"Unconventional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gradations or shadings; its power springs from its directness, vigour, and simplicity. It is often entirely occupied with the narration or description of a single episode; it has no room for dialogue, but it often secures the effect of the dialogue by its unconventional freedom of phrase, and sometimes by the introduction of brief and compact charge and denial, question and reply. Sometimes the incidents upon which the ballad makers fastened, have a unity or connection with each other which hints ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... the miner was a new character, unlike any she had ever met, and though rough and unconventional, she was disposed to ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... as had the cachet of social riskiness. But Carmen liked the room above all others. She enjoyed her cigarette there, and had a fancy for pouring her five-o'clock tea in its shelter. Books which had all sorts of things in them gave somehow an unconventional atmosphere to the place, and one could say things there that one couldn't say ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... said, with as near an approach to archness as a woman of her type is capable of, "you must not think me odd if I do something that may seem to you a little bit unconventional. It is only your own kindness to me which encourages me to ask a favor, which I shouldn't wonder if you would rather grant than not. The fact is, there is a gentleman who wishes very much to dance with me, and my card is already full. Now, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Heroinism—who was worth interviewing for the daily press. I flatter myself it was a good idea, worthy almost of a genius, though I am perfectly well aware that I am not a genius. I am merely a man of exceptional talent. I have talent enough for a genius, but no taste for the unconventional, and by just so much do I fall short of the realization of the hopes of my friends and fears of my enemies. There are stories I have in mind that are worthy of the most exalted French masters, for instance, and when I have the time ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... was oblivious. Unmindful of the merry-makers at the other tables, the girl waved her handkerchief at the swiftly-approaching motor. Waldron, from the back seat, raised an answering hand—though without enthusiasm. Above all things he hated demonstration, and the girl's frank manner, free, unconventional and not yet broken to the harness of Mrs. Grundy, never failed ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... you. I am really not unconventional—though certainly no slave to convention. Still there are limits . . . it is bad enough to intrude in this way, and I do not know what you can say or think of the time selected, ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... ill at ease. She saw before her one of those men whom the sex would vaguely generalize as "nice," that is to say, correct in all the superficial appointments of style, dress, manners, and feature. Yet there was a decidedly unconventional quality about him: he was totally unlike anything or anybody that she could remember; and as the attributes of originality are often as apt to alarm as to attract people, she was not entirely prepossessed in ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... time, too, the whole place began to be scandalised by her vagaries, her mysterious expeditions on the big brown horse, and her constant appearance in public with a coterie of young men about her. At a time when anything unconventional in a girl was clear evidence of vice to all the men and most of the women who knew of it, Beth's reputation was bound to suffer, and it became so bad at last that Dr. Hardy forbade Charlotte to associate with her. Charlotte told her with tears, and begged to be ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... drew them away slowly and sat down on the sofa. "I'm tired," she said a little defiantly, "that's all—you know if you will come and call at such dreadfully unconventional hours you mustn't expect to find people with all the paint on. I never put mine on ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... only throw myself upon her indulgence. Perhaps the other lady, the one I had had the honor of seeing the day before, would have explained to her about the garden. That was literally what had given me courage to take a step so unconventional. I had fallen in love at sight with the whole place (she herself probably was so used to it that she did not know the impression it was capable of making on a stranger), and I had felt it was really a case to risk something. Was her own kindness in receiving me a sign ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... on other than professional and official ground. Who had brought Michaelis there one afternoon the Assistant Commissioner did not remember very well. He had a notion it must have been a certain Member of Parliament of illustrious parentage and unconventional sympathies, which were the standing joke of the comic papers. The notabilities and even the simple notorieties of the day brought each other freely to that temple of an old woman's not ignoble curiosity. You never could guess whom you were likely ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... out loud and waves his arms in time to a mechanical piano. Between five and six, this student, led by a yell-leader, applauds football practice. The growing tendency of American university students to spend their evenings in extravagant relaxation, at the moving pictures, or in unconventional dancing, is said to be willful and an indication of an important moral sag of recent years. It would be interesting also to know if Arkwright, Hargreaves, Watt, or Darwin, Edison, Henry Ford, or the Wrights, or other persons of desirable if unconventional mechanical ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... The flowers have almost the keeping qualities of everlastings, and are of easy culture, while the sweet sultan, also of this family, adds fragrance to its other qualities. The blue cornflower is best sown in a long border or bed of unconventional shape, and may be treated like a biennial, one sowing being made in September so that the seedlings will make sturdy tufts before cold weather. These, if lightly covered with salt hay or rough litter (not leaves), will bloom in May and June, and if then replaced by a second sowing, ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... looking lane, he might not loiter along the most out-of-the-way path, he never ambled over the barest piece of country road, that he did not come face to face with some witty and lovely woman creature, also in search of things unconventional, and able to quote charming lines from Chaucer ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... YOU arrive, Mr. Burton?" she asked, "and how long have you been officiating as child's companion? You're certainly a happy-looking trio—so unconventional. I hate to see children all dressed up and stiff as little manikins, when they go out to ride. And you look as if you had been having SUCH a ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... understand. Heroically resisting a tendency to scream, she thus secured space for second thought, and, being a shrewd woman of the world, ended by making up her mind to tell no one about the matter. Evidently, Jennie had been having some decidedly unconventional experience, and the less publicity given to all such passages in young ladies' lives the better for their prospects. It so happened that in the bustle attending the approach to the terminus and the prospective change of cars everybody was too busy to notice ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... to a fair-minded contemporary a permissible or an impermissible letter for a philosopher to write? By modern standards it would be about the border-line. And again, suppose it is a definite love-letter, what means have we of deciding whether Epicurus—or for that matter Zeno or Plato or any unconventional philosopher of this period—would have thought it blameworthy, or would merely have called our attention to the legal difficulties of contracting marriage with one who had been a Hetaira, and asked us how we expect men and women to live. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... they are all merely so many instruments of torture, systems of cruelty, whereby the priest becomes master and remains master.... Every one knows this, but nevertheless things remain as before. What has become of the last trace of decent feeling, of self-respect, when our statesmen, otherwise an unconventional class of men and thoroughly anti-Christian in their acts, now call themselves Christians and go to the communion-table?... A prince at the head of his armies, magnificent as the expression of the egoism and arrogance of his people—and yet acknowledging, without any shame, that he is a Christian!... ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... river in the black canon below. Then the journey proceeds through the Firehole Valley, and through leafy forests and open glades, until the narrow and tortuous canon of Spring Creek is reached. The scenery here is decidedly unconventional and wild. ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... it brought him no sudden wealth, it certainly raised his reputation with the book-selling world. A connexion already begun with Smollett's 'Critical Review' was drawn closer; and the shrewd Sosii of the Row began to see the importance of securing so vivacious and unconventional a pen. Towards the end of the year he was writing for Wilkie the collection of periodical essays entitled 'The Bee'; and contributing to the same publisher's 'Lady's Magazine', as well as to 'The Busy Body' of one Pottinger. In these, more than ever, he was finding his distinctive touch; and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... for you if you'll go in," she said. "Would you really bear that for me?" "Yes, and far more—go on, I mean it." He threw down the whip and followed her in, and gave himself the same day to Christ. Even then she was unconventional in her methods and was criticised for it. She had a passion for the countryside, and often on Saturday afternoons she would take her class of lads away out to the green ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... she said: "Now we have walked all around the square. Now I am going to walk home; ... and thank you ... for my walk, ... which was probably as wholesome a performance as I could have indulged in—and quite unconventional ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... window at this, smiling a pallid, frosty smile and Mrs. Forrester was now aware that she had made him very angry. "I may be narrow," he said, "and conventional and ignorant; but I'm unconventional and clear-sighted enough to judge people by their actual, not their market, value. Of Herr Lippheim I know nothing, except that his parentage and antecedents haven't made a gentleman, or anything resembling one, of him; while of Karen I know that hers, unfortunate ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Mrs. Belloc with a ready sympathy that made Mildred appreciate the advantages of the friendship of unconventional, knock-about people. "Nothing could be easier. You've got no luggage but that bag. I'll take it up to the Grand Central Station and check it, and bring the check back here. You can send for it ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... should find ample consolation for the loss of Helen Blantock, and in the end lose interest in her and her titled grocery man, will not surprise the reader. The manner in which it is effected, however, involves some rather unconventional details, worked out, of course, through the agency of a delightful American girl. Anyone who has read "The Heavenly Twins" will doubtless find something to stir reminiscence in the intercourse between ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... of an unconventional and spontaneous type. Because other people did things in a certain way was no reason why he should do the same. Consequently, instead of beginning the service by reading the usual verses, he said, "I would like the congregation to sing a hymn"; and the hymn that ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... against the wall, her bandaged foot resting on a decrepit suit-case. Her eyes were sparkling, her lips ever ready to part in the joy of laughter, the colour leaping into her cheeks in response to the amazing quips of these unconventional vagabonds. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... thanks to thee, thanks to thee, sage unconventional! Heaven be blest, the truth's out, then, at last! Holiday woes—'twould take volumes to mention all!— Now, in the lump, meet a shrewd counterblast. Trying? Of course they are! Most deleterious? Scribe, let me clasp thee, in thought, to this breast! Holiday-hunting ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... the first years of her marriage the sober symmetry of Givre had suggested only her husband's neatly-balanced mind. It was a mind, she soon learned, contentedly absorbed in formulating the conventions of the unconventional. West Fifty-fifth Street was no more conscientiously concerned than Givre with the momentous question of "what people did"; it was only the type of deed investigated that was different. Mr. Leath collected his social ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... woman whose hand laid upon a young man's arm, whose voice speaking to him, could do so much to hold him back from evil. There was Susan Anthony—anxious, earnest and importunate, sarcastic, funny and unconventional as ever. Among all the company, "Susan" is the most violently and the most unjustly abused. To be sure, she can be very provocative of such speech. She sometimes has a lawless way of talking and acting, which men think wonderfully fascinating in a belle, but utterly unforgivable ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... street-cars, shops, electric lights, and mixture of native and foreign population, seemed strangely crowded and modern after the scenes they had recently left; too modern by far to suit Stevenson, who preferred the unconventional wild life of the islands they had ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... unconventional about the request. The girl glanced at the figures on the check, then stepped back into her cuddy, seeking among rows of burdened hooks for whatsoever articles would be on the hook bearing corresponding figures. To Trencher, dreading the advent of the Stamford man out of the Chinese ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... the arrival of his sister had reminded Orso forcibly of his paternal home, or that Colomba's unconventional dress and manners made him feel shy before his civilized friends, he announced, the very next day, his determination to leave Ajaccio, and to return to Pietranera. But he made the colonel promise that ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... was saturated with simple religious feeling, and for this deep but unconventional religiosity he found at Harvard the most sympathetic possible environment. In the fifty years that have sped since he arrived here our knowledge of Nature has penetrated into joints and recesses which his vision never pierced. The causal elements ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... not built on the hard set square lines of the former type. These persons have enormous imagination, their creative faculties largely developed. They are inventive, unconventional, emotional, demonstrative, and in fact the complete opposite in character to the class who possesses ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... a high stage under arctic environment would be more likely to achieve unconventional and realistic forms than if developed in more highly favored countries. The accurate geometric and ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... conversing politely, they are attended by their real, unconventional selves, who interrupt to say what the women actually think and mean. Compare Ninah Wilcox Putnam's Orthodoxy (Forum, June, 1914, 51:801), in which everyone in church says what he is thinking instead of ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... little surprise. The Government it was thought contemplated something in the shape of a railway policy in Ireland, and had spotted Robertson as the man for the job; it was certainly said that someone in high authority, taken greatly by his sturdy independence, his unconventional ways, and his enormous energy, had determined to try the novel experiment which such an appointment meant. I do not think that Robertson himself ever really enjoyed the change. He liked variety it is true, but ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... unconventional dinner performance with a grin on his face, and just as Marshall was showing just how the club should follow through, Chilvers called "Fore!" in a sharp tone. Miss Harding and Marshall were so absorbed in the elucidation of this most difficult golf problem that they instinctively dodged, ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... is. The difference is that the heavy father, in his heavy way, is a democrat. He does not urge a thing merely