my father from the barracks. The Major being this evening in coloured clothes, the people no longer knew him to be an officer, nor conceived, ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth

... the Rhine the three knights were shocked at the misery and ruin which met their eyes on all sides. Every castle and house throughout the country, of a class superior to those of the peasants, was destroyed, and tales of the most horrible outrages and ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... Every new conspiracy to amass millions through wrecking railroads, through pouring vast sums upon the stock market, through causing as vast sums to disappear from public use, stains them blacker with the proof of their horrible inhumanity. Even death does not always end their monstrous rapine, for when they pay what is called the debt of nature they too often fling, in their wills, a posthumous sneer at that still larger debt owed to their fellow-creatures, and make some eldest ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... moonshine and very cold, we set out, his coach carrying us, and so all night travelled to Greenwich, we sometimes sleeping a little and then talking and laughing by the way, and with much pleasure, but that it was very horrible cold, that I was afeard of an ague. A pretty passage was that the coach stood of a sudden and the coachman come down and the horses stirring, he cried, Hold! which waked me, and the coach[man] standing at the boote to [do] something ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... am thinking of joining one of your volunteer battalions because I want to fight. I do so because I think you are in the right, and that this war has been forced upon you by the Germans, who are likely to inflict horrible sufferings ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... not recognized. This employee was instructed not to ring the gong until he had received personal orders to do so from the President; a permanent telephone connection was established with the office in which the bankers were conferring, and amid a horrible suspense the outcome of their conference was awaited. For twenty minutes this strain continued. It was a quarter before ten and only fifteen minutes remained in which to act. Meanwhile the brokers were fast assembling upon the board room floor, ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble

... after Jarvis's entrance, was that of the keeper of a disorderly house. She was horrible. He felt she ought to be branded in some way, so that she and her vile trade would be known wherever she went. A man went her bail, and she flounced out in a ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke

... thought! Sore and weary, I lay down in a corner of the shed on some hay and fell asleep. I dreamed that I heard screams of women, mingled with song and laughter, and through it all the noise of music and dancing. Then the dream changed into a horrible nightmare in the shape of a big sawhorse which kicked at me and threatened me with ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... Our street musicians are growing worse and worse. There is a piper who infests the street in which I live, and sets my nerves on edge with his horrible droning. What am I ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various

