"Unpleasant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the preceding period is still in evidence, more and more activity is becoming purposeful and willed. While the child continues to love activity for itself, he is more interested in what it will accomplish than formerly, but an end is not yet sufficiently attractive in itself to hold him to an unpleasant activity for its achievement. For example, he enjoys both the weaving and the basket, the pasting and the scrap-book, but if pasting and weaving were laborious and difficult, he would not voluntarily go through them to obtain the basket ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... temper disarmed difference of opinion of anything harsh or unpleasant, and formed another credential for the prominence she attained in society. The absence of all artificiality in sentiment and manners, when contrasted with the straining after effect acquired by fashionably-bred ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... The same unpleasant weight crept over him; his heart beat rapidly, and his body seemed to be very hollow. Unceasing panoramas of heroism cast on his mental screen were one thing, but the military company in the broad daylight ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... desire to regulate everything; and that other attribute of the military spirit, nagging. You should never nag an African, it only makes him bothered and then sulky, and when he's sulky he'll lie down and die to spite you. But in spite of the Germans being over-given to this unpleasant habit of military regularity and so on, the natives from the Kru Coast and from Bassa and the French Ivory Coast return to them time after time for spells of work, so there must be grave exaggeration regarding their bad treatment, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... wife," ending, "Love will I make to the girls across the stream." Next comes a wife who poisons her husband: "I dried the evil root, and pounded it small;" but in this case the husband was hated because he had killed her brother. The most unpleasant of all, however, are the invocations to vodki. A circle of girls imitate drunken women, and sing as they dance: "Vodki delicious I drank, I drank; not in a cup or a glass, but a bucketful I drank.... I cling to the posts of the door. Oh, doorpost, hold me up, the drunken woman, ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... close thing," said Lewisham with a quite unreasonable exultation. For, strangely enough, the affair was beginning to take on a flavour of adventure not at all unpleasant. He leant back in his chair with the note-book closed in ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... moreover, is necessary to see that the fruit is picked and packed with proper care. In hiring pickers, it is usually stipulated that a part of the pay is to be reserved until the close of the season; otherwise those disposed to have a holiday leave when the weather becomes unpleasant or seek greener pastures when ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... most part tall tenement-houses, their lower stories uniformly given up to some small traffic, claim exclusive right of possession. The sidewalks are crowded with the stalls of a yet more petty trade; the neighborhood is full of unpleasant sights, unwholesome ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... visit was not so easy of execution. It required two days of red tape and official dispensation before she finally reached the seaside hospital that, by unpleasant coincidence, only a year before had been the resort hotel of more ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... rush for the pump and hose, for the smell of burning was stronger as we reached the steaming hold, I being first. But I felt puzzled, for the steam was dense as ever, and I could only smell the dank, unpleasant, hydrogenous odour of decomposed water, while the smell which had reached the companion-way had been the fresh, sharp, pungent scent of burning wood. The next moment, though, I saw where the danger was, ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... not understand this, and the mate had got him into the scrape for the purpose of getting the man who first had the swab, who was a particular friend of his, out of his unpleasant position. ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... book. "I was quite prepared to hear it," she said; "all the unpleasant complications since your Divorce—and Heaven only knows how many of them have presented themselves—have been left for me to unravel. It so happens—though I was too modest to mention it prematurely—that I have unraveled this complication. If one only has eyes to see it, there ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... specially, for a child in peculiar need of prayer, commended these associations to their judgment and affections. One lady referred to the possible disclosure of family secrets, at such meetings, which it was unpleasant to hear, and to the undesirableness of revealing the faults of a child. They agreed that these things should never be done, and that it was easy to avoid them by employing a friend, if necessary, to state the case, hypothetically, so as to conceal its connection with any member of the circle. The ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... different from what he told me. Her tone was even more depressing than her words; it breathed a coldness, not to say harshness, to which I had not been accustomed in a woman. There was nothing in her appearance to lessen the unpleasant impression. Small in stature, with florid complexion, wide cheek bones that gave her face a triangular form, she had the eye and look ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... "Bazoo." Now, the "Bazoo" has an average inclination to print very flattering remarks about the local representative at Annapolis. While the home editor always means this as pleasant service, the detection of flattering articles by any upper class man at Annapolis always means unpleasant times for the poor plebe who has been thus honored in the columns ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... in a loud voice, emphasising each word with a jolly laugh, good natured, devoid of malice, yet making an unpleasant impression on his two visitors less at home than he in the gruesome abode they ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... tell an unpleasant truth. There must have been some foundation in the beginning for the wide reputation which the Norwegians have for honest simplicity of character; but the accounts given by former travellers are undeserved ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... legitimised sister, loved her far more definitely since her marriage with M. le Prince de Conti. Monseigneur is lacking in tact. At this ball he thought he could parade his sentiments, which were visibly unpleasant, both to the young husband and to the Princess herself. He danced, nevertheless, for some minutes with her; but, suddenly, she feigned to be seized with a sharp pain in the spleen, and was conducted to a sofa. The young Comte de