"Shocking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rose from his bed about four, apparently as well as he has usually been in the winter time; returned to it without the least assistance, and in less than a quarter of an hour was a corpse in the arms of his sons, leaving those who knew his worth and deeply lament his loss." "It will be a shocking thing for George and John," wrote Allday Kerrison to ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... money, and the young man had shot his father-in-law. Milly remembered old Sweet quite vividly. He used to sit on his stoop in his stocking feet, even on Sundays when all the neighborhood was going by to church,—very shocking to Milly's sense of propriety. And the boy had hung around saloons. ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... concerning the influence of the death of Jesus, has supposed his case exceptional and his work peculiar. It would be very shocking to most Orthodox minds to suppose that the same law of vicarious sacrifice applies to others; that the sufferings and death of the good, in all ages, have helped to atone for evil; have enabled sinners to obtain pardon. But such, we ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... of course true only of insignificant duties, necessary for appearance' sake. Serious duties, necessary for kindness' sake, must be permitted in any domestic affliction, under pain of shocking ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... (abominable!); "unprovendered;" "such his tale;" "Ah, suffering to the height of what was sufffered" (a most insufferable line); "amazements of affright;" "The hot, sore brain attributes its own hues of ghastliness and torture" (what shocking confusion of ideas!). ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... turned away, saying, "How shocking such things were!" and Thorn, with a smile which did not, however, light up ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... a criminal," he smiled, "a man who has for years been playing upon the fears and the credulity of his fellow-creatures. That must have been a shocking discovery, Miss Gray, but at least you will acquit him of ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... I am about at the end of one of the most shocking and most mystifying affairs known to the human race. In keeping with my resolve I disappeared into the Negro race for the purpose of fathoming the mystery of the murder of my beloved Alene. The fact that I could so disappear is one of far-reaching significance. ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... choral society, he wanted to know? Though he had tried hard not to, he had been forced to admit that It was d——d disgraceful. He had never, he reflected aloud, seen anything like it during an active army existence that had provided many shocking sights. And he opined that there would be fatigues and C.B.s and court-martials and shootings-at-dawn if It continued. He was good, even ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... considered, a cheerful glow in her veins. Here, really, was an opportunity of stemming the current of her income without shocking any of her ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... my fury and your insult are too shocking to be wiped out even with an apology," said Gregory very calmly. "No duel could wipe it out. If I struck you dead I could not wipe it out. There is only one way by which that insult can be erased, and that way I choose. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... have known. Could not have known that this thing he wrought spelled at once Beginning and End: that no such shocking departure remains long sole-possessed, either shaft or fire or mushroom-shape: that with each great thing of man's devising comes question and doubt and ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... Mrs. Plinth with decision, "but it is absolutely necessary. I know what that happy-go-lucky principle leads to. As I told one of my nieces the other day, there are certain emergencies for which a lady should always be prepared. It's in shocking taste to wear colours when one pays a visit of condolence, or a last year's dress when there are reports that one's husband is on the wrong side of the market; and so it is with conversation. All I ask is that I should know beforehand what is to be talked about; ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Italy could only be achieved either by submitting the whole peninsula to the Roman Pontiff or by depriving him of the temporal power. And the speaker ended by prophesying, his only prophecy which failed, that this shocking event would not happen in the present century, whatever God might permit ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... example, the doctrine of metempsychosis, or, as it is commonly called, the "transmigration of souls." No doubt, there is a great deal connected with this doctrine in the Buddhist books that cannot but appear to us puerile and shocking; but still, we do not well, we do not justly, if, as do so many, we fasten such strange fancies on Buddha, or on Buddhism, as though it were from these that they sprang. So far from Sakya-muni being the originator of the theory ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... bolting through the place mounted by a gigantic monkey, the fraud would be discovered, and then the inhabitants would deal in their own gentle, characteristic way with the man who had been party to Professor Thunder's shocking imposition. Two days earlier ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... contrary, whose eccentricities did not lie on the side of respectability, had gone on shocking the stiff proprieties of her younger sister till she could be shocked no more, and gave in as to the hopelessness of fate. She had had a severe disappointment in youth, had not only survived it, but saved her heart alive out of it, losing only, as far as appeared ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... "It