... pleasant to look upon. This is truly a case where distance lends enchantment to the view; for, if we went down close to the surface, we should find it a scene of the weirdest and wildest desolation—more horrible than anything seen during a nightmare, and more terrible than anything imagined ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... was then read; and Sir Geoffrey Peveril heard, with some composure, the first part of it, which stated him to have placed his son in the household of the Countess of Derby, a recusant Papist, for the purpose of aiding the horrible and bloodthirsty Popish Plot—with having had arms and ammunition concealed in his house—and with receiving a blank commission from the Lord Stafford, who had suffered death on account of the Plot. But when the charge went on ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... so hard as to understand that there are human beings in this world besides one's self and one's set. But let us be selfishly thankful that it isn't you and I there in the apothecary's shop, as it might very well be; and let us get to the boat as soon as we can, and end this horrible midsummer-day's dream. We must have a carriage," he added with tardy wisdom, hailing an empty hack, "as we ought to have had all day; though I'm not sorry, now the worst's over, to have ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... be the body of a man who had died by violence. His dress and person denoted that of a passenger rather than that of a seaman, and he had evidently been dead but a very few hours, probably not twelve. The cut of a sabre had cleft his skull. Agreeing not to acquaint the ladies with this horrible discovery, the body was hastily covered with the sand, the pockets of the dead man having been first examined; for, contrary to usage, his person had not been stripped. A letter was found, written by a wife to her husband, and nothing more. It was in ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... He was dining one evening with a large party at Carlton House. The conversation turned upon Sir Robert Calder's sentence. [33] Erskine said, to set a pack of yellow Admirals who had never seen active service to judge a brave and distinguished Officer was horrible. "They might as well," said he, "set a parcel of Attorney's clerks to judge Erskine!" Is not this Chancellor Ego?—This was just before he was Chancellor. His wife died a short time ago, and his daughter wrote word to a friend that had her father known how soon ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... Charmion, sitting calm and quiet in the palm-house; I thought of that first horrible interview in the inn parlour; I thought of my heroic ancestors. It was no use; every moment I drew, nearer and nearer to the breaking-point. I still stared, but the Squire's face was growing misty, growing into a big, red-brown ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... conveyance. We met a few men and a great many ladies in litters; it seemed to me that most of the ladies looked pale and nauseated; their general aspect gave me the idea that they were patiently enduring a horrible suffering. As a rule, they looked at their laps, and left the scenery ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the middle when Meg, who was first, suddenly stopped with a stifled exclamation, and lay as flat and as still as she could. Gipsy naturally followed suit, and looking downwards saw the reason for the alarm. They were in horrible and imminent danger of discovery. Miss Poppleton herself had entered the conservatory below, and with a little watering can in her hand began to attend to her plants. Would she look up and notice the two dark bodies ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... fleas and other insects equally partial to a residence on the human body. After two days' penance, as the waters began to abate, we determined to cross the river in a small boat and proceed on foot, which we did, and though we had to skip thro' 2 or 3 horrible streams and wade thro' Mud and Marshes we performed the journey lightly, as anything was bearable after the Cortigo del rio Zuariano. We passed through St. Roque and the Spanish lines and arrived at Gibraltar on 20th, out of patience with the Spaniards ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... the relics of the fight, the stoppages caused on the road by the long file of the wounded who were crawling or being carried back, and in Smolensk itself by the tumbrels of amputated limbs about to be thrown away at a distance; in a word, all that is horrible and odious out of fields of battle, completely disarmed him. Smolensk was but one vast hospital, and the loud groans which issued from it drowned the shout of glory which had just been raised ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... I could not help shuddering at this. A felon's cell! My name mentioned with loathing! 'Twas too horrible. I tried to conquer myself, however, and to tell Tom to go on with his ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking

... forgotten.... While trying to find a passageway out of this hole in the ground we gyrated back and forth for the last two or three hours until the women became exhausted.... Then my 'prisoner' and I returned to the mouth of the entrance. There we heard a horrible row between the unruly brute we left on the floor and his wild-eyed fellow conspirators.... They accused him of DOUBLE-CROSSING THEM and making away with the treasure that they insisted should ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... Restaurant; but he came to be a formidable visitor in the Hinkle parlor. His competition reduced Bud to an inspired increase of profanity, drove Jacks to an outburst of slang so weird that it sounded more horrible than the most trenchant of Bud's imprecations, and made me ...
— Options • O. Henry

