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Ungracious   Listen
adjective
Ungracious  adj.  
1.
Not gracious; showing no grace or kindness; being without good will; unfeeling.
2.
Having no grace; graceless; wicked. (Obs.)
3.
Not well received; offensive; unpleasing; unacceptable; not favored. "Anything of grace toward the Irish rebels was as ungracious at Oxford as at London."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ungracious" Quotes from Famous Books



... said appealingly, "it seems so much the more ungracious on my part. Yet it is treachery to our Queen. And if it should be that Dama Ecciva hath been receiving these letters and holding such part in these intrigues—to leave her where she hath free access to the court-circle.—But it ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... rhetorician; perfect, as well in composing and versifying as in haranguing; a most noble speaker.... This Dante, on account of his learning, was a little haughty, and shy, and disdainful, and like a philosopher almost ungracious, knew not well how to deal with unlettered folk." Benvenuto da Imola tells us that he was very abstracted, as we may well believe of a man who carried the Commedia in his brain. Boccaccio paints him in this wise: "Our poet was of middle height; his face ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... almost like a dream, I have received at their hands so much kindness and courtesy, so much of that encouragement and generous approval which makes the hardest work a pleasure and happiness, that it seemed to me almost ungrateful and ungracious to refuse the duty which was sought to be imposed upon me, and so I have surrendered, with such grace as I may, and will endeavor, to the best of my ability, to push forward the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... dwelling upon the dark phases of your destiny and upon the ungracious acts of Fate, you are shaping more of the same experience for yourself here ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... was unavoidable, much as I dislike its ungracious and ungraceful air. If I have been inclined to undervalue certain things—"the sojourn in Brussels", for instance—which others have considered of the first importance, it is because I believe that it is always the inner life that counts, and that with the Brontes ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... of his own country, he is indebted for an ungracious paltry annuity, inadequate to the display of ordinary consequence, and wholly unequal to the suitable support of that dignity, which ought for ever to distinguish such a being from the mass ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... Times. As I don't finish there in February (as they seem to have supposed), but in April, it may, perhaps, stand over or blow over altogether. Such a thing would be a serious addition to the work, and yet refusal on my part would be too ungracious. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... could not tell from her manner whether Miss Price wished him to walk with her or preferred to walk alone. He remained from sheer embarrassment, not knowing how to leave her; but she would not talk; she answered his questions in an ungracious manner. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... groaning under the feeling of insult, self-condemning, and ill-satisfied in every way, Bold returned to his London lodgings. Ill as he had fared in his interview with the archdeacon, he was not the less under the necessity of carrying out his pledge to Eleanor; and he went about his ungracious ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... and I want to thank you for your invitation to El Castillo de Ruiz. I was so afraid you had not forgiven me for being so rude to you, and dreaded lest you had decided to have nothing further to do with such an ungracious ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage

... but somehow his manner was so friendly, so frank and honest, that she felt it would be ungracious of her. Finally he won the day, and she broke into ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... earnest loved her old father even almost extravagantly as her sisters pretended to do, would have plainly told him so at any other time, in more daughter-like and loving terms, and without these qualifications, which did indeed sound a little ungracious; but after the crafty, flattering speeches of her sisters, which she had seen draw such extravagant rewards, she thought the handsomest thing she could do was to love and be silent. This put her affection out of suspicion of mercenary ends, and showed that she loved, but not for gain; ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... driven those, who so violently felt its influence, into many usages that, to say the least, were quite as ungracious to the imagination, as the customs they termed idolatrous were obnoxious to the attacks of their own unaccommodating theories. The first Protestants had expelled so much from the service of the altar, that little was left for the Puritan to destroy, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... generous and admirable army, and my sole concern is to take part, however modestly, in the work of the nation. True, a thousand memories and reflections crowd my mind; the notion of pausing to express them in writing had not occurred to me, but it would be ungracious in me to decline your kind invitation. Please omit from the ideas I throw on paper whatever seems to you to be ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... itself into an undoubted tyranny, which Julian accepted, carelessly, thoughtlessly, a prey to the internal degradation of his mind. Once he had only been nobly susceptible, a fine power. Now he was drearily weak, an ungracious disability. But with his weakness came, as is usual, a certain lassitude which even resembled despair, an indifference peculiar to the slave, how opposed to the indifference peculiar to the autocrat. Valentine recognized in the voice the badge of serfdom, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... standing, with stained swords repaid 265 Their ancient enmity; all of Assyria Was subdued and doomed that day by their work, Its pride bowed low. In panic and fright, In terror they stood around the tent of their chief, Moody in mind. Then the men all together 270 In concert clamored and cried aloud, Ungracious to God, and gritted their teeth, Grinding them in their grief. Then was their glory at an end, Their noble deeds and daring hopes. Then they deemed it wise To summon their lord from his sleep, but success was denied them. 275 A loyal liegeman, ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... ungracious, headstrong fellow!" said Eustace, looking back wistfully. "And what to do! To ride back myself might be the means of getting the whole troop late in starting, and disorderly—yet, to leave him!" Eustace looked at John Ingram's comely ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... too disturbed at the time to care to enter the store and endure Josie's vapid advances; and through the thin partition there came to him their comments on Betty's ungracious behaviour. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... than might purchase honour; whose delights are vanities and whose pleasures fopperies, whose studies fables and whose exercise worse than follies. His conversation is base, and his conference ridiculous; his affections ungracious, and his actions ignominious; his apparel out of fashion, and his diet out of order; his carriage out of square, and his company out of request. In sum, he is like a mongrel dog with a velvet collar, a cart-horse with a golden saddle, a buzzard kite ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... offence, she could send off the Maid of the Mill behind her father, and adjourn all her own aerial architecture till some future opportunity, when this unexpected generosity on the part of the sire rendered any present attempt to return his daughter on his hands too highly ungracious to be farther thought on. So the Miller departed alone on his ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... a reason for our apparent lack of humor, which it may seem ungracious to mention. Women do not find it politic to cultivate or express their wit. No man likes to have his story capped by a better and fresher from a lady's lips. What woman does not risk being called sarcastic and hateful if she throws ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... the fellow hear me?" he cried, and this time his noise won him a moment of attention. Evander gave him a glance, and then, returning to Brilliana, said, with a manner of amused contempt, "You have a very ungracious gardener." ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... of your brethren, another of the allied sovereigns of Grub Street, the other day, Mawman the Great, by whom I sent due homage to your imperial self. To-morrow's post may perhaps bring a letter from you, but you are the most ungrateful and ungracious of correspondents. But there is some excuse for you, with your perpetual levee of politicians, parsons, scribblers, and loungers. Some day I will give you a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... so long in the ungracious office of sitting in judgment where I have found so much more to censure than to approve, though, wherever it was in my power, I have placed good by the side of evil, that the Reader might intuitively ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... days of the Tracts. Vehement native force was too strong for such a man to remain in the luminous haze which made the Coleridgean atmosphere. A well-known chapter in the Life of Sterling, which some, indeed, have found too ungracious, shows how little hold he felt Coleridge's ideas to be capable of retaining, and how little permanent satisfaction resided in them. Coleridge, in fact, was not only a poet but a thinker as well; ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley

... was not I who used the word 'lie,' remember. But if you are ungracious enough to refuse to withdraw the offensive phrase, let it pass. We are not in France. This deadly business will be fought out in the law courts. I am here to-night of my own initiative. I thought it ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy

... respects to my dear aunt," Felix answered, perfectly impenetrable to his ungracious reception, and perfectly comfortable in ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins

... Pegasus champ his golden bit as he may, and beat his hoof upon the empty air, Pittsburgh men and Pittsburgh women have ridden the classic steed with grace and skill through all the flowered deviations of his bridal paths. This is scarcely the place to attempt a critical estimate, and it would be an ungracious and a presumptuous task for me to appraise the literary value of that work with any great degree of detail. The occasion will hardly permit more than a list of names and titles; and while pains have been taken to make this list complete, it ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church

... bright, clear, cold, blue eye had little of sympathy in it, and every look and tone showed that she expected implicit obedience, to commands, which were far from unpleasant in themselves, though rendered ungracious by the want of softness and mildness with which they were given. Marian often wondered, apart from the principle, how her cousins, and even Miss Morley, could venture to disregard orders given in that decided manner; but she ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... censorious, not to say uncharitable in the extreme, (p. vii) always in an attitude of antagonism, always unsparing and denunciatory. The measure which he meted has been by others in their turn meted to him. This habit of ungracious criticism was his great fault; perhaps it was almost his only very serious fault; it cost him dear in his life, and has continued to cost his memory dear since his death. Sometimes we are not sorry to see men get the punishments which they have brought on themselves; ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... San Francisco paper, indulging in the partizan speech of the period, calling all friends of the Administration at Washington, "Abolitionists," gave ungracious testimony to King's standing and influence ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds

... Victor signified as much with an ungracious mumble. Lanyard fetched glasses, a decanter, a siphon-bottle, and supplied his guest with a ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... shall be our conduct? Shall we attempt to repair the breaches, and fortify the ruins? A hopeless and ungracious undertaking! Or shall we leave them to moulder away by time and accident—a sure but distant and thankless consummation; or, shall we not rather cut away at once the isthmus that remains, allow free course to the current which has been artificially ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... welcome here, no ungracious remembrances of the past, no need ever to doubt Trixy's warm heart, and, generous, forgiving, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... how a blow that had left a raw spot on the chin of Pino Vega could by mutual agreement be made to vanish. But if to the minds of the Spanish-Americans such a miracle were possible, it seemed ungracious not ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis

... is an ungracious task Mrs. Roberts has chosen me," the man answered, smiling. "Critics are not a ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... how many sons have you, Who call you mother, whom you never knew! But most of them who that relation plead, Are such ungracious youths as wish you dead. They gape at rich revenues which you hold, And fain would nibble at your grandame Gold; Inquire into your years, and laugh to find 150 Your crazy temper shows you much declined. Were you not dim and doted, you might see A pack of cheats that claim ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... all this disjointed talk about Belloc's prose seem but ungracious recognition of Mr. Kilmer's service in reminding us of the poems, let us thank him warmly for his essay. Let us thank him for impressing upon us that there are living to-day men who write as nobly and simply as Belloc on Sussex, with his ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... he was thinking how good it would be never again to leave this quiet room; never to move from this chair; never again to see a human being; never to have to smile when he was heart-sick, or to bow when he felt ungracious! ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... priest-like father reads the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of God on high;[60] Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage 120 With Amalek's ungracious progeny;[61] Or, how the royal Bard[62] did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint,[63] and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire; 125 Or other holy Seers that ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various