because to his fancy it should be done; but, because (in his own admirable republican formula) "Everybody does it." The conventional authority does claim some popular mandate; the unconventional authority does not. The Puritan who forbids soldiers on Sunday is at least expressing Puritan opinion; not merely his own opinion. He is not a despot; he is a democracy, a tyrannical democracy, a dingy and local democracy perhaps; but one that could do and has done ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... upon the victory-flushed Huns to whom this unconventional kind of fierce onset came as a complete and disconcerting surprise. They fought like demons, with utterly reckless bravery. They paid the price, alas! in heavy losses, but for what they paid they took compensation ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... standpoint you will, suggest any solution you will, conventional or unconventional, sanctioned by law or in defiance of law, woman is in the same position, fundamentally, until she is able to determine for herself whether she will be a mother and to fix the number of her offspring. This unavoidable situation ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... had said little during the meal or thereafter, to be sure, nevertheless, he had thought much. He had indeed used his eyes to good purpose, and now he regretted exceedingly that the evening promised to be so short. The more he saw of this unconventional countess the more she intrigued his interest. She was the most unusual woman he had ever met and he was eager to learn all about her. His knowledge of women was peculiarly elemental; his acquaintance with the sex was extremely limited. Those he had known in ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... the floor of the reception-room, was a picture of abject, horrid soul-torture. At last, through the subtlety of this unconventional sleuth, along methods which were never dreamed of in the ordinary police category, he had been broken on the wheel which he ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... were estimating the man behind the scientist. Van Camp was of the lean, angular type, like Jim Hambleton. He was also very manly and wholesome, but even in his conventional evening clothes there was something about him that was unconventional—a protesting, untamed element of character that resisted all rules except those prescribed by itself. He puzzled her now, as he had often puzzled her before; but if she made fun of his hobbies, she had no mind to ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... to her concerning the folly of such excursions into the unconventional. Alice listened. She discovered that his viewpoint was exactly like that of Ned Merrill. Any deviation from the conventional was a mistake. Any attempt to escape from existing conditions was a form of treason. Trade, property, business, respectability, good form; these were the shibboleth they ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... sit down too. We will sit here together. It is unconventional, but—there is no one to ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... door after her, and the pen, momentarily grasped, had fallen from Straws' hand. Instead of reaching for the ink-bottle he reached in the cupboard for the other bottle. Again she came near entering through the window—having many unconventional ways of coming into a room!—but after looking in for a moment, changed her mind after her fashion and floated away into thin space like the giddy, volatile mistress that she was. After that she appeared no more—probably ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... altogether unconventional. She never could be made to understand that it was not the proper thing to talk familiarly to any one she met, and discuss any subject they were ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... hopeful. He could not but feel that, if the elder sister came face to face with his marvellous machine, good must result for his plans. Rebecca walked with nervous haste, dreading Phoebe's possible discovery of this most unconventional conduct. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... restored to its old-time footing owed its longevity more to the enterprising solicitude of Miss McQuade than to any conscious sentimental effort on the part of Youghal himself. Molly McQuade was known to her neighbours in a minor hunting shire as a hard-riding conventionally unconventional type of young woman, who came naturally into the classification, "a good sort." She was just sufficiently good-looking, sufficiently reticent about her own illnesses, when she had any, and sufficiently appreciative ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... found scope for some of his most characteristic and permanently delightful gifts. In 1905 Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire and in 1908 What Every Woman Knows were added to the list. As dramatist Mr Barrie brought, to a sphere rather ridden by convention, a method wholly unconventional and a singularly fresh fancy, seasoned by a shrewd touch of satirical humour; and in Peter Pan he proved himself a Hans Andersen of the stage. In literature, the success of "Thrums" produced a crop of imitations, christened in derision by W. E. Henley the "Kailyard ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... loved all that was strong and untamed, all that was panting with wild and glowing life. Splendidly developed, softly sinewy, warmly bountiful, yet without the least physical over-luxuriance or suggestiveness, Jen, with her tawny hair and dark-brown eyes, was a growth of unrestrained, unconventional, and eloquent life. Like Nature around her, glowing and fresh, yet glowing and hardy. There was, however, just a strain of pensiveness in her, partly owing to the fact that there were no women near her, that she had, virtually, lived her life as a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... final variation of "Don Quixote" with its piercing, shattering trumpets of defeat, or the terrifying opening passage of "Tod und Verklaerung." For Strauss was able to unloose his verve and fantasy completely in the construction of his edifices. His orchestra moves in strangest and most unconventional curves, shoots with the violence of an exploding firearm, ambles like a palfrey, swoops like a bird. There are few who, at a first hearing of a Strauss poem, do not feel as though some wild and troubling ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... old house on Market Street Mr. Mickley was not alone popular among prominent people from afar. He was equally loved by his neighbors on all sides. Many of the more unconventional of these knew him best by the familiar title of "Daddy." To the better-educated class of young musicians he was almost as much a father as a friend. Nor were his close friendships confined to the young. Among his most steadfast admirers was an old-bachelor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... he continued, "and good. Has a heart of gold. She's wearing me to a shadow. I wanted something fresh and unconventional. I didn't grasp what it was going to do. She's the girl that gets up early in the morning and rides bare-back—the horse, I mean, of course; don't be so silly. Over in New South Wales it didn't matter. I threw in the usual local colour—the eucalyptus- tree and the kangaroo—and ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... drew himself up, escorting his friend with the artless, unconventional pride of a peasant of the South bearing aloft ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... anxiety to abandon his own way of life. He had a furtive and foolish notion that these people are of no importance whatever. These coteries, these at-homes, and flat philosophies are not the real thing. It sounds unsocial and unconventional, no doubt, but it is a question so far unsettled in the author's mind whether any genuine artist loves his fellows well enough to co-habit with them on a literary basis. For some mysterious reason the ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... a nice little place here for her work—quiet and unconventional. I hope you think well of her talent, sir? You might go further ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... trait which the author seems to take the most pleasure in depicting is the passionate loyalty of a girl to her lover or of a young wife to her husband, and her portrayal of this trait has feeling, and is set off by an unconventional style and brisk movement.—The ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... 