Vermandois came and sat there near ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... was a kind of serpent; another embraced its leg, and was ready to die for the belief that an elephant was a kind of tree. In the same way to the man who leaned against its side it was a wall; to the man who had hold of its tail a rope, and to the man who ran upon its tusk a particularly unpleasant kind of spear. This, as I have said, is the whole theology and philosophy of Browning. But he differs from the psychological decadents and impressionists in this important point, that he thinks that although the blind men found out very little about the elephant, ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... contemplating the metal box, and at times its contents. More and more, since his wonderful escape, was it assuming in his eyes the properties of an amulet, or charm. It would reassure him, too, what time unpleasant thoughts would weigh upon him as to the end to which he had been reserved. Twice had Lilith's love stood between him and death. Would it not again? In truth the metal box was ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... was evidently mistaken, for that same girl, after a glance around which revealed to her that she and her companions were the center of all eyes, tossed her head as though getting rid of some unpleasant thoughts, and turning to her escort, with a reckless laugh, asked him why he kept the best for himself. "I don't think it fair, girls," she declared in a loud voice. "We have as good a right to that nice wine as the boys have. I move that we make them treat us as ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... one of the terrace seats. On it lay a toy of Kate's, a little wooden "box of bells." Mechanically, her mind far away, Eliza took it up and began, still mechanically, turning the wire which set the bells to play with a soft but not unpleasant jingle. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... the revelations, true or false, of this unpleasant old woman, Mr. Dempster asked to be shown to bed, as he was tired; and he found his room, though small, was as clean and comfortable as Mrs. Frankland had been used to give to him in ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... with merriment. At first I was bewildered and thought I had been laughing in dreams, but a moment later I remembered the drug, and was delighted to think that after all I had got an effect. It had been working all along, only I had miscalculated the time. The only unpleasant thing then was an odd feeling that I had not waked naturally, but had been wakened by some one else—deliberately. This came to me as a certainty in the middle of my noisy laughter and ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... lay there I do not know. I woke with a strange and not unpleasant sensation, and presently became conscious that the fakir was gently pressing, with a sort of shampooing action, my temples and head. When he saw that I opened my eyes he left me, and performed the same process upon Charley. In a few ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... in a sort of white vapour full of the drowsy fragrance of the poppy. Everything disappeared at once; every light, every sound, and almost consciousness itself. Only the sense of being alive remained, and that was not unpleasant. ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... apology, Robert could not, in honour, have done anything to him at any future time. But Robert's fears, if he had any, were soon dispelled. Chivalry was a stranger to the breast of the baker's boy. He pushed Anthea away very roughly, and he chased Robert with kicks and unpleasant conversation right down the road to the sand-pit, and there, with one last kick, he landed him ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... you belong to a man who may involve you in numerous unpleasant affairs: a few more matters like this, and he will be quite disgraced. Have you any children? Excuse my asking; you are so young, it is perfectly natural." And the judge comes as near to Caroline ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... or disease, she thought to herself, and she forcibly recalled Frank's virtues. She was so far successful that when they parted and he kissed her, she was more than usually caressing, and her ardent embrace, at least for the moment, relieved that unpleasant sensation in the region of the heart. When he had gone she reasoned with herself. What a miserable counterfeit of love, she argued, is mere intellectual sympathy, a sympathy based on books! What did Miranda know about Ferdinand's 'views' ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... not surprised at the intelligence, listened to the vicar attentively, as he pointed out the necessity of forgiveness, if she hoped to be forgiven—of the conviction, in his own mind, that her husband was reformed—of the unpleasant remarks to which a woman who is separated from her husband must always be subjected—of the probability that the faults were not all on his side, and of the advantage her daughter would derive from their reunion: to which he entreated ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to locate a still and rob it. That, or make some of our own, which takes time. And it's an unpleasant, messy job anyway." ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... all jealousy. He finds every old person he meets, no matter how unpleasant, a decided improvement on himself; whereas he can always hope the young ones ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... we know from unimpeachable testimony that the sentiment so perfectly expressed was equally exemplified in his life. It sounds easy, but unfortunately the ease is not always proved in practice, for a man of genius to be throughout their lives an unmixed comfort to his parents. It is unpleasant to remember that a man so accessible to tender emotions should jar upon us by his language about women generally. Byron countersigns the opinion of Bolingbroke that he knew the sex well; but testimony ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... binding you to secrecy on the point at the same time. In fact, the writer of the letter begged me not to speak of it, and I took an engagement to him not to speak of it. Now it would be very unpleasant to me, and dishonorable to me, if, after entering into this engagement, the circumstance of the letter should come to be talked about. Of course you will understand that I do not object to your having been informed of the thing, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... wife was the greatest of the four blians here, all women; male blians, as usual, being less in demand. Her eyes were sunk in their sockets and she looked as if she had spent too many nights awake singing, also as if she had been drinking too much tuak. She had a staring though not unpleasant expression, was devoted to her religious exercises, and possessed an ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... more distressing to the imagination and crushing to the ambition than the practice of medicine in the East End. The