... A horrible thought rushed through his brain. He was at the mercy of that woman who had invoked the Devil against him, and of the lover on whose account she had desired his death. She had called, and in part had been answered. He was wounded, and incapable of defending himself. This guilty ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... "'Tis horrible! 'tis damnable!" Philibert grew pale with passion and struck his thigh with his palm, as was his wont when very angry. "Rioting in drunkenness when the Colony demands the cool head, the strong arm, and the true heart of every man among us! Oh, my country! my ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... indeed. Among the hundreds of servants that were brought to the colony each year a mortality of over eighty per cent would have amounted in a few years to thousands. Statements made in regard to early Virginia history are so frequently inaccurate, and the conditions here described are so horrible that one is inclined to reject this testimony as obviously exaggerated. However, a close examination of the number of persons that came to Virginia from 1607 to 1649, and of the population between those dates forces us to the conclusion that the statements of Berkeley and Evelyn ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... changed his mind and married. He brought his beautiful bride of half his age to this tiny wing,—it chanced to be tiny in this case,—and there she lived for seventeen years. The horrible loneliness of it, especially in winter, with not a neighbor for miles, unless one reckon the village at the park gate, which could not have furnished anything but human beings, and never a congenial companion for her! Needless ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... methods far from commendable. The old obligation of the magistrates, particularly of the aediles, to see that corn could be procured at a moderate price and to superintend the games, began to degenerate into the state of things which at length gave rise to the horrible cry of the city populace under the Empire, "Bread for nothing and games for ever!" Large supplies of grain, cither placed by the provincial governors at the disposal of the Roman market officials, or delivered at Rome free of cost by the provinces themselves ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... her, reminding her in some grotesque way of Johnny; poor, generous, honest, foolish old Johnny! She looked away quickly, a sudden desire not to go with this moon-faced companion took possession of her—a desire not to go at all, a horrible new-born doubt about it. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... than the prophet, who was thrown into a noisome prison, and afterwards lowered into a pit, where he nearly died; but not for all this did he cease to denounce the judgments of God on the rebellious city. Horrible famine prevailed, and the streets were full of dead; but Jeremiah told the king, that if he would go out and make terms with Nebuchadnezzar all might yet be saved. But Zedekiah would not listen, and at last broke out with his men of war to cut his way through the ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... obedience of the Cross. In its absolute sympathy with its Creator's agony, its indignation at the horrible crime of His enemies, it would fain have fallen and crushed the gazing foes abhorred. But this was not to be, any more than fire was to come down from heaven at the Boanerges' call when they were fain to avenge the insult put upon their Master, whom ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey

... of many throned Powers, That led th' imbattel'd Seraphim to War, Too well I see and rue the dire Event, That with sad Overthrow and foul Defeat Hath lost us Heavn, and all this mighty Host In horrible Destruction laid thus low. But see I the angry Victor has recalled His Ministers of Vengeance and Pursuit, Back to the Gates of Heavn: The sulphurous Hail Shot after us in Storm, overblown, hath laid The fiery Surge, that from the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... half mad now with terror. She tried to think calmly, because she knew that unless a miracle happened she would die alone here—the most horrible of all deaths. And then her eye caught the gleam of something upon the tool chest in the shadows beyond—the teeth of the ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... "I think I have a rather discontented nature. Certain people have a horrible effect on me. I want to run about, play, sing, read, quarrel, do anything rather than talk to them. But you, how I like to talk to you! You have a sort of a—what shall I call it—an all-pervading calmness, that communicates itself to me, and soothes my ruffled ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein

... which you feel seems rather to be joy and health: now of such a nature is love-sickness, for in it, too, there is joy and bliss. You are in love, then, as I can prove to you, for I find no pleasure in any malady save only in love. All other sickness is always bad and horrible, but love is sweet and peaceable. You are in love; of that I am sure, nor do I see any wrong in that. But I shall consider it very wrong, if through some childish folly you conceal from me your heart." "Nurse, there is no need of ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... used to the horrible roaring and groaning of those shells," he said. "If I get killed I'd like it to be done without the thing that does it shrieking and gloating ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... nation on earth that does uphold it—a great Christian republic, which, so far as the white people are concerned, is the fairest and most prosperous nation on earth—that great Christian republic using all the power of its government to secure and to shield this horrible institution of negro slavery from aggression; and there is no subject on which the government is so sensitive—there is no institution which it manifests such a determination to uphold. [Hear, hear!] And then ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... me for binding up your wrist, haven't you? You have saved me from a horrible death, and I shall think of you as a brave and noble fellow all the ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... with them. It made me just a little faint to look at it, and I had to turn away. There was but a slight injury at first, I was told, and it had become awful for lack of proper treatment and care. Dr. Grant, I was also informed by old Sammy, was confronted at first with the horrible problem of either taking fair chances for the man's life by an amputation which would have meant starvation for the family, or of assuming the risk of trying to save that arm upon which the woman and her little ones were depending. ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick



Words linked to "Horrible" :   frightful, horrifying, ugly



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