26, 1892. Though born in the country, most of his life was passed in cities; first in Brooklyn and New York, then in New Orleans, then in Washington, and lastly in Camden, where his body is buried. It was a poet's life from first to last,—free, unhampered, unworldly, unconventional, picturesque, simple, untouched by the craze of money-getting, unselfish, devoted to others, and was, on the whole, joyfully and contentedly lived. It was a pleased and interested saunter through the world,—no hurry, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... was apparent to Don and anyone else who thought of the matter, although he pretended a good-natured indifference that wasn't at all deceiving. Don more than once caught his rival observing him with resentment and dislike, and, remembering that Harry Walton had been a witness of his unconventional return to hall that night, he experienced misgivings. Of course, Harry wouldn't "peach," but—well, Don again wished anyone rather than Harry had ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... I remarked. "Suppose, for a change, we abuse Clarice, as she is not here; that will be pleasanter all round, and less unconventional. Now that girl does a great deal of harm, turning the heads of so many foolish young men. She spends more on her dress than you and I do together, Hartman. What an aim in life for a rational being! Simply to look ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... same dinner-party (for which I was in the act of dressing), and it might be that he had taken it into his head to come my way, though we had arranged to go separately. It was a small and confidential affair at the table of a good but unconventional political lady, an old friend of his. She had asked us both to meet a third guest, a Captain Fraser, who had made something of a name and was an authority on chimpanzees. As Basil was an old friend of the hostess and I had never seen her, I ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... said, "I'm afraid you will think this call somewhat unconventional, but"—she paused almost imperceptibly—"I am staying at Friar's Park, and Lady Coverly has heard from Dr. Greefe that you wish ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... by Flack's. The house itself was more pleasing to the eye than most of the houses in those parts, owing to the black and white paint which decorated it and an unconventional flattening and rounding of the roof. Nature, too, had made so many improvements that the general ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... friends, peacock-feathers hid from view the walls; this comfortable little boudoir, with its rugs, cozy Turkish corner, and dull sweet odors was originally a hall-bedroom; Tekla's ingenuity and desperate desire for the unconventional had converted the apartment into the prettiest of the Calcraft flat. Here, and here alone, was the imperious critic forbidden pipe or cigar. Cigarettes he abhorred, therefore Tekla allowed her favorites to use them. ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... a barbarian, Miss Willis, but I have a request to make. I am in the mood to-night to be unconventional"—the corners of his serious mouth lifted humorously—"to be what I really am," he illuminated, "and to meet you in the same spirit." He paused with a little shrug. "It is a disappointing reversion to the primitive, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... in Government offices in London had dulled her cheeks. Her smile had the fresh innocence of a child's and she possessed a curious felicity of manner which was delightful though a little puzzling. Her view of strikes and the important work of the Ministry was fresh and quite unconventional. Sir James, who had all his life moved among serious and earnest people, found Miss Molly's easy cheerfulness very fascinating. Even portentous words like syndicalism, which rang in other people's ears like the passing bells of our social order, moved her to airy laughter. There were ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... he adhered to the sonata form of the classic school, introduced into his compositions such daringly original methods that he must be regarded as the first of the great romantic composers. Some of his latest compositions notably, were so very unconventional that they found no appreciation, even among musicians, until years after his death. Technically, his art of orchestration reached such a perfection of general unity and elaboration of detail that he must stand as the greatest instrumental composer of the nineteenth century. The profound subjective ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... she let herself in for? She didn't ask what kind of women they would be—members of his family or servants. She didn't care. All women were alike. The woman was not born who wouldn't view a girl in her unconventional situation, "and especially in that rig"—once more the expression was her own—without a condemnation which Letty could not and would not submit herself to. So she would get up and steal away with ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... possession of her. She was a girl of many moods and tenses. At times she could even be sombre. But when she chose to be gay and fascinating she was irresistible. She was only seventeen, and in several ways she was unconventional, even unworldly. In others, however, she was a perfect woman of the world, and ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... the man might find them rather hard to render, as, had he been an Arab actually, still he would have been the most unconventional of poets, neglecting form ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers
... is more demonstrative," she said with a curiously grave smile that seemed habitual to her. "He sings your praises, Mr. Herrick; you would be amused to hear him. It is so refreshing to find any one natural and unconventional in this world; but he is so nice and frank—a nice boy," with a low laugh that showed her white teeth. Mr. Jacobi ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... rather odd, unconventional friendship with Major Guthrie was a pleasant feature of her placid, agreeably busy life, and it was strange that he had neither come, nor written and explained ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... dressing men, looked best in the regulation simplicity of evening clothes, in which the despotism of fashion curbs all vagaries of fancy. More than one feminine critic smiled involuntary approval of the handsome young sailor, whose easy, slightly unconventional manner, though singular, was ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Hampton Court cartoons." Raphael was a bird. We had several of his chromos; one was his "Miraculous Draught of Fishes," where he puts in a miracle of his own—puts three men into a canoe which wouldn't have held a dog without upsetting. I always admired to study R.'s art, it was so fresh and unconventional. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... believe that the Government was coerced into acting as it did by Radical pressure, both from outside, and from its immediate supporters in the House, and that it had to choose between making an unconventional surrender in the Transvaal and losing the support of a very powerful party. Under these circumstances it, being Liberal in politics, naturally followed its instincts, and ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... be very—unconventional, won't it?" she smiled. "But there are times when conventionalities must be thrown aside, and I shall be grateful if you'll take care of me, and do all the planning, please." Then, womanlike, contradicting her own last sentence, she went on, "But I don't ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... often graced with a most distinguished and aristocratic assemblage. Amongst the beauties of this brilliant company may be especially noticed Madame de Viel-Castel, the young princesse Amede de Broglie, the duchesse de Chaulnes with her strange, unconventional type of beauty, Madame Ferdinand Bischoffsheim, the comtesse Beugnot, the comtesse Tanneguy-Duchatel and the princesse de Sagan. And when all this gay party has dispersed, and the duke is left to his cigar—as constant a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... being devoured by the white ants. And there's Sabine, the loveliest of them all; ah! it was like a star rising when she came into the room. And that's Miriam, in her coachman's cloak, with all the little capes on, and she wore great top-boots underneath. You young people may say you're unconventional, but ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... for all your damned conventions—'At Home' scandals and Society calls. These girls of the bush are natural, jolly, unconventional, but not loose. So far and no farther is their attitude to mankind. And they've got an independence of character which knocks you fellows sick when you meet them. They don't want any of these insidious palavers and hollow attentions, and they'll tell a man ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... cheek-bones marked with scarlet, and a wide, humorous mouth that was somehow droll in its expression even when she was angry or serious. She was rarely angry; she was unexacting, good-humoured, preferring animals to people, and unconventional in speech and manner. Her father and Anne sometimes discussed her anxiously; they confessed that they were rather fearful for Alix. For Cherry, neither one had ever had a ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... church, to a Lenten service—?" It was as if he had known her for years, and their unconventional behaviour never crossed his mind. He did not even ask himself ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... in the seclusion of the bachelor's stately home, when, doubtless, his masculine heart melteth within him, and the bonds of his servitude are tightened. Still, it is a dangerous game for a supposedly reputable girl to play, isn't it? and a little—well, let us call it unconventional." ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... public sympathy around the young Duc d'Orleans when he suddenly appeared in Paris. The Government was completely bewildered and demoralized by this 'bolt out of the blue.' Instead of quietly reconducting the prince to the frontier with a reprimand for his inconsiderate and unconventional patriotism, it stupidly locked him up in a prison haunted by legends disgraceful to the Republic, proceeded against him with clumsy vehemence, gave him time to show himself to the French people, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... know her own popularity; and Christina's slow liking grew into a real and warm affection as the passing days gave her more and more occasion. In the matter of "style," it appears, Dolly had enough to satisfy her; thanks to her mother; for Dolly herself was as unconventional in spirit and manner as a child should be. In school work proper, on the other hand, she was a pattern of diligence and faithfulness; gave her teachers no trouble; of course had the good word and good will of every one of ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... much enjoyed by both. Years ago, when the poet was more in London than now, a little knot of literary friends had a standing engagement to dine together once a month, and the parties were almost the ideal of unconventional friendliness. Among the number were Carlyle, Cunningham, Mill, Thackeray, Forster, Stirling, Landor, and Macready. Here the conversation was of the best, Carlyle always coming out strong, and all the rest content to listen. However, Carlyle, unlike many great conversers, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... fir-trees, whose "slender tops are close against the sky" here, the watching hills, and the calmly beautiful river, seem to gaze sorrowfully at me as I stand in the moonlighted midnight to bid them farewell. Beloved, unconventional wood-life; divine Nature, into whose benign eyes I never looked, whose many voices, gay and glad, I never heard, in the artificial heart of the busy world,—I quit your serene teachings for a restless and troubled future. Yes, Molly, smile if you will ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... the things of interest, and Cousin Ferdinand smoked big cigars and told Uncle Henry all about the clothing trade, and I listened to them all and enjoyed it very much indeed. But I was afraid afterwards that it was a very bold and unconventional thing to do, and perhaps Mr. Peters felt that he had asked too much because he did not invite ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... only frigid person was Coleman. He had made his declaration of independence, and he saw with glee that the victory was complete. Nora Black might storm and rage, but he had announced his position in an unconventional blunt way which nobody in the carriage could fail to understand. He felt somewhat like smiling with confidence and defiance in Nora's face, but he still had ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... An unconventional English woman and an inscrutable stranger meet and love in an oasis of the Sahara. Staged this season with magnificent ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... no elusions and inferences about Philip Norris when he wanted to be direct. He had fairly taken her breath away. Melissy's instinct told her there was something humiliating about such a wooing. But picturesque and unconventional conduct excuse themselves in a picturesque personality. And this man ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... an exception, and that he contrived to leave it really exceptional. It did not in the least degree break the rounded clearness of his loyalty to social custom. It did not in the least degree weaken the sanctity of the general rule. At a supreme crisis of his life he did an unconventional thing, and he lived and died conventional. It would be hard to say whether he appears the more thoroughly sane in having performed the act, or in not having ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... things as How he Lied to her Husband and The Admirable Bashville) this drama does not turn on any very plain pivot of ethical or philosophical conviction. The artistic idea seems to be the notion of a melodrama in which all the conventional melodramatic situations shall suddenly take unconventional turns. Just where the melodramatic clergyman would show courage he appears to show cowardice; just where the melodramatic sinner would confess his love he confesses his indifference. This is a little too like the Shaw of the newspaper critics ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... unconventional, brave and frank, an "old-fashioned girl," and very sweet and charming. As indicated in the title, is a little out of the common track, and the wooing and the winning are as queer as the heroine. The New Haven Register says: "Decidedly the best work which has appeared from the ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... official—wedded as he may be to his rank or his title, anxious as he may be to preserve an outward decorum in exact keeping with the precise shade of his public status—is often the most delightfully unconventional, good-natured, unsophisticated, and even erratic being in the world, as soon as he has left the cares of his office behind him. Germany is the classic land of queer people. It is the land of Quintus Fixlein, Onkel Braesig, Leberecht ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... and unconventional Marie de Rabutin-Chantal was married to the Marquis de Sevigne; but her period of happiness was a short one. The husband, who was rich, handsome, and agreeable, proved weak and faithless. He was one of the temporary caprices of the dangerous Ninon, led a dashing, irresponsible ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... the Edinburgh—had made seriousness a religion. Editors, leader-writers, reviewers, the Press generally, were steeped to their lips in seriousness. They could not understand, and were greatly inclined to resent, the appearance of this bright, playful, unconventional spirit, happy and brilliant himself, and loving the happiness and brilliancy of the world; with not an ounce of pomposity in his own nature, and with the most irreverent demeanour towards pomposity in other people. "Our social Polyphemes," ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... only two, three, or four missionaries. Obviously, it would not be very likely that two single workers of opposite sex would be included in the group; to say nothing of the fact that such an allocation of workers would normally be considered highly unconventional! Usually single women workers were sent to one station, and a man (or men, if there were that many) to another. Missionary travel, except for going to a summer resort, was usually confined to one's own district, and missionaries working outside ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... the flood, the accident, golf, books and three good, substantial, warranted jokes, but the conversation lagged in spite of him. Miss Van Kamp would not for the world have it understood that this unconventional meeting, made allowable by her wrenched ankle, could possibly fulfill the functions ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... rescue them, why should they fly in its face? A little patience, and a blameless happiness lay before them. Let him not blind himself to the immense relief