bulk of my cases were club cases which enabled me to be sure of a living, and the rest were for the most part sordid and unpleasant subjects, springing out of the vile life of the district. Alien sailors abounded and quarrelled fiercely. Often and often have I been awakened in the dead hours to find drunken and foreign-speaking men at my door, with one or more among them suffering from a dangerous knife-wound. And the point ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... pale-green water of the harbor. For all practical purposes, therefore, the sea-breeze at Key West may be regarded as perennial and incessant. It varies in strength, of course, from day to day and from hour to hour; but in the two weeks that I spent there it was never strong enough to be unpleasant in the city, nor to necessitate the reefing of small sail-boats in the comparatively open ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... standing in the corridor heard her blessing me. Probably the questions which I had put with regard to poverty, had aroused expectation, and several persons followed us. In the corridor also, they began to ask me for money. Among those who begged were some drunken men, who aroused an unpleasant feeling in me; but, having once given to the old woman, I had no might to refuse these people, and I began to give. As long as I continued to give, people kept coming up; and excitement ran through all the lodgings. People made them appearance ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... affairs. It was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard frosts and heavy gales; and it was plain from the first that my poor father was little likely to see the spring. He sank daily, and my mother and I had all the inn upon our hands, and were kept busy enough, without paying much regard to our unpleasant guest. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... San Francisco argued on insufficient premises they condemned a fellow-creature to a most unpleasant death in a far country which had nothing whatever to do with the United States. They foregathered at the top of a tenement-house in Tehama Street, an unsavoury quarter of the city, and, there calling for certain drinks, they conspired because they were conspirators by ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... they became aware of hostile forces. This was explained when they were met by a Portuguese half-caste "with jacket and hat on," who informed them that for the last two years they had been fighting the natives. Plunging thus unconsciously into the midst of a Kafir war rendered travelling unpleasant and dangerous. In addition, the party of explorers found their animals woefully bitten by the tsetse fly, rhinoceroses and elephants were too plentiful to be interesting, and the great white ant ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... dispatches until the rates were lowered; but it was like an agreement of the railroad presidents of the present day, it was not adhered to. The Pioneer made a secret contract with the telegraph company and left the Minnesotian and the Times out in the cold. Of course that was a very unpleasant state of affairs and for some time the Minnesotian and Times would wait until the Pioneer was out in the morning and would then set up the telegraph and circulate their papers. One of the editors connected ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... canning the salmon of that stream. The timber along this river is of great importance. The Canadian fir and other indigenous trees line the banks and mountain sides in a quantity sufficient to supply the demand of the people of that great country for many years to come. But it was unpleasant to witness the devastation that the fires had made by which great sections of the forests had been killed. The Canadian government has made a determined effort to suppress these fires in their forests and upon their plains, and it is one of the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... carried out under the energetic regime of Admiral Fisher, First Sea Lord from 1904 to 1910. The British Dreadnought of 1906, completed in 10 months, and the battle cruisers of 1908—Indefatigable, Invincible and Indomitable—came as an unpleasant surprise to Germany, necessitating construction of similar types and enlargement of the Kiel Canal. Reforms in naval gunnery urged by Admiral Sir Percy Scott were taken up, and plans were made for new bases in the Humber, in the Forth at Rosyth, and in the Orkneys, necessitated by the shift ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... whole face, especially in the region of his eyes, was puffed unbecomingly. Casey, squinting an angry eye at Hank and the cup of coffee, spared a thought from his own misery to acknowledge surprise that anything on earth could make Hank more unpleasant to look upon. Joe had a sickly pallor to prove the potency ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... show like gallants here," said Winter; "it would do a man's heart good to behold them. Would to God the Prince of Parma were on the seas with all his forces, and we in sight of them. You should hear that we would make his enterprise very unpleasant to him." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... scene that followed, I will not speak. My lady readers can, without any effort of the mind, imagine something of its unpleasant reality. As for our visitor, when lights were brought in, he was no where to be seen. I have a faint recollection of having heard the street door shut amid the confusion that succeeded ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... And with my wife and children I always attend on them. O good Brahmana, with my own hands I assist them in bathing and also wash their feet and give them food and I say to them only what is agreeable, leaving out what is unpleasant. I consider it to be my highest duty to do what is agreeable to them even though it be not strictly justifiable. And, O Brahmana, I am always diligent in attending on them. The two parents, the sacred fire, the soul and the spiritual preceptor, these ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... day appointed when Independence was to be declared in the City Hall here; which was done about noon; and the Coat of Arms of the King was burnt. An unpleasant and ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... once and leaning down tried to pull Calico out by the nape of the neck. To the frightened and shivering kitten—that had upon touching bottom at once gained its feet—this would have been quite as unpleasant as the cold water that was now chilling her through and through, so she protested in ...
— The Book of the Cat • Mabel Humphrey and Elizabeth Fearne Bonsall