is all very shocking," the lady said. "What will poor Mr. Bastow do? I should think that he would not like to remain as clergyman here, where everyone knows ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... "I've a shocking bad memory in some things," was his reply, as he continued forward to the forecastle. He did not, however, forget to victual us that day, and insert our names, in pencil, upon the ship's books; but we were not put ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... true enough," Gervaise admitted; "and to my mind it is shocking that four-fifths at least of the Order, pledged to oppose the infidels, should be occupied with the inglorious work of looking after the manors and estates of the society throughout Europe, while one-fifth, at most, are here performing the duties to which all are ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... performances; yet I know not whether it has not happened to him as to others, to be praised most, when praise is not most deserved. That this play has scenes noble in themselves, and very well contrived to strike in the exhibition, cannot be denied. But some parts are trifling, others shocking, and some improbable. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... largely thwarted by the customary Byronic mystery and swagger. 'Cain' and 'Heaven and Earth,' though wretchedly written, have also a vaguely vast imaginative impressiveness. Their defiant handling of Old Testament material and therefore of Christian theology was shocking to most respectable Englishmen and led Southey to characterize Byron as the founder of the 'Satanic School' of English poetry. More significant is the longest and chief of his satires, 'Don Juan,' [Footnote: Byron entirely anglicized the second word ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... he did not write for children like Ducray-Duminil, and one of his novels contains a boastful preface scoffing at and glorying in the accusations of impropriety brought against him. I have found nothing very shocking in those books of his which I have read, and I certainly have not thought it necessary to extend my acquaintance in search of it. He seems to have been a quarrelsome sort of person, for he got into trouble not only with the moralists, not only with the Restoration ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... that bisected the wigwam, at a distance of perhaps twelve feet from the floor, were the scalps of his enemies. Judging from the great quantity of these ghastly trophies, my master was a man of immense valor and shocking brutality. ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... see how it reads," said he, and, removing the blotting paper, read as follows: "'Pair of Wellingtons, L1 15s.; satin stock, 25s.; cap ribbon for Sally Duster, 2s. 6d.; box of cigars, L1 16s. (mem. shocking bad lot)—5th Nov., Francis Fairlegh, aged 15'.—So much for that; now, let's see the next: 'Five shirts, four pair of stockings, six pocket-handkerchiefs, two pair of white ducks—5th Nov., ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... you ever hear any one so wickedly obstinate before?" cried nurse. "Isn't it shocking? and his ma that delicate and worried living all alone, like, here out in these strange parts, and him as ought to be a comfort to her doing nothing but hanker after running away to find him as is ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... add here, before my narrative advances to other events, that I have not described what passed between the lawyer and me, without having a definite object in view. I am ordered to include in my contribution to the shocking story of the Moonstone a plain disclosure, not only of the turn which suspicion took, but even of the names of the persons on whom suspicion rested, at the time when the Indian Diamond was believed ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... question, if we harbour it till morning, our lives must pay for it. What a sad mischance is this! Why, how did you kill this man? That is not the question, replied the Jew; our business now is to find out a remedy for such a shocking accident. They then consulted together how to get rid of the corpse that night. The doctor racked his brain in vain; he could not think of any stratagem to get clear: but his wife, who was more fertile in invention, said, there is a thought come into my head; let us carry.the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... so great that it intrudes itself even into thy friendships!" cried Fulgence. "All vanity of that sort is a symptom of shocking egoism, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... please," said Lady Louisa, as the door closed on the struggling, screaming, and protesting Amabel. "Isn't it really dreadful? But Esmerelda Ammaby says Henry used to tell shocking stories when he was a ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that, she didn't know whether she was glad or sorry. She knew how crude had been her self-revelation, and how shocking; but the memory of it gave her a measure of relief. It was like a general confession, like the open declaration of what had been too long kept buried in the heart. It had been a shameful thing to own that, loving one man, she would have married another man for money; but a worse shame ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... particular time, Shields was auditor of the state of Illinois. The finances of the state were in a shocking condition. The state banks were not a success, and the currency was nearly worthless. At the same time, it was the only money current, and it was the money of the state. These being the circumstances, the governor, auditor, and treasurer, issued a circular ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... fashion, still rolling the cigarette between his delicate finger and thumb. 