he really felt at being spared social obloquy. After all, a poet could be unconventional in his work—he had no need of the practical outlet demanded for the ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... hero, half ape, half man. Tarzan pere had been suckled and reared by a proud ape foster-mother, and after many jungle adventures had settled down as Lord Greystoke. This latest instalment of the Tarzan chronicles finds the Greystokes somewhat anxious about the restlessness and unconventional tastes of their schoolboy son, who inherits not only his father's vague jungle longings but all his explicit acquired characteristics, so that when, with the decent old ape, Akut, disguised as his invalid grandmother, he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... the lines originally traced. It seems certain, however, that the next stage in the relations of Archie and the younger Kirstie would have been as above foreshadowed; and this conception of the lover's unconventional chivalry and unshaken devotion to his mistress after her fault is very characteristic of the writer's mind. The vengeance to be taken on the seducer beside the Weaver's Stone is prepared for in the first words of the Introduction; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to intensest listening and questioning, and presently followed his questions with suggestions which showed that unconventional ways of working were not altogether new ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... moderation that he might preserve the power to enjoy; she, the etiolated, the subtle, the earnest follower of art, she who seemed always a little too earnest and conventional for that group of the frivolous and unconventional rich—people had wondered for years how there could be anything between them. These two alone understood that the bond was of the mind, not of the flesh or the spirit. She but thought, and he thought with her; she but lifted her eyebrow ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... but highly important details are carefully watched and skillfully righted by the good mother. I am the General Entertainer, but she is the ameliorator of those little roughnesses, those little sharp corners which cling even to unconventional people. Her clear, well-balanced mind, her gentle, yet quietly positive temperament, peculiarly fit her for this necessary but frequently neglected ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... will be after the easy, natural, unconventional life of San Remo, one delight of which is the absence of all thought about dress! Whatever may be and are the delights of Paris—and I fully intend that we should all three enjoy them—that burden is heavier there than in all the ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... to the diagrams of this book, that they are purposely somewhat unconventional, not being drawn to scale nor conforming to the canons of professional draughtsmanship. Where advisable, a part of a machine has been exaggerated to show its details. As a rule solid black has been preferred to fine shading in sectional ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... is not certain how much of this information Lisette repeated to Pomponnet, but Pomponnet, having a will of his own, refused to entertain monsieur Tricotrin at any price at all. More-over, he found it unconventional that she should desire the poet's company, considering the attentions that he had paid her; and she was forced to listen, with an air of humility which she was far from feeling, to a lecture on the responsibilities ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... deForest Caswell at his office. It was an unconventional thing to do to ask him to call, but she made some plausible pretext. She was surprised to find that he accepted it without hesitating. It set her thinking. Drummond must have told him something of her and he had thought this as good a time as any to face her. In that case Drummond ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... he went on, trying to deceive himself against his better judgment. "But you lead such a free, unconventional life." ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... tableful of people as partook of the feast! The Warners seemed to enjoy the fact that their guests arrived at such an unconventional hour, and the Farrington party were so glad to have reached their destination safely that they were in the ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... There was something decidedly attractive and breezy about the newcomer. Her dark eyes danced and twinkled as she spoke, and there was an unconventional jollity in the very high-pitched tone of her voice, and an ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the wrinkles had been pressed from his trousers and coat. The mud had even been brushed from his shoes. Not that Galusha noticed all this just then. He was busy dressing, having a nervous dread that the unconventional Primmie might find she had forgotten something and come ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... see Mr. WILLIAM ARCHER, and some new Critics, and unconventional Dramatists. They are following the text with books of the Play. But there are no more ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... Constantinople. Some can never get beyond the dirt and smells and thievery. Some never get used to the delicious thrills of surprise which every turn and every corner and every vista and every night and every morning hold for the beauty-lover. Nothing could be more heterodox, more bizarre, more unconventional than Constantinople scenes. Nothing could be more orthodox than the views of Naples. To be sure, poets have written reams of poetry about it, travellers have sent home pages of rhapsodies about it, tourists have ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... thoughtfully). You are a curious mixture, George. You were so very unconventional when you married me, and you're so very conventional when Brian wants to marry Dinah. . . . George Marden to marry ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... peculiar, so different from what I have been taught was proper." She smiled sadly, her eyes misting. "I am afraid you will not understand. You can scarcely appreciate how strictly I have been brought up, or what such an unconventional meeting as this means to me. I ought to ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... my element in this affair," she told herself, "for it is more difficult to cultivate these inexperienced girls than I had thought. They are not exactly impossible, as I at first feared, but they are so wholly unconventional as to be somewhat embarrassing as protegees. Analyzing the two I have met—the majority—one strikes me as being transparently affected and the other a stubborn, attractive fool. They are equally untrained in diplomacy and unable to cover their real feelings. Here ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... men in flapping panamas, in tunics and jackets of every kind and color, gave certainly an agreeable liveliness to the spectacle, which their elders emulated by expressions of taste as personal and unconventional. A lady in the old-fashioned riding-habit and a black top-hat with a floating veil recalled a former day, but she was obviously riding to lose weight, in a brief emergence from the past to which she belonged. One man similarly hatted, but frock-coated and ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... the future took tone from their blissful, unconventional life. They could not settle down until they had seen the world. They would go here and there, and perhaps, if they found it pleasanter so, not settle down at all. There were certain clay-white, ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 'ta'en by the milk-white hand,' lifted to a pillion on a coal-black charger, and spirited 'o'er the border an' awa'' by my dear Jock o' Hazeldean. Unhappily, all is quite regular and aboveboard; no 'lord o' Langley dale' contests the prize with the bridegroom, but the marriage is at least unique and unconventional; no one can rob me of ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... needed a sense of community and solidarity, without which the assurance necessary to the work is bound to falter and dwindle out; and there is also needed a degree of popular countenance, not to be had by isolated individuals engaged in an unconventional pursuit of things that are neither to be classed as spendthrift decorum nor as merchantable goods. In this connection an isolated one does not count for one, and more than the critical minimum will count for several per capita. It is a case where the ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... back; nor would the rein be drawn in the nine miles between Northiam and the Vicarage door. Debt was the man's proper element; he used to skulk from arrest in the chancel of his church; and the speed of Captain may have come sometimes handy. At an early age this unconventional parson married his cook, and by her he had two daughters and one son. One of the daughters died unmarried; the other imitated her father, and married "imprudently." The son, still more gallantly continuing the tradition, entered the army, loaded himself with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were seated, all four, in the small sitting-room of Signora Lucca, listening to her remarkable narrative of those sinister events, the ending of which we had chanced to witness. She spoke in rapid and fluent but very unconventional English, which, for the sake of clearness, I will ...
— The Adventure of the Red Circle • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with a feeling of horror. Inspired by her Aunt Sue, Madge had always tried to be on her best behavior while she was the guest of Cousin Louisa. But since propriety was not Madge Morton's strong point she had succeeded only in being perfectly miserable and in offending her wealthy cousin by her unconventional ways. ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... think it strange that I should have asked you to meet me here in this unconventional way instead of at the Inn?" she inquired, suddenly serious. Again the shy, pleading expression stole into ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... analyses. She had voluntarily accompanied her sister and mother to California, in the earnest hope that nature contained something worth saying to her, and was disappointed to find she had already discounted its value in the pages of books. She hoped to find a vague freedom in this unconventional life thus opened to her, or rather to show others that she knew how intelligently to appreciate it, but as yet she was only able to express it in the one detail of dress already alluded to. Some of the men, and nearly all the women, she had met thus far, she was amazed to find, valued the conventionalities ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... this queer business, learn the truth and so set certain vague and agitating fears at rest—did as Damaris bade him. Standing in the conflicting gaslight and moonlight, the haunted quiet of the small hours broken only by the trample and wash of the sea, he read Darcy Faircloth's letter from its unconventional opening, to its ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... "at least not to the shed by the mere. Tommy saw many owls after this in the course of his life; but as none of them would speak, and as most of them were addicted to the unconventional customs of staring and winking, he could not distinguish his friend, if she were among them. And now I ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... which this girl did it. She neither seated herself on the extreme edge of the easy-chair, as one braced for instant flight; nor did she wallow in the easy-chair, as one come to stay for the week-end. She carried herself in an unconventional situation with an unstudied self-confidence that he ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... only a trained instinct for sound work, but a deep sympathy with the latest effort of the human spirit to express itself in new forms. So deep and real will be his feeling for life that he will be eager to understand and possess every fresh manifestation of that life. However novel and unconventional the new form may be, it will not make its appeal ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... minding anybody when I made my poems?—of living a little like a disembodied spirit, and caring less for suppositious criticism than for the black fly buzzing in the pane?—That made me what dear Mr. Kenyon calls 'insolent,'—untimid, and unconventional in my degree; and not so much by strength, you see, as by separation. You touch your greater ends by mere strength; breaking with your own hands the hampering threads which, in your position would have ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... business of tracing No. 5 or running No. 10 to earth in the corner of a warehouse, I made many pleasant acquaintances and received kindest words and notes of welcome from unknown friends. All this warm-hearted, unconventional kindness goes far to make the stranger forget his "own people and his father's house," and feel at once at home amid strange and unfamiliar scenes. After all, "home" is portable, luckily, and a welcoming ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... had a character of very marked and lofty type, the most suggestive study or sketch of the future American man that has yet appeared in our history. How broad, unconventional, and humane! How democratic! how adhesive! No fine arabesque carvings, but strong, unhewn, native traits, and deep lines of care, toil, and human sympathy. Lincoln's Gettysburg speech is one of the most genuine and characteristic utterances ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... interrupted Ben more hotly, "do you suppose she wasn't conscious, and hurt, too, by her unconventional appearance?" ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... down the barriers even in these unconventional surroundings. You can adjust the matter to suit yourself, but I ab-so-lute-ly refuse to sit cheek by jowl with ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... old school: he likes things done decently and in order. He worships bright buttons, and exact words of command, and a perfectly wheeling line. He mistrusts unconventional movements and individual tactics. "No use trying to run," he says, "before you can walk." When we see him, we dress the company ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... Parker cried, angrily. In addition to his lesson in woods' thivalry he was getting education regarding the irresponsibility of these unconventional children of the ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... life he then learns to live, and the discoveries he makes in that unmapped land, the gates of which are closed, locked, barred, and chained against all but a very few of his countrymen, teach him to love many things which all right-minded people very properly detest. The free, queer, utterly unconventional life has a fascination which is all its own. Each day brings a little added knowledge of the hopes and fears, longings and desires, joys and sorrows, pains and agonies of the people among whom his lot is cast. Each hour brings fresh insight into the mysterious workings of the minds and hearts of ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... was found to contain the words "dictator, consul, praetor or magister equitum," the bill was no concern of theirs. But, if they caught the utterance "and whosoever after this enactment," then they must wake up, for some new fetter of law was being forged to bind their limbs.[825] A man of this unconventional type was not likely to be popular in the senate, and the opprobrious name, which he subsequently bore in the Curia,[826] is a proof of the liveliness which he ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... those of other men: they are the genuine expressions of an original and independent mind. His reading and his thinking ran together; there is free quotation, free play of wit and satire, grace of invention too, but always unconventional. The story is always pleasant, although always secondary to the play of thought for which it gives occasion. He quarrelled with verse, whimsically but in all seriousness, in an article on "The Four Ages of Poetry," contributed ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... lest in the first moments of her delightful discovery she should clap her hands or cry or dance or in some other unconventional way outrage grave decorum, returned to her seat ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... light, railway sleeping-cars, and equality are excellent things, but they are the death of romance. The essence of romance is variety, contrast, individuality, the eccentric, the unconventional. Level up society, put nineteen out of every twenty on fairly equal terms, popularise literature, and turn the Ten Commandments into a code of decorum, and you cut up by the roots all romantic types of life. The England of Fielding ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... tone-poet. When the emotions became too intangible for intellectual expression I asked my friend the musician to insert paragraphs in a minor key. The love-scenes I was particularly anxious to have written in musical phrases. But he shrank from so unconventional a form, not being sure he was a genius. I was also disheartened by the disappointing behaviour of the diverse scents with which I had expressed myself on certain blank pages. They would not ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... representative of a church was soon to follow. He preached no creed. His doctrines were as wide as the horizon. Living in the open air, preaching to congregations gathered from the ends of the country, dealing with men more unconventional than immoral, his sermons were concerned with the square deal rather than with dogma. His influences were incalculable. He made ready the field for the reapers who gathered the glory with the advance of refinement. On the frontier he married the ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... before his death. Hogg's 'Life' has been republished in a cheap edition by Messrs. Routledge, and there is a cheap edition of Trelawny's 'Records' in Messrs. Routledge's "New Universal Library." But both these books, while they give incomparably vivid pictures of the poet, are rambling and unconventional, and should be supplemented by Professor Dowden's 'Life of Shelley' (2 vols., 1886), which will always remain the standard biography. Of other recent lives, Mr. A. Clutton-Brock's 'Shelley: the Man and the Poet' (1910) may ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... Mackenzie and his world must now disappear in the wake of the red man and the buffalo before the railroad and the settler. To Jack French the invasion brought mingled feelings. He hated to surrender the untrammelled, unconventional mode of life, for which twenty years ago he had left an ancient and, as it seemed to his adventurous spirit, a worn-out civilization, but he was quick to recognize, and in his heart was glad to welcome, a change that would mean new life and assured prosperity ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... glad his choice of words permitted me to make emphatic reply. Not anger but "divinest melancholy" was responsible, I knew, for my unconventional behavior. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... imagination has enforced upon them, are rarely so imaginative that the practical is wholly obscured. Margaret was accepting the situation, was planning soberly to turn it to the best advantage. Obviously, much hung upon this unconventional, this vulgarly-sensational marriage being diplomatically announced to the person from whom she expected to get an income of her own. "No," said she to Joshua, in response to his nervously-made offer. "You must wait down in the office while I tell her. At the proper time I'll send ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... quite content me. The "compunctious visitings" would continue still. I look out of the window and see a sparrow on a neighbouring tree, loudly chirruping. And as I listen, trying to find comfort by thinking of the perils which do environ him, his careless unconventional sparrow-music resolves itself into articulate speech, interspersed with occasional bursts of derisive laughter. He knows, this fabulous sparrow, what I have been thinking about and have written. "How would you like it," I hear him saying, "O wise ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... not be deceived in this book. It is nothing but a handful of rustic variations on the old tune of "Rest and be thankful," a record of unconventional travel, a pilgrim's scrip with a few bits of blue-sky philosophy in it. There is, so far as I know, very little useful information and absolutely no criticism of the universe to be found in this volume. So if you are what Izaak Walton calls ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... furnished her house in proper style. This house was noted as early as 1690. In one of its halls were white cases full of books. His aunt had wished to put them in order. She had found frivolous books in them, ornamented with engravings so unconventional that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... do no such thing!" cried her mother, horrified. "It was extremely kind of monsieur to give us the hint. He has probably seen how unconventional you are, Dorise." ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... attached, and admiring or disapproving of the different combinations without gratitude or sentiment; she knew that self-interest prompted all of the offerings that were not merely sent just because it was the right thing to do. There was one unconventional bunch, however, that caught her eye. It was a mere handful of scarlet flowers tied loosely together with ribbons of their own colour and the same tint of green as their leaves. It was from a young subaltern in the regiment, a boy whom she had noticed first because ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... from her manner, which was quite as well bred as that of any woman I ever met, that she was some one of importance, and though she seemed almost too good looking to be respectable, I determined that she was some grande dame who was so assured of her position that she could afford to be unconventional. At first she read her novel, and then she made some comment on the scenery, and finally we began to discuss the current politics of the Continent. She talked of all the cities in Europe, and seemed to know every ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... Eager does not like Eleanor. She knows it herself. The truth must be told; she is too unconventional for him." ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... sets out to write a book we know we are in for something unconventional, but this time he has excelled himself in unconventionality, and has essayed a task that no author has attempted for the last sixty years,—to tell the story of the soil in the form of a chronicle. The result is remarkable; a clear account is given of the soil in ...
— The Farm That Won't Wear Out • Cyril G. Hopkins
... his way through the crowd, annoyed at this unconventional method of boarding his ship. He put both hands in his pockets, stuck out his little bearded chin, ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... had not lost zeal for the unconventional, and fortune favoured us. A man passing in a skiff told us that a road leading to the Weyanoke houses could be reached by rowing up a tiny bayou that joined the creek a short distance ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... twice, but her brief replies did not encourage him. At first, he concluded that her inattention and indifference must be due to self-consciousness; then, slightly annoyed, he decided they were not. And, very gradually, he began to realise that the unconventional, always so attractive to the casual young man, did not interest her at all, even enough to be aware of it ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... Canon Mecklin, sub-dean of the Chapel Royal, officiating. The honeymoon will be spent at the town-house of the groom, in York Terrace. Lord Casselthorpe has long been known as the blackest sheep of the British Peerage, being called the 'Coster Peer' on account of his unconventional language, his coarse manner, and slovenly attire. Two years ago he was warned off Newmarket Heath and the British turf by the Jockey Club. He is eighty-eight years old. The bride, like some other lights of the music-hall ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... to Kapus Elsa had been a very severe blow. She had really reckoned on Bela. He was educated and unconventional, and though he professed the usual anti-Semitic views peculiar to his kind, Klara did not believe that these were very genuine. At any rate, she had reckoned that her fine eyes and provocative ways would tilt successfully against the ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... that the most unconventional scene presents itself. Strictly speaking, there ought to be—and generally is—a support-line some seventy yards in rear of the first. This should be occupied by all troops not required in the firing-trench. But the trench is empty—which is not ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... and ears by little departures from feminine propriety. They have probably laboured in their vocation as sedulously as though they had striven to be correct, and have achieved at the best but a short-lived success;—as is the case also with the unconventional female. The charm of the disorderly soon loses itself in the ugliness of disorder. And there are others rebellious from grammar, who are, however, hardly to be called rebels, because the laws which they break have never been altogether known to them. Among those ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope |
