Dreadful Quotes

I remembered how is disheartening and dreadful when you're seeing it for the first time. I thought of my parents and the town where I was born, and suddenly everything around me seemed less real. ~ Daniel Kine

The earliest intelligence of the travellers' safe arrival at Antigua, after a favourable voyage, was received; though not before Mrs. Norris had been indulging in very dreadful fears, and trying to make Edmund participate them whenever she could get him alone; and as she depended on being the first person made acquainted with any fatal catastrophe, she had already arranged the manner of breaking it to all the others, when Sir Thomas's assurances of their both being alive and well made it necessary to lay by her agitation and affectionate preparatory speeches for a while. ~ Jane Austen

So after E, it's A for 'Acceptable,' and that's the last pass grade, isn't it?"
"Yep," said Fred, dunking an entire roll in his soup, transferring it to his mouth, and swallowing it whole.
"Then you get P for 'Poor' " - Ron raised both his arms in mock celebration - "and D for 'Dreadful.' "
"And then T," George reminded him.
"T?" asked Hermione, looking appalled. "Even lower than a D? What on earth does that stand for?"
" 'Troll,' " said George promptly. ~ J.K. Rowling

The Lord sometimes allows people who are devoted to Him to fall into such dreadful vices; and this is in order to prevent them from falling into a still greater sin-pride. Your temptation will pass and you will spend the remaining days of your life in humility. Only do not forget your sin. ~ Seraphim Of Sarov

It is in this unearthly first hour of spring twilight that earth's almost agonized livingness is most felt. This hour is so dreadful to some people that they hurry indoors and turn on the lights. ~ Elizabeth Bowen

I preach that odd defiant melancholy that sees the dreadful loneliness of the human soul and the pitiful disaster of human life as ever redeemable and redeemed by compassion, friendship and love. ~ John Derbyshire

The gates of memory would roll open - old joys would stretch out their arms to them, old hopes and dreams would call to them, and they would stir beneath the burden that lay upon them, and feel its forever immeasurable weight. They could not even cry out beneath it; but anguish would seize them, more dreadful than the agony of death. ~ Upton Sinclair

Sordid and infamous sensuality, the most dreadful evil that issued from the box of Pandora, corrupts every heart, and eradicates every virtue. Fly! wherefore dost thou linger? Fly, cast not one look behind thee; nor let even thy thought return to the accursed evil for a moment. ~ Francois Fenelon

Young man, be of good courage. Care not for what the world says or thinks: you will not be with the world always. Can man save your soul? No. Will man be your judge in the great and dreadful day of account? No. Can man give you a good conscience in life, a good hope in death, a good answer in the morning of resurrection? No! no! no! Man can do nothing of the sort. Then "fear not the reproach of men, neither be afraid of their revilings: for the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool" (Isa. 51:7,8). Call to your mind the saying of good Colonel Gardiner: "I fear God, and therefore I have none else to fear." Go and be like him. ~ J.C. Ryle

There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty. ~ John Steinbeck

How dreadful the knowledge of the truth can be
When there's no help in truth. ~ Sophocles

I think music on television is just uniformly dreadful. It is mundane, it says nothing. ~ Amy Sherman-Palladino

It was one of those things that one knows but cannot even tell oneself - so dreadful and shameful it would be to be mistaken. ~ Leo Tolstoy

It's so dreadful to be poor! sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress. ~ Louisa May Alcott

It is a dreadful truth that the state of having to depend solely on God is what we all dread most ... It is good of Him to force us; but dear me, how hard to feel that it is good at the time. ~ C.S. Lewis

Then a movement began among the people. They creaked to their feet, shuffled and fumbled up to the front, kneeling on the floor, and she saw little Thomas at the beginning of the row. The priest turned and made the sign of the cross and all signed themselves; then he came forward and moved along the line, placing the Hosts in the mouths of the people.