'Goodness gracious, Oswald!' Ernest exclaimed as his friend stepped in, 'why, you've actually come in evening dress! A white tie and all! What on earth will Max say? He'll be perfectly scandalised at such a shocking and unprecedented outrage. This will never do; you must dissemble ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... friend of mine, he said that my face appeared much fairer and smoother when he looked on me from the ground than it did upon a nearer view, when I took him up in my hand and brought him close, which he confessed was at first a very shocking sight. He said he could discover great holes in my skin; that the stumps of my beard were ten times stronger than the bristles of a boar, and my complexion made up of several colors, altogether disagreeable; although I must beg leave to say for myself that I am as fair ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... responsibility—particularly with that old cat Amoore looking at the lists over your shoulder. And such a shocking thing happened last summer! Poor crazy Cissie, my Nurse that I was telling you of, she took three solid ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... Paris. Do you think a woman is grateful to them for it? Far from it. She declares that she has sacrificed her position for them, and that while she was with them she was losing money. These details seem to you shocking? Well, they are true. You are a very nice fellow; I like you very much. I have lived with these women for twenty years; I know what they are worth, and I don't want to see you take the caprice that a pretty girl ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... go to sleep forward under the sail, I cruised on into the night. The wind had fallen somewhat, but it kept the canvas filled. The crooning of the water, the rustling of the sail, the thin voices of bugs on shore, and the guttural song of the frogs, shocking the general quiet—these sounds only intensified the weird calm of the night. The sky was cloudless, and the moon shone so brightly that I wrote my day's notes ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... shocking trouble. And now that you are able to converse rationally, you are more trouble than ever, asking so many questions. ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... this offence she had been repeatedly sent by her master and mistress to be whipped by the keeper of the Charleston work-house. This had been done with such inhuman severity, as to lacerate her back in a most shocking manner; a finger could not be laid between the cuts. But the love of liberty was too strong to be annihilated by torture; and, as a last resort, she was whipped at several different times, and kept a close prisoner. A heavy iron collar, with three long prongs projecting from ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... abruptly at an iris flanked by two sentries. They conferred briefly with Kennon's guide, dilated the iris, and motioned for Kennon to enter. The pastel interior of the modern office was a shocking contrast to the gray ferromorph ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... as a whole, with the Republican Reign of Terror twenty-two years earlier. But the comparison does little credit to the historical sense of those who suggested it. The barbarities of 1815 were strictly local: shocking as they were, they scarcely amounted in all to an average day's work of Carrier or Fouche in 1794; and the action of the established Government, though culpably weak, was not itself criminal. A second and more dangerous stage of reaction ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the subject to me till my mind was quite made up about it. They respected my wish, and said no more; but they lent me books to read which assisted in strengthening my wavering resolution. Among these books was the Life of Madame de Montmorenci, who, after the shocking death of her husband, entered the Order of St. Mary. The great example of this lady made me reflect seriously, and I communicated my thoughts, as a matter of course, to Father Deveaux. He assured me that the one last greatest sacrifice which remained ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... strange things he had seen were clean gone from his memory; he simply recollected having babbled all manner of foolish stuff beneath the elder-tree. This was the more shocking to him, as he entertained from of old an inward horror against all soliloquists. It is Satan that chatters out of them, said his Rector; and Anselmus shared honestly his belief. To be regarded as a Candidatus Theologiae, overtaken ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... of this success, by which the Spanish monarchy became master of the whole Pyrenean peninsula and its many colonies in East and West, it was all the more necessary for the other two powers to hold together. Many causes of quarrel indeed arose between them. How could the shocking event of the night of St. Bartholomew fail to awaken all the antipathies of the English, and indeed of Protestantism in general! Elizabeth did not let herself be prevented by her treaty from supporting the French Protestants in the manner she ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... apologized, smiling; "I seem bent on shocking you to-day. You can be as good as you want. Only, once in a while you do seem a little remote. Elizabeth used to say she was ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... move. He felt no anger, nothing but a supreme pity for this man who could not see, could not understand the truth of a nature with which he had held commune for so long, and, as he in his blindness believed, in such a perfect intimacy. There was to the Doctor something shocking in such blindness, in such ignorance. But there was something beautiful, too. And to destroy beauty ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... week, year after year, sometimes whole lifetimes, when they were specially valuable, and finally, perhaps, giving them away to others. It seems that women sometimes kept their wedding dresses long enough for their daughters to wear at their weddings. That would seem shocking to us, and yet, even your fine ladies did such things. As for what the poor had to do in the way of keeping and wearing their old clothes till they went to rags, that is something which won't ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... scientifically while he lay heart-broken on his bunk; then I walked with him to the Echuca road. So he sorrowed his way northward, in renewed search of his brother Larry; and, as I watched his diminishing figure, I prayed that he might be enticed into the most shocking company in Echuca, and be made fightably drunk, and fall in for a remembersome hammering, and get robbed of everything, and be given in charge for making a disturbance, and wind up the adventure with a month in Her Majesty's jail. It seemed to me ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... self-conceited spirit which made no allowance for other men's weakness or ignorance; nor again, for their superior experience and wisdom on points which I had never considered—which took a pride in shocking and startling, and defying, and hitting as hard as I could, and fancied, blasphemously, as I think, that the word of God had come to me only, and went out from me only. God forgive me for these sins, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... myself of habitually shocking her aristocratic sensibilities by profanely ignoring, in favor of the society of dirty little plebeians, the relations to whom the sacred charm of a common ancestry should have drawn me. "Make haste, honey," she used to say; "wash ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... slept too long in its rays, for there was in Dead Man's Diamond a certain sinister look and a boding of things to happen that are better not mentioned here. The face of the spider-idol was lit by that fatal gem; there was no other light. In spite of his shocking limbs and that demoniac body, his face ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... ancient city; and if they had come from the strait-laced East they were likely to be much scandalized when they learned the identity of the lady spoken of thus disrespectfully, and would at once want to know how and why such things could be. Then they would be told that the shocking appellation was only a good-natured and admiring recognition of Mrs. Coolidge's general efficiency. For it was the universal opinion in Santa Fe that Colonel Kate would always accomplish whatever she started out to do, and that nobody ever could ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... the Spider, with finger so fine, To show his dexterity on the tight line. From one branch to another his Cobwebs he slung, Then quick as an arrow he darted along; But just in the middle,—Oh! shocking to tell, From his rope in an instant poor Harlequin fell. Yet he touch'd not the ground, but with talons outspread Hung suspended in air, at the end of a thread. Then the Grasshopper came with a jerk and a spring; Very long was his Leg, though but ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... One Henry Harrison, a man of loose life, connected with this Mrs Vanwinckle, the borrower of the money, was tried, convicted, and executed, on pretty clear evidence, yet he died denying the crime charged. The case being of a shocking nature, of course interested the feelings of the common people, and another person was accused as an accessory, the principal evidence against whom ...
— Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald • Sir Walter Scott
... Church. A man may be content to remain a nullifidian; women cannot rest at that stage. They demand the spiritual significance of everything.—I grieve to tell you, Peak, that for three years I have been a widower. My wife died with shocking suddenness, leaving me her two little children. Ah, but leaving me also the memory of a singularly pure and noble being. I may say, with all humility, that I have studied the female mind in its noblest modern type. I know what can be expected of woman, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... colony, by arguments, explanation of the New Laws and of the Emperor's wishes, to effect the liberation of the Indians, but failing in this, he next preached publicly on the subject. No headway was made by one or the other means employed, while shocking cruelties were of daily occurrence and the Indians, who recognised the Bishop as their only protector and advocate, brought him tales of their sufferings which left him no choice but to have recourse to ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... In this point they differed widely from the poor child below stairs. They seemed to recognize a universal motherhood in womankind, and cared not which individual might be the mother of the moment. I found their tameness as shocking as did Alexander Selkirk that of the brute subjects of his else solitary kingdom. It was a sort of tame familiarity, a perfect indifference to the approach of strangers, such as I never noticed in other children. I accounted for it partly by their nerveless, unstrung ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that there are very few contradictions in statements of fact. The author has plainly singled out the empress Theodora as the principal victim of his venomous darts, and he gives an account of her early years which is both shocking and disgusting, but which, happily, we are not forced to regard as true. It goes without saying that such a work as this could not have been published during the lifetime of the author, and it appears that it was not given to the world until after ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... said Mr. Gradgrind. 'All necessary means will be provided for you. Atone, by repentance and better conduct, for the shocking action you have committed, and the dreadful consequences to which it has led. Give me your hand, my poor boy, and may God ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... malice or, and it is the same thing, to say that a criticism need not be honest might lead to shocking consequences. The skilful craftsman would be able to write a fiendish criticism with impunity and boast of the gratification of his hatred. There is no half-way house. A plaintiff must be entitled to offer evidence ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... understand why Marian should place such a shocking interpretation on such a trifling ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... Solemnity is a mask worn by ignorance and hypocrisy—it is the preface, prologue, and index to the cunning or the stupid. He was natural in his life and thought—master of the story-teller's art, in illustration apt, in application perfect, liberal in speech, shocking Pharisees and prudes, using any ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... a slight cold, my daughter, is a very serious affair to another; and you are one of those who can never take a slight cold without shocking the whole system. Your pale face and your evident debility this morning show how much even this slight cold, as you call it, has affected you. That you have this cold is to me no subject of wonder. You were well wrapped up, ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... agreeable. The conversation had been semi-political,—political to the usual feminine extent, and had consisted chiefly of sarcasms from Lady Cantrip against Sir Timothy Beeswax. "That England should put up with such a man," Lady Cantrip had said, "is to me shocking! There used to be a feeling in favour of gentlemen." To this the Duke had responded by asserting that Sir Timothy had displayed great aptitude for parliamentary life, and knew the House of Commons better than most men. He said nothing against his foe, and very much in his foe's ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... viewpoints. Micawber is both Micawber, and yet Dickens. And, again, while Micawber may be said to be Dickens, yet Dickens is not identical with Micawber. Man, like Micawber, may exclaim: "The Spirit of my Creator is inherent within me— and yet I am not HE!" How different this from the shocking half-truth so vociferously announced by certain of the half-wise, who fill the air with their raucous cries of: "I am God!" Imagine poor Micawber, or the sneaky Uriah Heep, crying: "I Am Dickens"; or some of the lowly clods in one of Shakespeare's plays, eloquently announcing ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... here so much looseness and inconsistency of language, that what is most offensive in it may easily bear more than one interpretation: and the shocking dogma that, in a given state of society, the force of circumstances constrains the commission of a certain amount of crime, may possibly admit of being explained away and softened down into the comparatively ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... you to read it in when it do; that the Blackwood and the Officers' Magazine are hout; that you may go without your new novels afore he'll let you have 'em chaiper than other folks, (and there's a shocking shame, sir!) and as for the works you mentioned, there's fifty new ones at least to choose from; but he can't remember what you don't be pleased to recollect yourself. Dear heart! to think of a gentleman like you, sir, being trated thus; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... to say!" stammered Peter in a husky voice. "Are—you are not joking, are you, Miss Borria? You can't be! But this is so serious! Shocking! Why, you never saw me before! Why should you pick me for such a thing when you never saw me? You don't know me. You don't know what a brute I might be. Why, I might be married ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... us to realize to ourselves a single ceremony of Grecian worship,—for instance, a dance in honor of Apollo,—in its subtile meaning, than it would be to appreciate the "Prometheus" of AEschylus. This ignorance leads oftentimes to the most shocking profanation; and from mere lack of vision we ridicule much that should call forth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... rudely interrupted by the sudden return of the terrible Corsican (now sweltering under the hot sun of St. Helena) went back to their jobs. The victory was duly celebrated with dinners, garden parties and balls at which the new and very shocking "waltz" was danced to the great scandal of the ladies and gentlemen who remembered the minuet of ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Golden Ankle up to the Knee There it was for the mob to see! A shocking act had it chanced to be A crooked leg or a skinny: But although a magnificent veil she wore. Such as never was seen before, In case of blushes, she blush'd no more Than George ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... associated with some subtle view of morals; with them realism was always associated with some simple view of morals. The end of Bill Sikes exactly in the way that the law would have killed him—this is a Hogarthian incident; it carries on that tradition of startling and shocking platitude. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... put out by the announcement of the intended visit. She declared that nothing was fit to be seen, that the house was in a state of disorder shocking to behold, and that there was scarce a place in it fit to sit down in; and she forthwith began to prepare for an afternoon's vigorous scrubbing ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... been very certain of Louis's intentions of resorting to the most dangerous extremities, must have known exactly what he intended to do; for he did not ask him a single question. Perhaps he dared not. Perhaps he preferred doubt to shocking certainty, as if he could thus escape the remorse attendant upon ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... Bostwick, who was a big man, began to sing in a shrill, tremolo soprano voice. It was not the same song Bessie was playing, and the discord was shocking that the professor smiled, the senator put his hands to his ears and Mrs. Bostwick ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... the family or of a guest under the roof would be a matter of the deepest disgrace. Etiquette is the tyrant of Japan. A slip in the manner of serving the food is a thousand times more important in Japanese eyes than the quality of the food itself. A hostess might serve burned rice and the most shocking tea, but if it were handed round in correct form, there would be nothing more to be said; but to serve a twice-honourable guest before a thrice-honourable guest—ah! that would be truly dreadful, a blot never to be ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... hear a call," said Mrs. Dunbar, "but it may have been our pet owl. Come, let us all get inside. Isn't it fortunate no one was hurt? Cleo, however did you get out on that tree without shocking ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... Mr. Crump, "she does it well, but no doubt they train her to it. It is perfectly shocking, such depravity in ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... I don't want you to think I justify desertion," said Hadow quickly, not ill pleased at the compliment. "Gad, sir, it's a shocking thing; bar actual cowardice, I positively know nothing worse. Were Jack my son, I'd rather see him stretched dead at my feet. I tell you, Mr. Francis, that when I first heard the news I was stunned; I felt myself trembling; the dishonor, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... direct and safer. But there was always some traffic upon them of men going into the line or coming out, of ration parties, munition and water carriers, and ambulances. On all four roads many men of our race were killed. All, at some time, or many times, rang and flashed with explosions. Danger, death, shocking escape and firm resolve, went up and down those roads daily and nightly. Our men slept and ate and sweated and dug and died along them after all hardships and in all weathers. On parts of them, no traffic moved, even at night, so that the grass ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... coroner did, that gentleman being suggestive of an extremely sharp ratting terrier grown fat. So Elizabeth informed the foreman that her grief was, of course, partly on account of master, and she thought it very shocking for there to be a murder in "our house;" but what she wanted to know was what had become of Bob, whom she was sure one of those bad men had smuggled ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... Pennycook looked coldly on, working her lower lip and the tip of her nose, rabbit-fashion, for all the world like one who, having anticipated a sniff of the spices of Araby, has detected instead a shocking aroma of corned beef ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... are more affecting than those of their sufferings during unfavourable seasons and in bad situations for hunting and fishing. Many assurances have been given me that men and women are yet living who have been reduced to feed upon the bodies of their own family to prevent actual starvation; and a shocking case was cited to us of a woman who had been principal agent in the destruction of several persons, and amongst the number her husband and nearest relatives, in order ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... you," said Eve, "and it sickens me also, for death and decay are not pleasant. Yet Nature, left to herself, reduces all to this. Every grave that has yawned to receive its prey hides corruption no less shocking. Nature's forces of creation and destruction forever work in partnership. Never satisfied with her composition, she destroys and starts again, building, building towards the ultimate of perfection. Thus, it is natural that if ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... replied "that this was true, to be sure; but if she was poor, she was still their mother;" and then she cried as if her heart would break. At last she thought how shocking it would be to see them starved to death before their eyes; so she agreed to what her husband had said, and then went ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... more likely—English chaps Brawling away, 'Go on!' for Ito, And 'Cut along!' instead of Cito; The engine letting off its steam, With puff and whistle, snort and scream; A smell meanwhile, like burning clothes, Flouting the angry Roman nose? Is it not Conscript Fathers shocking? Does it not seem your mem'ry mocking? The Roman and the Railway station— What an incongruous combination! How odd, with no one to adore ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... formed part of the Godhead, was the Son of God in the same sense and manner with Christ himself, and enjoyed thereby a glorious immunity from the trammels of all laws human and divine. Inwardly transported by this blissful persuasion, though outwardly presenting in their aspect and manners a shocking air of lunacy and distraction, the sectaries roamed from place to place, attired in the most fantastic apparel and begging their bread with wild shouts and clamour, spurning indignantly every kind ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... patents on inventions were no less instructive, although intermingled with shocking contradictions inserted with a view to make the useful truths more palatable. The necessity for brevity compels me to terminate this ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... took the baby out of his cradle, lest any of them should steal him, which, of course, seemed a very probable thing for them to do. Then she went to look for her husband, who, shocking to relate, was quite tipsy, quarrelling and arguing with the mayor, and she actually saw ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... your veil, dear, they are sticking out... Oh dear, dear, she is at home! I do have such shocking bad fortune." ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the advice of Bassanio, who, notwithstanding all the Jew had said of his kind intentions, did not like his friend should run the hazard of this shocking penalty for his sake, Anthonio signed the bond, thinking it really was (as the Jew said) merely ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... "I am shocking you, and I didn't want to shock you," she cried, almost wildly. "But you don't suppose he needs me—me myself? He only wants to be sure I'm doing the right thing. He wants to give people no chance of saying that Lady Mary Crewys rushed off to see her spoilt boy whilst her husband hovered ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... more seriously than the Kaiser. She wrote; I dictated. And if a particularly fine evening drew us out for a walk along the byways—where there was no saluting, and one could smoke a pipe without shocking the Duke of Cambridge—then it was to discuss the last scene and to wonder what would happen in the next. We did not estimate the money or publicity which might come from this new venture; there has never been any serious thought of making ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... of rural life, this ambition, akin to what we see taking quite another form among ourselves, Zola does not sufficiently realize. Shocking indeed were the miserliness and materialism of such existences but for the element of self-denial, this looking ahead for those to follow after. How differently, for instance, the farm-house and its group must have ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... purposes, even daring to attempt you in the presence of a good woman, which was a wickedness that every wicked man could not be guilty of; I say, except one had known these things, one could not have judged of the merit of your resistance, and how shocking those attempts were to your virtue, for that life itself was endangered by them: nor, let me tell you, could I, in particular, have so well justified him for marrying you (I mean with respect to his own proud and haughty temper of mind), if there had been room to think ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... night of such wallowing often costs them more than a month's sane recreation and good food would. All honour to the devoted men and women who labour in our seaports for the moral and material benefit of the sailor, passing their lives amidst sights and sounds shocking and sickening to the last degree, reviled, unthanked, unpaid. Few are the missionaries abroad whose lot is so hard ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... He said, when it was suggested that he try this tack, that he feared it was too late. Not that he wholly abandoned his belief in his own plan, but it seemed to me that he felt sorry that once attention could be attracted by being shocking it could only be held by ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... hoped they would see each other often, he said charmingly. He thought she would be sure to like Dunholm, which was really a thoroughly English old place, marked by all the features she seemed so much attracted by. There were some beautiful relics of the past there, and some rather shocking ones—certain dungeons, for instance, and a gallows mount, on which in good old times the family gallows had stood. This had apparently been a working adjunct to the domestic arrangements of every respectable family, and that irritating persons should dangle from it had been a simple ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... young men, the young men wrapped in white sheets under which they carry off, and make love to, the dusky maidens. This is the way a Titon "makes love." As a recent writer describes this dance, bringing before one only its poetry, and that which may be perhaps really beautiful, it does not seem shocking or revolting in the least; but the reality is simply dreadful. Not so much in itself, perhaps, though that is bad enough, as in its influence, its consequences, all that it means and all ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... warning, in a sudden and shocking burst of that high, voluble, metallic speech which Captain Alec had heard through the ceiling of the parlor, he began to address them, if indeed it were they whom he addressed, and not some phantom audience of Princes, Marshals, Admirals, or trembling sheep-like re emits. It was difficult ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... all the more shocking and discomposing, from the fact that I was at that moment contemplating the elegant features of a gentleman at the other end of the car, who seemed not altogether indifferent to my appearance (which he would have been, perhaps, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... well this exquisitely humorous jest about shocking a Suffragette. The whole crowd was ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... (say generally from thirty to fifty years old,) naturally we of young Oxford, that averaged about twenty, had the advantage. Then the public took to bribing, giving fees to horse-keepers, &c., who hired out their persons as warming-pans on the box-seat. That, you know, was shocking to our moral sensibilities. Come to bribery, we observed, and there is an end to all morality, Aristotle's, Cicero's, or anybody's. And, besides, of what use was it? For we bribed also. And as our bribes to those of the public being demonstrated out of Euclid to be as five ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... and fully the history and condition of the public mind in New England, and the world over, in reference to witchcraft in the seventeenth century. They show that there was nothing unprecedented, unusual, or eminently shocking, after all, in what I am about to relate as occurring in Salem, in 1692. The only real offence proved upon Margaret Jones was that she was a successful practitioner of medicine, using only simple remedies. Ann Hibbins was the victim of the slanderous gossip ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham |
