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Monstrosity   /mɑnstrˈɑsəti/   Listen
Monstrosity

noun
(pl. monstrosities)
1.
A person or animal that is markedly unusual or deformed.  Synonyms: freak, lusus naturae, monster.
2.
Something hideous or frightful.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Monstrosity" Quotes from Famous Books



... village state of "culture," more ancient, more savage, than literary narrative. Very frequently the local legends were subjected to the process of allegorical interpretation, as men became alive to the monstrosity of their unsophisticated meaning. Often they proved too savage for our authorities, who merely remark, "Concerning this a certain holy chapter is told," but decline to record the legend. In the same way missionaries, with mistaken delicacy, often refuse ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... a woman's body, exquisitely slim and young, with the breasts of a virgin. Very chaste in attitude, she holds in her hand a long-stemmed lotus flower, but by a contrast that nonplusses and paralyses you the delicate shoulders support the monstrosity of a huge lioness' head. The lappets of her bonnet fall on either side of her ears almost down to her breast, and surmounting the bonnet, by way of addition to the mysterious pomp, is a large moon disc. Her dead stare gives to the ferocity of her visage something unreasoning and fatal; ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... don't think you are, but it is only my duty to put the case plainly before you. That man who was buried this afternoon was simply unspeakable. He was a monstrosity of perverted morality. I cannot even bring myself to tell you what I know of him. I cannot even bring myself to give you the least hint of what my poor young sister, Clemency's mother, suffered in her brief life with ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... this joint resolution. But for one I thank God that I am so old-fashioned that I would not give one memory of my grandmother or my mother for all the arguments that could be piled, Pelion upon Ossa, in favor of this political monstrosity. ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... she said, turning suddenly to Miss Raeburn, "have you heard what a monstrosity Alice has produced this last time in the way of a baby? It was born ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... boyhood, they were only small clusters of buildings, with a ferry-house at the water's edge. Now they have crept along from the Palisades to the Kill van Kull, overflowed the Bergen Hills, reared giant structures which rival New York's in monstrosity, and extended their railroad-wharves and steamship-piers over the Arcadian haunts of the Elysian Fields and the primitive meadows of Communipaw and Paulus Hook. And on the East River Brooklyn, joined to New York by its Siamese ligament of the Bridge, seems the bigger ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... rudiment of a single digit to a completely double hand—the occasional appearance of additional digits in the salamander after a limb has been amputated—these various facts appear to indicate mere fluctuating monstrosity; and this perhaps is all that can be safely said. Nevertheless, as supernumerary digits in the higher animals, from their power of regrowth and from the number thus acquired exceeding five, partake of the nature of the digits ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... trees, burnt and ground, common charcoal, deer tallow, and spruce gum are used for this purpose. Labrets—pieces of wood, bone or shell, from 1.5 to 2.5 inches in length—are worn by a few old females, but this hideous, monstrosity is now never found upon the young women. Many of the middle-aged, however, pierce the centre of the lower lip and insert a small silver tube, which projects about a quarter of an inch. Both sexes perforate the septum of the nose ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden

... can express the countess's sensations at the dropping of such a "monstrosity" into the midst of her family circle,—she was appalled! Never had any one ventured to address her with such freedom; never before had she been treated by any one as though she were mere flesh and blood. She had not believed ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... better to fit them for the performance of different offices. Should growth and development be uniform and regular, that is in accordance with what is habitual in any particular species, there is no monstrosity, but if either growth or development be in any way irregular, malformation results. Hence, theoretically, the best way of grouping cases of malformation would be according as they are the consequences of:—1st. Arrest of Growth; 2ndly. Excessive Growth; ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... had thus far proved so fruitless, married again despite his fifty-odd years; the bride, a lass that came from his own province, was only twenty and her sole object in marrying was to change from servant to mistress. All of Uncle Patas' friends tried to convince him that it was a monstrosity for a man of his years to wed, and such a young girl at that; but he persisted in his ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... sculptors, or as sensitive as the saints; but if we admit that it is a barbarous thing to pass by the beauties of art without perceiving them; that it is the mark of defective civilization to confound horrible coarseness and monstrosity with ideal beauty, to be unable to distinguish the strident noise of the tram-car wheels, or the deafening crash of ill-tuned instruments from the harmonies of Bellini or Wagner; that each of us would blush for such insensibility, and would conceal it—how is it we do not perceive ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... times the average number of dead, and an enormous quantity of wealth, some of it in the form of little statues of men and women, or perhaps of gods. Yet, oddly enough, he was hunchback with a huge skull, almost a monstrosity indeed. Perhaps his mind partook of the abnormal qualities of his body, since no less than eleven little children had been sacrificed at his obsequies, two of whom, judging from their crooked bones, must have ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... improvements, even books, colleges, and the suffrage—all, in many respects, in themselves, (hard as it is to say so, and sharp as a surgeon's lance,) form, more or less, a sort of anti-democratic disease and monstrosity, except as they contribute by curious indirections to that culmination—seem to me mainly of value, or worth consideration, only ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... detest or hate any essence, but the devil; or so at least abhor anything, but that we might come to composition. If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the mul- titude; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but, confused together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra. It is no breach of charity to call these fools; it is the style all holy writers have ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... for the reverse. After recounting with great enthusiasm instances which he had witnessed of the daring and energy of Ghazan, the Armenian author goes on, "And the most remarkable thing of all was that within a frame so small, and ugly almost to monstrosity, there should be assembled nearly all those high qualities which nature is wont to associate with a form of symmetry and beauty. In fact among all his host of 200,000 Tartars you should scarcely find one of smaller stature or of uglier and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... richest citizen of Prussia. We have seen what he expects of his navy and of his army. Speaking on the 6th of September, 1894, he says: "Gentlemen, opposition on the part of the Prussian nobility to their King is a monstrosity." ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... bloody hand sated the deadly passion of his soul. Then he took the wife of the brother he had butchered, capping unnatural murder with incest. For whoso yields to one iniquity, speedily falls an easier victim to the next, the first being an incentive to the second. Also, the man veiled the monstrosity of his deed with such hardihood of cunning, that he made up a mock pretence of goodwill to excuse his crime, and glossed over fratricide with a show of righteousness. Gerutha, said he, though so gentle that she would do no man the slightest hurt, had been visited with ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... rational explanations of thoroughly proved experiences (only) which appear supernatural, derived from the average experience and study of the visible world. They must disbelieve the speciality of the Master and the Disciples, and that it is a monstrosity to test the wonders of show-folk by the same touchstone. Lastly, they must disbelieve that one of the best accredited chapters in the history of mankind is the chapter that records the astonishing deceits continually practised, with no ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens

... to swivel an archaic framework from back to front. The Big Bug looked puzzled, but passed on without comment. As he approached the next machine a second observer tried desperately to move a similar monstrosity round its hinges, while the pilot, stop-watch in hand, looked on with evident sorrow. The Big Bug now decided to investigate, and he demanded the reason for the stop-watch and the ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott

... broke up peaceably, although Mr. Bernard Jaw did his best to collect an audience for a new speech on the monstrosity of interfering ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various

... voice while he spoke, nor in the recounting of such inhuman monstrosity, such vile and bloodthirsty conspiracy against the liberty, the dignity, the very life of an entire nation, did he appear to feel the slightest indignation; rather did a tone of amusement and even of triumph strike through his speech; and now he laughed good-humouredly like an indulgent ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... in front of the curtain. He makes me a sign to look, and lifts the veil with a long rod. And suddenly, out of the blackness of some mysterious profundity masked by that sombre curtain, there glowers upon me an apparition at the sight of which I involuntarily start back—a monstrosity exceeding all anticipation—a ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... third day the incident of the eccentric lady and Evgenie Pavlovitch had attained enormous and mysterious proportions in his mind. He sorrowfully asked himself whether he had been the cause of this new "monstrosity," or was it... but he refrained from saying who else might be in fault. As for the letters N.P.B., he looked on that as a harmless joke, a mere childish piece of mischief—so childish that he felt it would be shameful, almost ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... appalled by the monstrosity he had created, for it was a loathsome, repulsive creature. Its head was flat and broad and sat upon its sloping shoulders without a connecting neck. Its legs were short, but its arms were long, and when standing erect it carried ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow

... gave premature birth to a child that was scarcely recognisable; it had been dead in its mother's womb for at least ten days, so the doctors averred. Monsieur le Duc d'Orleans, however, insisted upon having this species of monstrosity baptised. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... to result from partial dichotomy or cleavage of the trunk axis of the embryo, and is found exclusively in connection with the skull and vertebral column. It may take the form of a monstrosity such as conjoined twins or a parasitic foetus, but more commonly it is met with as an irregularly shaped tumour, usually growing from the sacrum. On dissection, such a tumour is found to contain a curious mixture of tissues—bones, skin, and portions of viscera, ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... believed, also, that certain kinds of animals would confer peculiar gifts upon the unborn, while others would leave so strong an adverse impression that the child might become a monstrosity. A case of hare-lip was commonly attributed to the rabbit. It was said that a rabbit had charmed the mother and given to the babe its own features. Even the meat of certain animals was denied the pregnant woman, because it was supposed to influence the disposition ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... feeling that the scandal is too good to be true—all these little hedges, and more, had to be broken through. To the Dinnafords, the unholy importance of what Noel had said to them would have continued to keep them dumb, out of self-protection; but its monstrosity had given them the feeling that there must be some mistake, that the girl had been overtaken by a wild desire to "pull their legs" as dear Charlie would say. With the hope of getting this view confirmed, they ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the Greek. In fact, Baffon (who used to wear ruffles) cites some cases of this monstrosity. On the whole, I am not sorry to have ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... was hideous, though his ugliness was not unpleasant, being due chiefly to a great development of his tribal feature, the nose, and in body he was misshapen to the verge of monstrosity. In fact Otter was a dwarf, measuring little more than four feet in height. But what he lacked in height he made up in breadth; it almost seemed as though, intended by nature to be a man of many inches, he had been compressed to his present dimensions by art. His ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... the suburbs. The very idea seems preposterous, for one cannot but associate the charms of a "find" with the horrors of "going to ground" in an omnibus, or the fox being headed by a great Dr. Eady placard, or some such monstrosity. Mr. Mayne,[6] to be sure, has brought racing home to every man's door, but fox-hunting is not quite so tractable a sport. But ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... iron curls were not delicate; they were thick, solid, unpliant ringlets, that would have formed a suitable decoration for the fair brow of a locomotive, or, perhaps, a chignon—supposing that any locomotive could have been prevailed on to adopt such a wild monstrosity! ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... look around the country, illusive, it seemed, according to its past treatment of men, in its restful beauty and secure feeling of peace. He was silent so long that the bone man looked at him again keenly, measuring him up and down as he would some monstrosity seen for the ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... a little ceremony. The babe is brought and laid upon the hearth or floor before the household gods for the father to inspect it. As has been said already, if it is a monstrosity, he may order it to be made away with. Otherwise it is still open to him either to acknowledge the infant or to refuse to have anything to do with it. The act of acknowledgment consists in stooping down and lifting up the child from ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... ever made for the guidance of an artist had been kept. The parts were out of proportion. No two parts seemed to fit each other. Put it all on paper, and it was an absurdity. The huge hall and porch added on by the builder of Queen Anne's time, at the very extremity of the house, were almost a monstrosity. The passages and staircases, and internal arrangements, were simply ridiculous. But there was not a portion of the whole interior that did not charm; nor was there a corner of the exterior, nor a yard of an outside wall, that was ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... The little monstrosity emphasized each of his staccato sentences by stamping a puny foot on the floor. His gloating over Jim's death was more ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny

... time in admiring. The bride wore the white which became her best, made with a long pointed bodice and paniers, and lace that had been worn by the wife of the first patroon. She had risen to the dignity of a wig, and her mass of black hair was twisted mercilessly tight under the spreading white monstrosity to which her veil was attached. Hamilton wore a black velvet coat, as befitting his impending state. Its lining and the short trousers were of white satin. His shapely legs were in white silk, his feet in pumps with diamond buckles, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... once. We have an evil heredity behind us in this matter, for we have inherited all kinds of funereal horrors from our forefathers, and so we are used to them, and we do not see the absurdity and the monstrosity of them. The ancients were in this respect wiser than we, for they did not associate all this phantasmagoria of gloom with the death of the body—partly perhaps because they had a much more rational method of disposing of the body—a method which ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant

... operate them grow pinch-faced, lean and haggard, from insufficient nutriment, and are old and decrepit while yet in the bud of youth; the tenements are crowded to suffocation, breeding pestilence and death; while the wages paid to labor hardly serve to satisfy the exactions of the landlord—a monstrosity in the midst of civilization, whose very existence is a crying protest against our pretensions ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... This monstrosity emanated from the brain of Ivan Hrosnoj, "the Terrible John." When he saw the architect's work complete he was delighted, loaded him with praise, embraced him, and then ordered his eyes to be put out, that no such second masterpiece ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... fefe, his legs almost as large as those of an elephant. He was a grotesque in hideous green. The blue of the candlenut-ink, in bizzare designs upon body and legs, had turned a scaly greenish hue from age and kava excesses. Revealed in the yellow light, he was like a ghastly bronze monstrosity that had known the weathering of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... who are bound by the ties of our faith to treat them as kindly as children—for whom, at the worst, they remain sisters of the Order. If women generally had parents, our marriage law could never have carried out the fiction of equality to its logical perfection and practical monstrosity." ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... believe. From the depths of the wood opposite came a crackling, crunching sound, as of some prehistoric beast forcing its way through tropical undergrowth. And then, suddenly, out from the thinning edge there loomed a monster—a monstrosity. It did not glide, it did not walk. It wallowed. It lurched, with now and then a laborious heave of its shoulders. It fumbled its way over a low bank matted with scrub. It crossed a ditch, by the simple expedient of rolling the ditch out flat, ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... remarkable productions in this way was the ponderous monstrosity invented by one Dr. Nicholson (Fig. 43). This hideous and unwieldy weapon was put forth by its inventor as the only correct form for a violin bow! It had to be haired with precisely 150 horse hairs dyed red. The reasons for this and the eccentric curve of the stick are subtleties into which ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George

... uncouth. In a field, as Millet has shown us, he possesses a beauty, dignified and touching. It is not impossible, therefore, that an artist who had the opportunity of entering into the life of a rhinoceros, as Millet had of entering into the life of a peasant, might discover beauty even in that monstrosity. This, however, I ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... spite of them, I was an artiste. I longed to bring them to my feet, as Jupiter did the Titans. So I ordered from one of those poetasters to be found in every land, a sort of libretto called, in theatrical parlance, a lyric drama; and to the words of this monstrosity I arranged the very finest airs of my several operas. When I had completed this musical kaleidoscope I called it 'Pyramus and Thisbe.' I dished up my olla podrida, and set it before the hungry English; but they did not relish ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... according to his impression. He renders not the object itself but his mental image of it; and that image is the result of his way of seeing and feeling, his habit of mind, his interest, and his store of memories. The idealist must base his work upon some kind of reality, or it is a monstrosity; he is obliged to refer to the external world for his symbols. The impressionist, who concerns himself with the play of light over surfaces in nature, is seeking for truth, and he cares to paint at all because that play of light, seemingly ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... by Hanslick: "Perhaps in a few years Ibsen's Peer Gynt will live only through Grieg's music, which, to my taste, has more poetry and artistic intelligence in every number than the whole five-act monstrosity of Ibsen." Among other notable orchestral and chamber music numbers may be mentioned a setting of Bjoernson's Sigurd the Crusader, Bergliot, based upon the sagas of the Norse kings, a suite composed for the two hundredth anniversary of Ludwig ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... them. It would be much nearer the truth to put the thing in the bold and bald terms of the old Irish song, and to call him "The anti-Irish Irishman." But it is only fair to say that the description is far less of a monstrosity than the anti-English Englishman would be; because the Irish are so much stronger in self-criticism. Compared with the constant self-flattery of the English, nearly every Irishman is an anti-Irish Irishman. But here again ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... a little Fritz be nourished into a Friedrich the Great; while irrational man-mountains, of the beaverish or beaverish-vulpine sort, take such a price to fatten them into monstrosity! The Art-manufacture of your Friedrich can come very cheap, it would appear, if once Nature have done her part in regard to him, and there be mere honest will on the part of the by-standers. Thus Samuel Johnson, too, cost next to nothing ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle

... of caprice, of elaborate monstrosity and mockery at Nature was here. There were espaliers of fruit-trees, a pear-tree in the shape of a pyramidal poplar, spherical oaks and lime-trees, an apple-tree in the shape of an umbrella, plum-trees trained into arches, crests, candelabra, ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... occasional modifications, especially through the study of monstrosities; hence, the labours of experimentalists, such as those of M. Camille Dareste, are full of promise for the future. In general we can only say that the cause of each slight variation and of each monstrosity lies much more in the constitution of the organism than in the nature of the surrounding conditions; though new and changed conditions certainly play an important part in exciting organic changes of ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... coped even for an instant with the ferocious brutality of the dead monster, except—von Horn's brain came to a sudden halt at the thought. Could it be? There seemed no other explanation. Virginia Maxon had been rescued from one soulless monstrosity to fall into the hands of ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... "but I cannot help it. I was created part man, part bird, part fish, part beast and part reptile, and such a monstrosity could not be otherwise than wicked. Everybody hates me, ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum

... as the sun slid into the position described, impressed me very much as I have been impressed, when a boy, by the concluding scene of some well-arranged theatrical spectacle or melodrama. Not even the monstrosity of color was wanting; for the sunlight came out through the chasm, tinted all orange and purple; while the vivid green of the grass in the valley was reflected more or less upon all objects from the curtain of vapor that still hung overhead, as if loth to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... test of a fine grotesque—a genuine Gothic monster—is, that he shall, in spite of his monstrosity, retain a certain anatomical consistency: it must be conceivable that the animal organism could have developed along these lines. In the thirteenth century, this is always possible; but in much later times, and in the Renaissance, the grotesques simply became comic and degraded, ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... the wide expanse. We must come out of our cave. We must link our pursuits to those of humanity. Breadth and robustness given to the mental constitution in its early training shall go far through life to save us from partial paralysis or monstrosity. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... that I was staring with much apparent interest, though indeed, had that same curly-horned monstrosity been changed by some enchanter's wand into a green dragon or griffin, or swan with two necks, the chances are that I should have continued sublimely unconscious ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... get Eyre," said Nancy, laughingly, "I was afraid he'd repeat the Gallatin Park monstrosity on a larger scale, and Eyre's the only man in this country who understands the French. It's been rather amusing," she went on, "I've had to fight Hilda, and she's no mean antagonist. How she hates me! She wanted a monstrosity, of course, a modernized German rock-grotto sort of an ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... spendthrift Clodius, who dissolved in vinegar a pearl taken from the ear of beautiful Metella (Sat. II, iii, 239), that he might enjoy drinking at one draught a million sesterces, near a thousand pounds. More than once he returns to castigation of the gluttony, which, though not yet risen to the monstrosity described by Juvenal, was invading the houses of the wealthy. He tells of two brothers—"a precious pair"—who used to breakfast daily upon nightingales: of one Maenius, who ruined himself in fieldfares (Ep. I, xv, 41). In a paper on the ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... shoes, and wore the aboriginal costume almost in full, moccasins and all, her gloves and hat alone remaining to distinguish her in appearance at a distance from a native woman of the Plains. The voluminous and beruffled skirts of the period, and that feminine monstrosity of the day, the wide spreading crinoline, she had left far behind her at the Missouri River. Again the long curls, which civilization at that time decreed, had been forgotten. Her hair at the front and sides half-waved naturally, but now, instead of neck curls or the low dressing of the hair ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... short-haired women who wish to see how British babies are reared, peace cranks and freaks of other kinds[73]. Our Government apparently won't let plain, honest, normal civilians come over, but if a fellow comes along who wants to investigate some monstrosity then one half of the Senate, one half of the House of Representatives, and a number of the executive offices of the Government give him the most cordial letters. Now there are many things, of course, that I don't know, but it has been my fate to have a pretty extensive acquaintance with ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... will you have? I must recognise the predicament I'm placed in by the more and more extraordinary development of English manners. Many things have altered, goodness knows, since I was Aggie's age, but nothing's so different as what you all do with your girls. It's all a muddle, a compromise, a monstrosity, like everything else you produce; there's nothing in it that goes on all-fours. I see but one consistent way, which is our fine old foreign way and which makes—in the upper classes, mind you, for it's with them only I'm concerned—des femmes bien ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... becoming oppressive and infectious each to his neighbor, in the smoking mass of decay. The resulting modes of mental ruin and distress are continually new; and in a certain sense, worth study in their monstrosity: they have accordingly developed a corresponding science of fiction, concerned mainly with the description of such forms of disease, like the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... Geryon, son of Chrysaor (Golden-sword), and the Ocean-nymph Callirhoe (Fair-flowing), was rich in the possession of sheep. His wealth, and perhaps his derivatives, rendered him this instrument of satire. The monstrosity, the mild face, the glancing point of venom, and the beautiful skin, make it as fine ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... been abandoned, and the principle which recognizes the right of the people to decide for themselves has been submitted in its place," he proceeded to vindicate his position throughout; declared that he opposed "the Lecompton monstrosity solely on the ground than it was a violation of the fundamental principles of free government; on the ground that it was not the act and deed of the people of Kansas; that it did not embody their will; that they were averse to it;" and hence he "denied the right of Congress ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... ransacked London together to find the Chippendale bookcase; and on its shelves stood books that had formed a bond between us, and copies of old reviews containing my fugitive contributions. A spurious Japanese dragon in faence, an inartistic monstrosity dear to her heart, at which I had often railed, grinned forgivingly at me from the mantel-piece. I have never realised how closely bound up with my habits was this drawing-room of Judith's. I stopped once ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... of hereditary monarchy. Assuredly the Emperor William at his worst would be entitled to say to his amiable Crown Prince what Charles II. said when his brother warned him of the plots of assassins: "They will never kill me to make you king." Others, of greater monstrosity of mind, have suggested that he should be sent to St. Helena. So far as an estimate of his historical importance goes, he might as well be sent to Mount Calvary. What we have to deal with is an elderly, nervous, not unintelligent person who happens to be a Hohenzollern; and who, to do him justice, ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... satisfactions of mankind. This hideous oblong, known as Bryanston Square—how did it come to seem a desirable place of abode? Nay, how was it for a moment tolerable to reasoning men and women? This whole London now gasping in foul vapours that half obscured, half emphasised its inexpressible monstrosity, its inconceivable abominations—by what blighting of eye and soul did a nation come to accept it as their world-shown pride, their supreme City? She was lost in a truth-perceiving dream. Habit ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... that evening is destined to live as long as the body of James Conlan inhabits this mortal coil. When he gave the servant his hat and stick and the footman his card, and heard that powdered monstrosity bawl "Mr. James Conlan" to a room filled with shimmering gowns and glistening shirt-fronts, Jim's flesh went cold. But the vigilant Claude helped him through. Claude was like a streak of greased lightning, bouncing Jim here and there ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... he changes, whether of a lion, horse or bird, will be quite perfect of the species to which it belongs; and this although it may appear false can only be called well imagined and monstrous. The reason is it is better decoration when, in painting, some monstrosity is introduced for variety and a relaxation of the senses and to attract the attention of mortal eyes, which at times desire to see that which they have never yet seen, nor does it appear to them ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... was in his dreams, hell in his association with men. And how dead everything about him seemed to be! It was all like a cemetery; it was a cemetery. His doughtiest life was gradually transformed into a shadow and lacerated into a monstrosity. But that he was aggrieved at men he felt full well; for they lived more innocent lives than he, and ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... notes abound I have not thought it needful in the Index to refer to the book unless the eminence of the author required a separate and a second entry. My labour would have been increased beyond all endurance and my Index have been swollen almost into a monstrosity had I always referred to the book as well as to the matter which was contained in the passage that I extracted. Though in such a variety of subjects there must be many omissions, yet I shall be greatly disappointed if actual errors are discovered. Every entry ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... and see the meanness of your intellect, the vulgarity of your character,—and tell me whether a woman like Aniela ought to remain true to you for an hour! How did you manage to get her, you spiritual and physical upstart? Is it not an unnatural monstrosity that you are her husband? Dante's Beatrice, marrying a common Florentine cad, would ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... crooked or straight Were fingers signalling the sky; The dog that strayed across the street Seemed four-legged by monstrosity. ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton

... insolence of the railroad, the presence and power of that Spirit, the Ally, and many other things and conditions in Corinth, with the lack of as many other things and conditions, are all due to the influence of what he calls "that hideous, cast-iron monstrosity." By this it will be seen that the Doctor is ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... family affairs, and a real delight in having all things well ordered and agreeable in her home. This is one of the most pleasing of the many revelations of this book. We love to know that she was a true woman, and no intellectual monstrosity. The glimpses that are given of her nursing her father through his long last sickness are very sweet and touching, and everything connected with her devotion to Mr. Lewes's children, down to poor Thornie's death, makes us love her more ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... romantic thing I ever heard," she cried. "Come now, this requires further investigation. What's our baby like, Dr. Knott? I've seen nothing but an indistinguishable mass of shawls and flannels. Have we, by chance, got an angelic monstrosity up-stairs without being ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... androgyne. These impostors, after a careful consultation of all attending circumstances, gave it as their opinion that the occurrence was an unfortunate impurity, and that it could only result to the disadvantage of Rome, unless she at once took steps to purify herself of such a monstrosity, with the conclusion that the androgyne should be first exiled from Roman soil, and then drowned in the depths of the sea. The unfortunate being was accordingly inclosed in a chest and put on board ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... people would knock off the top part of Antwerp Cathedral spire. Nothing can be more gracious and elegant than the lines of the first two compartments; but near the top there bulges out a little round, ugly, vulgar Dutch monstrosity (for which the architects have, no doubt, a name) which offends the eye cruelly. Take the Apollo, and set upon him a bob-wig and a little cocked hat; imagine "God Save the King" ending with a jig; fancy a polonaise, or procession of slim, stately, elegant court beauties, headed by a buffoon ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray

... arm-chair students of these things delight to represent them. For just as, a few years ago, we modern civilizees studying outlying nations, the Chinese for instance, rejoiced (in our vanity) to pick out every quaint peculiarity and absurdity and monstrosity of a supposed topsyturvydom, and failed entirely to see the real picture of a great and eminently sensible people; so in the case of primitive men we have been, and even still are, far too prone to catalogue their cruelties and obscenities and idiotic superstitions, and to miss the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... Pass—wandered—wandered—got to be fed with the mules and dogs at an Inn in the main valley far away—got to be Boy there—got to be Ostler—got to be Waiter—got to be Cook—got to be Landlord. As Landlord, he took me (could he take the idiot beggar his brother, or the spinning monstrosity his sister?) to put as pupil to the famous watchmaker, his neighbour and friend. His wife dies when Miss Marguerite is born. What is his will, and what are his words to me, when he dies, she being between girl and woman? 'All for Marguerite, except so much by ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... it must be owned, was something of a long-winded boaster, with a proneness to slide off into the fabulous, when blowing his own trumpet for the entertainment of his colored admirers, who bolted whatever monstrosity he might choose to toss into their greedy chops. But let us be just. It was with no direct intention of hoaxing or deceiving his hearers that he played the fabler; it was simply a way he had of holding up a magnifying-glass, so to speak, before their eyes, that he might ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... was of a dead green color, with blood trimmings; the nose beaked like a parrot's, the mouth a gaping crescent; the eyeless sockets seemed to sparkle and blink with inner eyes set in the back of the skull; murderous scalp locks streamed over the ill-shapen brow; and from the depths of this monstrosity some one, or something, said, "Boo!" I sprang backward, only to hear the gurgle of baby laughter, and see the wee face of a half-Indian cherub peering from behind the mask. Well, that mask is mine now; and whenever I look at it I think of the falling dusk ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... own, heartily hated and a little feared the old man. Since then the girl's lively imagination had created a most unseemly brute out of the enemy of her house, a beetle-browed, ugly-mouthed, facially-hideous being little short of a monstrosity. ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... the sultan has his own kiosk, a gilded monstrosity of architecture, and at its window, worn, pallid, haggard, gazing out with lacklustre and indifferent eye upon the scene below, this shadow of the Prophet might frequently be seen a few years since. It was etiquette for him to come sometimes, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... down from the other side of that ferocious head dangled the fish's tail, and from above the remarkable effect thus produced shot the intolerable glare of two yellow eyes. To the gaze of Duke, still blurred by slumber, this monstrosity was all of one piece—the bone seemed a living part of it. What he saw was like those interesting insect-faces which the magnifying glass reveals to great M. Fabre. It was impossible for Duke to maintain the philosophic calm of M. Fabre, however; there was no magnifying glass ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... dervishes, nor was there anything done in the least justifying or providing a decent pretext for that ferocious accusation. Very many thousands of dervish wounded fell into our hands that day and later. Officers have written to the press, denying these charges and the rest of Mr Bennett's tale of monstrosity. The Sirdar himself has confirmed by a personal cablegram my refutation of them. Here is another of Mr Bennett's suggestions of evil-doing, by innuendo and assertion:—"It was stated that orders had been given to kill the wounded." And, "If the Sirdar really believes that the destruction ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... Jean, "there was no thought of pleasing either you or me when she was christened—or rather when the late Mr. Duff-Whalley was christened. And I pointed out the house to you the other day. You asked what the monstrosity was, and I told you ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue, stands Shakespeare. His variety is like the variety of nature, endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity. The characters of which he has given us an impression, as vivid as that which we receive from the characters of our own associates, are to be reckoned by scores. Yet in all these scores hardly ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... patriotism to her side by advising that no notice be taken of this harebrained suggestion. Japan's advice received the secret blessing of both French and English who knew the situation, though in our case we had to admit that the British Premier had stood sponsor for this international monstrosity. This gave Japanese diplomacy its first clear hold upon Russian patriotism and enabled her to appear as a true friend of ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... had already taken the wrong turn, the turn that leads to endless inventions and no discoveries, in which new things grow old with confounding rapidity, but in which no old things ever grow new. The monstrosity of the crimes of the Renaissance was not a mark of imagination; it was a mark, as all monstrosity is, of the loss of imagination. It is only when a man has really ceased to see a horse as it is, that he invents a ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton

... Its habitat is in a land where plums grow with the stones outside, where aboriginal dogs have never been heard to bark, where birds are found covered with hair, and where mammals jump about like frogs! If these are shown to be literal facts, the mind is thereby well prepared for any animal monstrosity: and it staggers not in unbelief (on evidence of honest travellers) even when informed of a creature with a duck's bill and a beaver's body: it really amounted in Australia to ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... essence but the devil; or so at least abhor anything but that we might come to composition. If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion—the multitude: that numerous piece of monstrosity which, taken asunder, seem men and the reasonable creatures of God, but confused together, make but one great beast and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra: it is no breach of charity to call these fools; it is the style all holy writers have afforded them, set down ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... aid the poor brute by laying idle hands on the barrow behind, as I would unnatural parents. Pegasus harnessed to the Thracian herdsman's plough was no more of a desecration. I fancy the poor dog seems to feel the monstrosity of the performance, and, in sheer shame for his master, forgivingly tries to assume it is PLAY; and I have seen a little "colley" running along, barking, and endeavoring to leap and gambol in the shafts, before a load that any one out of this locality would have thought the direst cruelty. Nor ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... some consolation. One of them especially excited his hopes. It expanded and shut up quickly, but ended by becoming prodigious and absolutely uneatable. No matter—Pecuchet was content with being the possessor of a monstrosity! ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... gives birth to a child with two heads and two mouths, and the two hands and two feet are between them[637], disease will settle upon that city (where the monstrosity was born). ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... it my hope of again being able to take the sea for fishing, shooting, or sailing purposes. Alas! poor "Yellow Boy," I shall never see your like again! (neither probably will anyone else!) She answered my purpose admirably, but as a model of naval construction she was an absolute monstrosity, and would have made an object of great interest in a naval exhibition. I deeply regretted her loss, as I wanted to take her home as a great curiosity to open the eyes of the Yarmouth fishermen; but it was not to be, and I turned ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... call it—that squats, as though in derision, above the crossing; whilst even the natural meeting and intersection at this point of high roofs, which in itself would rise to dignity, is wantonly neglected to make way for this monstrosity. The church, in fact, looks, when viewed externally, more like four separate churches than one; and when we step inside, with all the best will in the world to make the best of it, it is hard to find, ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris

... Bernard monstrosity out of the ring. This is a class for collies, not for freaks. I refuse to judge that pup ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... and locks shining with essences betrayed wretched pretensions to a youth long passed away—' is it true that Nyssia has two pupils in each eye? It seems to me that must be very ugly, and I cannot understand how Candaules could fall in love with such a monstrosity, while there is no lack, at Sardes and in Lydia, of ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... don't look so well as they did. He was very foolish to buy that ten-thousand-dollar yacht so soon after spending even more than that on this red, white and blue monstrosity of his!" ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... itself shot out and down into the dark like a combination of voiceless cataracts. Or it was like some cyclopean sea-beast sitting above London and letting down its tentacles bewilderingly on every side, a monstrosity in that starless heaven. For the clouds that belonged to London had closed over the heads of the voyagers sealing up the entrance of the upper air. They had broken through a roof and come into a temple ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... our repugnance to its ugly looks and savage mien, and contemplate the hideous monstrosity,—as it is useless to deny that it combines the graces of the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Dickens' Quilp, with certain features of its own,—for the good it does ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... of the story are obvious. The little boy has no proper place in this world, and his drowning, so far from being pathetic, was the best thing that could happen to him. For he was a freak, a monstrosity. Even those who may not accept this view must at least agree that he ought to have known better, and deserved a whipping rather than the reward of martyrdom and sentimental praise. But even if we assume that the boy is a possible ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... great ugly guns I had seen, and of the still greater guns he had talked about, and how gloatingly he thought of the destruction they could do. I felt as I used to feel about that infernal stallion that had killed a man with its teeth and feet, a despairing fear, a sense of monstrosity in life. And this creature who had so disturbed me was only a beastly snuffy little man in an ill-fitting frock-coat, who laid his knife and fork by their tips on the edge of his plate, and picked his teeth with gusto and breathed into my face as he talked ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... the hotel's android servants ... to the strictly utilitarian mechanical monstrosity at home, known affectionately as "Old John" ... to the android showroom where they had seen the one that Dad said looked ...
— Native Son • T. D. Hamm

... will quickly forget their ambitions after a dose of that. Yet there must be a way to get inside the case and service the engine, they aren't just going to throw them away after a few months' use. And considering the level of technology displayed by this monstrosity I should be able to find the tricks and get around any other built-in traps. I ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... could not help looking upon her as a poor, wild, foolish girl, unworthy of consideration. She magnified her faults and crudities, she paraded before her inner vision her fecent improprieties, as they had been disclosed to her, until she saw herself a sort of monstrosity at which all mankind was gazing with disgust. Life seemed dry and shriveled, a mere jaundiced shadow, while her love for Beverley took on a new growth, luxuriant, all-embracing, uncontrollable. The ferment of spirit going on in her breast was the inevitable process of self-recognition ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... our conversation." I replied that I had but one voice, and that I had not been aware that his Royal Highness had two. "That confirms my impression," said the King, "that you are not a Man, but a feminine Monstrosity with a bass voice, and an utterly uneducated ear. But ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott

... powerful factor in making fame for a composer. For, as has been said, while a modern composer writes two or three different operas, Hasse wrote one hundred versions of one. This also had its effect on instrumental music, and, in a way, is also the direct cause of that monstrosity known as "variations" (Haendel wrote sixty-six on one theme.) In our days we often hear the bitter complaint that opera singers are no longer what they used to be, and that the great art of singing ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... descry differences, that he overlooks similarities—nay, identities. Thus only can I account for many statements about New York, occurring in the pages of recent and reputable travellers, both French and English, which I find to be exaggerated almost to the point of monstrosity. What should we say of an American who should criticise the Commercial Road from the point of view of Fifth Avenue? After a week's experience of New York, I cannot but fancy that certain travellers I could mention have been guilty of ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... surprising horticultural experiments until, what with orchids as big as a barrel, and geraniums which could be reached only by a ladder, he had converted the silvery strand of the dreamful domain into a forest of atrocious color and floral monstrosity. ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... they sang and said in the private gatherings of the Methodist Societies could only deepen and intensify the feeling of monstrosity. They ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... fogy, because he assumed that the spores of smut travel from the manure and seed of the previous crop in the circulation of the plant to the capsule, and thus convert the grain into a puff-ball, so also the ears of corn, the oats, and rye. This monstrosity on the rye grains is called ergot, or spurred rye, and when it is eaten by chickens or other fowls their feet and legs shrivel or perish with dry gangrene, not because the spores of the fungus which produced the spurred rye circulate in the blood of the chicken, nor that the spawn or mycelium ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... tighter; it causes him pain; he scarcely knows what ails him. He still grows. All his internal organs are cramped and displaced. He grows still larger; he has the head, shoulders and limbs of a man and the waist of a child. He is a monstrosity. He dies. This is a picture of the world of to-day, bound in the silly superstition of some prehistoric nation. But this is not all. Every decrease in the quantity, actual or relative, of gold and silver increases the purchasing power of the dollars made ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... knuckles of the left hand. The small eyes in his large head blinked craftily at the beautiful woman—its own mate being well-nigh as simian as itself—; it shuffled on its huge feet and pulled at its gaudy raiment with abnormally long fingers. The monstrosity had been nicknamed "Bes," after the monstrous dwarf god of Ancient Egypt, by someone—the nationality of whom is of no account—who had balanced the ardour of his studies with hours of leisure in the bazaar. The beasts, aroused doubtlessly by the scent of the thing ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... character and conduct of these young persons. It is almost beyond belief that they were wholly actuated by deliberate and cold-blooded malignity. Their crime would, in that view, have been without a parallel in monstrosity of wickedness, and beyond what can be imagined of the guiltiest and most depraved natures. For myself, I am unable to determine how much may be attributed to credulity, hallucination, and the delirium of excitement, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... as seem good in your sight, and have no fear that the sons of men will ever forsake you because of your clothes. When you find a man dictating to the ladies what they shall wear you're pretty apt to see his head housed in a stove- pipe hat—the most inartistic and awkward monstrosity ever designed by the devil to make the Almighty ashamed of his masterpiece. In all history there's no record of a great idea being born in a beegum. I never saw a statue of a hero or picture of a ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... monstrosity observed by M. Dareste has been that of the head protruding from the navel, and the heart or hearts above the head. This is a most extraordinary and new monster, and, if it persist, a chicken with its heart on its back, like a hump, may be expected. ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott

... German poetry," Klopstock, the author of the Messias.[190] Since his childhood, the name of Klopstock had been familiar to Goethe. To his conservative father, the Messias, as written in unrhymed verse, was a monstrosity in German literature, and he refused to give it a place in his library. Surreptitiously introduced into the house, however, Goethe had read it with enthusiasm and committed its most striking passages to memory. And he had retained his ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... of time since the Doctor and his spider lived has already been sufficient to cause a traditionary wonderment to gather over them both; and, especially, this image of the spider dangles down to us from the dusky ceiling of the Past, swollen into somewhat uglier and huger monstrosity than he actually possessed. Nevertheless, the creature had a real existence, and has left kindred like himself; but as for the Doctor, nothing could exceed the value which he seemed to put upon him, the ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... a dog resembling a hound is figured, with drooping ears, but with a longer back and more pointed head than in our hounds. There is, also, a turnspit, with short and crooked legs, closely resembling the existing variety; but this kind of monstrosity is so common with various animals, as with the ancon sheep, and even, according to Rengger, with jaguars in Paraguay, that it would be rash to look at the monumental animal as the parent of all our turnspits: ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... is placed in 1598. Long after its introduction many looked askance at its, because of the grammatical blunder it contains—the t in its being a nominative neuter ending, and the s a possessive ending. But no one thinks now of shunning what was then regarded as a grammatical monstrosity.] ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... inhabitant, and found out facts about some nasty young man who was born in seventeen something, and lived in a place called Atlantic View, and wore curls and a choky stock, and fought at Waterloo, and lies in the village church under a stone monstrosity. Don't tell me facts, because I know they will bar me for ever out of my House by the ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... and of European; but has assimilated none of them; and Russian civilization, with its amazing quality, its bewildering variety of achievement in art, literature, diplomacy, and in every field, is not a natural development, but a monstrosity. The genius intended for a whole people seems to have been crowded into a few narrow channels. Where have men written with such tragic intensity? Where has there been music suggesting such depths of sadness and of human passion? ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... 18 to 30 would fall that pseudo-educational monstrosity, the undergraduate university, and the degrading popular activities of 'beginning a business' or 'picking up a trade.' Much money must be spent here. Perhaps few fields of activity have been conventionalized as much as university ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker



Words linked to "Monstrosity" :   freak, mutant, variation, mutation, malformation, sport, miscreation, monstrous, leviathan, lusus naturae



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