Cecil had a very strange feeling; she felt that this was at the same time the most natural and the most unnatural thing she had ever seen. They were like little birds being fed by their mother, and yet it was grown people who knelt to receive what looked like a paper penny of bread on their tongues. She knew at once why the Mass provoked such love and such hate. Either what they believe is true, or else it is a dreadful delusion, she thought. ~ Meriol Trevor

In every cloud, in every tree – filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object, by day I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men, and women – my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her! ~ Emily Bronte

My mother really would make these dreadful concoctions. She really prided herself on something called 'Everything Stew,' where she would take everything in the refrigerator, all the leftovers, and put them all together. ~ Ruth Reichl

Titanic I thought was the most dreadful piece of work I've ever seen in my entire life. Another film that I think is equally bad was American Beauty. So badly acted and directed. But people like that. ~ Robert Altman

I say, we were so robbed, and hunted, and were made so poor, that our father told us it was a dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and that what we should pray for, was, that our women might be barren and our miserable race die out! ~ Charles Dickens

And are you thirsty," she asked, "or were you merely being polite?"
"I am always polite," he said with a wicked grin, "but I am thirsty as well."
Kate took one look at that grin, lethally combined with those devastating green eyes, and nearly groaned. "You are a rake as well," she said with a sigh.
Colin choked - on what, she did not know, but he choked nonetheless. "I beg your pardon?"
Kate's face flushed as she realized with horror that she'd spoken aloud. "No, it is I who should beg your pardon. Please forgive me. That was unforgivably rude."
"No, no," he said quickly, looking terribly interested and not a little bit amused, "do continue."
Kate swallowed. There was really no way to get out of it now. "I was merely - " She cleared her throat. "If I might be frank . . ."
He nodded, his sly grin telling her that he could not imagine her being anything but frank.
Kate cleared her throat yet again. Really, this was getting ridiculous. She was starting to sound as if she'd swallowed a toad. "It had occurred to me that you might be rather like your brother, that is all."
"My brother?"
"The viscount," she said, thinking it must be obvious.
"I have three brothers," he explained.
"Oh." Now she felt stupid. "I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry, too," he said with great feeling. "Most of the time they're a dreadful nuisance."

-Kate & Colin ~ Julia Quinn

Accustom yourself to look first to the dreadful consequences of failure; then fix your eye on the glorious prize which is before you; and when your strength begins to fail, and your spirits are well nigh exhausted, let the animating view rekindle your resolution, and call forth in renewed vigour the fainting energies of your soul. ~ William Wilberforce

Bilbo had never seen or imagined anything of the kind. They were high up in a narrow place, with a dreadful fall into a dim valley at one side of them. There they were sheltering under a hanging rock for the night, and he lay beneath a blanket and shook from head to toe. When he peeped out in the lightning-flashes, he saw that across the valley the stone-giants were out, and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them down into the darkness where they smashed among the trees far below, or splintered into little bits with a bang. Then came a wind and a rain, and the wind whipped the rain and the hail about in every direction, so that an overhanging rock was no protection at all. Soon they were getting drenched and their ponies were standing with their heads down and their tails between their legs, and some of them were whinnying with fright. They could hear the giants guffawing and shouting all over the mountainsides. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

My parents made no money whatsoever, but they really knew how to see, as artists. So a big adventure might be, on a hot, dreadful day with no place to go, to go out and draw our chickens with pastels. My parents gave me a sense of wonder. ~ Ali MacGraw

By slow but sure degrees, the terrors of that hateful corner swell until they beset him at all times; invade his rest, make his dreams hideous, and his nights dreadful. At first, he took a strange dislike to it; feeling as though it gave birth in his brain to something of corresponding shape, which ought not to be there, and racked his head with pains. Then he began to fear it, then to dream of it, and of men whispering its name and pointing to it. Then he could not bear to look at it, nor yet to turn his back upon it. Now, it is every night the lurking-place of a ghost: a shadow: - a silent something, horrible to see, but whether bird, or beast, or muffled human shape, he cannot tell. ~ Charles Dickens

Perhaps it was nothing very dreadful after all. I think the little things in life often make more trouble than the big things,' said Anne with one of those flashes of insight which experience could not have bettered. ~ L.M. Montgomery

This disaster was caused by environmentalists charged with protecting the wilderness, who made one dreadful mistake after another - and, along the way, proved how little they understood the environment they intended to protect. ~ Michael Crichton

The more a psychologist - a born, an unavoidable psychologist and soul-diviner - turns his attention to the more select cases and individuals, the greater is his danger of being suffocated by sympathy: he NEEDS sternness and cheerfulness more than any other man. For the corruption, the ruination of higher men, of the more unusually constituted souls, is in fact, the rule: it is dreadful to have such a rule always before one's eyes. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Music was such an important part of everyone's life in the '60s and '70s, but everywhere you played, the music was dreadful. ~ Peter Hook

What is this earth and sea of which I have seen so much? Whence is it produced? And what am I and all the other creatures, wild and tame, humane and brutal? Whence are we?
Sure we are all made by some secret power, who formed the earth and sea, the air and sky; and who is that?
Then it followed most naturally, It is God that has made it all. Well, but then it came on strangely, if God has made all these things, He guides and governs them all, and all things that concern them; for the power that could make all things must certainly have power to guide and direct them.
If so, nothing can happen in the great circuit of His works, either without His knowledge or appointment.
And if nothing happens without His knowledge, He knows that I am here, and am in this dreadful condition; and if nothing happens without His appointment, He has appointed all this to befall me.
Nothing occurred to my thought to contradict any of these conclusions; and therefore it rested upon me with the greater force that it must need be, that God had appointed all this to befall me; that I was brought to this miserable circumstance by His direction, He having the sole power, not of me only, but of every thing that happened in the world. Immediately it followed:
Why has God done this to me? What have I done to be thus used? ~ Daniel Defoe

Why do we have to go to Summerwind Abbey tonight? Why couldn't we have waited until I at least combed the sand out of my hair? She heard the whine in her voice and realized she'd been reduced to petulance. With any luck at all, she'd become a nag and make Jermyn a dreadful wife. ~ Christina Dodd

In 1906, just as we were definitely giving up the old shed laboratory where we had been so happy, there came the dreadful catastrophe which took my husband away from me and left me alone to bring up our children and, at the same time, to continue our work of research. ~ Marie Curie

The attendant thinks it is some sudden form of religious mania which has seized him. If so, we must look out for squalls, for a strong man with homicidal and religious mania at once might be dangerous. The combination is a dreadful one. At nine o'clock I visited ~ Bram Stoker

What dreadful misfortune awaited them among the savage hordes intoxicated with blood? ~ Henryk Sienkiewicz

You mentioned law school, he said, and this grabbed her attention. They talked about it at length, with Jake careful not to make his description as dreadful as the three-year ordeal itself. Occasionally, like all lawyers, Jake was asked by students if he would recommend the law as a profession. He had never found an honest way to say no, though he had many reservations. ~ John Grisham

All that each person is, and experiences, and shall never experience, in body and mind, all these things are differing expressions of himself and of one root, and are identical: and not one of these things nor one of these persons is ever quite to be duplicated, nor replaced, nor has it ever quite had precedent: but each is a new and incommunicably tender life, wounded in every breath, and almost as hardly killed as easily wounded: sustaining, for a while, without defense, the enormous assaults of the universe:

So that how it can be that a stone, a plant, a star, can take on the burden of being; and how it is that a child can take on the burden of breathing; and how through so long a continuation of cumulation of the burden of each moment one on another, does any creature beat to exist, and not break utterly to fragments of nothing: these are matters too dreadful and fortitudes too gigantic to meditate long and not forever to worship: ~ James Agee

I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow, but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall. ~ Bram Stoker

Historically, Macbeth is one of the greatest kings Scotland ever had. He was on the throne for 19 years, and he simply has this dreadful reputation because Shakespeare manipulated history for the benefit of James I, who was paying him to write the play to blacken Macbeth's name. ~ David Hewson

He could swear he did not look back, could not - by any optical chance, or in any prism - have seen her physically as he walked away; and yet, with dreadful distinction, he retained forever a composite picture of her standing where he left her. The picture - which penetrated him, through an eye in the back of his head, through his vitreous spinal canal, and could never be lived down, never - consisted of a selection and blend of such random images and expressions of hers that had affected him with a pang of intolerable remorse at various moments in the past. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

There is no hypocrisy so great as the words which we say to ourselves, "I wish to know the worst!" At heart we do not wish it at all. We have a dreadful fear of knowing it. Agony is mingled with a dim effort not to see the end. We do not own it to ourselves, but we would draw back if we dared; and when we have advanced, we reproach ourselves for having done so. ~ Victor Hugo

Design is a dreadful form of expression ~ Philippe Starck

I seem to myself, as in a dream,
An accidental guest in this dreadful body. ~ Anna Akhmatova

The bulk of suffering does not stem from 'dreadful' experiences but rather from frightening beliefs. ~ Abraham Low

But say That Death be not one stroak, as I suppos'd, Bereaving sense, but endless miserie From this day onward, which I feel begun Both in me, and without me, and so last To perpetuitie; Ay me, that fear Comes thundring back with dreadful revolution On my defensless head; both Death and I Am found Eternal, and incorporate both, Nor I on my part single, in mee all Posteritie stands curst: Fair Patrimonie That I must leave ye, Sons; O were I able To waste it all my self, and leave ye none! So disinherited how would ye bless Me now your Curse! Ah, why should all mankind For one mans fault thus guiltless be condemn'd, If guiltless? But ~ John Milton

When we're unaware that we share the power to co-create reality with the universe itself, that power slips away from us, causing our dream to become a nightmare. We begin to feel we're the victims of an unknown and frightening creation that we're unable to influence, and events seem to control and trap us. The only way to end this dreadful reality is to awaken to the fact that it too is a dream - and then recognize our ability to write a better story, one that the universe will work with us to manifest. ~ Alberto Villoldo

Magnus's life philosophy was to keep moving, and in places like Moquegua he understood why it was necessary to keep moving. If he did not, someone might see him as he really was. Not that he thought he was so very dreadful, but there was still that voice in his head like a warning: Keep in bright constant motion, or the whole illusion will collapse in on itself. ~ Cassandra Clare

Memories can be vile. Repulsive little brutes, like children I suppose. But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we can't face them, we deny reason itself! Although, why not? We aren't contractually tied down to rationality. There is no sanity clause. So when you find yourself locked down in an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember: There's always madness. You can just step outside and close the door, and all those dreadful things that happened, you can lock them away. Madness ... is an emergency exit. ~ Alan Moore

There were many paths that led up into those mountains, and many passes over them. But most of the paths were cheats and deceptions and led nowhere or to bad ends; and most of the passes were infested by evil things and dreadful dangers. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Sometimes a King has to do terrible things in order to protect those he has sworn to look after. When the stakes are so high, dreadful decisions have to be taken. It is the responsibility of a King to take on that burden, that guilt. ~ Cressida Cowell

We know about your presence that fills the world, that occupies our life, that makes our life in the world true and good. We notice your powerful transformative presence in word and in sacrament, in food and in water, in gestures of mercy and practices of justice, in gentle neighbors and daring gratitude. We count so on your presence and then plunge - without intending - into your absence. We find ourselves alone, abandoned, without resources remembering your goodness, hoping your future, but mired in anxiety and threat and risk beyond our coping. In your absence we bid your presence, come again, come soon, come here: Come to every garden become a jungle Come to every community become joyless sad and numb. We acknowledge your dreadful absence and insist on your presence. Come again, come soon. Come here. ~ Walter Brueggemann

What a dreadful surprise. For everyone knows, is absolutely certain, that nothing will ever happen to me. Others die, I go on. There are no consequences and no responsibilities. Except that there are. But lets not talk about em eh? By the time the consequences catch up to you its too late isn't it? ~ Ray Bradbury

The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

...the God in whom the majority of Christians throughout history have professed belief would appear to be evil (at least, judging by the dreadful things we habitually say about him). And I intend nothing more here than an exercise in sober precision, based on the presumption that words should have some determinate content.

(from Radical Orthodoxy 3.1 (2015): 1-17) ~ David Bentley Hart

The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,
And I must seek for mine.
The moon, like a flower,
In heaven's high bower,
With silent delight
Sits and smiles on the night.

Farewell, green fields and happy groves,
Where flocks have took delight.
Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves
The feet of angels bright;
Unseen they pour blessing,
And joy without ceasing,
On each bud and blossom,
And each sleeping bosom.

They look in every thoughtless nest,
Where birds are covered warm;
They visit caves of every beast,
To keep them all from harm.
If they see any weeping
That should have been sleeping,
They pour sleep on their head,
And sit down by their bed.

When wolves and tigers howl for prey,
They pitying stand and weep;
Seeking to drive their thirst away,
And keep them from the sheep.
But if they rush dreadful,
The angels, most heedful,
Receive each mild spirit,
New worlds to inherit.

And there the lion's ruddy eyes
Shall flow with tears of gold,
And pitying the tender cries,
And walking round the fold,
Saying, 'Wrath, by His meekness,
And, by His health, sickness
Is driven away
From our immortal day.

'And now beside thee, bleating lamb,
I can lie down and sleep;
Or think on Him ~ William Blake

Your uncle Howard is one of the most harmless of men - much nicer than most professional people. Of course he does dreadful things as a judge; but then if you take a man and pay him 5,000 pounds a year to be wicked, and praise him for it, and have policemen and courts and laws and juries to drive him into it so that he can't help doing it, what can you expect? ~ George Bernard Shaw

I'm dreadful at schmoozing at Hollywood parties. ~ Lena Headey

They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms:
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide;
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way. ~ John Milton

Every friend to the liberty of his country is bound to reflect, and step forward to prevent the dreadful consequences which shall result from a government of events. ~ Henry Knox

Of most dreadful suffering, I am the cause. ~ Euripides

[12] It is dreadful to have mercy as a witness against anyone. His final thesis is one of warning. When you've made an enemy, even of mercy, then you're hosed. Mercy is your only hope. Don't fight it. ~ Anonymous

I never liked the ocean," said Cutangle. "It ought to be paved over. There's dreadful things in it, down in the deep bits. Ghastly sea monsters. Or so they say. ~ Terry Pratchett

As in any war, there have been dreadful mistakes and civilian casualties. The difference is when Israelis kill innocents they apologize; when Hezbollah kills innocents they celebrate. ~ J. D. Hayworth

The unwholesome-looking little moral agent of destruction exulted silently in the possession of personal prestige, keeping in check this man armed with the defensive mandate of a menaced society. More fortunate than Caligula, who wished that the Roman Senate had only one head for the better satisfaction of his cruel lust, he beheld in that one man all the forces he had set at defiance: the force of law, property, oppression, and injustice. He beheld all his enemies and fearlessly confronted them all in a supreme satisfaction of his vanity. They stood perplexed before him as if before a dreadful portent. He gloated inwardly over the chance of this meeting affirming his superiority over all the multitude of mankind. ~ Joseph Conrad

I ask the citizens of this Republic whether such a state of things is to be suffered to pass unnoticed, and the hearts of widows, orphans, and patriots to be broken, and their wrongs left without redress? No! I invoke the genius of our Constitution. I appeal to the patriotism of Americans to stop this unlawful and unholy procedure; and pray that God may defend this nation from the dreadful effects of such outrages. ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

Don't let's ever be afraid of things. It's such dreadful slavery. Let's be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let's dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid ~ L.M. Montgomery

The Conservative party found him an embarrassment because he was apt to criticize the party leader in public, the Liberals naturally wanted to defeat him, and the newspapers were out to get him. It was a dreadful campaign on his part, for he lost his head, bullied his electors when he should have wooed them, and got into a wrangle with a large newspaper, which he threatened to sue for libel. He was defeated on election day so decisively that it was obviously a personal rather than a political rejection. ~ Robertson Davies

All this last day Frodo had not spoken, but had walked half-bowed, often stumbling, as if his eyes no longer saw the way before his feet. Sam guessed that among all their pains he bore the worst, the growing weight of the Ring, a burden on the body and a torment to his mind. Anxiously Sam had noted how his master's left hand would often be raised as if to ward off a blow, or to screen his shrinking eyes from a dreadful Eye that sought to look in them. And sometimes his right hand would creep to his breast, clutching, and then slowly, as the will recovered mastery, it would be withdrawn. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

It is difficult to believe in the dreadful but quiet war lurking just below the serene facade of nature. ~ Charles Darwin

[On President Kennedy's assassination Nov. 22, 1963:] Something dreadful is going to happen to the president today. ~ Jeane Dixon

Balance lives in the present. The surest way to lose your footing is to focus on what dreadful things might happen. ~ Oprah Winfrey

What shall we do now?" he asked.
"Something very dreadful," she said,her voice sour."Ask Arlow Bowlerham for the name of a dressmaker. ~ March McCarron

In the whole vast domain of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom. As soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom, you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life. You feel it already in the vegetable kingdom: from the great catalpa to the humblest herb, how many plants die, and how many are killed. But from the moment you enter the animal kingdom, this law is suddenly in the most dreadful evidence. A power of violence at once hidden and palpable … has in each species appointed a certain number of animals to devour the others. Thus there are insects of prey, reptiles of prey, birds of prey, fishes of prey, quadrupeds of prey. There is no instant of time when one creature is not being devoured by another. Over all these numerous races of animals man is placed, and his destructive hand spares nothing that lives. He kills to obtain food and he kills to clothe himself. He kills to adorn himself, he kills in order to attack, and he kills in order to defend himself. He kills to instruct himself and he kills to amuse himself. He kills to kill. Proud and terrible king, he wants everything and nothing resists him.

From the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound ... from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child - his table is covered with corpses ... And who in all of this wil ~ Joseph De Maistre

Maybe, like Tony Amsterdam, you have seen a vision of God that is gone only temporarily; withdrawn, she thought, rather than ended. Maybe inside the terribly burned and burning circuits of your head that char more and more, even as I hold you, a spark of color and light in some disguised form manifested itself, unrecognized, to lead you, by its memory, through the years to come, the dreadful years ahead. A word not fully understood, some small thing seen but not understood; some fragment of a star mixed with the trash of this world, to guide you by reflex until the day...but it was so remote. She could not herself truly imagine it. Mingled with the commonplace, something from another world perhaps had appeared to Bob Arctor before it was over. All she could do now was hold him and hope. ~ Philip K. Dick

My worry is that other advances in science may result in other means of
mass destruction, maybe more readily available even than nuclear weapons.
Genetic engineering is quite a possible area, because of these dreadful
developments that are taking place there. ~ Joseph Rotblat

It was; she lifted her head and smiled. Only two people shared her "special" seat: a fine old man in a velvet coat, his hands clasped over a huge carved walking-stick, and a big old woman, sitting upright, with a roll of knitting on her embroidered apron. They did not speak. This was disappointing, for Miss Brill always looked forward to the conversation. She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn't listen, at sitting in other people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her. She glanced, sideways, at the old couple. Perhaps they would go soon. Last Sunday, too, hadn't been as interesting as usual. An Englishman and his wife, he wearing a dreadful Panama hat and she button boots. And she'd gone on the whole time about how she ought to wear spectacles; she knew she needed them; but that ~ Katherine Mansfield

The dreadful truth is that when people come to see their MP they have run out of better ideas. ~ Boris Johnson

The dreadful thing about getting older is you cry at the drop of a hat. ~ Eric Idle

But you're dead inside to me, you're cold and beyond my reach! It is as if I'm not here, beside you. And, not being here with you, I have the dreadful feeling that I don't exist at all. And you are as cold and distant from me as those strange modern paintings of lines and hard forms that I cannot love or comprehend, as alien as those hard mechanical sculptures of this age which have no human form. I shudder when I'm near you. I look into your eyes and my reflection isn't there ... ~ Anne Rice

Ordinary love is mere animal attraction. Otherwise why is the distinction between the sexes? If one kneels before an image, it is dreadful idolatry; but if one kneels before husband or wife, it is quite permissible! ~ Swami Vivekananda

I did not realize the dreadful facts of life. I did not know that a pattern forms before we are aware of it, and that what we think we make becomes a rigid prison making us. ~ Margaret Drabble

The most dreadful part of all," the old stag answered, "is that the dogs believe what the hound just said. They believe it, they pass their lives in fear, they hate Him and themselves and yet they'd die for His sake. ~ Felix Salten

Throats in a dreadful silence. The infection will spread outward from that point. Old ladies will crack skulls with their deadly handbags. Cars will plunge down the crowded sidewalks. Drivers will be torn out of their cars and stomped. It will spread to all the huge cities of the world, and by dawn of the next day there will be a horrid silence of sprawled bodies and tumbled vehicles, gutted buildings and a few wisps of smoke. And through that silence will prowl a few, a very few of the most powerful ones, ragged and bloody, slowly tracking each other down. ~ John D. MacDonald

They were most peculiar. And they eat pizza pie." "For breakfast?" "No, for lunch and dinner. But it's not a pie at all, it's a kind of bread with tomato sauce and cheese on it." "Sounds dreadful. ~ Bill Bryson

This is the thing no one prepares you for where disaster are concerned. There is no ominous black cloud, no spooky chill, no neon sign that flashes: Stop! Please! Go back to bed! There's something really really dreadful waiting to happen around the corner! I beg of you, do not continue! ~ Sarah-Kate Lynch

What a dreadful thing it must be to have a dull father. ~ Mary Mapes Dodge

Helplessness. If women were hope´s oldest companions, it was due to helplessness. Certainly women often exerciced dreadful power over a single hearth, but the world between hearths belonged to men. ~ R. Scott Bakker

I think the notion of retirement is just a dreadful, dreadful idea and I hope I never have to do that. ~ Michael Moritz

Annabelle, what happened to you?" Lillian asked the next morning. "You look dreadful. Why aren't you wearing your riding habit? I thought you were going to try out the jumping course this morning. And why did you disappear
so suddenly last night? It's not like you to simply vanish without saying - "

"I didn't have a choice in the matter," Annabelle said testily, folding her fingers around the delicate bowl of a porcelain teacup. Looking pale and exhausted, her blue eyes ringed with dark shadows, she swallowed a mouthful of heavily sweetened tea before continuing. "It was that blasted perfume of yours - as soon as he caught one whiff of it, he went berserk."

Shocked, Lillian tried to take in the information, her stomach plummeting. "It… it had an effect on Westcliff, then?" she managed to ask.

"Good Lord, not Lord Westcliff." Annabelle rubbed her weary eyes. "He couldn't have cared less what I smelled like. It was my husband who went completely mad. After he caught the scent of that stuff, he dragged me up to our room and…well, suffice it to say, Mr. Hunt kept me awake all night. All night ," she repeated in sullen emphasis, and drank deeply of the tea.

"Doing what?" Daisy asked blankly.

Lillian, who was feeling a rush of relief that Lord Westcliff had not been attracted to Annabelle while she
was wearing the perfume, gave her younger sister a derisive glance. "What do you think they were doing? Playing a few han ~ Lisa Kleypas

It was dreadful the way all the three were looking at him, just as if they did not admire him. ~ J.M. Barrie

You may be a dreadful failure. Christ is a divine success. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. ~ Edward Thomson

At any point in all of Eternity, we can say, 'This is just the
beginning.' How wonderful for those who are with Christ. How
unimaginably dreadful for those who are not. ~ Leonard Ravenhill

Television doesn't want to admit it has those dreadful roach ads on anyway. ~ Michael O'Donoghue

The one thing about 'Beautiful Creatures,' 'The Host' and 'The Mortal Instruments,' which are all well-made movies, is that they were all infected with a dreadful sincerity. ~ Mark Waters

Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects. ~ Oscar Wilde

Poor, poor Pandora. Zeus sends her off to marry Epimetheus, a not especially bright man she's never even met, along with a mysterious covered jar. Nobody tells Pandora a word about the jar. Nobody tells her not to open the jar. Naturally, she opens the jar. What else has she got to do? How was she to know that all those dreadful ills would go whooshing out to plague mankind forevermore, and that the only thing left in the jar would be hope? ~ Liane Moriarty

Fiona had never learned her mother's language and she had never shown much respect for the stories that it preserved-the stories that Grant had taught and written about, and still did write about, in his working life. She referred to their heroes as "old Njal" or "old Snorri." But in the last few years she had developed an interest in the country itself and looked at travel guides. She read about William Morris's trip, and Auden's. She didn't really plan to travel there. She said the weather was too dreadful. Also-she said-there ought to be one place you thought about and knew about and maybe longed for-but never did get to see. ~ Alice Munro

Oh, no. That's just a name. Oswald isn't a man, he's an ondageist. Have you heard of poltergeists?" "Er ... invisible spirits that throw things around?" "Good," said Miss Level. "Well, an ondageist is the opposite. They're obsessive about tidiness. He's quite handy around the house, but he's absolutely dreadful if he's in the kitchen when I'm cooking. He keeps putting things away. I think it makes him happy. Sorry, I should have warned you, but he normally hides if anyone comes to the cottage. He's shy." "And ~ Terry Pratchett

A person may say I am not much concerned how long I stay in purgatory, provided I may come to eternal life. Let no one reason thus. Purgatory fire will be more dreadful than whatever torments can be seen imagined, or endured in this world. He who is afraid now to put his finger into the fire, does he not fear lest he be then all buried in torments for a long time? ~ Caesarius Of Arles

For time and eternity there have been fathers like Nathan who simply can see no way to have a daughter but to own her like a plot of land. To work her, plow her under, rain down a dreadful poison upon her. Miraculously, it causes these girls to grow. They elongate on the pale slender stalks of their longing, like sunflowers with heavy heads. You can shield them with your body and soul, trying to absorb that awful rain, but they'll still move toward him. Without cease they'll bend to his light. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation. ~ Ray Bradbury