... vessel. Then horse, rope, pulley, and windlass are brought into play to draw the log into the hold and place it properly among other monarchs of the forest, thus ignominiously laid low, and become what "Mantalini" would style "a damp, moist, unpleasant lot." From the wharf above we look down into the hold, and, seeing this black, slimy, muddy cargo, say regretfully, "How are the mighty fallen!" as we think of the grand forests of which these trees were ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... this letter will quite remove all unpleasant feelings from your mind, and that I shall hear from you soon, on ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... my indiscretion in asking her about an unpleasant subject, and at the same time thanked her for what she had seen fit to tell me, professing myself much interested, ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... want the skin, and it would be a very unpleasant task to take it off. Push off, Cross, and let's go up the stream. I want to get to clearer parts, where we can land and ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... been severely bitten by a piranha. My new companions had story after story to tell of them. Only three weeks previously a twelve-year-old boy who had gone in swimming near Corumba was attacked, and literally devoured alive by them. Colonel Rondon during his exploring trips had met with more than one unpleasant experience in connection with them. He had lost one of his toes by the bite of a piranha. He was about to bathe and had chosen a shallow pool at the edge of the river, which he carefully inspected until he was satisfied that none of the man-eating fish ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... place I had to look in a biographical dictionary to find out whether his baptismal name was Franklin, or Francis, or simply Frank, for I think children are sometimes christened with this abbreviated name. But it is too much in the style of Cowper's unpleasant acquaintance: ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... had been his but yesterday. Cass, the teller, certainly shunned him as he would a leper. Lane, vindictively pleased that he had unearthed the villain, drew his small soul into a shell of cold, studious politeness; much as a sea spider might house his unpleasant body in a discarded castle ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... bottle of hay. It was already beginning to grow very late and dark by the time we had come up with the spot where it ought to have been, but not a vestige of such a thing had turned up. Should we not sight it in a quarter of an hour, we must go to sea again, and lie to for the night,—a very unpleasant alternative for any one so impatient as I was to reach a port. Just as I was going to give the order, Fitz—who was certainly the Lynceus of the ship's company—espied its black back just peeping up above the tumbling water on our starboard ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... was ready for it, if only as a newspaper need; but to Sumner it came as a surprise and a disagreeable one, as Adams conceived. He learned something — a piece of practical education worth the effort — by watching Sumner's behavior. He could see that many thoughts — mostly unpleasant — were passing through his mind, since he made no inquiry about any of Adams's family, or allusion to any of his friends or his residence abroad. He talked only of the present. To him, Adams in Washington should have seemed more or less of a critic, perhaps ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the endeavour to recur to a freer spirit of versification, I have joined one of still greater importance—that of having a free and idiomatic cast of language. There is a cant of art as well as of nature, though the former is not so unpleasant as the latter, which affects non-affectation.—(What does all this mean?)—But the proper language of poetry is in fact nothing different from that of real life, and depends for its dignity upon the strength and sentiment of what it speaks. It is only adding musical modulation to ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... inns. At one of these we ordered a seadinner—crabs, cuttlefishes, soles, and turbots—which we ate at a table in the open air. Nothing divided us from the street except a row of Japanese privet-bushes in hooped tubs. Our banquet soon assumed a somewhat unpleasant similitude to that of Dives; for the Chioggoti, in all stages of decrepitude and squalor, crowded round to beg for scraps—indescribable old women, enveloped in their own petticoats thrown over their heads; girls ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... forgot temporarily that Neifkins, in violation of the law governing such matters, was in debt to the bank beyond the amount of his holdings as director, and behind with his interest—a condition which had disturbed the president not a little because it was so fraught with unpleasant possibilities. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... Something was being burned. Something sizable, or its flames would not rise so high. It must be either Casa Grande, its barn, or both. Li's heart stood still. He stopped Cochise in sympathy with that important organ. What to do? At Casa Grande was a friend to whom he was attached. Things of a most unpleasant nature might be happening to him—could he ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... a similar manner, and that they are simply experiencing one of the ordinary characteristics of the human mind. If the soldier in battle will only realize that the enemy is just as much afraid of him as he is of the enemy, reason is likely to assert itself and to a great extent overcome the unpleasant feelings inside him. General Grant, in his Memoirs, relates a story to the effect that in one of his early campaigns he was seized with an unreasonable fear of his enemy, and was very much worried as to what the enemy was doing, when, all ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... comical little tots standing on their uncle's stomach and chopping his heart out with their axes—after you got the town sized up it's just that funny and horrible. It's like the music I heard that time at a higher concert I was drug to in Boston—ingenious but unpleasant." ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... went, through a country which owes its civilization and tillage to the spirit of one man, who has found stag-preserving by no means incompatible with large agricultural improvements; among a population who still evince an unpleasant partiality for cutting and carrying farmers' crops by night, without leave or licence, and for housebreaking after the true classic method of Athens, by fairly digging holes through the house walls; a little nook of primeval savagery fast reorganizing itself ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... which the people of Mourzuk had against the Touaricks—the Touaricks who pride themselves in having one word, and performing what they promise." But Hateetah has since become an old man, and, with the usual prudence of age, recommends me not to go much about amongst the people. "Something unpleasant might happen," he says, "for which all the Sheikhs would be sorry." The Giant said to me, "Come, you Christian, I shall sell you a wife of the Shânbah women. Stop here till ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... unpleasant fact that almost all the poetry of Hfiz is addressed to youths, as we see by the occasional introduction of Arabic (e.g., Afka'llh). Persian has no genders properly so called, hence the effect is less striking. Sa'di, the "Persian Moralist" begins one of the tales, "A certain learned ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... and repeat them two or three times over in your mind. This course will enable you to retain the most important ideas advanced. If you wish to proceed with ease and advantage, you must have the subject-matter of the preceding lectures stored in your mind. Do not consider it an unpleasant task to comply with my requisitions, for when you shall have learned thus far, you will understand seven parts of speech; and only three more will ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... opening of manhood a terrible calamity fell upon him, in magnitude fit to form the mystery or centre of an antique drama. He had to dwell, all his days, with a person incurably mad. From poverty he passed at once to unpleasant toil and perpetual fear. These were the sole changes in his fortune. Yet he gained friends, respect, a position, and great sympathy from all; showing what one poor man of genius, under grievous misfortune, may do, if he be courageous ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... was excoriating the woman who had been so cowardly as to desert a dying man. "Even if she hadn't seriously cared, or if, for that matter, she hadn't cared at all, it would seem that mere common decency.... It puts, frankly, a very unpleasant light on the whole affair.... Ayling was a gentleman, and—you will forgive me for saying so, I'm sure—just the decent sort to be imposed upon, to allow himself to be led into ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Militia-rolls, and other Name-catalogues,' but had nowhere been able to find 'the name Teufelsdrockh, except as appended to his own person.' We can readily believe this, and we doubt very much whether any Christian parent would think of condemning a son to carry through life the burden of so unpleasant a title. That of Counsellor Heuschrecke—'Grasshopper'—though not offensive, looks much more like a piece of fancy-work than a 'fair business transaction.' The same may be said of Blumine—'Flower-Goddess'—the heroine of the fable; and so of ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... be reassembled readily after separation. When stranded, germination is prompt, but the young plants, lacking essential conditions, invariably perish. One of the trailers—the caltrops—has trilobed, saw-edged leaves (harsh on both sides), yellow flowers of unpleasant odour, and fruit which, perhaps, formed the model of the war weapon of the time of the Crusaders. In whatever position it rests on the ground it presents an array of spikes to the bare foot. Though all its superficial qualities are graceless, it ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... people who are wise, he was cheerful and amiable, because that was the way to be healthy and happy and to have those around one agreeable and in the mood to do what one wished them to do. He told people, not the truth, not the unpleasant thing that might help them, but what they wished to hear. His family lived in luxurious comfort only because he himself was fond of luxurious comfort. His wife and his daughter dressed fashionably and went about and entertained in the fashionable, expensive way only because ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... this day been free from anxiety about you. My worst fear has been about your own endurance of this restraint; for, knowing your impatient disposition, I have feared that you might fret yourself into illness if you were not soon released from your unpleasant situation. ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... room and its tokens of their frolic came an uneasy sense of an unpleasant remembrance. The thrill of his own triumph no longer filled his heart; only the memory of the uproar remained. As he caught sight of the broken pieces of china still littering the carpet, and recalled McFudd's sprawling figure, a slight color ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... afraid of bugs, snakes and wild animals. We have spent our vacation month this way for twenty-five years, have camped in most of the counties of Minnesota, and in Iowa, the Dakotas and Montana, and have never had but one unpleasant experience of the kind. That was one night when we pitched our tent after dark on the bottoms below Fort Snelling, and did not know till we had laid ourselves down that a colony of ants had pre-empted the spot before ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... the ladder, but soon came up again, with a can of something with a strong, but not unpleasant smell. Bunny remembered that smell. Once when he was little, and had a bad cold, his mother had rubbed lard and ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope
... red ears that stood out at right angles above it. But Obed was only a boy. He was not expected to be more than clean and speechless; and, to tell the truth, Eben, being in the hobbledehoy stage of boyhood—gaunt, awkward, and self-sufficient—rather surpassed his small brother in unpleasant aspect and manner. But who would look at the boys when Dolly stood beside them, as she did now, tall and slender, with the free grace of an untrammelled figure, her small head erect, her eyes dark and soft as a deer's, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... which the Peak district is notable, a manor of ghostly repute. This cheerful homestead was apparently constructed in or adjoining an ancient burial ground, was in fact a converted monastery, and Don dealt in characteristically whimsical fashion with its unpleasant peculiarities. ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... is a nephew of Jesse Pelter, it is more than likely he will keep out of sight, thinking that a meeting between us would be very unpleasant." ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... almost to death in such a place. There was nothing to be seen around but packs of beaver, otter, mink, fox, and bear skins; and nothing to be heard but the incessant chattering of Canadian voyageurs, in their mixed jargon of French, English, and Indian. To make matters still more unpleasant, there was very little to eat, and nothing to drink but the clear water of the little mountain-stream upon ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... brought other and less unpleasant distractions than controversies. We are a curious, practical, and rather stupid people, and our one idea of honouring a man is to vote for him in some way or other; so they sent Newton to Parliament. He went, I believe, as a Whig, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... the letter," he said, with a sneer. "If that was not enough for you—" He broke off with a harsh, unpleasant laugh. ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... a man a little apart, a little higher than the others, and he gets the taste of power, which reacts on him like the first taste of blood on the big cat. Henceforward he has his ideal, his definite goal, which is to get the upper hand—to be on top. He may be, and generally is, an exceedingly unpleasant fellow to have for a neighbour—mean, sordid, greedy, tyrannous, even cruel, and he may be generally hated and despised as well, but along with these feelings there will be a kind of shamefaced respect and admiration ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... them all. There had been a time when these were among the things he mourned for not having done, but that time was long past. He guessed at their pleasures, and knew them to be without salt. Life, said he, is as unpleasant as a plate of cold porridge. Somehow the world was growing empty for him. He wondered was he outgrowing his illusions, or his appetites, or both? The things in which other men took such interest were drifting beyond him, and (for it seemed that the law of compensation can ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... unpleasant smell was more noticeable at this point than elsewhere in the room, and he found himself staring speculatively up the wide, carpeted stairs. Next he turned his attention to the lacquered coffin which occupied the corresponding recess to that filled by the ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... way to his father's house before he began to feel dizzy, and to realize a very unpleasant feeling at the stomach. But he hurried home as fast as he could, which was not very fast, for he ...
— Proud and Lazy - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic
... the squire to show the white feather upon this unpleasant occasion. The next day, feigning excuse to attend the sale of a hunting stud at Tattersall's, he ruefully went up to London, after taking a peculiarly affectionate leave of his wife. Indeed, the squire ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was well that I did, for he suddenly got one hand free and struck. It was a vicious blow and had it not been partly stopped by my elbow the adventure would have ended very differently, for I felt the point of a knife sweep across my chest, ripping open my pajama jacket and making a quite unpleasant little flesh-wound. On this I gripped him round the chest, pinioning both his arms as well as I could and trying to get possession of the knife, while he made frantic ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... served up with their own skilled hands. Of course, he admitted to himself, it would not be the same if he were to go back there again. He was conscious of having moved along—was it, after all, an advance?—to a point where it was unpleasant to sit at table with the unfragrant hired man, and still worse to encounter the bucolic confusion between the functions of knives and forks. But in those happy days—young, zealous, himself farm-bred—these ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Mr. Murmurtot, taking my hand, "if this meeting was unpleasant. It was necessary." Then he bowed politely and walked away. The sun was just going down as Rayel and I entered the cabin, where Hester was waiting ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... natural philosophy, and for practice, geologically examined the neighboring mountains. On the top of the most interesting of these mountains, (interesting I mean to a student,) was a remarkable cave, which the inhabitants of the town called Florien. From its mouth, a mild and not unpleasant air issues at certain periods, as though the cave inhaled the breeze and gently sighed ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... far from wholesome. After storing, for a day or two, it generally became offensive, so that none could drink it. In a little while this offensiveness passed off, and it might then be used, though the casks bred growths of an unpleasant sliminess, if the water remained in them for more than a month. However water was not regarded as a drink for human beings until the beer was spent. The salt meat was as bad as the beer, or worse. Often enough ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... haste about serving papers, I waited one whole hour before I shot mine off to New York. I am no longer doing time, but am a full-fledged citizen of South Dakota. Isn't it nice that my case won't have a jury—it always gets hung and it sounds unpleasant even ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... line-of-battle ships. He had better have kept to the small craft, which he found to float so well. Two of his recent works, "Le Beaupere," and "Le Gentilhomme Campagnard," have lost in merit what they have gained in length. The subject of the former is most unpleasant: its catastrophe unnecessarily painful. And the "Gentilhomme Campagnard," just now concluded, although containing, as do all his books, much spirited dialogue, many well-drawn characters, and well-contrived incidents, is weakened by being spun ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... the 6th of February, and in Lent she might not marry. Renard assured her that the prince should be in her arms before Septuagesima, and all her trials would be over. The worst danger which he now anticipated was from some unpleasant collision which might arise after the prince's landing; and he had advised the emperor to have the Spaniards who would form the retinue selected for their meekness. They would meet with insolence from the English, which they would not endure, if they had the spirit to resent it; their dispositions, ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... reprisal upon the Spaniards for their faithless and cruel practices; others styling it a breach of treaties, little better than piracy, and such as it was neither expedient nor decent for a trading nation to encourage. During this interval, Drake must have felt his situation unpleasant and precarious; but the queen turned the scale in his favor by going, April 4, 1581, to dine on board his ship at Deptford, on which occasion she declared her entire approbation of his conduct, and conferred on him the honor, and such it then ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... in 1605, not finding, it seems, play-writing a peaceful trade, or play-poets and play-hearers improving company. After him we should say no further testimony on this unpleasant matter ought to be necessary. He may have been morose, fanatical, exaggerative; but his bitter words suggest at least this dilemma. Either they are true, and the play-house atmosphere (as Prynne says it was) that of Gehenna: or they are untrue, and the mere fruits of spite ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... to make a laughing reply, but just at that moment Larry and Denton came along with broad smiles of welcome on their faces, and the unpleasant episode was forgotten. ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... other—can't be together a day without quarrelling. Pretty plain on which side the fault lies. I shouldn't think there are many women better tempered than Sibyl. All the time we've been married, and all we've gone through, I have never once seen an unpleasant look on her face—to me, that is. It's something to be able to say that. Mrs. Larkfield is simply intolerable. She's always either whining or in a fury. Can't talk of anything but ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... legal papers proving that his adopted sister Kate, at the time of her marriage, had received her rightful third of his father's estate; but he did not feel in any way compelled to show these to his unpleasant visitor. ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... (political commissioner in Afghanistan) soon saw the advantage of treating with him for his succession to the throne of Cabul. The Viceroy, however, true to his earlier resolve to break up Afghanistan, added the unpleasant condition that the districts of Candahar and Herat must now be severed from the north of Afghanistan. Abdur Rahman's first request that the whole land should form a neutral State under the joint protection of Great Britain and Russia was decisively negatived on the ground that ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... having been chosen Augur, Horace endeavours to turn the conversation towards gayer subjects than Grecian Chronology, and the Trojan War, upon which his Friend Telephus had been declaiming; and for this purpose seems to have composed the ensuing Ode at table. It concludes with an hint, that the unpleasant state of the Poet's mind, respecting his then Mistress, incapacitates him for abstracted themes, which demand a serene and collected attention, alike inconsistent with the amorous discontent of the secret heart, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... spend a comfortable time; Until—"What's this the Germans say is fact That Wolf found out first? It's unpleasant work Their chop and change, unsettling one's belief: All the same, while we live, we learn, that's sure." So, I bent brow o'er Prolegomena. And, after Wolf, a dozen of his like Proved there was never any Troy at all, Neither Besiegers nor Besieged,—nay, worse,— No actual Homer, no ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... city, where for some time they lived in what the New Englanders considered ungodly happiness. Then the couple visited England, hoping that the elder Franklands would forgive, but the family snubbed the beautiful American, and made life so unpleasant for her that young Frankland took her to Madrid. Finally at Lisbon the crisis came; for in the terrors of the famous earthquake he was injured and separated from her, and in his misery he vowed that ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... produce it; whatever else you risk, do not risk this. Early form the happy habit, the habit of enjoyment every day, no matter what comes or does not come to you during the day. Pick crumbs of comfort out of your situation, no matter how unpleasant or disagreeable. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... in an unpleasant fix," said his chum, musingly. "The only safe thing to do, I guess, is to take that convict's advice and move away at once. If we interfere with their plans or even let on that we know what they are, it will mean fight, with ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... what I did,' said Mr. Cupples. 'For a moment he only stared at me, and I could see a vein on his forehead swelling—an unpleasant sight. Then he said quite quietly, "This thing has gone far enough, I guess," and turned ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... vessel is much stronger than that of a steamer; on the latter, however, many affirm that the eternal vibration, and the disagreeable odour of the oil and coals, are totally insupportable. For my own part, I never found this to be the case; it certainly is unpleasant, but much easier to bear than the many inconveniences always existing on board a sailing vessel. The passenger is there a complete slave to every whim or caprice of the captain, who is an absolute ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... be glad to end the story of our little friend's troubles and safe escape with her arrival at last in the Mission Home that day. But how few rescues ever do end in that peaceful and pleasant way! There followed the usual train of lawyers and warrants. To avoid these unpleasant experiences, Kum Ping had to change her place of residence several times, the last time being the night before the fatal eighteenth of April. A warrant was served at ten o'clock that night, but ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... in the alferez's house closed? Where was the masculine face and the flannel shirt of the Medusa or Muse of the Civil Guard while the procession was passing? Could she have understood how unpleasant was the sight of the swelling veins of her forehead, filled, it seemed, not with blood but with vinegar and bile; of her large cigar, that worthy ornament of her red lips; and of her envious look; could she have understood all of that, and, giving way to a ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... burly, with curly hair, and not an unpleasant face. So quick had I come upon him, so strange, perhaps, he thought it that I named him at hazard, that he fell back against the iron and stood there gaping like one who had seen a bogey in the dark. ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... "'T is unpleasant to meet a beggar. It is painful to deny him; and if you relieve him, it is so much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... smell of the mess of lentils, is strikingly expressed in the Hebrew: 'Let me devour, I pray thee, of that red, that red there.' It is no sin to be hungry, but to let appetite speak so clamorously indicates feeble self-control. Jacob's coolness is an unpleasant foil to Esau's impatience, and his cautious bargaining, before he will sell what a brother would have given, shows a mean soul, without generous love to his own flesh and blood. Esau lets one ravenous ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... carrousel had in some occult manner intensified or consummated, as one might say, the effect of my previous potations. I mean to say, the continued swirling about gave me a frothy feeling that was not unpleasant. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... to do so," replied her visitor, "but at present we have neither Jon Jonson nor Ragnar to speak about. A certain person in this neighborhood has placed himself in an unpleasant position." ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... of which I have had the privilege of looking over, he mentions in detail all the reasons which influenced him in forming his own opinion about the expediency of a continued residence at St. Petersburg, and leaves the decision to her in whose judgment he always had the greatest confidence. No unpleasant circumstance attended his resignation of his secretaryship, and though it must have been a disappointment to find that the place did not suit him, as he and his family were then situated, it was only at the worst an experiment fairly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... from the errors of the Nations; and that your papa had been providentially disposed to buy a house in the convenient neighbourhood of the steeple under which that Immaculate and final verity would be beautifully proclaimed. Do not think it, child; it is not so. This, on the contrary, is the fact,- -unpleasant you may think it; pleasant, it seems to ME,—that you, with all your pretty dresses, and dainty looks, and kindly thoughts, and saintly aspirations, are not one whit more thought of or loved by the great Maker and Master than any poor little red, black, or blue savage, running ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... going. Large and strange, and large and large, and strange and stranger, and strange and large, and strange, and large, and strange and stranger, and large and larger, these are what has come and is coming and is staying and is meaning that anything is pleasant and that anything is unpleasant. That is enough. Always having done what is not making all the difference between what has been done and is being done is what has been done and what has not been done. What has been done is what is making the difference that ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... advice to the king to make an example of Vashti, so that in future no woman should dare refuse obedience to her husband. Daniel-Memucan had had unpleasant experiences in his conjugal life. He had married a wealthy Persian lady, who insisted upon speaking to him in her own language exclusively. (43) Besides, personal antipathy existed between Daniel and Vashti. He had in a measure been the cause ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... afternoon my sister called upon me at the Evening News office. She wore that look of resigned martyrdom peculiar to women who have something unpleasant to say. ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... past really was, and if she and her father were the doubtful adventurers Diana believed them to be. If so, it might happen that Lydia would extricate herself out of her present unpleasant position by the use of past experience. To give her no chance of such dodging, Lucian rapidly detailed the evidence against her so that she would be hard put to baffle it. But in this estimate he quite underrated Lydia's nerve and capability ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... or unpleasant, comfortable or uncomfortable, made no difference. It was thanks to the courage of this handful of boys and girls that, in spite of the worst that Mr. Justice Armorer could do, in spite of the dread of him and his constables, in spite of his angry ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... simply differ sometimes, that's all. I never had an unpleasant word with Jack in ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... left England he felt somewhat lonely, and then his father had become so utterly estranged from him because of his conduct, that his situation became unpleasant even for him; so he determined to sail for America. Learning that Ashton had settled in Rochester, he made his way to that city. He arrived there at the latter part of the year 1864, towards the close of the American War; and shortly after his arrival, meeting ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... which he most valued now was not on the table before him. He was playing it in his own mind. In short, duty or no duty, he was resolved to end the role of jailer and prisoner, for sake of the prisoner herself. Let others attempt the unpleasant task if they liked. Let others condemn if they liked. He, Carlisle, could be jailer no longer. Yet he deliberated ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... Craig. "You have opponents who know the game in its every crooked turn. If I can be only a small cog on a wheel that crushes them, I shall be only too glad. Your face tells me that something particularly unpleasant ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... or four times, according to the state of the leaves. The rolling is attended with some pain, as an acrid juice exudes from the leaves, which acts upon the hands; and the whole operation of tea-curing and packing is somewhat unpleasant, from the fine dust arising, and entering the nose and mouth,—to prevent which, the workmen often cover the lower part of the face with a cloth. The leaves are frequently tested, during the process of curing, by pouring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... in these days it is not easy to get people one can trust. Mr. Fern will not find any one to take your place in a moment. And just now, when he evidently has a great deal of trouble on his mind, it will be unpleasant to make ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... paralysis when the first came round), with an uneasiness, amounting to dread. She had no other warrant for it, than the occasion, the expression of her father's face, in the hasty glance she caught of it, and the presence of Mr Carker, which, always unpleasant to her, was more so on this day, than she had ever ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... eyes again, while his breathing was beginning to grow fainter, and there was an unpleasant rattle in the hollow of his throat. Andrew ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... leg-pulling exercises. [Laughter.] One has to be on one's guard, and woe be to the woman who in these days displays that absence of the sense of humor which is such a prominent characteristic of our comic papers. [Laughter.] I do not mean to say for a moment that man assumes his "mere man" tone for unpleasant purposes. On the contrary, he assumes it for party purposes as a rule—for dinner party purposes. [Laughter.] When man is in his mere man mood sovran woman would do well to ask for anything that she wants—for it is then that he holds ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... are well mixed. Butter a tin, put in the cake, and bake it from 11/2 to 2 hours. Let the dripping be quite clean before using: to insure this, it is a good plan to clarify it. Beef dripping is better than any other for cakes, &c., as mutton dripping frequently has a very unpleasant flavour, which would be ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... projects, to what sort of a world of electronics information—scholarly, archival, cultural, etc.—they wished to end up with ten or fifteen years from now. LYNCH suggested that to extrapolate directly from these projects would produce unpleasant results. ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... will. Sit down again, and let me explain why. Oh, come, don't behave so. It is very unpleasant. Now be good, and you shall have, the missing page of your great speech. Here it is!"—and she displayed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to mention. As we were returning from performing the obsequies of our Masai friends we passed the hollow tree where Alphonse had secreted himself in the morning. It so happened that the little man himself was with us assisting in our unpleasant task with a far better will than he had shown where live Masai were concerned. Indeed, for each body that he handled he found an appropriate sarcasm. Alphonse throwing Masai into the Tana was a very different creature from Alphonse flying for dear ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard |
