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Reprehensible   /rˌɛprɪhˈɛnsəbəl/   Listen
Reprehensible

adjective
1.
Bringing or deserving severe rebuke or censure.  Synonyms: condemnable, criminal, deplorable, vicious.  "A deplorable act of violence" , "Adultery is as reprehensible for a husband as for a wife"






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"Reprehensible" Quotes from Famous Books



... collector, perhaps," said the Professor, with his wonted amiability, "which you are not. No, I can only call it a senseless and reprehensible waste of money." ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... attitudes. It may be, that the sufferings and exposures of his previous life had left upon his swarthy features a stamp of care and melancholy, foreshadowing the greater wrongs and trials in store for him. But the chief figure in the group is the just man who rose and rebuked the harsh and reprehensible procedure of the powerful landholder, neighbor and friend though he was. The manner in which the arbitrary trooper bowed to the rebuke, if it does not mitigate our resentment of his conduct, illustrates the extraordinary ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... but nearer and nearer approaches may be made; and, finding my Dictionary about to be reprinted, I have endeavoured, by a revisal, to make it less reprehensible. I will not deny that I found many parts requiring emendation, and many more capable of improvement. Many faults I have corrected, some superfluities I have taken away, and some deficiencies I have supplied. I have methodised some parts that were disordered, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... his father put it—in the affairs of the town, the state, and the nation, as well as those of the Lossing furniture company. But, though he was pleased to make rather cynical fun of his son's political enthusiasm, esteeming it in a sense a diverting and therefore reprehensible pursuit for a business man, the elder Lossing had a sneaking pride in it, all the same. He liked to bring ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet

... nocturnal foxes; and the squirrels spend their days wantonly biting off and flinging down the tender young shoots of the firs. Then there is the boy who drives the donkey and water-cart round the garden, and who has an altogether reprehensible habit of whisking round corners and slicing off bits of the lawn as he whisks. "But you can't alter these things, my good soul," I say to myself. "If you want to get rid of the hares and foxes, you must consent to have wire-netting, ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim

... afraid that you hardly realise the matter in its true light. I was not at all pleased with the manner in which you gave your explanation. You appeared to imagine that you had done something clever and amusing. I take a very different view. You showed a reprehensible carelessness in trifling with medicines in the dark; it might have caused you your life, or, at best, a serious injury. As it was, you brought pain upon yourself, and gave us all a serious alarm. I see nothing amusing in such behaviour, but consider it stupid, and careless ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... answers in the culprit's mouth, going so far as to suggest the very words: how, distracted by excessive grief after his young wife's death, rendered irresponsible for his conduct by his despair, in a moment of blind recklessness, without realizing the highly reprehensible nature of the act, nor yet its danger and its dishonour, he went off to join the nearest rebels on a sudden impulse. And that ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad

... last framed by military power, and those who maintain the authority of that constitution. The antagonist parties each hold possession of different States of the Republic, and the fortunes of the war are constantly changing. Meanwhile the most reprehensible means have been employed by both parties to extort money from foreigners, as well as natives, to carry on this ruinous contest. The truth is that this fine country, blessed with a productive soil and a benign climate, has been reduced by ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan

... able man, and loyal to the Union; but, unlike Seward, he was never loyal to the President personally, and was constantly plotting in his own interest to supplant Lincoln as the nominee of his party in 1864,—a most reprehensible course on the part of a cabinet officer. This did not give concern to Mr. Lincoln in the slightest degree. He cared very little what Mr. Chase said or thought of him personally, so long as he was doing his duty as ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... deal. On the other hand, it must be said that the sum-total of all the English poetry written in imitation of the worst forms of this French excess was probably less than one hundred lines; that what was really reprehensible in the English imitation of the poetry of the French School was, therefore, too inconsiderable to justify a wholesale charge against it of an endeavour to raise the banner of a black ambition whose only aim was to ruin society; that Rossetti, who was made to bear the brunt ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... Agassiz and Audubon among men of science (even though one was born in Switzerland) were Americans. To the vast majority, of course, such names are names and nothing more, which may not be particularly reprehensible. But while on the one hand a general indifference to American literature as a whole has carried with it a lack of acquaintance with individual writers, that lack of acquaintance with the individuals naturally reacted to confirm disbelief in the existence of ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... women, the feud began in this way: When Ann Pease divorced her handsome but profligate spouse, William, Nancy Rogers had, with reprehensible haste, taken him for better or for worse. Of course, it proved for worse, but Ann Pease had never ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... owned without reflection. "The trouble is that, while I may deserve it on general grounds, I'm unconscious of having done anything very reprehensible in particular." ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... Grace firmly. "No one can make you leave college unless you fail in your studies or do something really reprehensible, but there is one thing you must make up your mind to do if you wish to stay here, and have ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... through the deceitfulness of the heart, the zeal which, in its proper exercise, is admirable, as inciting us to a grand enthusiasm in a cause believed to be true and holy, ofttimes degenerates into a blind and bitter bigotry, as unreasoning as reprehensible; the faith which pierces the unseen and eternal, and fixes its calm eye on One who sits changeless amid infinite series of changes, all-wise amid infinite follies and wickednesses of His creatures, all-merciful ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... let us shoot him, if we can, but allow him an honorable burial in the soil he fights for. [Footnote: We do not thoroughly comprehend the author's drift in the foregoing paragraph, but are inclined to think its tone reprehensible, and its tendency impolitic in the present stage of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... concerning a horse, as the value paid by them to you for procuring the use of my influence in his favor; and I cannot sufficiently reprobate such a transaction, nor find terms strong enough in which to condemn the parties concerned in it. Sir, I repeat it, that such juggling is more reprehensible on your part than on theirs, and that it is doubly disrespectful to me, to suppose that I could be influenced by anything but merit in the candidates. I desire you will wait upon me to-morrow, when I hope you may be able to place the transaction in such a light as will raise you once more to ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... hinted to the Duke of York that she considered it high time that Constance should take up her residence at Cardiff, for she was a firm believer in "the eternal fitness of things," and while too much love was in her eyes deeply reprehensible, a proper quantity of matrimony, at a suitable age, was a highly respectable thing, and a state into which every man and woman ought to enter, with due prudence and decorum. And as a wife married in childhood ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... honest. The Manichee Bishop of Rome, that man of rough manners who had so offended Augustin, was on the point of being convicted of stealing the general cash-box. Lastly, there were rumours in the air, accusing the Elect of giving themselves over to reprehensible practices in their private meetings. They condemned marriage and child-bearing as works of the devil, but they authorized fornication, and even, it is said, certain acts against nature. That, for ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... necessity against which rebellion has been in vain. Her plain, prominent features wore, from habit, a look of sullen martyrdom that belied her natural kindness of heart; and even her false brown front was arranged in little hard, flat curls, as though an artificial ugliness were less reprehensible in her sight than ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... more return on thy feet to Olympus: but always grieve beside him, and watch him, until he either make thee his consort, or he indeed [make thee] his handmaid. But there I will not go to adorn his couch, for it would be reprehensible: all the Trojan ladies henceforth will reproach me. But I shall have woes ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... o'clock, before the big open hearth, with a friendly fire. Much chaffing and pleasant talk about the arrangements for to-morrow. A man to be sent off at daybreak to have two buckboards ready at the landing at seven for the drive to Tadousac. Then a reprehensible quantity of tobacco smoked in the book-room, and the tale of the season's angling told from the beginning with many embellishments and divagations. There were stories of good luck and bad; vituperations ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... conscience can well be in a gale of wind, with the Foreland lights ahead and infinite possibilities all around. The captain drinks his whisky and hot water with a certain slow appreciation of the merits of that reprehensible solution, and glances at the aneroid barometer on the bulkhead ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... fiddles, to greet his wife—a lady of masculine mind, who talked a good deal about her father's bones, which it seemed were unburied, though whether from a peculiar taste on the part of the old gentleman himself, or the reprehensible neglect of his relations, did not appear. This outlaw's wife was, somehow or other, mixed up with a patriarch, living in a castle a long way off, and this patriarch was the father of several of the characters, but he didn't exactly know which, and was uncertain whether he had brought ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... flirtation and romance connected with them. The religious element is not taken up and considered. They do not involve the true idea of preparation, but have an air of mere sentimentalism about them. The object in view is not fully seen. The most reprehensible motives and the most shocking thoughtlessness pervade them throughout. These addresses carry with them an air of trifling, a want of seriousness and frankness, which betrays the absence of all sense of responsibility, and of all proper views of the sacredness of marriage and of its ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... "In wrestling, a blow is a reprehensible action." A blow is not an action but an act. An action may consist of ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce

... who could inspire such devotion as he had from such a woman as Mrs. Clemm, a man who loved flowers and children and animal pets, who could be so devoted a husband, who could so consecrate himself to art, was not a bad man. Yet his acts were often, as we have seen, most reprehensible. Frequently the subject of slander, he was not a victim of conspiracy to defame. Although circumstances were many times against him, he was his own worst enemy. He was cursed with a temperament. His mind was analytical and imaginative, and gave no thought to ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... to say about that," said Corbridge, rather sharply. "It is a reprehensible business, and I have ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton

... common-sensible. If it will make our soldiers fight any better, it certainly is not very much to be deprecated. To settle disbanded volunteers in the South so as to gradually drive away slave labor by the superior value of free labor on lands confiscated or public, is certainly not a very reprehensible proposition. But it originated, as all the more advanced political proposals of the day do, with men who favor Emancipation, present or prospective, and therefore it must be cried down! The worst possible construction ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... Tantrism and the best proof that it did not become prevalent until much later is afforded by the narratives of the three Chinese pilgrims who all describe the condition of religion in India and notice anything which they thought singular or reprehensible. Fa-Hsien does not mention the worship of any female deity,[308] nor does the Life of Vasubandhu, but Asanga appears to allude to Saktism in one passage.[309] Hsuean Chuang mentions images of Tara but without hinting at tantric ritual, nor does I-Ching allude to it, nor ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... whatever be the cause it was then a fact that eight out of every ten horses could and did buckjump, and with many of them the vice was incurable. An experienced buckjumper will decide as the saddle is being put on him to get rid of it as soon as possible without any apparent reason for such reprehensible conduct. He will swell himself out so that the girths cannot be fully tightened, and when he is mounted will suddenly bound off the ground, throw down his head, and prop violently on his fore feet, and this he will continue to repeat till the saddle comes on ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... day this would not be so reprehensible. We are comparatively an unbelieving generation; and what are called "spiritual circles" are common, though not always unattended with mischievous results. But at that time when it was considered a ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... defensive. It was aimed at those particular fictions which aroused animosity against all Catholics, rather than against Belgian Catholics alone. The Informations Pax, says M. van Langenhove, had only an ecclesiastical bearing and "confined their attention almost exclusively to the reprehensible acts attributed to the priests." And yet one cannot help wondering a little about what was set in motion in the minds of German Catholics by this revelation of what Bismarck's empire meant in relation to them; and also whether there was any obscure connection ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... Panslavism, or by the enemies of Turkey in general, as a focus of agitation, where plans are hatched and schemes devised, the object of which is to disorganise and impede the consolidation of the empire. The conduct of Servia, as well as of greater and more important nations, has been most reprehensible, and with it the forbearance of Turkey, notwithstanding the corruptness of her government and the fanaticism of the Mussulman population, has contrasted most favourably. Little wonder, then, that ill-blood should have existed between these rival factions, and that the ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... individual takes another into his confidence on any matter which does not involve bad faith on the part of the petitioner. Even then, if the man imparts that which shows that his own conduct has been reprehensible or that he would enlist the support of his superior in some unworthy act, it is better to hear him through and then skin him, than to treat what he says in the offhand manner. An officer will grow in the esteem of his men only as he treats their affairs with ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... guarantee' by which it was not intended that every Power was bound single-handed to fight any Government which violated Luxemburg. Although this gross disregard by the Germans of their solemn pledge did not entail the same consequences as the subsequent violation of Belgian neutrality, it is equally reprehensible from the point of view of international law, and the more cowardly in proportion as this state is weaker than Belgium. Against this intrusion Luxemburg protested, but, unlike Belgium, she did not appeal ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History

... which exempted certain minor acts of piracy from the operation of the bill. Thus amended, the bill passed both houses; and the opposition felicitated themselves, that, notwithstanding their numerical weakness, they had compelled ministers to accept their corrections of so reprehensible ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... reprehensible nor an unintelligible vanity for the Egyptian ruler to desire the control of the whole of the great river, whose source had been traced south of the Equator, and 2000 miles beyond the limits of the Pharaohs' ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... Now this reprehensible youth who left me, a little hurt and put back, might for aught he or I knew have been one of the crew of the Argo—had been certainly slave or comrade to Thorfin Karlsefne. Therefore he was deeply interested in guinea competitions. Remembering what Grish Chunder had said I laughed aloud. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... most important characteristics, some admirable, some reprehensible, which Heine has derived from his race, and they are the very ones that raised opponents against him, one of the most interesting and prominent among them being the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. His two opinions ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... more effect on Caddy than all previous remonstrances. She implored to have the sentence suspended for a time at least, that she might try to exert more self-command; and Mr. Ellis, who really pitied her, well knowing that her heart was not in fault, however reprehensible she was in point of temper, consented; and Caddy's behaviour from that moment proved the sincerity of her promises; and though she could not quite restrain occasional outbursts of senseless lamentation, still, when she felt such fits of despair ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... Caliphs, with all their esoteric unbelief, were, at least in their earlier history, tolerant of all the differences in the religious faith of their people; Frederick, on the other hand, crowned his system of government by a religious inquisition, which will seem the more reprehensible when we remember that in the persons of the heretics he was persecuting the representatives of a free municipal life. Lastly, the internal police, and the kernel of the army for foreign service, was composed of Saracens who had been brought over from Sicily to Nocera and Lucera— men who were ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... of islands, which was all the world to him, the governor viewed with suspicion the absence of a word in my documents, referring even to an islet; this, in his mind, was a reprehensible omission; for surely New York, to which the papers referred, was built on an island. Upon this I offered to swear to the truth of my clearance, "as far as known to me," after the manner of cheap custom-house swearing with which shipmasters, in some parts of the world, are made familiar. ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum

... now quite settled and fine, and as I had got into the trade-winds, I set about preparations for hoisting the topsails. This was a most arduous task, and my first attempts were complete failures, owing, in a great degree, to my reprehensible ignorance of mechanical forces. The first error I made was in applying my apparatus of blocks and pulleys to a rope which was too weak, so that the very first heave I made broke it in two, and sent me staggering against the after-hatch, over which I tripped, and striking against the main-boom, ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... spite of his reprehensible attitude towards our national game, I was still, as Mr. Chadband said, "a human boy," is proved by the intense interest with which I beheld the one and only "Mill" which ever took place while I was ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... is known to every one, as the omitting to relate some good and laudable action, which, though it may seem not to be reprehensible, yet is then done maliciously when the omission happens in a place that is pertinent to the history. For to praise unwillingly is so far from being more civil than to dispraise willingly, that it is perhaps rather ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... not fear torture or death, but asked life only for the sake of those who loved him. Thus the physical ordeal was the fulfillment of a vow, and a sort of atonement for what might otherwise appear to be reprehensible weakness in the face of death. It was in the nature of confession and thank-offering to the "Great Mystery," through the physical parent, the Sun, and did not embrace ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... the soft, fragrant child lips. Oh, how sweet they were! Was such tenderness reprehensible? He was beginning to think of love and marriage as strong, heartsome youth will, but, strange to say, the young woman his father approved of was not at all to his liking. He was nearing man's estate, and though he labored with himself to repress what he knew would be considered lawless desires, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... drive up with boxes on the top, and Toto dancing round and round it on the tips of his toes barking loudly, which I am sorry to say was his reprehensible manner of receiving strangers. Bobbie parted the boughs a little more. It was a situation full of interest. Would she be frightened of Toto? He felt a good deal depended on this as a ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton

... To them a woman acting as a messenger, an elevator operator, or a trolley conductor, was anathema, and the tempting of women into these employments seemed but the latest vicious trick of the capitalist. The conductor in her becoming uniform was most reprehensible, and her evident satisfaction in her job suggested to her critics that she merely was trying to play a melodramatic part "as a war hero." In any case, the conductor's occupation was one no woman should be in, "crowded and pushed about as she is." It was puzzling ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... most reprehensible," exclaimed Professor Porter, with a faint trace of irritation in his voice. "Never, Mr. Philander, never before in my life have I known one of these animals to be permitted to roam at large from its cage. I shall most certainly report this outrageous breach of ethics ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... should be apportioned it is difficult to say. Jackson laid it upon Hill. And that officer's conduct was undoubtedly reprehensible. The absence of Major Dabney, struck down by sickness, is a possible explanation of the faulty orders. But that Jackson would have done better to have accepted Lee's hint, to have confided his intentions to his divisional commanders, and to have trusted something to their ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... Narayana weapon, a scorcher of foes that I am, I will destroy the Pandavas, causing an immense carnage amongst them. That wretch amongst the Panchalas, (viz., Dhrishtadyumna), who is an injurer of friends and Brahmanas and of his own preceptor, who is a deceitful wretch of the most reprehensible conduct, shall never escape from me today with life." Hearing these words of Drona's son, the (Kuru) army rallied. Then many foremost of men blew their gigantic conchs. And filled with delight, they beat their drums and dindimas by thousands. The earth resounded with loud noises, afflicted with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... absolutely dangerous, was at least an excessive dose, even for one accustomed to the drug. For a moment his resolution failed; then the dominant-note of his nature—the unconscious, fundamental egotism on which his character was based—asserted itself beyond denial. It might be reprehensible, it might even be criminal to accede to such a request, made by a man in such a condition of body and mind; yet the laws of the universe demanded self-assertion—prompted every human mind to desire, to ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... whose word and example are encouragements to every kind of sin. Society ought to be a kindly matrix in which incipient life is nurtured into health and beauty; but it may be a malignant nurse, by whom the stream of life is poisoned at its very source. If this be so, then it is as reprehensible in those whose vocation is to watch over the moral and spiritual development of their fellow-men to be indifferent to the conditions by which life is surrounded as it would be discreditable to the physicians of a city swept year after ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... excited at the first glimpse of the watch-tower of the fort that they dashed forward, as Rigaud says, "like lions." Hence one might fairly expect to see the fort assaulted at once; but by the maxims of forest war this would have been reprehensible rashness, and nothing of the kind was attempted. The assailants spread to right and left, squatted behind stumps, and opened a distant and harmless fire, accompanied with ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... and of science," He said in his positive way: "So weigh them, obey them, Display them, and lay them To heart in your infancy's day!" Jack made no reply, But he said on the sly An eloquent word, that had come From a quite indefensible, Most reprehensible, But ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... an opinion backed up by a bet. It would not be very difficult to parallel those cases where the Italians disregard the solemnity of death, in their eagerness for omens of lottery-numbers, with equally reprehensible and apparently heartless cases of betting in England. Let any one who doubts this examine the betting-books at White's and Brookes's. In them he will find a most startling catalogue of bets,—some so bad as to justify the good parson in Walpole's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... was expected of Marie. She was brought up to think that leisure was woman's natural estate. Work, for any girl, she regarded as an accident due to the unexpected and usually reprehensible collapse of the males of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... are always observed with great care. Even when inconsistent with the ordinances of the scriptures, such customs do not lose their binding force. Reprehensible as the sale of a daughter or sister is, the great king Salya, when he bestowed his sister Madri on Pandu, insisted upon taking a sum of money, alleging family custom not only as an excuse but as something that was obligatory. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... it was all said I had accomplished nothing. The man looked at me in blank amazement as though I had suddenly lost my mind. He had not the faintest idea that burning up that beautiful forest was reprehensible in the slightest degree. To him and all his kind, the only thing worth while was to clear that bit of land in the valley. If every tree on the mountain was destroyed in the process, what difference did it make? It would be done eventually, ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... sequitur esse—i.e., the operation, the working of every being, must be the necessary result of its qualities which are themselves known only by the acts they bring forth. If these acts be praiseworthy, the qualities are good: if reprehensible, they are bad. But if the acts are to be free, they should be neither good nor bad. A being therefore to be perfectly free should have no qualities at all—i.e., should not be created. For it must be borne in mind that it is not the motives that impart ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... anesthetized patients after such an operation as, for instance, tonsillectomy, to see that the larynx and laryngopharynx are free of clots. To perform a bronchoscopy or esophagoscopy under these conditions would be reprehensible; but direct laryngoscopy for the seeking and removal of clots serves a useful purpose as a preventative of pulmonary abscess and similar complications.* Diagnosis of laryngeal conditions in young children is possible only by direct laryngoscopy and is neglected ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... cries, "Now, now, you are doing it!" submit, but declare at the same moment—"That it is the very first time in your whole life that you were ever known to be guilty of it; and therefore it can be no habit, and of course nowise reprehensible." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... ill employed, however, were we to enter at any length into the reprehensible parts of this remarkable production. It is sufficient to shew, that we have not been misrepresenting the purpose of the poet's mind, when we mention, that the whole tragedy ends with a mysterious sort of dance, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... were veiled for the early Christians behind the question of the kind of Christ in whom their hearts believed. With all that we have said about the reprehensible admixture of the metaphysical element in the dogma, with all the accusation which we bring concerning acute or gradual Hellenisation, secularisation and defection from the Christ, we ought not to hide from ourselves that in this gigantic struggle there were real religious interests at stake, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... that, the villages to which such offenders belong shall be held collectively responsible and punished with rigour. I call upon each and every one of the people of Korea to understand clearly what I have herewith said to you and avoid all reprehensible action." ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... curiosity, and made a lane for him to pass through. Mahlon Dickinson, the Recorder, was in the act of giving his decision on the case, and he closed his remarks by saying, "The conduct of Mr. Hopper has been highly reprehensible. The man is not his debtor; and the pretence that he was so could have been made for no other reason but to cause unnecessary delay, vexation, and expense." The lawyers smiled at each other, and seemed not ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... drama there had been much that was reprehensible. But whoever compares even the least decorous plays of Fletcher with those contained in the volume before us will see how much the profligacy which follows a period of overstrained austerity goes beyond the profligacy which precedes such a period. The nation ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... that his part of the line at the moment had originally belonged to the Hun. It was a confused bit of trench, in which miners carried on extensively their reprehensible trade. And where there are miners there is also spoil. Spoil, for the benefit of the uninitiated, is the technical name given to the material they remove from the centre of the earth during the process ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... said Mr. Farrington, "and I hope it will continue to do so, but I may as well warn you that it has a most reprehensible habit of stopping now and then, and utterly refusing to proceed. And this, without any apparent reason, ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells

... independent of the will. Though this or any other state of the understanding may be involuntary, the manifestation of such a state is not so, but is a voluntary act, and, 'being neutral in itself, may be commendable or reprehensible according to the circumstances in which it takes place.' (Bailey's Essay on Formation of Opinion, ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... license a thing to be condoned, to be mixed with the blood of one's own posterity? Eben, I've never seen you make excuses for ungodliness before." The fierce old face suddenly cleared. "But there—there! This is all an imaginary danger. I'll watch them, but I'm sure that these two have no such reprehensible thought." ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... to danger, and are led on by some irresponsible foreigner, who abuses the hospitality of our own Government by seducing the young and ignorant to join in his scheme of personal ambition or revenge under the false and delusive pretense of extending the area of freedom. These reprehensible aggressions but retard the true progress of our nation and tarnish its fair fame. They should therefore receive the indignant frowns of every good citizen who sincerely loves his country and takes a pride in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... refuse to allow you to ask any further questions," interrupted Miss Winstead. She was so nervous and perplexed at the task before her that she was glad even to be able to find fault with the child. It was really reprehensible of any child to take an ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade

... have confined my imagination to the margin, it must not be considered as very reprehensible, if I have suffered it to play some freaks in its own dominion. There is no danger in conjecture, if it be proposed as conjecture; and while the text remains uninjured, those changes may be safely offered, which are not considered even by him ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson

... read your animadversions on the additional matter introduced in my second edition of an "Account of Marocco, Timbuctoo," &c. (see Literary Panorama for April last, p. 713.) wherein you 433 conceive that I am reprehensible for not having discovered publicly the remedy alluded to as an infallible cure to the Butellise or Nyctalopia, I should observe that I was not apprised, (till I read those animadversions,) that this was a disorder incident to the inhabitants in Europe, or that it ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... the higher criticism to the urchin's nearest ear. It was now that connoisseur's turn to be affronted. Picking himself out of the gutter, he placed his thumb to his nose, and wiggled his finger in active and reprehensible symbolism, whilst enlarging upon his original critique, in a ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... now, by the irresponsible, lawless murder of a good citizen, merely because he failed at first to grasp the meaning of the lesson placed before him to learn, is, to my way of thinking, not only unjustifiable but damnably weak and reprehensible." ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... took life, as may have appeared, at a broad and generous level, it quite comprehended the salient points of a Calcutta dinner party; and it was seldom that she failed, metaphorically speaking, to carry away a bone from the feast. If you found this reprehensible, she would have told you she had observed that they do it in Japan, where manners are the best in ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... worldly of him, and therefore reprehensible; yet to a great extent she could sympathise with his disappointment. At bottom he was a proud man, although he repressed his pride and kept it secret. He was an ambitious man, also, and his lot had been confined to humble tasks, absolutely unrecognised beyond his parish, ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... the King considered a too curious fathoming of divine mysteries as highly reprehensible, particularly for the common people. Although he knew more about them than any one else, he avowed that even his knowledge in this respect was not perfect. It was matter of deep regret with the Advocate that his Majesty had not held to his former positions, and that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... then? My reason calls it nonsensical to lead a wretched and miserable life, even for the sake of the Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth. How can this be pleasing to a supreme being? What can it matter to him? And my taste calls happiness desirable and sorrow reprehensible, whether it come from one or from another. Sugar is sweet though it come from the devil, and quinine is bitter though it come from God. I ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... calm and silent as a clear lake. The king's long account of his fruitless quest for truth would be tiresome if it were not of such great historic interest and the same may be said of the Buddha's enumeration of superstitious and reprehensible practices, but from this point onwards his discourse is a magnificent crescendo of thought and language, never halting and illustrated by metaphors of great effect and beauty. Equally forcible and surely resting on some tradition of the Buddha's own words is the solemn ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... last, by his own confession, dishonored the colors belonging to your school, and made certain derogatory remarks concerning his country and his flag, for which offenses he desires now to make reparation. Will you therefore kindly permit him, at the first possible opportunity, to apologize for his reprehensible conduct, publicly, to his teacher, to his country and to his flag, and especially to Master Alexander Sands, the bearer of the flag, who, though not without fault in the matter, was, nevertheless, at the time, under ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... replied: "Thy artist and thy experts alike are masters, each in his line. If my fine qualities were a product of nature, I were no better than a log of wood, which remains forever as nature produced it at the first. Unashamed I make the confession to thee that by nature I possessed all the reprehensible traits thy wise men read in my picture and ascribed to me, perhaps to a greater degree even than they think. But I mastered my evil impulses with my strong will, and the character I acquired through severe discipline has ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... will be said that this wholesale wanton destruction of bird life, however painful it may be to lovers of nature, however reprehensible from a moral point of view, is sanctioned by law, and cannot therefore be prevented. This is not quite so. We see that the Wild Birds Protection Act is continually being broken with impunity, and where public opinion is unfavourable to it the guardians of the law themselves, the police and the ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... enlisted over his proposed strike more than over Pierre's artful suggestion of covert nagging. Not that she considered an ambushed attack, under the circumstances, as reprehensible, but rather because open attack revealed one's personality as much as the other course concealed it. The first year only of humanity is wholly satisfied, barring colic, with the consciousness of existence. The remaining years are principally ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... clothes, he sat down before the fire, damp without, and feverishly irritable within. He vacillated an hour between his translation of St Fortunatus' hymn, Quem terra, pontus aethera, and "Red as a Rose is She," which, although he thought it as reprehensible for moral as for literary reasons, he was fain to follow out to the vulgar end. But he could interest himself in neither hymn nor novel. For the authenticity of the former he now cared not a jot, and he threw the book aside vowing that its hoydenish ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... regards matters of State and religion, for little or nothing does the Corean care about either of these, as in respect of the daily proceedings of life. To the foreign observer, many of his ways and customs are at first sight incomprehensible, and even reprehensible; yet, when by chance his mode of arguing out matters for himself is clearly understood, we will almost invariably find that he is correct. After all, every one, whether barbarian or otherwise, knows best himself how to ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... course, Japan will not be the power that sets in order this disturbed country. Never Japan, the great commercial competitor. For by this time you must surely understand that Japanese aggression is immoral and reprehensible, whereas European aggression or "civilization" is the fate to which the Orient is predestined. The world contains a double standard of international justice, for the East and ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... that King's composure was sorely disturbed. In the first place, he had been caught in a most reprehensible act, and in the second place, he was not quite sure that the Prince could save him from ignominious expulsion under the very eyes—and perhaps direction—of this trim and attractive member of the royal household. He found himself ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... determined to make her complaint to the king; but she was told that it would be all in vain, because so spiritless and faineant was he that he not only neglected to avenge affronts put upon others, but endured with a reprehensible tameness those which were offered to himself, insomuch that whoso had any ill-humour to vent, took occasion to vex or mortify him. The lady, hearing this report, despaired of redress, and by way of alleviation of her grief determined to make the king sensible of his ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... misfortune befell him. William, if loutish and a bit of a bully on occasion, was not an ill-natured child; and, having a turn for humor of a broad, unintellectual sort, he and Jan became rather friendly on the common, but reprehensible ground of playing pranks, which kept the school in a titter and the Dame in doubt. And, if detected, they did not think a dose of the strap by any means too high a price to ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... illegible immiscible impassible intelligible irascible legible miscible negligible partible passible (susceptible) perceptible permissible persuasible pervertible plausible possible producible reducible reflexible refrangible remissible reprehensible resistible responsible reversible revertible risible seducible sensible ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton

... is not unprofitable there should be unprofitable, hurtful, and unhappy persons. What manner of god then is Jupiter,—I mean Chrysippus's Jupiter,—who punishes an act done neither willingly nor unprofitably? For vice is indeed, according to Chrysippus's discourse, wholly reprehensible; but Jupiter is to be blamed, whether he has made vice which is an unprofitable thing, or, having made it not unprofitable, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... the first century even "the beginning of miracles," for before that date Jewish and Pagan miracles are to be found in abundance. Why should Bible miracles be severed from their relations all over the world, so that belief in them is commendable faith, while belief in the rest is reprehensible credulity? "The fact is, however, that the Gospel miracles were preceded and accompanied by others of the same type; and we may here merely mention exorcism of demons, and the miraculous cure of disease, as popular instances; ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... going too fast, however. What I meant to say was that the murder was premeditated. In the case of a reprehensible murder I know this would be considered an aggravation of the offence. Of course, it is an open question whether all the murders are not reprehensible; but let that pass. To my own mind I should have been indeed deserving ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie

... blithely, as if he were rather glad to be alive. Now this is a sentiment, if you analyse it, near akin to vanity, and, therefore, to be discountenanced in your neighbour and concealed in yourself. How can a man be glad that he is alive, and frankly show it, without a touch of conceit and a reprehensible forgetfulness of the presence of original sin even in the best families? The manners of a professional man, above all, should at once express and ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... kind of blessed invention for my entertainment on this trip, and that I've grown to like him better than I expected makes the amusement keener, of course. I'm tired to death of the commonplace, mild and circumspect adorer. Baron de Bach is a continual surprise and an occasional alarm! Nothing reprehensible!" I say, in answer to the quick lifting of the bandage a second time. "Only he is so unlike all the other men I have known I can't judge him by any previous standard. I have the same interest in him Uncle ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins

... according to early custom in May or June, and at a later time about Easter. After the establishment of Christianity the Church made constant efforts to suppress this latter festival, and it was referred to by an eighth century council as "a wicked and reprehensible holiday-making." These festivals appear to be intimately associated with Dionysus worship, and the flower-festival of Dionysus, as well as the Roman Liberales in honor of Bacchus, was celebrated in March with worship of Priapus. The festivals of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... that he received this sum through the hands of Gunga Govind Sing; and that he was exceedingly angry with Gunga Govind Sing for having kept back or defrauded him of the sum of 10,000l. out of the 40,000l. To keep back from him the fourth part of the whole bribe was very reprehensible behavior in Gunga Govind Sing, certainly very unworthy of the great and high trust which Mr. Hastings reposed in his integrity. My Lords, this letter tells us Mr. Hastings was much irritated at Gunga Govind Sing. You will hereafter see how Mr. Hastings behaves to persons ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... forget that many of the advantages secured by cramming are dependent upon the methods pursued. There are good methods and poor methods of cramming. One of the most reprehensible of the latter is to get into a flurry and scramble madly through a mass of facts without regard to their relation to each other. This method is characterized by breathless haste and an anxious fear lest something be missed or forgotten. Perhaps its most serious evil is its ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson

... inclined to think that in those reprehensible bygone times, many other people did their business in ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... there is in the very modesty and simplicity of her attire. But what! must virtue be slovenly? Must holiness be unclean? Can not a pure and clean soul rejoice in the cleanliness and purity of the body also? Is there not something reprehensible in the displeasure with which I regard the neatness and purity of Pepita? Is this displeasure, perchance, because she is to be my step-mother? But, perhaps, she does not wish to be my step-mother! Perhaps she does not love my father! It is true, indeed, that women are incomprehensible. It ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... not the question. It's the whole circumstance from beginning to end. I consider Dick's behaviour most reprehensible." ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... guide herself by means of the olfactory sense? This view is pretty generally accepted. The Ants, people say, are guided by the sense of smell; and this sense of smell appears to have its seat in the antennae, which we see in continual palpitation. It is doubtless very reprehensible, but I must admit that the theory does not inspire me with overwhelming enthusiasm. In the first place, I have my suspicions about a sense of smell seated in the antennae: I have given my reasons before; and, next, I hope to prove by experiment ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... cold meat was set out; but having no associations with the house except through this one dead man, it seemed as if his presence and attributes pervaded it wholly. He appears to have been a man of reprehensible habits, though well advanced in years. I ought not to forget a brandy-flask (empty) among his other effects. The landlady and daughter made a good impression on me, as ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... timber famine in this country, and no measures that we now take can, at least for many years, undo the mischief that has already been done. But we can prevent further mischief being done; and it would be in the highest degree reprehensible to let any consideration of temporary convenience or temporary cost interfere with such action, especially as regards the National Forests which the nation can now, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... antiquity' who enjoyed such high privilege from English kings. However, if a dramatist had been bold enough to put such a favourite on the stage, he would have met with the most severe punishment long before Jonson had pointed out his reprehensible audacity. By the 'happiest monarchs,' Henry III. and Henry IV. of France are meant. The latter, at that time, yet stood in the zenith of his good fortune. Again, the expression: 'of every vernaculous orator,' ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... that a lodger with references should obtain floor space for, say, from eightpence to a shilling. He may even be able to board with the sublettees for a few shillings more. This, however, I failed to inquire into—a reprehensible error on my part, considering that I was working on the ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... together with the accomplice Hunt, had been long verging toward this melancholy end. Four of them had been tried for the death of their comrade Bulmore, which happened in a contest with one of them in November last; and their manner of conducting themselves at various times appeared to have been very reprehensible. The liquor which they procured from the store was the cause of drunkenness, which brought on affrays and disorders, for which, as soldiers, they were more than once punished. To these circumstances must be added (what perhaps must be considered as the root of these evils) a connexion ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... latter great wrong, a few suffered dreadfully—particularly on Sundays, when they had for some time expected the earth to open and swallow the public up; but which desirable event had not yet occurred, in consequence of some reprehensible laxity in the arrangements ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... differences; that they are only tampering with us, and, at the same time, they are striving to get the L700. I believe that no settlement can be effected until that grant matter is adjusted, and that no grant will be paid until that settlement is made. I cannot forget the reprehensible conduct of the Missionary party, in sending a missionary to Bytown, at the very time that they were pretending to negotiate a settlement with us! Still I am anxious to do almost anything to effect an adjustment of our misunderstandings; but I fear that the British Conference, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... more primitive instincts which they seek to repress. An artist may, for example, through a vivid portrayal, so excite the animal lust and cruelty which lurk hidden in all of us as to make the most morally reprehensible objects acceptable. Nature has taken many a revenge on civilization through art. Although no one should demand that these appeals be entirely excluded, yet when they operate alone, without the sublimation of insight, they are flagrantly unaesthetic in their influence, because ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... they did not agree as to how life and its affairs should be conducted. Lester had a secret contempt for his brother's chill, persistent chase of the almighty dollar. Robert was sure that Lester's easy-going ways were reprehensible, and bound to create trouble sooner or later. In the business they did not quarrel much—there was not so much chance with the old gentleman still in charge—but there were certain minor differences constantly ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... some work should be provided in each locality, on which those persons may be employed who cannot be so removed, and who yet stand in need of relief. It would be mischievous and wasteful to relieve such persons without exacting labour from them, and just as reprehensible to employ them in digging holes and filling them up again, or in any other occupation equally useless and unproductive. If their work is to be obtained, it should be directed into some channel that will benefit themselves and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... winter, when it was mustered out. Much was said by the local papers to the detriment of the men composing this regiment, but viewing their action from the standpoint of the civilian and citizen, it does not appear reprehensible. They had volunteered with the understanding that their own officers, officers with whom they were well acquainted, and in whose friendship they held a place, should command them, and when they saw these officers displaced and white strangers put in their stead, they felt ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... Not only does he frequently incorporate his own readings in the text without noting the MS. forms, but he even makes mistakes in the MS. forms which he does note. Acollation of Thorpe's text with the MS. has revealed a carelessness which was all the more reprehensible in that it came from a scholar who was thought to be well-nigh infallible. Afew examples of this ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker

... Trivial meant three ways; it was what might be heard at the crossroads or on any route you chanced to be traveling, and its value was accordingly slight. Lewd meant belonging to the laity; it came to mean ignorant, and then morally reprehensible. Common may be used to signify ill-bred; vulgar may be and frequently is used to signify indecent. Sabotage, from a French term meaning wooden shoe, has come to be applied to the deliberate and systematic scamping of one's work in order to injure one's employer. Idiot (common soldier) ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... mingled with his feelings for Ledscha. If to avoid the fleeting censure of aristocratic friends he left in the lurch the simple barbarian maiden who loved him with ardent passion, it was no evidence of resolute strength of soul, but of pitiful, reprehensible weakness. No, no! He must take the nocturnal voyage in order ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... power to hand you over bonds to the value of $50,000, which have been placed in our hands for that purpose. But if—as our client, the late Mr. Gillian, explicitly provides—you have used this money as you have money in the past, I quote the late Mr. Gillian—in reprehensible dissipation among disreputable associates—the $50,000 is to be paid to Miriam Hayden, ward of the late Mr. Gillian, without delay. Now, Mr. Gillian, Mr. Sharp and I will examine your account in regard to the $1,000. You ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... not tell me—why didn't you? Did you suppose I knew? No. Had I known, my conduct in coming to you as I did would have been reprehensible. ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... or character. Yet I might have been reconciled to his familiarity in my family, but for the suggestions of another. If you read over—what I never dare open—the play of "Othello," you will have some idea of what followed—I mean of my motives; my actions, thank God! were less reprehensible. There was another cadet ambitious of the vacant situation. He called my attention to what he led me to term coquetry between my wife and this young man. Sophia was virtuous, but proud of her virtue; and, irritated ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... that I was sewing, while she repeated all sorts of juvenile singsongs of which her memory seemed full, for my entertainment. There used to be a legend current among my brothers and sisters that this aunt unwittingly taught me to use a reprehensible word. One of her ditties began with ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... seen in the common grasshopper. Doubtless each one of my readers has at some time taken a grasshopper into his hand, and, holding the tip of his finger against the insect's mouth, has promised the creature its freedom on condition that it disclosed its reprehensible habit of chewing tobacco. The grasshopper surely complied, and I trust the promiser was as good as his word. The grasshopper's head is so placed that, while it is at the front of its body, the mouth is directly on the under side of ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... solicited and obtained Abelard's absolution, i. 146; buried with Abelard, ib.; a fine lady, 147; Pope's reprehensible lines found ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... intended to reach the Secretary of War as well were in every sense a corroboration of Pike's complaints in so far as the woeful neglect of the Indians was concerned. Better proof that Hindman's conduct had been highly reprehensible ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... And in return, madame, I ask the same fidelity; I ask my patrons (I do not venture to call you my clients) to put the same confidence in me. You may think that in acting thus I am trying to fasten upon this affair—no, no, madame; there may be reprehensible things done; with an inheritance in view one is dragged on . . . especially with nine hundred thousand francs in the balance. Well, now, you could not disavow a man like Maitre Godeschal, honesty ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... vulgar women an attraction which surprises, but which springs from a reprehensible curiosity. To a woman of society they offer another, more noble yet not less dangerous—the attraction of reforming them. It is rare that virtuous women do not fall into the error of believing that it is for virtue's sake alone such men love them. These, in brief, were the secret ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... given to them as chief a child almost still in its cradle, the King instructed the grand almoner to remind them that they had had as abbes in preceding reigns princes who were married and of warlike tastes. "Such abuses," said the prelate, "were more than reprehensible; his Majesty is incapable of wishing to renew them. As to the Prince's extreme youth, that is in no way prejudicial to you, my brethren, as monseigneur will be suitably represented by his vicar-general until such time as he is able ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the true facts of the case, and found out that the letter was really Dexie's, as she at first supposed, she would have put aside the fact that her conduct was none the less reprehensible, and would have used all her arts to win him to her side. As it was, she was more willing to sit by her father's side during the time Mr. Traverse was present than at any other ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... course, reprehensible behaviour on the part of a maid, presumptuous, familiar, interfering; but Bridget is Bridget, and I might as soon command her not to use her tongue, as to stop taking an interest in anything that concerns "Herself". As a matter of fact, I don't try. Servility, and decorum, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... as the congregation took no outward part in the prayers except that of listening to them, Polly and I had nothing to do—and we could not even hear the old gentleman who usually "read prayers"—which led us into the very reprehensible habit of "playing at houses" in Uncle Ascott's gorgeously furnished pew. Not that we left our too tightly stuffed seats for one moment, but as we sat or stood, unable to see anything beyond the bombazine curtains (which, intervening ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Judah, dear boy, of Judah. To be ignorant on such a vital matter makes it even more reprehensible. I cannot believe that our dear Miss Pinniger has so neglected your ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne

... misery and, perhaps, the destruction of the person demanding his most cherished love and protection. On so important a subject, we feel we should commit an unpardonable wrong were we not to speak thus plainly and openly. An opportunity has been afforded us, which it would be reprehensible to neglect. We shall indeed feel we have been amply rewarded, if these suggestive remarks of ours tend in any way to remove or alleviate the sufferings of an uncomplaining and loving wife. Our sympathies, always susceptible to the conditions ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... Jefferson-Madison "resolutions of '98." It was easy, therefore, to alarm the public with confessions of a secret emissary, as he pretended, who had turned traitor to the government which had employed him and to the conspirators to whom he had been sent; and the more reprehensible was it, therefore, in a President of the United States, to make the use that was made of this story, which an impartial examination would have shown was essentially absurd and infamously false. Mr. ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... would seem that unbelief is not the greatest of sins. For Augustine says (De Bapt. contra Donat. iv, 20): "I should hesitate to decide whether a very wicked Catholic ought to be preferred to a heretic, in whose life one finds nothing reprehensible beyond the fact that he is a heretic." But a heretic is an unbeliever. Therefore we ought not to say absolutely that unbelief is the greatest ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... also the necessary means of its perfection. He willed, therefore, the state—He willed its connection with the source and original archetype of all perfection. They who are convinced of His will, which is the law of laws, and the sovereign of sovereigns, cannot think it reprehensible that this, our corporate realty and homage, that this our recognition of a signiory paramount—I had almost said this oblation of the state itself—as a worthy offering on the high altar of universal praise, should be performed with modest ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... If I happen to say that it would be a most reprehensible thing if anyone were to do something, somehow or other that is the very thing that Jack and you do. It was only last week I said that it would be a very objectionable trick if anyone was to tie paper bands round the neck of the clergyman's ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... way, casting some converted looks at the gentleman, and judging him to be the mysterious unknown in whom the late Captain Stroke had taken such a reprehensible interest. He was a stout, red-faced man, stepping firmly into the fifties, with a beard that even the most converted must envy, and a frown sat on his brows all the way, proving him possibly ill-tempered, but also one of the notable few who can think hard about one thing for at least ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... out, as for as animal magnetism is concerned. For though undoubtedly there were Quakers so superstitious as to be led away on this occasion, yet they were very few in number, and not more in proportion than others of other religious denominations. The conduct of these was also considered as reprehensible by the society at large, and some pains were taken to convince them of their error, and of the unsuitableness of such doctrines with ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... altogether wisely upon them. The writer was verdant, to be sure, and self-conscious, and partial in his view of the relations of the sexes, but there was withal a serious purpose in the writing. He meant to expose and correct what he conceived to be reprehensible conduct on the part of the gentler sex, bad feminine manners. Just now he sees the man's side of the shield, a few years later he will see the woman's side also. He ungallantly concludes "to lead the 'single life,' and not," as he puts it, "trouble myself about the ladies." A most ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... at the door while her hand was on the bell, and on her calling "Come in," instead of the servant her hostess appeared, dressed to the baroness's eye in a truly amazing and reprehensible fashion, and looking as cheerful as an innocent infant for whom no such thing as evil-doing exists. Also she seemed quite unconscious of her clothes and bare neck, nor did she offer to explain why she was arrayed as though she were going to a ball; and she stood a moment in the doorway trying ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... fellow's coat. Our peculiar style of pushing a football right through the thorax of the whole Middle West nearly made him shudder his shoes off and every fall in chapel he delivered a talk against the reprehensible state of mind that finds pleasure in the defeat of others. We always cheered those talks, which pleased him; but he never could understand why we didn't go out afterward and offer ourselves up to some high-school team as victims. It ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... cultures, to feel that the present was indeed a majestic crisis, to be so esteemed by a superior man. I could not. Though the crisis possibly intimidated me somewhat, yet, on behalf of Jos Myatt, I was ashamed of it. This may be reprehensible, but it ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... of a grave and solemn complexion, and in his happiest state the opium-eater cannot present himself in the character of L'Allegro: even then he speaks and thinks as becomes Il Penseroso. Nevertheless, I have a very reprehensible way of jesting at times in the midst of my own misery; and unless when I am checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I shall be guilty of this indecent practice even in these annals of suffering or enjoyment. The reader ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... islands, which are under its government and protection. From that [ruin] will follow great and intolerable disadvantages and losses to the disservice of the royal crown, the loss of that land and community, and (what is most reprehensible) that of religion and the Catholic faith. Although this is so deeply rooted in the said city and in the other islands, it would be lost, if the Dutch gained possession of Manila, as they have done of many neighboring ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various

... Mining Company as easily as in notes of the Bank of England; nay, by this very proceeding of his, he had even given them a double chance of being traced. He (Mr. Balais) was not there, of course, to justify the conduct of the prisoner at the bar. It was unjustifiable, it was reprehensible in a very high degree; but what he did maintain was that, even taking for granted all that had been put in evidence, this young man's conduct was not criminal; it was not that of a thief. He had never had the least intention of stealing ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... States. By ascribing to those who administer the government the atrocities committed by Transatlantic rulers, you aim a deadly blow at the character of our system; and your conduct, base in any view we can take of it, is particularly reprehensible in the delicate state of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... knew quite well that she was shifting upon him the responsibility of deciding. As a strict disciplinarian—in theory—it would never do for her to countenance such unlawful proceedings. He rose to the occasion promptly. "Soap and water for these highly reprehensible young folks, after that—the ice cream—seeing that the cherry pie came to a ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott



Words linked to "Reprehensible" :   wrong, deplorable, reprehend, reprehensibility, vicious



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