... low vaults, The mansions of the dead.—Roused from their slumbers, In grim array the grisly spectres rise, Grin horrible, and, obstinately sullen, Pass and repass, hushed as the foot of night. Again the screech-owl shrieks: ungracious sound! I'll hear no more; it makes one's ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... the reverse,—a horrible stimulant! Caxton, do you know that, ungracious as it will sound to you, I am growing impatient of this 'honorable independence'? What does it lead to? Board, clothes, and lodging,—can it ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Mr. Brauer had had a conference, as the lady called it, immediately after his arrival at nine o'clock, and Miss Murray, who sat next to Miss Thornton, suspected that it had had something to do with her neighbor's ill-temper. But Miss Thornton, delicately approached, had proved so ungracious and so uncommunicative, that Miss Murray had retired into herself, and attacked her ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... may divert himself his own way, without being taken to task by man, woman, or child. As to children, he's very good to my child; there's one loves him," pointing to George, "and I'm glad of it: for I should be ashamed, so I should, that my flesh and blood should be in any ways disregardful or ungracious to those that be kind and ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... 'admit' out of these licensed persons such as might have become warped from the proper standard of pastoral fitness, the church had a negative voice, all-potential in the creation of clergymen; the church could exclude whom she pleased. But this contented her not. Simply to shut out was an ungracious office, though mighty for the interests of orthodoxy through the land. The children of this world, who became the agitators of the church, clamored for something more. They desired for the church that she should become a lady patroness; that she should give as ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... and worshippers of grace and beauty here. There will be glowing evenings, warm moonlight, distant voices singing....There is your desire, doctor, the desire you say is the driving force of life. But reality mocks it. Boats bump and lead to coarse ungracious quarrels; rowing can be curiously fatiguing; punting involves dreadful indignities. The romance here tarnishes very quickly. Romantic encounters fail to occur; in our impatience we resort to—accosting. Chilly ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... in general! How different is the reception of this despised race of the wandering stranger from that of —-. However, I am a Saxon myself, and the Saxons have no doubt their virtues; a pity that they should be all uncouth and ungracious ones! ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... landed all the Spaniards, to the number of 150 persons, men and women, giving them plenty of wine and victuals, with the sails of their ship and some planks, to build huts or tents for them to dwell in. The owners of the prize being thus disposed of, the next thing was to share the booty; which ungracious work of distribution soon involved Candish in all the troubles of a mutiny, every one being eager for gold, yet no one satisfied with his share. This disturbance was most violent in the Content; but all was soon appeased ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... old Laemml himself appears to ask his old enemy Dal Segno to give singing-lessons to his dear son. The Italian teacher is very rude and ungracious, Laemml's blood rises also and a fierce quarrel ensues, which is interrupted by the arrival of the Prince. Having heard their complaints, he decides that the quarrel is to be settled by a singing competition in which ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... retreat and disappear, an almost intolerable sense of guilt contending with the profound sense that he was being gulled. She was no sooner gone than the first of these feelings took the upper hand; he felt, if he had done her less than justice, that his conduct was a perfect model of the ungracious; the cultured tone of her voice, her choice of language, and the elegant decorum of her movements, cried out aloud against a harsh construction; and between penitence and curiosity he began slowly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... rough weather was puzzled for a moment, then amused or delighted as he caught the figure. It did not require great originality to think of a crowd as rough in its movements. But our poet applied the idea to an individual. To him a rude, uncivil, impolite, ungracious, uncourteous, unpolished, uncouth, boorish, blunt, bluff, gruff, brusk, or burly person was as the unplaned lumber or the unpolished gem; and we imitative moderns still call such a man rough. But we do not think of the man as covered with projections that need ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... him, no questions asked. His speech was almost a different tongue from theirs; he was thirty-five, he had dogs and a man-servant, instead of the usual equipment of mother, sisters, and "hired girl," and he seemed eternally bored and ungracious. This was enough for the Los Lobos girls, and for ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... inhuman wretches, who flocked to the wreck as to a blessing! It is even suspected that he came on shore alive, but was stripped and left to perish. Nothing could equal the audacity of the plunderers, although a party of the Lanark militia was doing duty around the wreck. But this is an ungracious and revolting subject, which no one of proper feeling would wish to dwell upon. Still less am I inclined so describe the heart-rending scene at Buncrana, where the widows of many of the sufferers are residing. ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park

... Chapman, in his comedies generally, shows a kind of philosophical contempt for woman, as a frailer and flimsier, if fairer, creature than man, and he sustains his bad judgment with infinite ingenuity of wilful wit and penetration of ungracious analysis. In "The Widow's Tears" this unpoetic infidelity to the sex pervades the whole plot and incidents, as well as gives edge to many an incisive sarcasm. My sense, says Tharsalio, "tells me how short-lived widows' tears are, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... the queen regent having sent only half the marriage portion; and so harassed was the ambassador by royal wrath, that he took to his bed, "and sustained such a fever as brought him to the brink of the grave." Regarding that part of the dowry which had arrived, Charles behaved in an equally ungracious and undignified manner. He instructed the officers of the revenue to use all strictness in its valuation, and not make any allowances. And because Diego de Silva—whom the queen had designed for ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... are not told, save that on the following morning the widow's heriot was sent back, with an ungracious message from the knight, showing his unwillingness to restore what terror only ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... the somewhat ungracious form of invitation. "It war me," he said, "dropped in, not finding ye ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... vegetable carpet, soft and embroidered, beneath man's feet; with its valleys covered with corn until they laugh and sing; with its noble architecture of the mountains covered with mighty carvings and painted legends. Verily, it would be an ungracious thing for us to go on living here without taking the trouble to look upon this earth's floor, so firm and solid, or study the beauteous ceiling lighted with star lamps by night. And the evenings of one week with Geikie or Dana will tell us by what furnaces ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... not see fit to follow my advice, I hope you will remain close at The Mitre until my return, which, I trust, will be within three weeks. Danger will attend you if you do not follow my suggestion. In any case, Sir Max, I hope you will not visit my house. My words may seem ungracious, but they are for your good and mine. When I return to Peronne, I shall be happy if you will honor my poor house; but until my return, untold trouble to many persons may follow your disregard of what ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... to his room. Lottie, to escape De Forrest, had also gone to hers, but soon after, at her brother's solicitation, had accompanied him to a neighboring pond to make sure that the ice was safe for him. But, though she yielded to Dan's teasing, her compliance was so ungracious, and her manner so short and unamiable, that with a boy's frankness he had said: "What is the matter with you, Lottie? You are not a bit like Auntie Jane to-day. I wish you could stay one thing ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... full, and were not able to seat all the passengers. Consequently, according to the usages of American etiquette, the gentlemen vacated the seats in favour of the ladies, who took possession of them in a very ungracious manner as I thought. The gentlemen stood in the passage down the centre. At last all but one had given up their seats, and while stopping at a station ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... Lord Hermiston was coarse and cruel; and yet the son was aware of a bloomless nobility, an ungracious abnegation of the man's self in the man's office. At every word, this sense of the greatness of Lord Hermiston's spirit struck more home; and along with it that of his own impotence, who had struck - and perhaps basely struck - at his own father, and not reached so far as to ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... on the pretext of not being familiar enough with the details of the department. Your refusal was greatly embarrassing to me, for I still believed that your services ought to be preserved to the state and to myself. I overlooked your ungracious refusal, and sent for you to speak freely and openly with you. I have conversed with you, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... happen, would it not excite the general indignation, and tend to bring down upon the authors of such measures, the aggravated vengeance of heaven? If, after all, a spirit of disunion, or a temper of obstinacy and perverseness, should manifest itself in any of the states; if such an ungracious disposition should attempt to frustrate all the happy effects that might be expected to flow from the union; if there should be a refusal to comply with the requisitions for funds to discharge the annual interest of the public debts; and if that refusal should revive again all those jealousies, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... perhaps, a rather ungracious way of answering Molly Brunton's speech, and so she felt it to be, although her invitation had been none of the most courteously worded. She irritated Sylvia still further by ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... delightful day, and a magnificent country! They too thought of journeying to Cosenza, and, in short, would I allow them to share my carriage? Now this was annoying; I much preferred to be alone with my thoughts; but it seemed ungracious to refuse. After a glance at their smiling faces, I answered that whatever room remained in the vehicle was at their service—on the natural understanding that they shared the expense; and to this, with the best grace in the world, they at once ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... issues. To Nevil it seemed as if the gods, with ironical gesture, handed him the wish of his heart, saying: "It is yours—if you are fool enough to take it." Stress of thought so warred in him that he came to himself with a fear of having hurt the boy by ungracious silence. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... late at night, through districts inhabited only by the roughest and poorest classes, entirely unmolested; and that we trusted much on many occasions to the honesty of the people, and never found cause to repent our trust—I cannot but feel that it would be an ungracious act to ransack newspapers and Reports to furnish materials for recording in detail, the vices of a population whom I have only personally known by their virtues. Let you and I, reader, leave off with the same pleasant impressions of the Cornish people—you, whose only object ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... of the verses he writes in young ladies' albums, the proverbial receptacles for trash! Here and there a sweet and natural thought intervenes; but the chief part is best characterized by that expressive though ungracious word "rubbish." And what could induce our author to trench on the masculine and vigorous Crabbe? did he think his powerful and dark outlines might with advantage be turned to "prettiness and favour?" But let our readers judge from the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... is nothing so ungracious as a refusal, and no mark of high breeding so rare as the art of gracious acceptance. Any booby can give a present; but to receive a gift without churlish reticence or florid rapture is no easy accomplishment. I am always pleased to see you well-dressed, my love"—Diana winced as she remembered ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... At this ungracious speech—for Skoke[13]means snake—the figure started slightly, but did not obey. After some silence she spoke again, "Wa-ain (white soul) get up and eat, our people will soon be here." Still no motion nor reply. At length the woman, in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... in shoals of delicious stupidity. I was such a new creature! I was so different from the women they had met and always known. They were the foolish moths, I the candle-flame. They dashed blindly into danger; they fluttered about in ungraceful, ungracious misery. Finally, they would fly out and go on their little commonplace ways full of scars and petty burns, but not altogether marred—all the better for their uncomfortable but harmless burning. But nowadays it is quality not numbers which I desire, so they let me alone and are indeed ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.

... to his wife that her majesty, in returning acknowledgements for the magnificent hospitality with which she had been received at the archiepiscopal palace, made use of the well-known ungracious address; "Madam I may not call you, mistress I am ashamed to call you, and so I know not what to call you; but howsoever ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... French pretty much what Horace had been to Latin poetry. These great writers had, each of them, rescued the lyric muse of their country out of the rude ungracious hands of their old poets. And, as their talents of a good ear, elegant judgment, and correct expression, were the same, they presented her to the public in all the air and grace, and yet severity, of beauty, of which her ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various

... dismission, gave him tokens of her royal munificence. Her Majesty feared that her acting otherwise to a Minister, who had been honoured by her confidence, would operate as a check to prevent all men of celebrity from exposing their fortunes to so ungracious a return for lending their best services to the State, which now stood in need of the most skilful pilots. Such were the motives assigned by Her Majesty herself to me, when I took the liberty, of expostulating with her respecting the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... made since then in this country—and in this country only, if at all—it is hard for me to speak without being either ungracious or insincere, and yet speak I must. I say, then, that an apparent external progress in some ways is obvious, but I do not know how far that is hopeful, for time must try it, and prove whether it be a passing fashion or the first token of a real stir among the great mass of civilised men. ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... would do well to cherish so far as never to depart from it without some reluctance;—but, when old and familiar means are not equal to the exigency, new ones must, without timidity, be resorted to, though by many they may be found harsh and ungracious. Nothing but good would result from such conduct. The well-disposed would rely more confidently upon a Government which thus proved that it had confidence in itself. Men, less zealous, and of less comprehensive minds, would soon be reconciled to measures from which at first they had revolted; ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... necessary to say where we should be next. My own eyes were turned wistfully towards the east, following the road by the Lake of Constance, Inspruck, and Saltzbourg, to Vienna; but several of our party were so young when we were in Switzerland, in 1828, that it seemed ungracious to refuse them this favourable opportunity to carry away lasting impressions of a region that has no parallel. It was, therefore, settled before we slept, again to ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... last night an ugly fellow, Of skinny exterior and most ungracious manner, Was thrown with a total loss of gravity From the flapping doors of ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke

... if our ultimate condition must be that of entire subjection and surrender to and harmony with the Divine Will, how sad it is that our consecration is so slow, so protracted, so ungracious; that we take so much time to reach the point where we are altogether the Lord's. People can read the mystery of conversion in the parable of the dry bones in Ezekiel; but there is consecration in the story, too. ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris

... don't be an ungracious pig! Here I am and here I mean to stay. I won't bother you, so just ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... "What—the house?" was the ungracious reply. "I'm sure I don't know; I never thought about it—whether it was pretty or ugly, I mean. It suited us, and it amused mother ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... tone was still hurried, absent, ungracious. The two looked at her in surprise. Where was the radiance of triumph that had lit up her face as she signalled to them from the platform? They had expected to find her full of the speech and had been prepared ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... priest-like Father reads the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of God on high; Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... glance. "Go, Marian," he said, not impatiently,—for he was too thoroughly courteous ever to be ungracious, even to a child,—but with a steady indifference that cut me with more pain than if ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... mainly to a spirited account of the abduction of that gentleman, and his confinement in the wilderness by a gang of ruffians, who, after trying in vain to bend his soldier-like mind to a compliance with their violent designs, gave him an ungracious release, and allowed him to return to his family. Among the papers in the appendix, now first introduced to the public, will be found a deed of purchase, made from the Indians ninety years ago, by the Connecticut Land Company, containing the names of some six hundred of the most wealthy ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... be taught, I mun; but I'd rayther be whipped and ha' done with it,' was Sylvia's ungracious reply. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... Barbara's hand, she drew back, leaning against the wall; the Duke stood with his arms by his side, looking at the man who interrupted his sport and seemed to have power to control his will. Then, at last, in crisp, curt, ungracious tones, ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... that some kind of an effort was made to prevent his removal, presumably by George S. Hillard, who was a Whig in good favor; but the conclusion which one would naturally draw from the above, that Hawthorne was turned out of office in a summary and ungracious manner, is not justified by the evidence. He was not relieved from duty until June 14, 1849; that is, he was given a hundred days of grace, which is much more than officeholders commonly are favored with, in such ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... makes me feel easy. There's a good chance of their pulling through, now you're not with them, Plunger," was Baldry's ungracious response. "Why, here ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting

... to be ungracious; but his courtly breeding was too much of an instinct with him for him not to rise, doff his cap, and stand aside, as Eleanor of Castille slowly moved towards the woodland path, with her graceful Spanish ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... this ungracious permission, Ellen fled up stairs, and dressing much quicker than before, was ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... more gentle, more reasonable, and more considerate than old. And, summing up, in a general way, my experience of different ranks (which extends, let me premise, all the way down from peers to publicans), I have met with most of my formal and ungracious receptions among rich people of uncertain social standing; the highest classes and the lowest among my employers almost always contrive—in widely different ways, of course—to make me feel at home as soon as ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... and whilst the minister was absorbed in that occupation, Courtin perceived the lettre de cachet lying upon the bureau. When Louvois had finished writing, Courtin, with some emotion, asked him what that lettre de cachet was? Louvois told him its purpose. Courtin remarked that it was surely an ungracious act, for that, even if the report were true, the King might be content to go no further than advising her to be more circumspect. He begged and entreated him to tell the King so on his part before acting upon the lettre de cachet; and that, if the King would not believe his words, he ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... of the unpleasant, ungracious feelings of the intervening time. No one had any secret complaint against another; there were no cross purposes, no bitterness. The Major accompanied Charlotte's playing with his violin, and Edward's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... five the battle began. The English foot, in such order as they could keep on treacherous and uneven ground, made their way, sinking deep in mud at every step, to the Irish works. But those works were defended with a resolution such as extorted some words of ungracious eulogy even from men who entertained the strongest prejudices against the Celtic race. [107] Again and again the assailants were driven back. Again and again they returned to the struggle. Once they were broken, and chased across the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... ungracious in her tone and manner. It seemed to Maude that she had never before been alone with so singular a person. There was, in the first place, her striking and yet rather sinister and ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... to come down off their dignity; and, nine times out of ten, when they scowl the most darkly, they are really wishing that they knew how to come to terms. I must go down town now, Cis; but my parting advice to you is to corner Allyn and bully him into shaking hands. The boy is an ungracious cub; but he is sound at the core, and I honestly think he is fond of you in his ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... anticipating the period when he might possess the means of rendering them more comfortable. But all this had long passed away. He was now a bachelor past fifty, bearish and uncouth in his appearance, and ungracious in his deportment. Secluded in his chambers, poring over the dry technicalities of his profession, he had divided the moral world into two parts—honest and dishonest, lawful and unlawful. All other feelings and affections, if he had them, were buried, and had never been raised ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... thought or word or deed, the spirit that generously confided in thee; if thou art a lover, and hast ever given one unmerited pang to that true heart which now lies cold and still beneath thy feet,—then be sure that every unkind look, every ungracious word, every ungentle action will come thronging back upon thy memory and knocking dolefully at thy soul: then be sure that thou wilt lie down sorrowing and repentant on the grave, and utter the unheard groan and pour the unavailing tear, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... laboriously, because he is always obliged to mount. The stress of the rhyme and metre are of course in this case very great, and it is they, doubtless, that drove the poet into this false picture of a bird of prey laden with his quarry. It is an ungracious task, however, to cross- question the gentle Muse of Longfellow in this manner. He is a true poet if there ever was one, and the slips I point out are only like an obscure feather or two in the dove carelessly preened. The burnished plumage and the ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... beginning of the end, and when, next day towards noon, my husband came with drowsy eyes to make a kind of ungracious apology, saying he supposed the doctor had been sent ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... as though anxious for concealment. The Doctor, having retired into his study, was not to be disturbed; but the stranger was urgent for admission, while Lettice Gostwich, Dee's help-at-all-work, a pert ungracious slattern, was fully resolved not to permit ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... which inform us that the demon has appeared to those whom he wished to seduce, or who have been so unhappy as to invoke his aid, or make a compact with him, as a man taller than the common stature, dressed in black, and with a rough ungracious manner; making a thousand fine promises to those to whom he appeared, but which promises were always deceitful, and never followed by a real effect. I can even believe that they beheld what existed only in their own confused and ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... be under the ungracious necessity of shaking him off. I can't tell you how sick I am, Harry, at the loss ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William

... the three months which he had himself named, and then returned elate with his news. He had seen the younger brother, Robert Lefroy, and had learnt from him that the elder Ferdinand had certainly been killed. Robert had been most ungracious to him, having even on one occasion threatened his life; but there had been no doubt that he, Robert, was alive, and that Ferdinand had been killed by a party ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... were very flowery, the morning was very bright, but what were these to her? She wanted dimness, sleep, forgetfulness. At eight o'clock, breakfast-time, the 'dauntless three' were driving in a waggonette amid blazing, breathless sunshine, over country naked of shelter, ungracious and harsh. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... governor's house out of pity and charity—she, a Melchite! The interpreter had little to say in her favor, by reason of her sect; and though he could find no flaw in her beauty, he insisted on it that she was proud and ungracious, and incapable of winning any man's love; only the child, little Mary—she, to be sure, was very fond of her. It was no secret that even her uncle's wife, worthy Neforis, did not care for her haughty niece and only suffered her to please the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... conciliatory. The English, it was said, had always been forbidden to trade in the Dutch colonies. The Dutch ought therefore to find no fault with the recent Navigation Act, from which measure the Council did not "deem it fitting to recede." As to the colonial boundary, the ungracious reply ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott

... embarrassment by his rudeness. Once his hostess, a simple unpretending woman desirous only of pleasing her distinguished guest, said, "Oh, Mr Borrow, I have read your books with so much pleasure!" "Pray, what books do you mean, madam? Do you mean my account books?" was the ungracious retort. He then rose from the table, fretting and fuming and walked up and down the dining-room among the servants "during the whole of the dinner, and afterwards wandered about the rooms and passage, till the carriage could be ordered ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... something truly horrible to shudder at and to frighten children with: and so a certain school of philosophers exhaust their rhetoric in convincing us that the objects known to science are artificial and dead, while the living reality is infinitely rich and absolutely unutterable. This is merely an ungracious way of describing the office of thought and bearing witness to its necessity. A body is none the worse for having some bones in it, even if they are not all visible on the surface. They are certainly not the whole man, who nevertheless ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... the honour of being the first to abolish the unhospitable, troublesome, and ungracious custom of giving vails to servants. JOHNSON. 'Sir, you abolished vails, because you were too poor to be able to ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... that perversity which all children have more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now, at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good Mr. Wilson's question, the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... produced upon him had been most deep and most salutary. It had rendered dissipation tasteless and insipid; it had made him look more deeply into his own heart, and into the rules of life. Though, partly from irksomeness of dependence upon an uncle at once generous and ungracious, partly from a diffident and feeling sense of his own inadequate pretensions to the hand of Miss Cameron, and partly from the prior and acknowledged claims of Lord Vargrave, he had accepted, half in despair, the appointment offered to him, he still found it impossible to banish that image ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VII • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Edward, who seemed almost spitefully to be turning this trick against him in his old age, and he handed on his grievance to John and his wife. The small, wooden house in Church Street contained a narrow, ungracious family life, it can be seen, of petty economies and few interests. No wonder that the Field—the one important family possession remaining—became the favorite topic of discussion and speculation. The city was ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... parents of her welfare. A demon woman, whose form resembles that of Mary, haunts her lover, and entices him to evil. Since Hogg can give to his legends a "local habitation and a name," pointing to the very stretch of road on which the elfin lady first appeared, it seems ungracious to doubt his veracity. The Ettrick Shepherd's most memorable achievement, however, is his Confessions of a Fanatic (1824), a terribly impressive account of a man afflicted with religious mania, who believes ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... heart was dead and cold a minute before at the ungracious reception she had met with, felt words come up into her mouth at the implied insult to her father, and spoke out, to her ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... used to come to the manse on the Saturdays for a meal of meat; and so it fell out that as, by some neglect of mine, no steps had been taken to regulate the disposal of the victual that constituted the means of the augmentation, some of the heritors, in an ungracious temper, sent what they called the tithe-ball (the Lord knows it was not the fiftieth!) to the manse, where I had no place to put it. This fell out on a Saturday night, when I was busy with my sermon, thinking ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt

... on the frosty air of Glamerton; but no one ventured to go and tell the dreary tidings. The men left it to the women; and the woman knew too well how the bearer of such ill news would appear in her eyes, to venture upon the ungracious task. So they said to themselves she must know it just as well as they did; or if she did not know, poor woman! she would know time enough for all the good it would do her. And that came of sending sons ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... the exhaustive studies which I subsequently devoted to one of the bronze weights found in 1851 in the excavations at the Serapeium, it would be ungracious for me not to think well of them, as they opened for me the ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France

... invidious sound, and have indeed very often been used in contempt. He can only say, that he uses them with no such feeling; that they are employed simply as the most obvious terms of designation; and that he would like better to employ any less ungracious ones that did not ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... on to say that it might be possible that she owed Mr Croft an apology for the somewhat ungracious manner in which she had treated him at Mrs Keswick's house; but she assured herself that Mr Croft owed her an apology, not only for the manner of his attentions, but for the peculiar publicity he had given them. In that case the apologies neutralized each other. Miss March had ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... loved Sir William Hatton's widow, and induced Essex to support his suit, and that rejecting him she gave herself to his enemy, we know; but history tells us nothing of the secret struggle which preceded the lady's resolution to become the wife of an unalluring, ungracious, peevish, middle-aged widower. She must have felt some tenderness for her cousin, whose comeliness spoke to every eye, whose wit was extolled by every lip. Perhaps she, like many others, had misread the essay 'Of Love,' and felt herself bound ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... is a very ungracious thing for you to say. And as for that, I too am a knight of King Arthur's court, but I do not believe that you will serve me as you have served those three. Instead of that, I have great hope that I shall serve you in such a fashion that I shall be able to set these knights free ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... who in different ways gave Redmond complete and most useful backing. It would have been possible to call together a group consisting of men who had been members of the national organization which would have excluded all these and included the Bishops;[10] but Redmond probably felt it would be ungracious to do this. His chief desire was to avoid all recognition of party and still more of partisan machinery. His conclusion was to do nothing; and it was a conclusion to which he was prone at all times when he did not see his way clear. This temperamental disinclination to take any action which ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... was not fond of playing to people who did not care for music, though she was often obliged to do so; but Anna pressed her so earnestly that she did not like to be ungracious, and, taking up her violin, played a short German air, which she thought might please ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton

... He replied without interest to her remarks and then entered into conversation with his right-hand neighbour. Joanna was annoyed—she could not put down his constraint to shyness, for he did not at all strike her as a shy young man. Nor was he being ungracious to Mr. Turner of Beckett's House, though the latter could not talk of turnips half so entertainingly as Joanna would have done. He obviously did not want to speak to her. Why? Because of what had happened in Pedlinge all that ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... and gallantry toward women; which may be true, as neither under such conditions costs any earnest sacrifice. But the rank and file of the middle class of Austrians, the class with which travellers have naturally most to do, are most brusque and ungracious in manner as well as in deed, unembellished with any ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... cried the Yookoohoo, examining her work with critical approval. "You are much better and more interesting than fishes, and this ungracious Skeezer would scarcely allow me to do the transformations. You surely have nothing to thank him for. But now let us dine in honor ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... ungracious comment the great man hung up the receiver and stumbling through the darkness His Highness felt his way upstairs and ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... the last trick this ungracious boy had it in his power to play; for, seeing two men come up to the beggar, and enter into discourse with him, he was afraid of being pursued, and therefore ran as fast as he was able over several fields. At last he ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... 29th, 1875.—You will see that by a stupid mistake in the address this letter has just been returned to me. It is by no means worth forwarding, but I cannot bear that you should think me so ungracious and ungrateful as not to have thanked ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... being told to wait, Mr. President," said the ungracious voice. "My appointment was for ten o'clock, and I am ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... at least, or scalps to hang at my belt. No? You ungracious little thing! There is a good-by kiss to show you that I always hold out ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... receive such an ungracious return, the man pursued, which but confirming Israel in his suspicions he ran all the faster, and thanks to his fleetness, soon succeeded ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... devoured sundry oases by simply waiting till man is preoccupied with other matters. And how rare they are, these specks of green, these fountains in the sand—rare as the smiles in a lifetime of woe! Beyond and all around lies a grave and ungracious land, the land of the lawless, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... generations in a growing isolation, drawing away, on either hand, from the rich who had now become too high for them, and from the poor, whom they still regarded as too low; and even to-day, when poverty forces them to unfasten their door to a guest, they cannot do so without a most ungracious stipulation. You are to remain, they say, a stranger; they will give you attendance, but they refuse from the first the idea of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... but an ungracious return. My lady snatched her hand away, as though from a snake, and gazed at her with flashing eyes ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... for perhaps half an hour before Nina's odd manner recurred to her, on a wave of memory, and she seemed to hear again Nina's ungracious tone. ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... almost ungracious to quote such an observation, because it may be distorted into a criticism of charity itself, or made to serve the purposes of certain anti-Romanists who cannot even spare those noble women who minister to the sick in the home or hospital from their bigoted criticisms. ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... down the gangplank and I greeted him as is my ungracious way, as if he had been off on a sailing trip. But he knew, and he held to me, the tall fellow, with his arm around my shoulder unashamed, and from that moment to this in the den he had hardly let ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... old. At rare intervals came the flash and outbreak of a fiery mind; but the years were years of lassitude. His patriotic song, Le Rhin Allemand, is of 1841. In 1852 the Academy received him. "Musset s'absente trop," observed an Academician; the ungracious reply, "Il s'absinthe trop," told the truth, and it was a piteous decline. In 1857, attended by the pious ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... her aunt; "not uninteresting, but ungracious. But I like an ungracious man better than one like Philip, who hangs over young girls like a soft-hearted avalanche. This Lambert will govern Emilia, which is ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... a region filled with the fumes from a thousand venal censers of a flattery which intoxicates and makes giddy. A king in Egypt, very near our Lord's time, had borne the title 'benefactor,' the very word that is employed here; even as many a most ungracious sovereign has been called ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... effect of the young woman's reserve ungracious, or was it only natural that in her particular situation she should not have a flow of compliment at her command? I noticed that Mrs. Nettlepoint looked at her often, and certainly though she was undemonstrative Miss ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... promoted to the command of a division. That official replied promptly that he did not oppose it himself, but that he could not do it without the recommendation of the army officers, and that recommendation had not been given. Possibly the field officers believed the suggestion would have been ungracious to Mr. Davis. General Toombs had not hesitated to criticise the policy and appointments of the Richmond administration. That practice had strained his relations with the Confederate Government, but Toombs was a man who "would not flatter ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... But it is ungracious to talk of oneself—except so far as shall answer some points you touch on. It would in many respects be very delightful to me to walk again with you over those old Places; in other respects sad:—but the pleasure would have the upper hand if one had not again ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... taken into his house almost as an adopted daughter, and had, since that time, had all the privileges accorded to her. She had now been promoted still higher, and had become his affianced bride. That the man should have turned upon her thus, in answer to her counsel, was savage, or at least ungracious. But at every word her heart became fuller and more full of an affection as for something almost divine. What other man had ever shown such love for any woman? and this love was shown to her,—who was nothing to him,—who ate the bread of charity in his house. And it amounted to this, that he ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Ungracious" :   graceless, gracious, impolite, unrefined, unpleasing



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