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More "Impertinent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their souls to God (for it matters as much to a dead man whether he has been shot in a Border scuffle or at Waterloo), opened out and fired according to their custom, that is to say without heat and without intervals, while the screw-guns, having disposed of the impertinent mud fort aforementioned, dropped shell after shell into the clusters round the flickering green standards ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... so, come to Wingham this summer, Forget the world's trouble and strife, Our program will sure be a hummer, We'll give you the time of your life. We'll make no untimely suggestions, Concerning the length of your stay, Nor ask you impertinent questions About what you've done ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... of guineas given me yesterday by a Bishop," he writes, triumphantly, but without volunteering any explanation of this extraordinary gift. Sterne's letter to Garrick was forwarded, it would seem, to Warburton; and the Bishop thanks Garrick for having procured for him "the confutation of an impertinent story the first moment I heard of it." This, however, can hardly count for much. If Warburton had really wished Sterne to abstain from caricaturing him, he would be as anxious—and for much the same reasons—to conceal the fact as to suppress the caricature. He would naturally have the disclosure ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... County History, he replied, "I regret, sir, not to be able to contribute to so valuable a work; but the Smiths never had any arms. They invariably sealed their letters with their thumbs." In later life he adopted the excellent and characteristic motto—Faber meae fortunae; and, to some impertinent questions about his grandfather, he replied with becoming gravity—"He disappeared about the time of the assizes, and we ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... don't believe a word of it!" said Miss Cassandra emphatically. "No ordinary girl, no matter how handsome she might be, would sit up and talk like that to a great King. I call it downright impertinent; she wasn't even a titled lady, much less ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... your little brother and sister to retire promptly to your berths, Grace, and try to get a good nap," the captain said when they had reached the deck of the Dolphin. "And, Cousin Annis, I hope you'll not think me impertinent if I advise you ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... she desired that Pauncefort would make no more observations on the subject, either to her or to any one else. And then Pauncefort bade her ladyship good night in a huff, catching up her candle with a rather impertinent jerk, and gently slamming the door, as if she had meant to close it quietly, only it had escaped out ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... and the courtship had not taken very long. The lady was of French extraction, had an only brother in the service of the East India Company, and, being an orphan, was the ward of the Marquis of Downshire,—circumstances on which gossips like Hogg made impertinent remarks. It is fair, however, to 'the Shepherd' to say that he speaks enthusiastically both of Mrs. Scott's appearance ('one of the most beautiful and handsome creatures I ever saw in my life'; 'a perfect beauty') and of her character ('she is cradled in my remembrance, and ever shall ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... What can the impertinent flirt want with me? She knows I hate her too for being of the other party: however, I'll be as civil to her as I can. [Enter Miss STITCH.] Dear miss! your servant; this is ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... SAKOONTALA.—This impertinent bee will not rest quiet. I must move elsewhere. [Moving a few steps off, and casting a glance around.] How now! he is following me here. Help! my dear friends, help! deliver me from the attacks of this ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... depresso supercilio, crudelitatem tibi non placere. Some think to bear it by speaking a great word, and being peremptory; and go on, and take by admittance, that which they cannot make good. Some, whatsoever is beyond their reach, will seem to despise, or make light of it, as impertinent or curious; and so would have their ignorance seem judgment. Some are never without a difference, and commonly by amusing men with a subtilty, blanch the matter; of whom A. Gellius saith, Hominem delirum, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... stand the idea of my having, after all these days of official reserve that she had placed between us, startled her into that rush to the door annihilated her dignity at a blow. So did I finish my sandwiches beneath her invisible but eloquent fire. What affair of mine was the cake? And what sort of impertinent, meddlesome person was I, shrieking out my suggestions to people with whom I had no acquaintance? These were the things that her nose and her neck said to me the whole length of the Exchange. I had ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... people, it is very unbecoming in speaking to them to turn one's back and shoulders to them. It is an impertinent action to knock against the table, or to shake the desk, which another person is using for reading or writing. It is uncivil to lean against any one, or to pluck his dress when speaking to him, or while entertaining ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... Vidac. "But I tell you what I will do. I'll confine you to your quarters for ten days for that impertinent request! And if I so much as see your noses outside your quarters, I'll ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... at once; and Smythe discreetly busied himself tossing stones at an impertinent chipmunk that popped in and out among the rocks ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... old castle the melting patches of dazzling snow sent down mimic showers of diamond drops, and the moisture thawed from them made dark stains upon the grey masonry. A redbreast skipped about the furrows made in the white carpet by the carriage wheels, paused, turned his tiny impertinent head, and glanced up at the ramparts with a squint, as though to tell the time of day by the sun and the shadows of the projecting eaves. From the paved court of the stables, where all had been hurry and confusion on the previous night, came the occasional ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... The inhabitants of Constantinople were generally subject; and Theophylact insinuates, (l. viii. c. 9,) that if it were consistent with the rules of history, he could assign the medical cause. Yet such a digression would not have been more impertinent than his inquiry (l. vii. c. 16, 17) into the annual inundations of the Nile, and all the opinions of the Greek philosophers ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... passes by, it may happen, no doubt, He may chance to look in as I chance to look out; She would never endure an impertinent stare, It is horrid, she says, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... to pry into the private affairs of others by asking what their profits are, what things cost, whether Melissa ever had a beau, and why Amarette never got married? All such questions are extremely impertinent and are likely to meet ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... having soon been informed where Dorilaus lived, he went when it was quite dark to his house, though how divided between hope and fear it is easy to imagine. He knocked at the gate, which being opened by the porter, and he desiring to speak with his master, was answered with many impertinent questions, as—who he came from, what his business was, and such like interrogatories which the sawciness of servants generally put to persons such as this fellow took Horatio to be by his appearance. But he had no sooner ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... questions I would like to ask you," I began, "and one or two of them may seem impertinent. But they won't be asked in that spirit—and please don't answer any that ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... merely out of a remembrance of the "trembling lip" put up towards her face, speaking of which the good motherly old soul exclaims, "and I dearly kissed it;" or, bearing in mind, another while, her preposterous reminiscence of the "impertinent little cock-sparrow of a monkey whistling with dirty shoes on the clean steps, and playing the harp on the area railings with a hoop-stick." Actually given or only meditated, the whole of these ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... are littleness, falsity, vulgarity, harshness, scolding vociferation, an incessant issuing of superfluous prohibitions and orders, which are regarded as impertinent interferences with the general liberty and repose, and are provocative of rankling or exploding resentments. The blessed antidotes that sweeten and enrich domestic life are refinement, high aims, great interests, soft voices, quiet ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Finally Lincoln's patience was exhausted, and he paused in his argument to say: "Gentlemen, I cannot afford to spend my time in quibbles. I take the responsibility of asserting the truth myself, relieving Judge Douglas from the necessity of his impertinent corrections." This silenced his opponent, and he spoke without further interruption to the end, his speech being three hours and ten ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... the zebra. "He lives in a pool where I go to drink every day, and he is a very impertinent crab, I assure you. I have told him many times that the land is much greater in extent than the water, but he will not be convinced. Even this very evening, when I told him he was an insignificant creature who lived in a small pool, he asserted that ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... witnessedst my efforts to repel the testimony of my ears! It was in vain that you dwelt upon the confusion which my unlooked-for summons excited in you; the tardiness with which a suitable excuse occurred to you; your resentment that my impertinent intrusion had put an end to that charming interview: A disappointment for which you endeavoured to compensate yourself, by the frequency and duration of ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... services of his own men for the purpose, and to raise a regiment of rangers in Northern New York, a proposal which he trusts will not be deemed impertinent. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... by a wail in minor key: "Five bells and all's well!" ... And of a sudden Lanyard suffered the melancholy oppression of knowing his littleness of body and soul, the relative insignificance even of the ship, that impertinent atom of human organization which traversed with unabashed effrontery the waters of the ages, beneath the shining constellations of eternity. In profound psychical enervation he perceived with bitterness and despair the enormous futility ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... going to ask you if you knew," Kent replied, scowling because he saw Fred looking at Val in what he considered an impertinent manner. "My horse ran off while I was fighting fire here, so I'm afoot. I was waiting for ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... to anger her. "I know where I have business. I need no admonitions from you as to what places I enter. You are impertinent, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... uttered in splendid disregard for the packet of money he had just received—perhaps, rather, in a splendid regard for it. "Oh, Dad, please don't forget to give Sadie that five dollars I borrowed from her for the taxi'." And with that impertinent ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... an octopus as he masticated a mouthful of betel-nut. Taking the pipe and tobacco from his master he sat down cross-legged beside the companion. Barry eyed him for an instant with anger and disgust. He returned the look with an impertinent grin, and then coolly spat out a stream of the acrid scarlet juice half-way across the clean, ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... I only thought of him in regard to his impertinent solicitation of my sister; and against this I could restrain him. He was polite; obsequiously so, and cautiously guarded in his gallantries; so that I had no cause for resorting to the desafio. I could ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... distribute it at home, and whom it is a penal offence even to teach to read it? Do we not send remonstrances to Tuscany, about the Madiai, when women are imprisoned in Virginia for teaching slaves to read? Is all this hypocritical, insincere, and impertinent in us? Are we never to send another missionary, or make another appeal for foreign lands, till we have abolished slavery at home? For my part, I think that imperfect and inconsistent outbursts of generosity and feeling ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... committed a barrister in petty sessions for contempt of court. An action was brought against him, but the Chief Baron raised so many legal exceptions, that it had finally to be abandoned through the fraternal law-moulding. This action was pending in the civil court, when a lawyer was very impertinent to the Chief Baron in the criminal. Instead of committing him, the Chief Baron said ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... said Miss Marsh; "St. Benet's was made for sociability as well as study, and I have no patience with the students who don't try to combine the two. By the way," she added, turning round and speaking in a rather impertinent voice to Priscilla, "I sent you a message to say I was going down to Kingsdene this afternoon and would be happy to take you with me if you ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... left alone, I, for the first time, felt the whole ill-luck of my situation. So long as I was heated by our little dialogue, I thought only of retorting the impertinent interference of a stranger with my motives or actions. But, now, the whole truth flashed on me with the force of a new faculty. I saw myself involved in a contest with a fool or a lunatic, in which either of our lives, or both, might be sacrificed—and for nothing. Hope, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... to her father and his bride: "What a wicked heart I have kept, to oppose my husband in such a little thing as his good old hat—the badge of his reverence to his family and of his bravery to an impertinent age. I have let it discolor my married life and all the sunshine. But my baby has melted my obdurate heart. Come, unite with me, and let us show him that everything he wears we ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... sweet-spirited, and vivacious, and—un-snobbish, if you know what that means—that every one in high school, and even the grammar-grade children, idolize her. She is very witty, but her wit is always innocent and kind. She never hurts any one's feelings. And she is never impertinent. The professors are as crazy about her as the scholars,—forgive the slang. Did the twins ever tell you what happened ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... "Is it impertinent and interfering to be anxious about one's mother's health, even if one is a chit?" inquired Isobel, looking ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... an advocate of art for art's sake. I think it in very bad taste, always impertinent, and often pedantic, to attempt to prove theses by writing stories. For such a purpose dissertations or books purely and severely didactic should be written. The object of a novel should be to charm, through ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... Armstrong lived in Cincinnati; her father was a wealthy physician at Walnut Hills. Stoddard knew the family, and I asked questions about them, their antecedents and place of residence that were not perhaps impertinent in view of the fact that I had never consciously set eyes on their daughter in my life. As I look back upon it now my information secured at that time, touching the history and social position of the Armstrongs of Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, seems ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... wax tapers was in the submerged cellar. So she took the lantern from its nail and set it on the floor at the head of the two pallets, and it threw scattered spots of lustre on Rice's white forehead and Maria's hair. This humble shrouded torch, impertinent as it looked when the lily-white moonlight lay across it, yet reminded beholders of a stable, and a Child born in a stable who had taught the race to turn ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... rine." Possibly he may have inherited this tendency from Erasmus Darwin, who stammered. (My father related a Johnsonian answer of Erasmus Darwin's: "Don't you find it very inconvenient stammering, Dr. Darwin?" "No, sir, because I have time to think before I speak, and don't ask impertinent questions.") ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... author's mania, he might have utilized it better by giving us more of the harmless and ill-treated cousin's happy hunts, and less of the disputes over his accumulated quarry. This, however, means simply the old, and generally rather impertinent, suggestion to the artist that he shall do with his art something different from that which he has himself chosen to do. It is, or should be, sufficient that Le Cousin Pons is a very agreeable book, more pathetic if less "grimy," ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... hang heavy—that's all! She might have been lively and laughed with us! Stupid race! 'Men of butter,' King Philip says. That wild Lamperi was really impertinent to-night, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... men in the West, Jake Studley took the view that all men are equal, and that the interests of one are the concerns of all. A civil answer to what in other climes would be considered impertinent curiosity was the unmistakable shibboleth of the coequal fraternity. Hartwell's manner had been interpreted by Jakey as a declaration of heresy to his orthodox code and the invitation to mind his own business as a breach of etiquette which the code entailed. Jakey thereupon ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... of the queen's purpose, he went away again, for thou must know that he is wroth with her because, he having written some verses in which he praised the great Gustavus, she did not write to him, she who, as thou knowest, has written to a hundred impertinent apes. I might complain, with far more reason; but, so long as kings, queens, princes, and princesses do me only that sort of harm, I shall never complain. The chancellor [Seguier, at whose house the Academy met] had forgotten ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... "Impertinent young beggar!" said Burgess. "Do him good, curse him! Mr. North, I'm sorry you should have had the trouble to come here, but will you ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... retorted Marguerite, "to place yourself unreservedly in Mr. Harley's hands? Shall you flirt with the captain if he thinks your doing so will add to the humorous or dramatic interest of his story? Will you permit your children to make impertinent remarks to every one aboard ship; to pick up sailors' slang and use it at the dining-table—in short, to make themselves obnoxiously clever at all times, in order that Mr. Harley's critics may say that his book fairly scintillates with wit, and gives gratifying evidence that 'the rising young ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... will not think me impertinent to intervene in the debate, but I am moved to do so a great deal by that sentence in the speech of the Foreign Secretary in which he said that the one bright spot in the situation was the changed feeling in Ireland. Sir, in past time, when ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... (Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's work being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must now prefer for Carlo a notorious character named Charles Chester, of whom gossipy and inaccurate Aubrey relates that he was "a bold impertinent fellow...a perpetual talker and made a noise like a drum in a room. So one time at a tavern Sir Walter Raleigh beats him and seals up his mouth (that is his upper and nether beard) with hard wax. From him Ben Jonson takes his Carlo Buffone ['i.e.', jester] in 'Every Man in His Humour' ['sic']." ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... out Oliver; "I never used such words; I never even thought them, and you are an impertinent fellow to put them into my mouth. Nigger woman! ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... you don't happen to be quiet; if you get into a rage, or say impertinent things. But if you are reasonable, we shall only chain you by the feet. The blacksmith is getting ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... look out for yourself at the cost of others, a heavy cost." The commissioner's easy tone had changed to sternness. Knoll felt this, and a sharp gleam shot out from his dull little eyes, while the tone of his voice was gruff and impertinent again as he asked: "What ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... gentleman, 'education a great thing: a very great thing! I never had any. I admire it the more in others. A very fine thing. Yes, yes. Tell me more of your history. Let me hear it all. No impertinent curiosity—no, no, no.' ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the old Ilga was at the front, domineering and impertinent, and Polly would be called upon to exercise all her tact and patience in order to keep things pleasant during her visits. But, little by little, as the convalescent gathered strength of body she also gained in self-control. Miss Price and Polly were her adored examples ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... mysterious, sometimes strange and capricious, and perhaps almost always, unmeaning; to clear myself from these imputations, by a candid confession of the motives which have governed me, is all that I wished. Once, also—I hope but once,—you thought me impertinent,—there, indeed, I ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... resultant edifice, like the cathedral of St. Peter's, is architecturally incoherent. He showed so little regard for unity that he did not hesitate to halt his novel for half a hundred pages while he set before the reader the totally extraneous novelette of "The Curious Impertinent," which he happened to find lying idle in his desk. How little he was a master of mere style may be felt at once by comparing his plays with those of Calderon. Yet these technical considerations do not count ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... filial. In getting a little past the prime of life he did not like to be used with too great consideration of his years, and he did not think that he and his wife were so old that they need be treated as if they were going on a golden wedding journey, and heaped with all sorts of impertinent prophecies of their enjoying it so much and being so much the better for the little outing! Under his breath, he confounded this lady for her impudence; but he schooled himself to let her rejoice at their going on a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... it so that their bones may be cast into its waters. If we row a little way up we shall see this ceremony at the Burning Ghauts. There are funeral pyres of wood where the relatives are carrying out the last offices for the dead. Some prowling pariah dogs, of the lean yellow breed, and a few impertinent crows are hovering about, hoping that some scraps may fall to their share. The dead bodies are rolled up in white and red cloth and lie with their feet in the ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... he whispered his teacher— "If 'tisn't impertinent, may I ask why "Should a Bullock, that useful and powerful creature, "Be thus offered up ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... himself a poet) was written in my nineteenth year, and consequently contains nearly as many faults as words. That I deemed it not wholly unoriginal is my only apology for its publication—an apology lame and poor, and somewhat impertinent to boot: so that if its infirmities meet with more laughter than charity in the world, I shall not raise my voice in its defence. I am aware how deficient the Poem is in point of art, and it is not without considerable ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... going homewards over Moor-fields, about twelve of the clock at night, were staid by an impertinent constable with many frivolous questions, more by half to show his office than his wit; one whereof was, If they were not afraid to go home at that time of the night? They answered, 'No.' 'Well,' said he, 'I shall ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... splendid entertainment, which was to have taken place on the very day when he received his order of banishment, and had written in the notes of invitation—M. Le Comte de Lusace will be there. This Count was the brother of the Dauphine, and this mention of him was deservedly thought impertinent. The King said, wittily enough, "Lambert and Moliere will be there." She scarcely ever spoke of the Cardinal de Bernis after ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to him. The master cast his vote with the latter class, and the result was that Ben withdrew, thus saving the authorities the trouble of expelling him. His leave-taking was made melodramatic with a speech to the boys, wherein impertinent allusions were made concerning all schoolmasters, and the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the last thing I can say about Lourdes. It is quite useless as evidence—indeed it would be almost impertinent to dare to offer further evidence at all—yet I may as well hand it in as my contribution. It is this, that Lourdes is soaked, saturated and kindled by the all but sensible presence of the Mother of God. I am quite aware ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... made by the author of Waverley upon the mind of a young enthusiast of his own time is too delightful to pass over without quotation. "He has no eccentric sympathies or antipathies"; wrote J.L. Adolphus, "no maudlin philanthropy or impertinent cynicism; no nondescript hobby-horse; and with all his matchless energy and originality of mind, he is content to admire popular books, and enjoy popular pleasures; to cherish those opinions which experience ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... He now took off his spectacles, as if to indulge himself with a view of me by the naked eye; and after a scrutinizing look, which, in another place and person, I should probably have resented as impertinent, but which here seemed part of his profession, he rose from his seat and ushered me into another apartment. This room was probably his place of reception for criminals of a more exalted order; for it was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... which I wish to bring before the Committee and the Government is this, because it is on this that I rely mainly—I think I may say almost entirely—for any improvement in the future of India. It would be impertinent to take up the time of the Committee by merely cavilling at what other people have said, and pointing out their errors and blunders, if I had no hope of being able to suggest any improvement in the existing state of things. I believe a great improvement may be made, and by a gradual ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... no affair of his, he reflected. A citizen of the intellectual world should be above soiling his thoughts with mean curiosities of that sort, and he drove the impertinent query down again under the surface of his mind. He refused to tolerate, as well, sundry vagrant imaginings which rose to cluster about and literalize the romance of her youth which Sister Soulsby had so frankly outlined. ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... think that his pale face had grown scarlet. This Schmielke was certainly held in high esteem by everybody, and of course it would not be wise to quarrel with a representative of the Prussian Government. Still, it was very impertinent of him even to think of Mrs. Tiralla, of that educated woman, the daughter of a schoolmaster, extremely impertinent. Really, you couldn't help laughing at it. And he ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... admit, in his portraits of mothers or passionate women who know life. Certain authors, without counting George Sand, have given us sketches of young girls far superior to Balzac's, but that is no reason for scoffing in so impertinent a manner at the author of the Comedie humaine, when his unquestionable glory ought to silence similar pamphletistic criticisms. We advise those who reproach Balzac for not having understood the simplicity, modesty and graces ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... impertinent, much too bold," she admonished. "I will not talk to you any more if you are not quite respectful; but the first part of your description was pretty. Let me, if I can, do even half so well. You, senor, are rather tall and quite slender, no superfluous flesh, all muscle, and ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... coaxingly, "I am going to be curious and impertinent. You can snub me if you like. Why don't ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Currie came round the front. He was smoking a cheroot, the slowly curling smoke from which, as also his whole gait and mien, was suggestive of peaceful proprietorship. He paused to examine his bed of spring wallflowers, stooped to uproot an impertinent dandelion which had taken root in his otherwise irreproachable turf, gathered a fine auricula and placed it in his button-hole. Then he took a contented survey of his fruit trees, until his eyes finally rested upon the white-robed bower of the balloon. A change ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... her face, "only think of our Wenna being married to Mr. Trelyon, and how happy and pleased and pretty she would look as they went walking together! And then how proud he would be to have so nice a wife! and he would joke about her and be very impertinent, but he would simply worship her all the same, and do everything he could to please her. And he would take her away and show her all the beautiful places abroad; and he would have a yacht, too; and he would give her a fine house in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... shamrocks upon it, no doubt the flag of the old French regime with additions. He also took possession of Hudson's Bay Company funds with the coolness of a buccaneer, and his manner in refusing personal liberty to people whom he dared not arrest was overbearing and impertinent. ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... for the fur of a marten on the back of a cat. But, Mr. Van Staats, while walking to your door this morning, it was my fortune to meet the late governor, who is permitted by his creditors to take the air, at an hour when he thinks the eyes of the impertinent will be shut. I believe, Patroon, you were so lucky as to get back your moneys, before the royal displeasure ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Don Juan. He remonstrates with his master on his evil ways, but is forbidden sternly to repeat his impertinent admonitions. His praise of tobacco, or rather ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... but I'm sorry that I took even a moment's notice of it. Why should one be ruffled because others are unfeeling and impertinent; it is their misfortune, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... time, Percy drove very rapidly. "I came mighty near having a fight while you were in the house," said he. "It was that boy at the inn. He's a queer sort of a fellow, and awfully impertinent. He was talking about you, and he wanted to know if the bear had hurt you. He said he believed you were really afraid of the beast, and only wanted to show ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... he seemed to enjoy being one. He usually laughed whenever Johnnie Green or his father tried to catch him, or when they attempted to frighten him. And on the whole he was quite the boldest, noisiest, and most impertinent of all the creatures ...
— The Tale of Old Mr. Crow • Arthur Scott Bailey
... "You are impertinent," snapped Blennerhassett, turning from his rude critic. "If you have nothing to tell or to ask that is of any importance, make off, for I can be detained ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... I took it simply from the Bible, in the words that God's wisdom teacheth, and thus I argued: "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners: I am a sinner; I want to be saved: he will save me." There is no presumption in taking God at his word: not to do so is very impertinent: I did it, and I ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... were impertinent curiosity that instigates the question, my old friend," I added, "it would not be in my power to look you in the face, as I do now, while begging you to let me know your difficulties. Tell them in your own manner, but tell them with confidence; ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... thirty-two Misses Simaise, as dashing the one as the other, talking and laughing loudly, with the hoydenish manner peculiar to artists' daughters, with the studio jests, the familiarity of students, and knowing also better than anyone how to dismiss a creditor or blow up a tradesman impertinent enough to present his bill at an ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... of our quiet days was interfered with. Workmen hammered about our ears, and an impertinent odour of paint annoyed us. We turned our reading days into days of general inspection, and amused ourselves with watching how the dingy corners threw off their cobwebs one after another, and came forth into the light with clean and brilliant faces. It was pleasant ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... their minds. Don't imagine, however, that I do not wish woman to be elegant, to dance or to sing; but I should like to see as much care devoted to her mind as to her body, and between being ignorant and savante I should like to see a road taken which would prevent annoyance from an impertinent sufficiency or from a tiresome stupidity. I should like very much to be able to say of anyone of my sex that she knows a hundred things of which she does not boast, that she has a well-balanced mind, that she speaks well, writes correctly, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... among servants arises from impertinent interferences and petty tyrannical exactions on the part of employers. Now the authority of the master and mistress of a house in regard to their domestics extends simply to the things they have ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to make mention of divers interviews between the crew and the natives in the voyage up the river; but as they would be impertinent to my history, I shall pass over them in silence, except the following dry joke, played off by the old commodore and his schoolfellow Robert Juet, which does such vast credit to their experimental philosophy that I cannot refrain from inserting it. "Our master and his mate determined ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... find, nevertheless, to be the very essence of weed character—in plants, as in men. If you glance through your botanical books, you will see often added certain names—'a troublesome weed.' It is not its being venomous, or ugly, but its being impertinent—thrusting itself where it has no business, and hinders other people's business—that makes a weed of it. The most accursed of all vegetables, the one that has destroyed for the present even the possibility of European civilization, is only called ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... large number of Royal Academicians pronounced John Kendal's work impertinent, if not insulting, meaningless, affected, or flippant. Collectively, with a corporate opinion that might be discussed but could not be identified, they received it and hung it, smothering a distressful doubt, where it would be least likely ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... her bedroom door she elevated her pretty, impertinent little nose and sniffed the air. It was laden with a delicate perfume that came from a huge bunch of mignonette on the table. It was long-stemmed, fresh, and moist, loosely bound together, and every one of its tiny brown blossoms was sending out fragrance into the room. It did not need Fergus ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... bludgeon to whose strokes poetic tradition has attributed the death of Keats. Macaulay was made of harder stuff, and gave little heed to a string of unsavoury invectives compounded out of such epithets as "ugly," "splay-footed," and "shapeless;" such phrases as "stuff and nonsense," "malignant trash," "impertinent puppy," and "audacity of impudence;" and other samples from the polemical vocabulary of the personage who, by the irony of fate, filled the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. The substance of Professor Wilson's attacks ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... any other time did I ever encounter the slightest disrespect from police, gendarmes, servants (those severe and often impertinent judges of one's attire and equipage), nor from their masters,—not even on this critical occasion when I so patently, flagrantly transgressed all the proprieties, yet was not interfered with by word or glance, but was permitted to discover ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... to me," said their mother. "Go upstairs right away and get ready for tea. You look like real farmers' boys at this moment, I declare, so hot and dusty. I don't wonder Mr. Ashurst offered you work,—though I think it was very impertinent of him to do so. I hope you said that your father's sons didn't need to earn ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... what they threaten, that is, 'blow out our brains.'... I would again hint the necessity of putting the militia under a better regulation, had I not mentioned it twice before and a third time may seem impertinent. But I must once more beg leave to declare that, unless the Assembly will pass an act to enforce military law in all its parts, I must decline the honor that has been so generously intended me. I see the growing insolence of the soldiers, and the indolence ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... known that at this very time the minister was incensed against this prelate, whose haughtiness was so overbearing, and whose impertinent ebullitions were so frequent as to have involved him in two very disagreeable affairs at Bordeaux. Four years before, the Duc d'Epernon, then governor of Guyenne, followed by all his train and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... like to commend itself to the pious votary of Keats as to the ardent Shelleyite: there are familiars of the Tennysonian Muse, the Sibyl of Rizpah and Vastness and Lucretius and The Voyage, to whom it must seem impertinent beyond the prophet's wont; there are—(but they scarce count)—who grub (as for truffles) for meanings in Browning. But it was not uttered to please, and in truth it has enough of plausibility to infuriate whatever poet-sects there be. Especially ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... affection for Verona and certain things in Verona. Italians must forgive us English this little streak of impertinent proprietorship in the beautiful things of their abundant land. It is quite open to them to revenge themselves by professing a tenderness for Liverpool or Leeds. It was, for instance, with a peculiar and personal indignation that I saw where an Austrian air bomb had killed ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... tell? When I made the same inquiry of him he merely answered that he was tired of being trumpeted to the world by these 'impertinent Yankee reporters!' The next day he left me alone in that stupid place and went out on his 'business,' whatever that was. And when he returned in the evening he told me that the 'business' was happily concluded, and that we might as well go on to Washington and Tanglewood to pay our promised visit ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... she says, "is full of kindnesses toward me, and I love him tenderly. But it is pitiable to see his weakness for Madame du Barri, who is the silliest and most impertinent creature that it is possible to conceive. She has played with us every evening at Marly,[2] and she has twice been seated next to me; but she has not spoken to me, and I have not attempted to engage in conversation with her; but, when it was necessary, I have ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... pray? it seems to me that the Scottish tongue is a perfect treasure-house for impertinent people. How Scots must congratulate themselves that they need never be at a loss when they are angry ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... instructive all this is to you! When my father came into the room to-day and found me hiding my eyes from the lightning, he was quite angry and called 'it disgraceful to anybody who had ever learnt the alphabet'—to which I answered humbly that 'I knew it was'—but if I had been impertinent, I might have added that wisdom does not come by the alphabet but in spite of it? Don't you think so in a measure? non obstantibus Bradbury and Evans? There's a profane question—and ungrateful ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... no business of mine," said Barbox Brothers. "That was an impertinent observation on my part. Be what ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... a disinclination that it should be known, as that she little understood the character of the villagers themselves—ofttimes mistaking a really well-meant interest in her welfare for an idle and impertinent curiosity. Mrs. Layton had been highly born and nurtured, and there seemed to her delicate mind a something rude and unfeeling in the manner with which her too officious friends and neighbors would touch upon ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... was pleasant, contrasted with the former loud, discordant, and perpetual din which rang in their ears from morning to night. Their male visitors were, likewise, few and select, and did not remain with them any very considerable time together. An order was issued by the king, that if any impertinent individual troubled them at any time with his company, when it was not desired, Ebo was at liberty to behead him, and no one according to the strict injunction of Mattsolah, should tax the eunuch ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... stick about the back of impertinent puppies," cried the doctor, angrily. "I said lying—lying in ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... I lit a cigarette and strolled forward. Either the fellow had fancied that he knew her or he had behaved in a confoundedly impertinent way. The latter hypothesis seemed, on the whole, the more likely, and I felt a lively desire to drop him over ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... farm two miles behind those hills, and in a house hidden under elm and apple trees. Madam, it is very late, and I must bid you good-evening. Before I go, I should like to know, if you will not deem me unwarrantably impertinent, whether you are a very young person with white hair, or whether you are a very old woman with ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... tiny mirror, so clear that nobody looking into it could tell what it was made of, or even see it at all—only the thing reflected in it. Rosamond saw a child with dirty fat cheeks, greedy mouth, cowardly eyes—which, not daring to look forward, seemed trying to hide behind an impertinent nose—stooping shoulders, tangled hair, tattered clothes, and smears and stains everywhere. That was what she had made herself. And to tell the truth, she was shocked at the sight, and immediately began, in her dirty heart, to lay the blame on the ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... in the city to-day," returned Saidie calmly. How odious they were, these Englishwomen, with their short skirts and big boots, and red, hot faces, with great black straw houses over them, and their curt manners, and the impertinent way they spoke of ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... a beautiful example of humour—provoking to smiles while touching to tears—with a wonderful introductory piling up of definitions: "A Poor Relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature,—a piece of impertinent correspondency,—a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity,—an unwelcome remembrancer," and so on. "This theme of poor relations is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic associations that it is difficult ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... Hardy, shortly; and added after a short pause, "very few men would thank me if I did; most would think it impertinent, and I'm ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... excited by the stranger's appearance, there were only two dissenting voices. One was that of an impertinent cur, which, after snuffing at the heels of the glistening figure, put its tail between its legs, and skulked into its master's back-yard, vociferating an execrable howl. The other dissentient was a young child, who squalled at the fullest stretch of his lungs, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... our own degenerate Growth) the better to qualify them for eleemosinary Dinners, gave Rise to this impertinent Treatment of a Nation, which, from the concurrent Testimonies of all the Dispassionate and Learned, can, in Reality, be as little the Object of ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... greater part of this is performed under their superintendence by the animals, which are almost as useful as any human slaves on earth, with the one unquestionable advantage that they cannot speak, and therefore cannot be impertinent, inquisitive, or treacherous. No fermented liquors form part of the Martial diet; but some narcotics resembling haschisch and opium are much relished. When the official had retired, I said ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... cast down with shame, and promised all manner of things for the future—but no. Her mistress is forced to remind her of all she has done for her, and at that, if you please, Barbro falls to answering back, ay, so foolish was she, saying impertinent things. Or perhaps she was cleverer than might seem; trying on purpose, maybe, to bring the matter to a head, and get out of the ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... truly glad that you like the Introduction, for I was rather afraid that it might appear absurd and impertinent to be talking about myself, when nobody, that I know of, has requested ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... last very well, Lonny. The boy is naturally impertinent. They were probably put on to ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... up at her blankly, his laughing, impertinent brown face sobered at once by the sight of her own. He made a reply in Italian, raising his shoulders. Some ill-dressed, loafing stragglers on the wharf drew near Sylvia with an indolent curiosity. She ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... could not help noticing that for the next two or three days there were many callers at the ranch and that he was obliged in his walks to avoid the highroad on account of the impertinent curiosity of wayfarers. Some of them were of that sex which he would not have contented himself with simply ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... party the host and hostess are sufficient guarantees for the respectability of their guests; and although a gentleman would show a singular want of knowledge of the laws of society in acting as we have supposed, the lady who should reply to him as if he were merely an impertinent stranger in a public assembly-room would be implying an affront to her entertainers. The mere fact of being assembled together under the roof of a mutual friend is in itself a kind of general introduction of ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... spirit of the thunder-storm of August first. I cannot even remember how you look. Your voice—I'd recognize that. It has a quality of—what is it? Atmosphere, vibration, purity, roundness—no, I can't get it. You see I may be unconventional, I may be impertinent, I may be personal, because I am not a person, only Yours gratefully, ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... think you can owe me no malice; for I never saw you before to my knowledge. If you can give any good reason for asking it, I am willing to render you personal satisfaction. If your purpose is merely impertinent curiosity, I let you know that I will not suffer myself to be dogged in my private walks by ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... evening, and permit themselves to make remarks on the difference of the physique, of the Europeans and Japanese, which are not only, in our way of thinking, unsuitable for young girls, but even impertinent towards the guest. The male attendants are seldom seen, at least in the inner apartments. In the morning one washes himself in the yard or on the balcony, and if he wishes to avoid getting into disfavour, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... from this worship of the great. 'We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous.' 'The external graces, the frivolous accomplishments of that impertinent and foolish thing called a man of fashion, are commonly more admired than the solid and masculine virtues of a warrior, a statesman, a philosopher, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... meeting between Mr. Lyons and Mrs. Taylor. He was deferential, complimentary, and genial, and he made a suave, impressive offer of his personal services, in response to which Mrs. Taylor regarded him with smiling incredulity—a smile which Selma considered impertinent. How dared she treat his courtly advances with ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... proceeded, one of his instructors repeated an impertinent remark of the boy's, and the Principal asked him whether he thought that a courteous speech to make to a woman. Paul shrugged his shoulders slightly ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... could spare the time to hear all the Rev. Andrew Rowbottom persuasive arguments and stubbornly resist each plea, but the majority of the men were glad to buy the eloquent clergyman off with a small contribution. Sometimes office boys were impertinent, and an occasional business man was insolent and talked of throwing the suppliant out of the window, but Mr. Rowbottom was always suave and conciliatory. He seemed to sympathise with the angry individual whose privacy he was forced ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... you in this impertinent manner,' I said, 'but I would like to introduce myself,' and I handed ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... hardly have descended to speak of such trifles publicly, if the impudence of this "sketcher" had not forced me to a refutation of a disingenuous and gratuitously impertinent assertion; so meant to be, for what could it import to the reader to be told that the author "had repeatedly declined an introduction," even if it had been true, which, for the reasons I have above given, is scarcely possible. Except Lords Lansdowne, Jersey, and Lauderdale, Messrs. Scott, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... his tone that dashed my spirits like a bucket of cold water. He had not meant to be impertinent. He was the most truthful man alive. What did he mean? Not willing to change places with me! It was ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... for, during the sojourn of the Court at Paris, which lasted until the month of June, Henry abandoned himself with even less reserve than formerly to his passion for the Marquise; while the forsaken Queen—who hourly received information of the impertinent assumption of that lady, and who was assured that she had renewed with more arrogance, and more openly than ever, her pretended claim to the hand of the sovereign—unable to conceal her indignation, embittered the casual intercourse between herself and her ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... certainly is so," I replied, after a little thought. "The thing, however, is, as you say, of the simplest. Would you think me impertinent if I were to put your theories to a more ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the story of the west gable, which most people disbelieved, she believed it, although she did not understand it. It invested the shy man with interest and romance. She felt that she would have liked, out of no impertinent curiosity, to solve the mystery; she believed that it contained ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had collected an excellent library of books of all sorts, not excepting the most impertinent of the Popish authors, and here it was that he spent the greatest and the best part ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... mother with him," said Baptiste; the remark, as Baptiste delivered it, was impertinent, and yet so intangibly impertinent as to afford no handle for reproof. He meant that the Baron was free from an aggravation; he said ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... Apartments at Windsor) known to Lewisham. The furniture struck him in a general way as akin to that in the South Kensington Museum. His first impression was an appreciation of the vast social superiority of the chairs; it seemed impertinent to think of sitting on anything quite so quietly stately. He perceived Smithers standing with an air of bashful hostility against a bookcase. Then he was aware that Lagune was asking them all to sit down. Already seated at the table was the ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... might do anything of the kind. You have inconvenienced me quite enough already. You had better not inconvenience me any more. I consider your conduct a piece of unparalleled clumsiness, and your language little short of impertinent. What you have said now you should have said in the letter which announced my uncle's death. Or you should have instructed Mr. Barker, who was abroad at the time and found me in Heidelberg, to make the necessary investigations. ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... houses lying between the Middle Temple Garden and Essex Street, Strand. Having their entrance-doors in Essex Street, these houses are, in fact, as private as the residences of any London quarter. The noise of the Strand reaches them, but their occupants are as secure from the impertinent gaze or unwelcome familiarities of law-students and barristers' clerks, as they would be if they lived at St. John's Wood. In Essex Street, on the eastern side, the legal families maintained their ground ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... house of this grand llama of tailors that D'Artagnan took the despairing Porthos; who, as they were going along, said to his friend, "Take care, my good D'Artagnan, not to compromise the dignity of a man such as I am with the arrogance of this Percerin, who will, I expect, be very impertinent; for I give you notice, my friend, that if he is wanting in respect I will ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... enjoyed listening, but particularly he enjoyed listening to his own thoughts as they trod slowly, but very certainly, to foregone conclusions. Into the silent arena of his mind no impertinent chatter could burst with a mouthful of puns or ridicule, or a reminiscence caught on the wing and hurled apropos to the very centre of discussion. His own means of conveying or gathering information was that whereby one person asked a question and another person ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... from the forest of olden times that has now disappeared; and ancient bow-windows jut out over the side causeways. Some of the old exclusive mansions continue to boast in a breastwork of stone pillars linked together by chains of iron, intended as a defence against impertinent intruders, but more often serving as safe swinging-places for the young children sent to play in the streets. Perhaps of all times of the year the little town looks its best on a sunny autumn morning, with its fine film of mist, when the chestnut leaves are golden, and slender threads ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... Effingham, gravely, "that the gentleman has avoided the capital mistake of commenting on things that actually exist. Comments on its facts are generally esteemed by the people of a country, impertinent and unjust; and your true way to succeed, is to treat as freely as possible its ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... my departure, I endured much lecturing, which I considered as exceedingly useless, and consequently little less than impertinent. The lawyer reminded me of my youth, and warned me against the knavery of mankind, who he affirmed are universally prone to prey upon one another. This, miracles out of the question, must be the creed of a lawyer. I had a better opinion of my fellow bipeds, of whom I yet knew but little, and heard ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... very small teeth. She was not unlike her mother in feature, but she was taller, more dreamy, less vivid, less straightforward in expression. At times there was a hint of the minx in her. She emerged from her dreams to be impertinent. A certain shrewdness mingled with her audacity. At such moments, as men sometimes said, "you never knew where to have her." She was more self-conscious and more worldly than her mother. Secret ambition worried at her mind, and made her restless in body. When she looked at a crowd ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... of Lord Coke is well worth quotation: "And seeing we are to treat of matters of game, and hunting, let us (to the end we may proceed the more chearfully) recreate ourselves with the excellent description of Dido's Doe of the Forest wounded with a deadly arrow sticken in her, and not impertinent to our purpose: ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... in no impertinent tone, but in the low voice of one who "shall whisper out of the dust." He had not yet recovered from the first impression of his awakening, that the world in which he now stood ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... whole of it. At the rates they were selling, they must be receiving at least a dollar a quart, and that clear of the cost of the cream from their two cows. I suppose it might have been considered impertinent in us to be thus prying into our neighbors' concerns, wondering how they contrived to live and how much money they made by their business. But we had no idea of doing them any injury; I was only desirous of doing something better for myself than working all my life ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... thought when I told them they could not get him that they would go away, but when they asked me if he was not there, of course I could not tell them a story; so I said I declined to answer impertinent questions. You know poor Charlie was at that moment lying curled up under the bed in the boys' room with a roll of carpet a foot thick around him, and it was as hot as an oven. Well, they insisted on going through the ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... in the lighter parts of life, it is too late to get much intelligence. One of his answers to a boastful Frenchman has been related; and to an impertinent he made another equally proper. During his embassy he sat at the opera by a man who, in his rapture, accompanied with his own ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... these magical transformations, that the hero would be glad to let him go. If Hercules had relaxed his grasp, the Old One would certainly have plunged down to the very bottom of the sea, whence he would not soon have given himself the trouble of coming up, in order to answer any impertinent questions. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred, I suppose, would have been frightened out of their wits by the very first of his ugly shapes, and would have taken to their heels at once. For one of the ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... ask the gentleman himself," responded the duenna; "I know nothing of him, but that he is the most daring and impertinent man"—(Martha indulged in the privilege granted her by Don Lope); "the most unceremonious, head-strong, self-sufficient cavalier I ever met with—Virgen Santa!—What a disturbance he has raised in the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... looks on, tolerant and superior and smilingly attentive, upon the good and bad of our existence, it will go hardly if we do not catch some reflection of the same spirit to help us on our way. There is here no impertinent and lying proclamation of peace—none of the cheap optimism of the well-to-do; what we find here is a view of life that would be even grievous, were it not enlivened with this abiding cheerfulness, and ever and anon redeemed by a ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Wildschloss could be shaken off! But he only became constantly more friendly and intrusive, almost paternal. No wonder, when the mother and her uncle made him so welcome, and were so intolerably grateful for his impertinent interference, while even Friedel confessed the reasonableness of his counsels, as if that were not the ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... impudence, still held his tongue like a trembling lackey; in which the Hereditary Prince, despite his desire to find everything in the Castle ridiculous, still maintained a reserve sufficient to save him from being expelled from Berlin for his impertinent criticisms—or where the Princess was still proud and witty beneath her girlish simplicity. And still rarer is it to see a Seckendorf who, in spite of his clumsy "combinations," did not quite sink to the level of the Marshal von Kalb. At this point a dramaturgic hint ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... of them was opened and a white cloth waved from it by an unseen hand. He wondered was it a signal. He stooped to fasten a bootlace, and Rama, who was making for the gateway in the high wall forming the fourth side of the courtyard, called impatiently to him to hasten. The servant's tone was impertinent, and Dermot looked up ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... five! She furnishes dinner for the men on the six-thirty. I wonder what she is giving them to-day?" Jeff smiled when he remembered how Judith had satisfied Nan's impertinent curiosity concerning what was in her basket. "I've a great mind to find out. Foolishness! I'll do nothing of the sort." The young man tried to lose himself in the intricate plot of a detective story but he had to confess he was not half so much interested in the outcome of the tale as he was ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... just before you left the dining-room which made you look so haughty, dearest? He was not impertinent to you, I hope," and Henry frowned ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... you say, boy!" he returned fiercely. "When you have passed through as much hell-fire as I have and have rested as sweetly with a corpse for a pillow, you will learn to curb your impertinent tongue when you address ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... that is partly the source of her knowledge," replied the knowing one, with a great show of innocence in her manner. John was in no position to ask impertinent questions, nor had he any right to grow angry at unpleasant discoveries; but he did both, although for a time he ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... this rather impertinent comment, and 'repeats the story of his birth' with still greater improvements, till Hotspur gives him a piece of advice which will do for his whole race of the present day, viz., 'tell the truth, and shame ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... you to be friends with me again. I was very impertinent that night after your speech. I don't know what made me ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... would it be impertinent to ask for what purpose you have come to Poland? Believe me, I only put the question in order to see if I can in any way ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... been thinking," said he, "about what you told me"—this was a reference to an interview not recorded. "I am annoyed that Mrs. Harrop should have been impertinent to you." ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... anger, and if Shakespeare had been anything but a shade he would have fared ill, for the enraged Roman, poising his cue on high as though it were a lance, hurled it at the impertinent dramatist with all his strength, and with such accuracy of aim withal that it pierced the spot beneath which in life the heart of ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... meet Engineer Serko when my strolls take me in the direction of the Beehive. He always shows himself disposed to chat with me, though, it is true, he does so in a tone of impertinent frivolity. We converse upon all sorts of subjects, but rarely of my position. Recrimination thereanent is useless and only subjects ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... "It may not be impertinent to observe that in this wilderness we neither see nor hear any birds of music. These frequent only the abodes of man. There is one wood-bird, not often seen, but heard without any melody in his note, in ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... courtiers hailed me as greater than themselves, by reason of this woman's choice. There was method, too, in their salutation. Some rumour must have got about of my preference for the older and simpler habits, and there was no drinking wine to my health after the new and (as I considered) impertinent manner. Decorously, each lord and lady there came forward, and each in turn spilt a goblet at my feet; and when I called any up, whether man or woman, to receive tit-bits from my platter, it was eaten simply and thankfully, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... of life. A novelist, therefore, who uses the imaginary facts, like Sterne and Dickens, as mere pegs on which to hang specimens of his own sensibility and facetiousness, becomes disgusting. When, he remarks, you have said of a friend 'he is dead,' all other observations become superfluous and impertinent. He, therefore, considers 'Robinson Crusoe' to represent the ideal novel. It is the life of a brave man meeting danger and sorrow with unflinching courage, and never bringing his tears to market. Dickens ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... yeller haythen, I'll cut off your pigtail in spite of that impertinent friend of yours—Dick Dewey. I'll show you that an O'Reilly ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... said Lily, 'and he is the last person to say anything impertinent of papa. And I myself heard papa call her Alethea, which he never used to do. Claude, ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... took it simply from the Bible, in the words that God's wisdom teacheth, and thus I argued: "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners: I am a sinner; I want to be saved: he will save me." There is no presumption in taking God at his word: not to do so is very impertinent: I did it, and I ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... you argumentative child," I said (you will find Rupert is impertinent enough in one place to suggest that I have a tendency to be rude and a tendency to hold forth). "Surely the ideal story must contain the maximum of Objective Incident with the maximum of Subjective Incident. Only give us the exciting events of your schooldays, and describe ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... not be allowed the expression—'tis impertinent, 'tis false. I never was unobserving or absent; I never had the fidgets; I never once mentioned the name of my adored Helen; and, heigho! I never sighed for ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... you will have the kindness to leave us to ourselves, and not to meddle with what does not concern you. If you were a brother or father of hers, the case might have been different. As it is, I can only consider you an impertinent meddler." ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... a word to you,' he said hurriedly. 'I have been trying for an opportunity these two days. I hope you won't think it strange or premature or impertinent——' ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... I have taken this Habit to free you from an impertinent Lover, and to secure the damn'd Rogue Daring to my self: receive me as sent by Colonel Surelove from England to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... action spring faster than thought. The Sicilians at vespers asked the Frenchmen to pronounce "cheecheree," and slew them when they said "sheesheree." So Easton snapped a fulminate in Davidge when his Prussian tongue betrayed him into that impertinent, intolerable alien "Vell?" ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... time and thought to paltry local matters, leaving a deplorably small portion of either to be devoted to national questions; while in the exercise of his functions as a legislator he is likely to be influenced by a variety of motives which ought to be quite impertinent and are often unworthy. These things however seem to be almost inevitable results of the national political structure. The individual corruptibility of the members of either House (their readiness, that is to be influenced ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... is the result of a mental egotism combined with love of admiration, and usually produces awkward diffidence or absurd affectation. Too often the first weakness is overcome, or covered up, most unwisely, by exchanging bashfulness for impertinent boldness; while the vanity and self-consciousness of the second very rarely result in manners or Conversation either sensible or agreeable. To overcome these defects, wisely, requires a strong effort. They should be radically subdued by learning to ask one's self, "Am I doing what is ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... cried Achelous, turning toward the hero, while his voice rose till it sounded like the thunder of distant cataracts, and his green garment changed to the blackness of night,—"impertinent stranger! how darest thou claim this maiden,—thou who hast mortal blood in thy veins! Behold me, the god Achelous, the powerful King of the Waters! I wind with majesty through the rich lands of my wide realms. I make all fields through which I flow beautiful with grass and flowers. ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... you do me a favour? If you refuse to dance or sing or laugh, if all that is tedious, then let me beg you, implore you, to summon all your powers, if only for this once, and make one witty or clever remark. Let it be as impertinent and malicious as you like, so long as it is funny and original. Won't you perform this miracle, just once, to surprise us and make us laugh? Or else you might think of some little thing which you could all do together, ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... wherever there was an opportunity of flouting an insolent Frenchman. Under these circumstances the streets were not altogether a pleasant promenade for well-born women; but Romola, shrouded in her black veil and mantle, and with old Maso by her side, felt secure enough from impertinent observation. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... slavery in Martinique, Guadaloupe, and Cayenne: and that—(pray listen, young lady)—he declares to the English that he can do what he pleases in Saint Domingo. I wish he could see that angry blush. Pray look at her, Madame! I see she thinks Bonaparte a very impertinent fellow." ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... look of trying to discover the secret of his fascination. It was quite unlike the way any other girl had ever looked at him. Other girls looked at you side-wise or averted their eyes when they met yours. But this was different. It was mocking, impertinent, insinuating, but it did not displease him. He saw that he had made an impression, an instantaneous impression. He mystified her perhaps but he interested her intensely. For the first time he had conquered with ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... always doing nothing. To rush out indignantly, seize my box, defy the brigands, and carry it back myself, seemed the work of an instant. Drenched and gasping, I find myself once more outside; the Porter of the Grand Hotel Du Lac is at my heels, furious and impertinent. "Dis, not your loggosh: other shentleman's loggosh." He seized the portmanteau, and a struggle would certainly have ensued, when my own Hotel Porter appeared on the scene triumphant, with a regiment of station-men carrying one small tin box. "What you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... absence of the overwhelming sentiment which, sooner or later, works havoc in a woman's heart, she spent her young ardor in an immoderate love of distinctions, and expressed the deepest contempt for persons of inferior birth. Supremely impertinent to all newly-created nobility, she made every effort to get her parents recognized as equals by the most illustrious families of ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... disappointment felt by the royalist at this unsatisfactory result. "These bravadoes and impertinent demonstrations on the part of some of your people," wrote Richardot, ten days later, "will be the destruction of the whole country, and will convert the Prince's gentleness into anger. 'Tis these good and zealous ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... an old man for speaking, Mrs. Jardine, and not think me impertinent if I make free to say that if more young ladies started housekeeping with such ideas, homes would be happier. I make bold to say that you will not have trouble in keeping Mr. ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... Amusements; which altho' they are not capable of affording any great Pleasure, yet they give that serene Turn of the Mind, which I think much preferable to anything else Human Nature is made susceptible of." To this pleasant picture of "rural Amusements," and tranquillity, it is surely not impertinent to add this further passage, as a possible echo of Charlotte Fielding's thought, well acquainted as she must have been both with the "sweetly winding banks of Stour" and with the clamorous successes of political drama: "in all these various Changes I never enjoyed ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... Discourse) how men, barely by the use of their natural faculties may attain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of any innate impressions; and may arrive at certainty, without any such original notions or principles. For I imagine any one will easily grant that it would be impertinent to suppose the ideas of colours innate in a creature to whom God hath given sight, and a power to receive them by the eyes from external objects: and no less unreasonable would it be to attribute several truths to the impressions of nature, and innate ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... sharp work,' says Bulbo. 'Call my Chamberlain, he'll be my second, and in ten minutes, I flatter myself, you'll see Master Giglio's head off his impertinent shoulders. I'm hungry for his blood Hoooo, aw!' and he looked as savage as ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sir," proceeded the speaker, "I feel, as all present must feel, that it would be unnecessary—nay, almost impertinent—were I to weary the public ear by a halting recapitulation of deeds with which it is already so appreciatively familiar." At this he was interrupted by deafening and long-continued applause, at the end of which ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... one is tempted to adopt a certain tone and to use certain phrases, which may or may not be justified. I yielded to the temptation. I was wrong, but I was also victimised. This morning, with a moment's torture under the impertinent tongue of a rascally impresario, I paid for all the spurious confidence which I have felt and for all the proud words I have uttered. I came to-day in order to lay at your feet my thanks for the unique humiliation which ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... the first, and Marston's work being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must now prefer for Carlo a notorious character named Charles Chester, of whom gossipy and inaccurate Aubrey relates that he was "a bold impertinent fellow...a perpetual talker and made a noise like a drum in a room. So one time at a tavern Sir Walter Raleigh beats him and seals up his mouth (that is his upper and nether beard) with hard wax. From him Ben Jonson takes his Carlo Buffone ['i.e.', jester] ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... superfluous to multiply ad libitum quotations showing that the early Protestants referred everything to the general purposes of Providence and sometimes to the direct action of God, or to the impertinent but more assiduous activity of the devil. It is interesting to note that they were not wholly blind to natural causes. Luther himself saw, as early as 1523, the connection between his movement and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... about them was, that although the most timid and cowardly creatures in the world, they seemed the most impertinent things that ever lived! Knowing that their holes afforded them a perfectly safe retreat they sat close beside them, and as the hunters slowly approached, they elevated their heads, wagged their little tails, showed their teeth, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... heart was thumping with excitement and resentment. The apprehension of the untried is apt to be sharp at such moments, and I looked for them to turn their backs upon me for an impertinent provincial. Indeed, I think they would have, all save Comyn, had it not been for Fox himself. He lighted a pipe, smiled, and began easily, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... these shining bergs carried death with them if they should graze hard against the steamer's side, and, cautiously, steered with infinite pains, the little boat crept on, zigzagging between them. A frail little toy of man, it seemed, to venture here alone; small, black, impertinent atom forcing its way so hardily into this magnificence of colour, this silent splendour, this radiant stillness of the North. Into this very fastness of the most gigantic forces of Nature it had penetrated, and the sapphire sea supported it, the transparent light illumined ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... unexpectedly). No, Sir, I did not. I am not in the habit—whatever you may be—of discussing my private affairs with strangers. I consider your remark highly impertinent, Sir. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... ended, the first names with her will be these.' The prophecy is as little like to commend itself to the pious votary of Keats as to the ardent Shelleyite: there are familiars of the Tennysonian Muse, the Sibyl of Rizpah and Vastness and Lucretius and The Voyage, to whom it must seem impertinent beyond the prophet's wont; there are—(but they scarce count)—who grub (as for truffles) for meanings in Browning. But it was not uttered to please, and in truth it has enough of plausibility to infuriate whatever poet-sects there be. Especially ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... careful," he said. "We must place clearly before ourselves the risks that we are running before we come to any decision. For you the risk is simply that of unofficial banishment. They can hardly send you to Siberia because you are half an Englishman; and that impertinent country has a habit of getting up and shouting when her sons are interfered with. But they can easily make Russia impossible for you. They can do you more harm than you think. They can do these poor devils of peasants of yours more harm than ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... so, as Mr. Chillingworth says, the more exciting interest which that affair created drew off public attention, in a great measure, from my father's suicide, and we did not suffer so much from public remark and from impertinent curiosity as might have ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... said. "He has been very restless and rather impertinent lately, and has been looking for another job. What did you ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... afraid, but I had very bitter feelings in my heart. Why should I be called naughty, and disobedient, and impertinent, and all that, for the first time in my life? I knew I had sometimes a rather cross temper, but when mother had spoken to me about it, I had always felt sorry, and wished to be better. And since we had ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... looked upon as impertinent in me, who am about to give the life of another, to trouble the reader with any of my own concerns, or the affairs that led me into the South Seas. Therefore I shall only acquaint him, that in my return on board ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... to the method of treating the text may seem impertinent to some. The authors however merely wish to suggest a method which ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy
... nothing, but to wander hungrily and vacantly through the city in the dinner-hour. He found no more varnish for the work of art, and his working comrade was less amiable than he had been. The week's end found him a little further in debt, in spite of abstention. His landlady, who thought he had been impertinent in that unconscious matter of the aspirate, was not disposed to ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the bill of fare, and not observing any thing else which could be got for nothing, laid it down, and looking at Mr. Kornicker, who was gazing abstractedly at the table-cloth, said that he hoped he (Mr. Scrake) was not going to be impertinent; and as Mr. Kornicker made no other reply than that of looking at him, as if he considered it a matter of some doubt whether he was or was not, he elucidated the meaning of his remark, by inquiring ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... first time, finds himself among strangers, and his identity lost, in a world so much larger, so much colder, so much more indifferent to him than he ever imagined. Indeed, I think that what we often attribute to the impertinent familiarity of country-men and rustic travelers on railways or in cities is largely due to their awful loneliness and nostalgia. I remember to have once met in a smoking-car on a Kansas railway one of these lonely ones, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... to fidget with her fingers among the papers. She had never before encountered a clergyman so contumacious, so indecent, so unreverend,—so upsetting. She had had to deal with men difficult to manage;—the archdeacon for instance; but the archdeacon had never been so impertinent to her as this man. She had quarrelled once openly with a chaplain of her husband's, a clergyman whom she herself had introduced to her husband, and who had treated her very badly;—but not so badly, not with such ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... written to the church of Christ, by which it is exhorted to faith and prayer; but it speaks not a word of a woman's meeting, and therefore it is fooling with the word to suggest it. I cannot therefore, while I see this impertinent dealing, but think our argumentator dotes, or takes upon him to be a head of those he thinks to rule over. The woman's letter to me also seems to import the same, when they say, "Mr. K. would desire to know what objections you have against it (his arguments), and he is ready ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... greatly control her children in these matters; she can make them modest or impertinent, ingenuous or deceitful, fearful or intrepid. The germ of all these traits of character exist in childhood, and a mother can repress ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... and years. One gets so little encouragement. First you bolt away from my tears, then you send an impertinent message, and then when you come at last you pretend to behave respectfully, though you don't know how to do it. You should sit much nearer the edge of the chair and hold yourself very stiff, and make it quite clear that you don't know what ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... him for being tired with that for which all men envied him; and he never came home, but it was: "Was there no sot that would stay longer? Would any man living but you? Did I leave all the world for this usage?" To which he: "Madam, split me, you are very impertinent!" In a word, this match was wedlock in its most terrible appearances. She, at last weary of railing to no purpose, applies to a good uncle, who gives her a bottle of water. "The virtue of this powerful liquor," said he, "is such, that if the woman you marry proves a scold (which, it seems, my dear ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... was an effect of these things that from the very first, with every one listening, I could mention that my main business with her would be just to have a go at her head and to arrange in that view for an early sitting. It would have been as impossible, I think, to be impertinent to her as it would have been to throw a stone at a plate-glass window; so any talk that went forward on the basis of her loveliness was the most natural thing in the world and immediately became the most general and sociable. It was when I saw all this that I judged how, though it was the ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... round for a stone when one of them buttonholed me. He wasn't insolent, but he was impertinent. The two hawks and the blackbirds flew off as I came up; but the sparrows stayed. They were the only ones in possession as I moved away; and they will be the only ones in possession when I return. If that is next summer, then ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... in some amazement. She would have thought it rather impertinent in a stranger offering such familiar accommodation, but Bluebell availed herself of it with the frankest nonchalance, and, in the conversation that ensued, lost her place in the first rush of diners, who, at the ringing of the bell, instantly ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... clinging to the basket and hammering away at the hard fat, head downwards, was a favourite pose; then, when any one else desired a share, he would make a stand with open beak and outspread wings and enact "king of the castle" in the most impertinent manner, considering his tiny dimensions. A guerilla warfare seems always going on amongst these Blue Tits. If one was in the basket and remaining perfectly still, I knew two or three others were meditating ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... lord, I saw you at the play last night. You seemed to be much interested. Don't think me impertinent, if I remind you of our conversation when we were riding home from Tusculum; and if I warn you,' said he, mounting his horse, 'to beware of counterfeits—for such are abroad.' Reining in his impatient ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... of flint pebbles commonly called Hertfordshire plum-pudding stone. These have usually a silicious matrix and were often used by the Romans and others for making querns for corn-grinding. It is, perhaps, not impertinent to mention here the opinion of geologists that during the Eocene Period a considerable portion of the land usually spoken of as S.E. England was ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... parties, was to be done by myself. Edgerton was suffering from a guilty pursuit. That pursuit, if still urged, might be successful, if not so at present. The constant drip of the water will wear away the stone; and if my wife could submit to impertinent advances without declaring them to her husband, the work of seduction was already half done. To listen is, in half the number of cases, to fall. I must save her; I had not the courage to put her from me. Believing that she ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... came bowling along, keeping up her fiery steeds to a sort of curvetting gallop, like one deep in the science of the manege—now deranging the order of march of the troops, by breaking through the ranks, in spite of the impertinent remonstrances of the out-posts and videttes, at which she laughed, at once to show her teeth and her power;—and now scattering the humble crowd, "like chaff before the wind," as giving her horses ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... gathering goodies among the leaves and twigs, and perhaps piping a little aria at intervals, congratulating himself on having found a pleasant, quiet place, when, lo! a gang of English sparrows crowd around him, peering at him now with one eye, now with the other, canting their heads in their impertinent way, bowing and scraping and blinking, and for all the world seeming to make such derisive remarks as, "Oh, what a fine fellow! Quite stuck-up, ain't he? Isn't that a stylish topknot, though? He! he! he! Look! he wears a rose on his shirt bosom! Isn't he a dandy? ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... penetrated his heart; he only lived in her presence, away from her he hardly existed: the emotions she excited were rather those of adoration than of love, for he gazed upon her beauty till he thought her more than human, and hung upon her accents till all speech seemed impertinent to him but her own. Yet so small were his expectations of success, that not even to his sister did he hint at the situation of his heart: happy in an easy access to her, he contented himself with seeing, hearing and watching her, beyond which bounds he formed not any plan, ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... collect from the extreme west, passing in his course, and with impunity, the several American posts that lay in their way. In order more fully to comprehend the motives and character of this remarkable man, it may not be impertinent to recur summarily to events that took place prior to the declaration of war by the United States ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... general admiration excited by the stranger's appearance there were only two dissenting voices. One was that of an impertinent cur which, after sniffing at the heels of the glistening figure, put its tail between its legs and skulked into its master's backyard, vociferating an execrable howl. The other dissentient was a young child who squalled at the fullest stretch ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... be satisfied, but I am not. If you desire to transact business with this impertinent stranger, Mrs. Delancy, you'll have to do so under existing conditions. I do not approve of him or his methods, and my dog doesn't either. You can trust a dog for knowing a man for what he is. Mrs. Austin and I are going ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... a Plot Discovered, a Tragedy, acted at the Duke's Theatre, 1685, dedicated to the Duchess of Portsmouth. Of this we have already given some account, and it is so frequently acted, that any enlargement would be impertinent. It is certainly one of the most moving plays upon the English stage; the plot from a little book, giving an account of the Conspiracy of the Spaniards ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... this city—no need to look surprised, senor, one who is familiar with a town does not gaze and stare and ask the path of passers-by, nor does a native of Seville walk on the sunny side of the street in summer. And now, if you will not think me impertinent, I will ask you what can be the business of so healthy a young man with my rival yonder?' And he nodded towards the house of the ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... I'm sorry that I took even a moment's notice of it. Why should one be ruffled because others are unfeeling and impertinent; it is ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... discharge that boy before supper-time, there will be trouble," said the major when the steward presented himself. "He is stupid, careless, and impertinent. He had the presumption to tell me that he did not cook the onions, and it was not his fault that they were not ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far! There is no use for any man's taking-up his abode in a house built of glass. A man always is to be himself the judge how much of his mind he will show to other men; even to those he would have work along with him. There are impertinent inquiries made: your rule is, to leave the inquirer uninformed on that matter; not, if you can help it, misinformed; but precisely as dark as he was! This, could one hit the right phrase of response, is what the wise and faithful man would aim to ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... themselves far handsomer, and saw themselves infinitely better clad, and wondered how people could be so vulgar. A shuddering came over Emilius; he looked round for Roderick, but the latter had already run away from him again. An impertinent coxcomb, with a head pilloried in his high starched neck-cloth, a servant to one of the visitors, eager to show his wit, pressed up to Emilius, giggling, and cried: 'Now, your honour, what says your honour to this grand couple? They can neither of them guess ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... observed Miss Campion, archly; but she took the girl's hand in hers, and her shrewd, clever face softened. "You must forgive an impertinent old maid, my dear. Perhaps she had her story too, who knows. And so you have your ideal, my poor, dear child; and the ideal has not made you a happy woman. It never ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... thought impertinent in thee to hazard a conjecture that, with the resources the Government of Demerara has, stones might be conveyed from the rock Saba to Stabroek to stem the equinoctial tides which are for ever sweeping away the expensive wooden piles round the mounds of the fort? Or would ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... Glenn; "and I have since felt so much anxiety to be acquainted with it that I have several times been on the eve of asking you to gratify my curiosity; but thinking it might be impertinent, I have forborne. It has more than once occurred to me that your condition in life must have been different from what it ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... Spain, nor all that was in Spain, could have deprived Donald of these for a moment. He was amazed, but not in the least awed. He was, in truth, looking rather fiercer than usual, at this particular juncture, in consequence of a certain feeling of irritation, caused by what he deemed the impertinent curiosity of the passers-by, who, no less struck with his strange appearance than he with theirs, were gazing and tittering at him from all sides—treatment this, at which Donald thought fit to take mortal offence. Having arrived, however, at the gate of Alcala, Donald thought it full time ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... flights of stairs which were the only escape from them—three long, steep flights, which left her breathless, her knees trembling under her great weight, and which led out on the narrow side street, full of noisy, impertinent children and clattering traffic. Beyond that, nothing—a city full of strangers whose every thought and way of life were foreign to her, whose very breath came in hurried, feverish gasps, who exhaled, as they passed her, an almost palpable emanation ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... good grammar; he conversed, which is a rare thing in a village; and the other peasants said of him: "He talks almost like a gentleman with a hat." Fauchelevent belonged, in fact, to that species, which the impertinent and flippant vocabulary of the last century qualified as demi-bourgeois, demi-lout, and which the metaphors showered by the chateau upon the thatched cottage ticketed in the pigeon-hole of the plebeian: rather rustic, rather citified; pepper and salt. Fauchelevent, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... those middle-class families which were called indifferently, in the impertinent language of the last century, the high bourgeoise or the petty nobility. This family had inherited from the brothers Paclet the fief of Tirechappe, which was dependent upon the Bishop of Paris, and whose twenty-one houses had been in the thirteenth ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... heathen papists, worshiping idols in the few moments unoccupied in breaking each other's heads with shillalahs. He had for me and mine a devotion at once touching and uncomfortable; but as he grew older he interfered in all manner of matters beyond his province, offered advices absurd and impertinent, and never once in the whole sixty years of our acquaintance can I recall his agreeing entirely with a statement made by any body except Nancy. If he couldn't contradict one flatly, and the uncongenial part of acquiescence was forced upon him by his love ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... should have a decided bearing on any theory of heredity. Does the occurrence of near-by cases have no significance? We are not yet in a position to state this as a fact. Does inquiry concerning religion seem especially impertinent? What if some future investigation should prove that cancer everywhere, is more prevalent among the Christians than the Jews? Does the social condition of the sufferer seem to have no relation to cause? What if we discover, that everywhere,—and not among the foreign ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... heaven from Mr. James—the true artist will vary his method and change the point of attack. That which was in one case an excellence, will become a defect in another; what was the making of one book, will in the next be impertinent or dull. First each novel, and then each class of novels, exists by and for itself. I will take, for instance, three main classes, which are fairly distinct: first, the novel of adventure, which appeals to certain almost sensual and quite illogical ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flower-covered head, or the indolent leaning figure framed in a doorway of a man in wide velvet trousers and crimson-barred serape, whose brown face was partly hidden in a yellow nimbus of cigarette smoke. Even in the semi-darkness, Ezekiel's penetrating and impertinent eyes took eager note of these facts with superior complacency, quite unmindful, after the fashion of most critical travellers, of the hideous contrast of his own long shapeless nankeen duster, his stiff half-clerical brown straw hat, his wisp of gingham necktie, ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... present day, but one of the best writers in the language. He speaks and thinks plain, broad, downright English. He might be said to have the clearness of Swift, the naturalness of Defoe, and the picturesque satirical description of Mandeville; if all such comparisons were not impertinent. A really great and original write sense, Sterne was not a wit, nor Shakespear a poet. It is easy to describe second-rate talents, because they fall into a class and enlist under a standard; but first-rate powers ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... a little further, 135 And then I'll bring thee to the present business Which now's upon 's; without the which, this story Were most impertinent. ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... them they looked, some of them, somewhat sourly on me, and asked me some impertinent questions, to which ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... whither are we running? It is high time that we should 'bout ship and haul off on the opposite tack, if we would not be regarded as impertinent intruders. Love-making is a most delightful pastime, particularly when it comes in at the end of a long period of suffering, hardship, and misunderstanding; but it loses all its piquant charm if it has to be performed in the presence of strangers, no matter how sympathetic. So we ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... sneaking eavesdropper!" cried Peterkin, laughing. "It is really too bad that a fellow can't have a little tete-a-tete with a friend but you and Ralph must be thrusting your impertinent noses in ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... the lady, changing her tone, "do you know you please me very much? For one person that shows herself well-bred in this matter there are a thousand, I think, that ask impertinent questions. I am very glad you are an exception to the common rule. But, dear Ellen, I am quite willing you should know my name—it is Alice Humphreys. Now, kiss me again and run home; it is quite, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... at him with the deepest interest. "You have come to Algiers to find a woman," she murmured, "and I, to find a man. Do you—oh, don't think me impertinent—do ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... are impertinent, sir, you will repent it. I shall take care to inform his lordship ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... too dim, Miss Jean, in spite of the impertinent toss of your head, to see in you the likeness of the maid that led me such a wild dance in the days of my youth. And I promise you, if you do not smile on young Dick Ringgold and stop your outrageous treatment of him, I will not leave you a ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... afraid you won't find Diana, Iris," answered Mrs. Dolman, "for the simple reason that she has been a very impertinent, naughty little girl, and I have been obliged ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... his own person, yet he projected, and very nearly effected it, for his son Gilbert, by intermarriage with the Lady Jane Grey, and so, by that way, to bring it into his loins. Observations which, though they lie beyond us, and seem impertinent to the text, yet are they not much extravagant, for they must lead us and show us how the after- passages were brought about, with the dependences on the line of a collateral workmanship; and surely it may ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... received his order of banishment, and had written in the notes of invitation—M. Le Comte de Lusace will be there. This Count was the brother of the Dauphine, and this mention of him was deservedly thought impertinent. The King said, wittily enough, "Lambert and Moliere will be there." She scarcely ever spoke of the Cardinal de Bernis after his dismissal from ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... mocking, and even laughing at the word "judgment," as if the providence of God had no concern in the inflicting such a desolating stroke; and that the people calling upon God, as they saw the carts carrying away the dead bodies, was all enthusiastic, absurd, and impertinent. ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... "that you will not think me impertinent, but it occurred to me that you have noticed some apparent interest of mine in your movements since you ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lover is supposed to be himself a poet) was written in my nineteenth year, and consequently contains nearly as many faults as words. That I deemed it not wholly unoriginal is my only apology for its publication—an apology lame and poor, and somewhat impertinent to boot: so that if its infirmities meet with more laughter than charity in the world, I shall not raise my voice in its defence. I am aware how deficient the Poem is in point of art, and it is not without considerable misgivings ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... children pie. She believes in oatmeal as a staple diet, but their grandmother indulges them when they visit her. For once, I fancy, it won't hurt, and in the future I'll—Oh! what a lot I shall have to learn; and how delightfully exciting it all is! Mary, don't stare at me like that. It's impertinent. I know you don't mean it so, and you think I'm a little flighty. Well, I am. Very flighty, indeed! But—fancy old Madame ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... was a healthy-minded young man at the time, and I confess that it was a blow. Before I could fully recover, however, two or three of these admirers ran up to me radiating indignation, and told me that a public insult had been put upon me in the next room. I inquired its nature. It seemed that an impertinent fellow had dressed himself up as a preposterous parody of myself. I had drunk more champagne than was good for me, and in a flash of folly I decided to see the situation through. Consequently it was to meet the glare of the company and ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... had very little to do; and as it never suited me to reside there, there was never any one to look after him. However, I make no complaint. Here they are intolerable—intolerable, self-sufficient, impertinent upstarts, full of crotchets of their own; and the bishop is a weak, timid fool; as for me, I never go inside a church. I can't; I should be insulted if I did. It has however gone so far now that I shall take permission to bring the matter before ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... he answered, putting on his hat and buttoning his befrogged surtout; "and should you," he continued, drawing on his gloves, "should you stare at me with those damned, impertinent fishes' eyes of yours, I should, most certainly, pull your nose for you—on the ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... upon me) I should be impertinent, should I say anything upon this subject, when we have heard you but now discourse so fully against those that would persuade us that Epicurus's doctrine about the soul renders men more disposed and better pleased to die than Plato's doth. Zeuxippus therefore ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... "It's impertinent to congratulate you, Pleydon. You know what you've done better than any one else could. You have all our admiration." Linda watched the tenderness with which the other covered Simon Downige's vision in clay. Later, returning home after dinner, Arnaud speculated about Pleydon's ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... said the old gentleman, 'education a great thing: a very great thing! I never had any. I admire it the more in others. A very fine thing. Yes, yes. Tell me more of your history. Let me hear it all. No impertinent curiosity—no, no, no.' ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... deportment was not a whit less impertinent or objectionable now than heretofore. After making a profound salutation to Aveline, which he thought was executed in the most courtly style, and with consummate grace, he observed in a loud whisper to his partner, "'Fore heaven! a matchless creature! a divinity! ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... in the public character of an author, he does it with fear and trembling. So dear is fame to the rhyming tribe, that even he, an obscure, nameless Bard, shrinks aghast at the thought of being branded as—an impertinent blockhead, obtruding his nonsense on the world; and, because he can make a shift to jingle a few doggerel Scotch rhymes together, looking upon himself as a poet of no small ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... to shoot at a moment's notice; so as to be ready when some impertinent bully draws a weapon as you have done—yes, I always go ready for impertinent fellows wherever I ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey
... avowedly exceptional) as Shakespeare. Now, though the personal interest may be not illegitimate and sometimes great, the impersonal is certainly greater. Thanks to industrious prying, not always deserving the adjective impertinent, we know a great deal about Balzac; and it is by no means difficult to apply some of the knowledge to aid the study of his creation. But in reading the creation itself you never need this knowledge; it never forces itself on you. The hundreds, and almost thousands, of persons who form the company ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... "You're very impertinent. We all have to pay for each other all the while and for each other's virtues as well ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... will think me impertinent if I continue to ask questions," said the stranger; "but I shall be glad to know to what ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... charity, and teach your children never to eat an apple without offering somebody else half of it. Is the family frailty combativeness, keep out of the company of quick-tempered people, and never answer an impertinent question until you have counted a hundred both ways, and after you have written an angry letter keep it a week before you send it, and then burn it up! Is the family frailty timidity and cowardice, cultivate backbone, read the ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... was less funny than impertinent. She would be angry. It was better. She would respond icily and put ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... the Gospel Covenants which seem to me to be founded on the expressions and practice of Christ himself. If I were writing thus to worldly men I know I should expose myself to the imputation of excessive vanity or impertinent intrusion. But of you and Dr. Carey I am far from judging as of worldly men, and I therefore say that, if we are spared to have any future intercourse, it is my desire, if you permit, to discuss with both of you, in the spirit of meekness and conciliation, the points which now divide us, ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... that she was deeply smitten, and that she had no time to think about the opinions of other people. She had not lost her little determined manner; but she was all sincerity and good nature; there was nothing impertinent in her success, nothing personal in her consciousness of her strength. I never saw such a sweet fiancee as she when she quickly answered some of her young friends who asked her if she was content: "Bless me! indeed I am! I don't complain of ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... lived through the last generation, he would not need to be told that, some thirty or thirty-five years back, Mr. Waterton, a distinguished country gentleman of ancient family in Northumberland, publicly mounted and rode in top- boots a savage old crocodile, that was restive and very impertinent, but all to no purpose. The crocodile jibbed and tried to kick, but vainly. He was no more able to throw the squire than Sinbad was to throw the old scoundrel who used his back without paying for it, until he discovered a mode (slightly ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... we ought to have been more sensible. Two or three nights later, as I was sleeping in a special bed one of the men then absent had made by a big rock some yards from the main camp, I was awakened by a wolf crunching bones by the fire not eight feet from my head. I wanted to shoot the impertinent wretch, but his form was indistinct and my rifle lying by my side had to be trained his way. This took some time, as I had to move cautiously, and in the midst of my effort my elbow slipped. Like a shadow he flitted into the deeper gloom and I went to sleep again. I ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... face, "only think of our Wenna being married to Mr. Trelyon, and how happy and pleased and pretty she would look as they went walking together! And then how proud he would be to have so nice a wife! and he would joke about her and be very impertinent, but he would simply worship her all the same, and do everything he could to please her. And he would take her away and show her all the beautiful places abroad; and he would have a yacht, too; and he would give her a fine house in London. And don't you think our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... questions, sir," the confident girl replied; and though the lawyer appealed to the court several times to "silence the insolence" of this witness before she was through; the court protected the witness and rebuked the lawyer for impertinent questions, and the insolence ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... the clergyman felt himself enforced to withdraw from the public gaze. There were rough people who were impertinent and timid people who turned out of their road to avoid him, so that he found his out-door walks and meditations almost confined to the night, unless he chose the grave-yard for its seclusion or strolled on the beach and listened to the wallowing and grunting of the Black Boars—the rocks off ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... brought him to the conclusion that sausages and mashed potatoes, twopence a plate, were the best food. Now, sausages once or twice a week for breakfast are not unpleasant. As lunch, even, with mashed potatoes, they become monotonous. At dinner they are impertinent. At the end of three days Dick loathed sausages, and, going, forth, pawned his watch to revel on sheep's head, which is not as cheap as it looks, owing to the bones and the gravy. Then he returned to sausages ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... many who place abundance of merit in going to church, although it be with no other prospect but that of being well entertained, wherein if they happen to fail, they return wholly disappointed. Hence it is become an impertinent vein among people of all sorts to hunt after what they call a good sermon, as if it were a matter of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... "the state of the Union" to express my admiration for the diligence, the good temper, and the full comprehension of public duty which has already been manifested by both the Houses; and I hope that it may not be deemed an impertinent intrusion of myself into the picture if I say with how much and how constant satisfaction I have availed myself of the privilege of putting my time and energy at their disposal alike in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and my point of view of girls was taken entirely from them. I can remember very well my pause of dawning doubt and surprise when a girl first informed me she thought a man who told her she was pretty was impertinent. What bewildered me still more on that occasion was that this particular girl was so extremely beautiful that to talk about anything else but her beauty was a waste of time. It made all other topics trivial, and yet she seemed quite sincere in what she said, and refused to allow me to bring ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... on the table and narrowed his eyes at Hollis. "Don't think my questions impertinent," he said gravely, "for I assure you that nothing is further from my mind than a desire to pry into your affairs. But I take it you will need some advice—which, of course, you may disregard if you wish. I suppose you don't make a secret of ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... his brows go up in surprise. He was about to speak, but she went on with more than a touch of embarrassment. "Perhaps it sounds impertinent, but I believe I could help him in some ways,—if I had the chance. Anyhow, I should like to try. Please let him come and see me as often as ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... in his own country, giving freely his impressions of our civilization. His letters from New York appear to have been especially full, and, in offering the present synopsis of these to the American reader, it will not be impertinent to note certain peculiarities of the Altrurian attitude which the temperament of the writer has somewhat modified. He is entangled in his social sophistries regarding all the competitive civilizations; ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... deliverance. It was not a merry existence for a young man who heard the brave currents of life sounding around and calling him vaguely to come and adventure himself with the rest. He knew that the sons of the men who laughed at his grandfather laughed also at him, and regarded him with a somewhat impertinent wonder, but he dared explain himself to none, and dared seek companionship with none. This is why he looked so listless as he lounged toward the sea that fine afternoon. There was enough all round him to please ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... Samuel Johnson, champion of the heavy-weights of English literature, the "Great Moralist," the typical Englishman of his time, wrote the pamphlet called "Taxation no Tyranny." It is what an Englishman calls a "clever" production, smart, epigrammatic, impertinent, the embodiment of all that is odious in British assumption. No part of the Old World, he says, has reason to rejoice that Columbus discovered the New. Its inhabitants—the countrymen of Washington ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... might perhaps seem very impertinent if it grew serious in the conclusion. I would, nevertheless, leave it to the consideration of those who are the patrons of this monstrous trial of skill, whether or no they are not guilty, in some measure, of an affront ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... pocket-money by becoming one of the contributors to the newspaper. And how had it ended? The editor had declared that his list of writers was full, and begged leave to suggest that Mr. Vimpany should wait for the next vacancy. A most impertinent proposal! Had Lord Harry—a proprietor, remember—exerted his authority? Not he! His lordship had dropped the doctor "like a hot potato," and had meanly submitted to his own servant. What did Mr. Mountjoy think of such ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... is not of the theoretical kind, but it is a constant, earnest, sincere practice. It is neither demonstrative nor loud, but manifests itself in a quiet, practical way, and is always at work. It is not aggressive, which sometimes is troublesome if not impertinent. In him religion exhibits its loveliest features; it governs his conduct not only toward his servants but toward the natives, the bigoted Mohammedans, and all who come in contact with him. Without ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... him among you, and examine him, gentlemen. Question him with all confidence, without fear of his troubling you with idle chatter or impertinent queries. Do not be afraid of his taking up all your time, or making it impossible for you to get rid of him. You need not expect brilliant speeches that I have taught him, but only the frank and simple truth without preparation, ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... is just the thing which shames me. I have felt the most lively curiosity about you, and I have asked you thousands of impertinent questions." ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... perfectly to their taste, as to have but one fault against me, which I might easily be cured of, and that was my modesty: this, they observed, might pass for a beauty the more with those who wanted it for a heigh tener; but their maxim was, that it was an impertinent mixture, and dashed the cup so as to spoil the sincere draught of pleasure; they considered it accordingly as their mortal enemy, and gave it no quarter wherever they met with it. This was a prologue not unworthy ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... every woman of that kind we meet. The thing is to attack the general principle behind the thing, not each individual case.... Besides, it would be so frightfully impertinent of us. How would you like it if someone stopped you in the street and asked you where you worked and whether you were sweated or not, and why you ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... triumphantly, but without volunteering any explanation of this extraordinary gift. Sterne's letter to Garrick was forwarded, it would seem, to Warburton; and the Bishop thanks Garrick for having procured for him "the confutation of an impertinent story the first moment I heard of it." This, however, can hardly count for much. If Warburton had really wished Sterne to abstain from caricaturing him, he would be as anxious—and for much the same reasons—to ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... Roy, interrupting, "I'm the owner an' commander of the Sunshine, besides bein' the paternal parent of an impertinent son, and I claim to have the right to do as I please—therefore, hold your ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the worst places is Vintimiglia on the Franco-Italian line. The French frank you out of their country; the Italians frank you in. You step into a separate chamber and are searched and asked particular and impertinent questions. Before leaving Italy the Italian police demand your personal attendance and take a small due. In some countries you are required to obtain police permission to leave the country; in some not. No ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... "was surprised one day by a Doctor and a Lawyer almost forcing themselves at the same time into my room. I did not know," he adds, "till afterwards the real object of their visit. I thought their questions singular, frivolous, and somewhat importunate, if not impertinent: but what should I have thought, if I had known that they were sent to provide proofs of my insanity?" Lady Byron, in her Remarks on Mr. Moore's Life, etc. (Life, pp. 661-663), says that Dr. Baillie (vide post, p. 412, note 2), whom she consulted ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... again, for instance, would Teresa's cook give her notice, as Agnes's cook had given her notice that morning. It was about that matter she wished to see Father Ferguson, for it was through the priest she had heard of the impertinent Irish girl who cooked so well, but who had such an independent manner, and who ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... seats immediately in front of him, and continued the discussion of the topic which doubtless absorbed their minds before entering. "I was saying," said one, an elderly man, with quite a refined appearance, "that impertinent article by that Negro preacher was equally as spicy as the editorial, and as the editor took time by the forelock and made good his escape, the determination was to make sure of this preacher. But ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... speak concerning the Sacrifice of Christ's Death, and his Righteousness imputed to us; but I shall not now discuss it fully, only a few Remarks may not be impertinent or useless. These two Points appear to me to be much misunderstood; Sin is said to be infinite, because committed against an infinite God; and that therefore nothing but an infinite Being can satisfy the Justice of God for it: ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... the silly, impertinent fellow mean, thought I; but the ale was now before me, and I hastened to drink, for my weakness was great, and my mind was full of dark thoughts, the remains of the indescribable horror of the preceding ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Madelon, getting rather red. She had resented the stare, and did not want to be talked to; her one idea now was to get to Spa unnoticed. But she had ill-chosen her travelling companion—the Countess was a lady whose impertinent curiosity was rarely baffled. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... "So you are impertinent, as well as a thief," said the old gentleman. "I have no more pity for you. Madam, if you will take my advice, you will have the ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... started, and felt a queer sensation in my heart, although I did not give him a groat. Indeed, I had not a groat on me. Rich folk dislike hearing poor people complain of their poverty. "They disturb us," they say, "and are impertinent as well. Why should poverty be so impertinent? Why should its hungry moans prevent us ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "she was a harlot, and I" (which is true) "was a thief." (Though you hardly should cite this particular line, by the way, as an instance of absolute brevity: I'm aware, man, of that; so you needn't disgrace yourself, sir, by such grossly mistimed and impertinent levity.) I don't like to break off, any more than you wish me to stop: but my fate is Not to vent half a million ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... death-watches; and was the other day almost frightened out of her wits by the great house-dog, that howled in the stable at a time when she lay ill of the tooth-ach. Such an extravagant cast of mind engages multitudes of people not only in impertinent terrors, but in supernumerary duties of life; and arises from that fear and ignorance which are natural to the soul of man. The horror with which we entertain the thoughts of death or indeed of any future evil, and the uncertainty of its approach, fill ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... had, I certainly should not show them to you, impertinent person! There are a few little souvenirs in that desk, but ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... to my work, shaking off the dust of my obscure street, I enter your sacred precincts, oh, F. F. B.'s! Bless you, it can do you no harm, for even your boudoirs do not look out at me; their eyes are shuttered to all such vulgar sights. It was impertinent, but this morning I pitied you (you!) that you could not see the wondrous beauty of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... hitherto used, he began to threaten him—telling him of the different perils from the law which he would have to encounter by having joined the party, and various dangers to which he would subject himself by deserting it. But in vain—Thady was firm; and when Pat got violent and inclined to be impertinent on the subject, he told him that he would knock him down with the alpine in his hand if he ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... so Nicholas told himself. Christina had the look of a frightened rabbit: it had always irritated him. This girl, even in her sleep, wore an impertinent expression—a delightfully impertinent expression. Besides, this girl was pretty—marvellously pretty. Indeed, so pretty a girl Nicholas had never seen in all his life before. Why had the girls, when Nicholas was young, been so entirely different! A sudden bitterness ...
— The Soul of Nicholas Snyders - Or, The Miser Of Zandam • Jerome K. Jerome
... the weary details of human illusions and disappointments, while here we pray to the Virgin, and absorb ourselves in the art, which is your pleasure and which shall not teach either a moral or a useful lesson. The Empress Mary is receiving you at her portal, and whether you are an impertinent child, or a foolish old peasant-woman, or an insolent prince, or a more insolent tourist, she receives you with the same dignity; in fact, she probably sees very little difference between you. An empress of ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... Eleanor would soon be one of the line, moving in their place, where they had moved; lovely and admired in her turn; but their turn was over. What when hers should be?—could she keep this heritage for ever? It was a very impertinent thought; it had clearly no business with either place or time; but there it was, staring at Eleanor out of the rich cornices, and looking in at her from the magnificent plantations seen through the window. Eleanor did not welcome the thought; it was an intruder. The fact was that having once ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... and little children took up all the available space. ... How curiously out of the world Bourcelles was, to be sure. Newspapers had no meaning any longer. Picture-papers and smart weekly Reviews, so necessary and important in St. James's Street, here seemed vulgar, almost impertinent—ridiculous even. Big books, yes; but not pert, topical comments issued with an absurd omnipotence upon things merely ephemeral. How the mind accumulated rubbish in a city! It seemed incredible. He surely had climbed ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... offended by her companion's impertinent tone. She started to turn off the power and apply the brake. She would not ride ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... Yet the girl's eyes were moist and shone with tenderness. It was plain that she was deep in love and had no time to think of the opinions of others. Her little air of determination was not absent, but everything about her denoted frankness and good-will. There was nothing impertinent in her success, nothing selfish in her sense of power. Never have I seen so lovely a bride, when she answered with frankness her young friends who ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... institution; or he may possess a marked inclination for albs and chasubles; or he may reflect upon the distinct social advantages of a good living; or he may have nothing else in particular to do; or he may simply desire to rouse the impertinent curiosity of all the indolent quidnuncs of his acquaintance, without the remotest intention of ever gratifying their underbred ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... knuckles, when they introduce their fingers into private pies without permission from the chief cook. How the dance went Debby hardly knew, for the conversation fell upon books, and in the interest of her favorite theme she found even the "grand square" an impertinent interruption, while her own deficiences became almost as great as her partner's; yet, when the music ended with a flourish, and her last curtsy was successfully achieved, she longed to begin ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... is in the city to-day," returned Saidie calmly. How odious they were, these Englishwomen, with their short skirts and big boots, and red, hot faces, with great black straw houses over them, and their curt manners, and the impertinent way they spoke of ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... philosophy in the Universities, and did all that lay in his power to prevent those societies of men instituted to improve human reason from depraving it by their quiddities, their horrors of the vacuum, their substantial forms, and all those impertinent terms which not only ignorance had rendered venerable, but which had been made sacred by their being ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... Hogg, was terribly strict, and woe betide the author of any small footmarks that he found on one of the freshly raked surfaces. Nothing annoyed him more than the odd bulbs that used to come up in the midst of his precious buffalo grass; impertinent crocuses and daffodils and hyacinths, that certainly had no right there. "Blest if I know how they ever gets there!" Hogg would say, scratching his head. Whereat Norah was wont to retire behind a pyramid tree for purposes ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... which the vanity of the unfortunate commander made him most willing to dispense. The victory at Saratoga had spoiled him for ever, and thinking too much of himself, he committed the next great error of a military man, of thinking too lightly of his foe. It would be idle and perhaps impertinent, to suggest that if Marion had been suffered to remain with him, the issue of this march might have been more fortunate. Gates was quite too vain-glorious to listen and Marion quite too moderate to obtrude his opinions; and yet Marion was a man of equal prudence and adroitness. He could ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... simple expression of a nature that had nothing to conceal. There was not even a hint of gossip about it, nor of ill nature. In a land where there were no newspapers, telegraphs, telephones, railroads, or neighbours, it seemed like the expression of a confidence which had in it neither malice nor impertinent coarseness. And yet Bauer was puzzled to know what Clifford's real feeling was towards Miss Gray even after Clifford's own open statement made to him that day while they were sitting on the ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... suffering fellow-men and into closer communion with his God. He had learned that religion is a thing of the spirit, and not a matter of creeds and catechisms. Of Robert Burns's own religion it would be impertinent to inquire too curiously. The religion of a man is not to be paraded before the public like the manifesto of a party politician. After all, is there a single man who can sincerely, without equivocation or mental reservation, label himself Calvinist, Arminian, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... no impertinent tone, but in the low voice of one who "shall whisper out of the dust." He had not yet recovered from the first impression of his awakening, that the world in which he now stood was not a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that little world of traps and trickery, can have any idea of the obstacles and perplexities multiplied in the way of the most eminent and successful author by the mismanagement of managers, the jealousies and intrigues of rival authors, and the fantastic and impertinent caprices of actors. A long and baffling negotiation was carried on between Goldsmith and Colman, the manager of Covent Garden; who retained the play in his hands until the middle of January (1773), without coming to a decision. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... time to finish the rather curt contributions she vouchsafed toward the conversation. On her side, Mrs. Carew, mindful of her position and of her superior accent, which implied even more, wanting to be condescending and patronizing, and half afraid to be openly impertinent, was calm and self-possessed. She grew more freezingly courteous as the other lady ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... not be sententious any longer. Mending stockings is not exactly the sort of pastime I should choose—who do things quite as trifling without the utility—and even your Seigneurie peradventure.... I stop there for fear of growing impertinent. The argumentum ad hominem is apt to bring down the argumentum ad baculum, it is as well ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... just stood. At first she was glad there were other people down there, as if she and Basil were not enough to bear it alone, and she could almost have spoken to the two hopelessly pretty brides, with parasols and impertinent little boots, whom their attendant husbands were helping over the sharp and slippery rocks, so bare beyond the spray, so green and mossy within the fall of mist. But in another breath she forgot them; as she looked on that dizzied sea, hurling itself from ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Mrs. Marteen, and I'm ready to do as much again whenever you need it. You say you won't take it—why, it's yours. You must. I want to be friends. I don't want this thing lying between us, crossing our thoughts. If I ask you impertinent questions, which I undoubtedly shall, I want them to have the sanction of good will. I want you to know that I feel nothing but kindness for you—nothing but pleasure ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... is as impertinent as he is vicious," he said at last, finding that to no interrogation could he draw forth any other response than a smile. "Here Angus,"—and he turned to the gamekeeper—"take him into the coach-house, and teach him a little behaviour. A touch or two of the whip will ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... finished all that lies on my mind, my dear, and am very easy: For have you not wondered, that I have so much employed myself in my library? Been so much at home, and yet not in your company?—No, sir, said I; I have never been so impertinent as to wonder at any thing you please to employ yourself about; nor would give way to a curiosity that should be troublesome to you: And, besides, I know your large possessions; and the method you take of looking yourself ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... some time, then began coughing with increasing violence, until I asked what he wanted. Then he would shyly stammer out his request. Never would they accost me or otherwise disturb me while I was writing or reading; yet at other times they could be positively impertinent, especially if excited. The islander is very nervous; when he is quiet, he is shy and reticent, but once he is aroused, all his bad instincts run riot, and incredible savageness and cruelty appear. The secret of successful treatment of the natives seems to be to keep them very quiet, and ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... if she considered this a very impertinent question, the woman replied, with a slight toss ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... temperate reply to his letter: a reply which conveyed a decided refusal of his offers—asserted positively her own marriage, and the claims of her children—intimated legal proceedings—and was signed in the name of Catherine Beaufort. Mr. Beaufort put the letter in his bureau, labelled, "Impertinent answer from Mrs. Morton, Sept. 14," and was quite contented to forget the existence of the writer, until his lawyer, Mr. Blackwell, informed him that a suit had been instituted ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... my son Gildart pressed Miss Puff to attempt another tart, and whispered something impertinent in her ear, for the poor thing's pink round face suddenly became scarlet, and she puffed out in a dangerously explosive manner with ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... was so. A few questions were put to me by individuals, rather for the sake of gratifying an impertinent curiosity, than that of elucidating further proof of my proficiency, and the ceremony was finished by my formal reception into the body of the church. A prayer was offered, an address delivered, a hymn sung—the eyes of many ladies were turned with smiling interest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... some expression of regret, it was to warn you never again to assume the tone of insinuation and sarcasm to me, which you permitted yourself to-day in the presence of Molly. You could not restrain this long habit of censuring, of unwarrantable and impertinent criticism, of your elder, and when you referred to my past, Molly could not but be offended by the mockery of your tones. Moreover, you took upon yourself, if I have heard aright, to disapprove openly of our marriage. Upon what ground that would bear announcing I know not, but let ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... thus had he been her attendant. She instinctively looked round in the hopes that he might still be following, but she could not see him. She therefore went on, trusting that her silence would induce the impertinent stranger to allow her ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... ladies' hatpins. Still, it was useless denying it, the car looked, if not like a market-woman, at least like a disreputable old tramp of the motor world, with its wreaths of luggage looped on anyhow, as if it were a string of giant sausages; and I hated the Prince not only for his impertinent pleasure in our plight, but for the proud magnificence of his car, which gained new lustre ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... expatiating on the great difficulty of comprehending the native character, which is inscrutable—"not in the individuals, but in the race." They are fickle and false, also of a cold temperament, and malicious, dull, and lazy—due to "the influence of the moon." They are ungrateful, lazy, rude and impertinent, arrogant, and generally disagreeable. San Agustin relates many of their peculiar traits, and incidents showing these, to much disparagement of the natives. He berates their ignorance and superstition, their faults of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... "you are not speaking the truth, you have stolen the cow, and you are very impertinent as well. We will take you ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... Peters, I know it is very impertinent for me to follow you up here, but how could you expect me to stay down yonder, with the floor trembling over head, and that violin—? I beg your pardon, sir," continued young Farnham, addressing ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... the more accurate, will seem the more like life in fifty years' time. Borrow is never technical. If he quotes Gypsy it is not for the sake of the colour effect on those who read Gypsy as they run. His effects are for a certain distance and in a certain atmosphere where technicality would be impertinent. ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... to gardening in it. Rather than a grief, it was a pain and disgust to see. Fruit-trees there were on the wall, but run wild with endless shoots, which stuck like a hog's mane over the top of it, and out in every direction from the face of it with a look of impertinent daring. All the fastenings were broken away, and only the old branches, from habit, kept their places against it. Everything all about seemed striving back to a dear disorder and salvage liberty. The walks were covered with weeds, and almost impassable with unpruned branches, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... secret of success in society, is a certain heartiness and sympathy. A man who is not happy in the company, cannot find any word in his memory that will fit the occasion. All his information is a little impertinent. A man who is happy there, finds in every turn of the conversation equally lucky occasions for the introduction of that which he has to say. The favorites of society, and what it calls whole souls, are able men, and of more spirit than wit, who have no uncomfortable egotism, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in silence; then "Come," I said, "I am going to be impertinent! I am in a mood to ask questions, and to ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to direct the attention of the Court to this unprecedented tampering with the jury, by this gratuitous exhibition of matter impertinent and ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... pusxi. Impend minaci. Impenetrable nepenetrebla. Imperative ordona. Imperfect neperfekta. Imperfection difektajxo. Imperial imperia. Imperishable nepereema. Impermeable nepenetrebla. Impersonal nepersona. Impertinent malrespekta. Imperturbable stoika. Impetuous vivega. Impetus antauxenpusxo. Impiety malpieco. Impious malpia. Implacable vengxema. Implant enradiki. Implement ilo. Implicate impliki. Implied neesprimita. Implore petegi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... distinction to a splendid entertainment, which was to have taken place on the very day when he received his order of banishment, and had written in the notes of invitation—M. Le Comte de Lusace will be there. This Count was the brother of the Dauphine, and this mention of him was deservedly thought impertinent. The King said, wittily enough, "Lambert and Moliere will be there." She scarcely ever spoke of the Cardinal de Bernis after his dismissal from ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... an impertinent scoundrel," said the general. "If you had been a good soldier you would never need to ask for help. I shall not give ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 'I am ready to do full justice to your intentions, all that's very fine, I admit, very exalted, but we are simple people, we do not gild our gingerbread, we are not capable of following the flight of great minds like yours.... What you think sincere, we regard as impertinent and disingenuous and indiscreet.... What is clear and simple to you, is involved and obscure to us.... You boast of what we conceal.... How are we to understand you! Excuse me, I can neither regard you as a friend, nor will I give you my hand.... That is petty, perhaps, ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... had not always enjoyed, though, even to her grandchildren, she could be, when the occasion demanded it, severe. The eldest of them, the little Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, was a remarkably headstrong child; he dared to be impertinent even to his grandmother; and once, when she told him to bow to a visitor at Osborne, he disobeyed her outright. This would not do: the order was sternly repeated, and the naughty boy, noticing that his grandmama had suddenly turned ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... a theatrical or literary suggestion that Lady Ardmore's daughter should be in love with Mr. Macdonald. The effect of the new point of view was most salutary, on the whole. She had come to think herself the only prominent figure in the Reverend Ronald's landscape, and anything more impertinent than her tone with him (unless it is his with her) I certainly never heard. This criticism, however, relates only to their public performances, and I have long suspected that their private conversations are ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... or two later this is answered by a letter signed M. G. W., who was a colored grocer of Yates Street (Lester & Gibbs). He was a clever writer, and handled the gentleman, Mr. Sharpstone, without gloves, saying some very pertinent as well as impertinent things, taking especial exception to the reference of Mr. Sharpstone to the ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... Phil that if she would keep a diary and write down honestly everything that happened to her if would some day put Pepys to the blush. Not every day was as rich in adventure as this; but this is not a bad sample. If Phil had been a prig or fresh or impertinent, she would not have been the idol of Main Street. A genius for being on the spot when events are forward must be born in one, and her casual, indifferent air contributed to a belief in Main Street that she was leagued with supernatural agencies. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... the Carper does, who then tells the Chaplain Saygrace, and he supposes prays to God to bless the entertainment of the Devil, tho there is not a word of a Grace spoke at all; and after, when he grows hot, positive, and impertinent, which the Duke his patron being at Table, only bears with, to divert himself, he insolently calls Don Quixot, Don Coxcomb, who justly enrag'd, ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... the Kembles' sister. To Romney's studio Cumberland also brought Garrick, with some hope that the great actor might interest himself in favour of the painter. But Garrick was too closely allied with Sir Joshua; he was wilfully blinded to the merits of Romney. He criticised with most impertinent candour the works he found in the studio, pausing before a large family group of portraits and with an affected imitation of the attitude of the chief figure, saying, 'Upon my word, Mr. Romney, this is ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... did not tell her children the true reason for leaving. She merely said that Mrs Cork had been very impertinent, and that they must look out for other rooms. Madge instantly recollected Great Ormond Street, but she did not know the number, and oddly enough she had completely forgotten Mrs Caffyn's name. It was a peculiar name, she had heard it only once, she had not noticed it over the door, and her ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... grandmother continued: "Then nothing remains for me but to forbid your having any communication whatever with one whose conduct in my house has been so unpardonably rude and vulgar. You will never marry him, Margaret, never! Nay, I would sooner see you dead than the wife of that low, mean, impertinent fellow!" ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... glad of this opportunity to ask you what may seem a foolish, if not impertinent question. The maid, Ellen, in showing me my room, was very careful to assure me that she slept near me and would let me into her room in case I experienced any alarm in the night; and when I showed surprise at her expecting me to feel alarm of any kind ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... whom he was waiting with anxious expectation, entered, and summoned him to the presence of Lord Eskdale, who, with a shrewd yet lounging air, which concealed his own foreboding perplexity, said, 'Well, Prevost, what is the matter? The people here been impertinent?' ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... advancement which the science of engraving has made in the lapse of the last ten years; or how far it has left behind those mere scratches of the graver which lit up our young admiration when a boy. Two of these we will be impertinent enough to criticise, in spite of the affection with which we cherish the visionary recollection of the pictures of grandmother's parlour. The subjects were "courtship," and "matrimony." In the former, the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... prithee, be not impertinent, my lord; some of you lords are such conceited, well ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... about solitude and society," he thus sums up: "Any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on the plain at the base of the mountain instead of climbing steadily to its top. Of course you will be glad of all the society you can get to go up with? Will you go to glory with me? is the burden of the song. It is not that we ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... garland of Emelye. Eyther for euerye, an overnice correction. The intellect of Arcite had not wholly gone, or he would not have known Emelye. Straught, a better word than haughte. Visage for vassalage, an impertinent correction. Leefe for lothe, a nedeless correction. It is more likely that Absolon knocked than that he coughed at the window. Surrye or Russye, indifferent which. Cambuscan is Caius canne. "That may not saye naye," better than "there ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... tongue, you impertinent, forward young man!" said Catherine in a rage. "There, now!" added she, beginning to cry, "I've forgotten what I was going ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... elder Brother, has set up for a kind of wit; and leans towards the Philosophe side. Monseigneur d'Artois pulls the mask from a fair impertinent; fights a duel in consequence,—almost drawing blood. (Besenval, ii. 282-330.) He has breeches of a kind new in this world;—a fabulous kind; 'four tall lackeys,' says Mercier, as if he had seen it, 'hold him up in the air, that he may fall into ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... word. I dislike your secrecy—something dark and hidden within you—and I fear your influence over my uncle. You have known me less than a fortnight—Mr. Farrington, less than a week—yet you have made what I can only conceive to be impertinent proposals of marriage to me. To-day you were for three hours with my uncle. I can only guess what your ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... the whole night rambling about the city, inventing and carrying into execution the most impertinent, practical jokes. One of our favourite pleasures was to unmoor the patricians' gondolas, and to let them float at random along the canals, enjoying by anticipation all the curses that gondoliers would not fail to indulge in. We would rouse up hurriedly, in the middle of the night, an honest ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... not tend to assist Mrs. Felix in that self-control which, with all her wildness, she could appositely practise. In the presence of the Clevelands she was fitful, capricious, perplexing; sometimes impertinent, sometimes humble; but always ill at ease, and ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... sir, that I have offended," said he at length, keeping a tight hand upon his every instinct—which was to knock this impertinent stranger down. "But if I have, I beg that you will believe that I have done so unwittingly. ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... hills, smothered among green trees. That was Cold Branch—no boom town, but the slow growth of many years. Cold Branch lay on the edge of the grape and corn lands. The big country road ran just back of the heights. Cold Branch had nothing in common with the frisky ambition of Okochee with its impertinent lake. ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... mock heroic, and the lower lyric compositions, yet in Christian poems, of the sublime and greater kind, a mixture of the Pagan theology must, by all who are masters of reflexion and good sense, be condemned, if not as impious, at least, as impertinent and absurd. And this is a truth so clear and evident, that I make no doubt it will, by degrees, force its way, and prevail over the contrary practice. Should Britons recover their virtue, and reform their taste, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... sharply, "don't be impertinent. There are so many strangers driving," she continued, to the man; "do stand and tell us who they are. You know ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... replied, "Sir, I can wait." To a stupid justice of the peace, who had wearied him with a long account of his having caused four convicts to be condemned to transportation, he answered, "I heartily wish I were a fifth;" a repartee that calls to our mind Horace's answer to the impertinent fellow: ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... who had come to recommend his son for a bishopric was so angry when Vincent explained that he did not see his way to grant his request that he answered the "impertinent peasant" with a blow. Vincent, without the slightest allusion to this treatment, quietly escorted him downstairs and saw him into his carriage. Insulted another day in public by a magistrate whose interests ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... visitor kindly began to talk to one of the children, another was sure to draw near and "take up" all the first child's answers, with smart comments and catches that sounded as silly as they were tiresome and impertinent. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... had spoken in some time. The young man looked at her sharply—rather too long a look, Betty thought; but there was nothing impertinent in it. ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... the sage answered him, "Precisely for that reason—because it does not avail." It is manifest that weeping avails something, even if only the alleviation of distress; but the deep sense of Solon's reply to the impertinent questioner is plainly seen. And I am convinced that we should solve many things if we all went out into the streets and uncovered our griefs, which perhaps would prove to be but one sole common grief, and joined together in beweeping ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... hanged if that's not your fellow there, Charley," said Power, as he came to a dead stop a few yards off. "What an impertinent varlet he is; only to think of him there, presiding among a set of fellows that have fought all the battles in the Peninsular war. At this moment I'll be hanged if he is not going ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... haw!" screamed the impertinent young Irishman, and the story was all over Connemara and Joyce's Country in a ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to see her at her house, Place d'Orleans. I found it a handsome modern residence. She had not answered my letter, written about a week before, and I felt a little anxious lest she should not receive me; for she is too much the mark of impertinent curiosity, as well as too busy, to be easily accessible to strangers. I am by no means timid, but I have suffered, for the first time in France, some of the torments of mauvaise honte, enough to see what they must be ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in the mind of the Secretary of State of two things—first of all, of the Indian point of view; and, secondly, the point of view as it appears to those who are the masters of me and of you. Do not forget that adjustment has to be made. It would be impertinent of me to pay compliments to the Civil Service, to whom I propose this toast—"The Health of the Indian Civil Service." You might think for a moment, that it was an amateur proposing prosperity and success to experts. I have ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... 'Impertinent!' cried Margaret. 'It's the nicest thing any one has said to me for months, and thank goodness I'm not above ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... "No, not impertinent—as yet," and she told him what had passed between Meyer and herself, adding, "You see, father, I detest this man; indeed, I want to have nothing to do with any man; for me all that is over and done with," and ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... have fallen into sin and impiety as soon as they drank of the enchanted cup of prosperity? Men that can bear prosperity, are for heaven; even wise devils leave them alone. As for the one who persecuted and beggared job, how foolish and impertinent he was! If he had understood humanity, he would have multiplied his riches, and possessed him of health, and honors, and pleasures: THAT is the ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... Mrs. Prentiss dryly. She added, holding out her hand with a charming smile: "But later, I was so proud to have known Gisela Doering, that personal curiosity seemed impertinent. How we have missed your writings these ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... knocking at her parlour door, and lingered for a talk which ended only at supper time. He spoke of his own affairs, and grew more ready to do so as his hearer manifested a genuine interest, without impertinent curiosity. Little by little he imparted to Mrs. Elderfield a complete knowledge of his commercial history, of his pecuniary standing—matters of which he had never before spoken to a mere acquaintance. A change was coming over him; the foundations of habit ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... on the canals at all hours, and if Venice be so impertinent in her system of watchfulness, thou knowest, father, that, without extraordinary motive, that disguise is sacred. Without this narrow privilege, the town would not be habitable ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... me," Borrowdean asked, "if I make a remark which may sound a little impertinent? You and Mannering were great friends at Blakely. On my first visit there you will remember that you did not attempt to conceal that there was more than an ordinary intimacy between you. Yet to-day I notice that there are indications on both your parts of a desire to avoid ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reached the house, it was late enough, And many impertinent things were said, Of time and distance, and such dull stuff, But we said ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... he heard the impertinent and boasting message which De Langurant had sent him. He started up immediately and called for his arms, commanding, at the same time, that his horse should be saddled. He was very soon equipped and ready. The gate was opened, the drawbridge let down, and he sallied forth. De Langurant was waiting ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Supervisor was stationed in Antique province, while in Capiz was a detachment of the regular army. And in full sight of both on the top of a precipice, an insurrecto flag flaunted its impertinent message. ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... Montfort? Not his sister? You don't mean it. Why, I was at school with Carlos, the first school I ever went to. An old priest kept it, in Plaza Nero. Carlos was a good fellow, and gave me the biggest licking once—I'm very glad we met, Miss Montfort. And—I don't mean to be impertinent, I'm sure you know that; but—what are you going to ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... is accounted for, anyway," declared Roger. "You won't think it impertinent if I figure out how much you're ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... much the orkider of the two. He was a person with whom Mr. Furze seldom interfered. He was, it is true, a good workman in the general fitting department, in setting grates, and for jobs of that kind, but he was impertinent and disobedient. Mr. Furze, however, tolerated his insults, and generally allowed him to have his own way. He was not only afraid of Orkid Jim, but he was a victim to that unhappy dread of a quarrel which is the torment and curse of weak minds. It is, no doubt, ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... poor horses and mules, worn and sore, stood dripping and wretched, with quivering knees, in the middle of the square—too miserable to feed, only now and then slashing their long wet tails to right or left to drive away impertinent flies. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... disposition, should never hint at, or complain of, Philip's attempts upon his life. Had he complained—had he accused Philip of murder—had he vowed vengeance and demanded justice on his return to the authorities, it had been different; but no—there he was, making his uncalled-for and impertinent observations, with his eternal chuckle and sarcasm, as if he had not the least ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... invite no Englishman of rank or name. This gives me an opportunity, my dear lord, of mentioning one Englishman, not of great rank, but who is very unhappy that you have taken no notice of him. You know how utterly averse I am to meddle, or give impertinent advice; but the letter I saw was expressed with so much respect and esteem for you, that you would love the person. It is Mr. Selwyn, the banker. He says, he expected no favour; but the great regard ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the general mind could take firm hold of enough for such feelings. Cold, intangible, he was to play across the life of others. A momentary resentment was sometimes felt at a presence which would not mingle with theirs; his scrutiny, though not hostile, was recognized as unfeeling and impertinent, and his mirth unsettled all objects from their foundations. But he was soon forgiven and forgotten. Hearts went not forth to war against or to seek one who was a mere experimentalist and observer in existence. For ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... has made her debut in the literary arena, by the publication in the feuilleton of a daily newspaper of the first portion of what she calls her "Memoirs:" a quasi-impertinent epistle to the ex-king of Bavaria. Since, the publication has been suspended. It ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... guards were enjoying themselves my companion and I, perched on the top of the load, became the target for the jokes and gibes of the curious crowd which had collected round the vehicle. One fellow in the crowd was particularly impertinent and offensive with the result that we soon became riled. He came close to the side of the wagon to shout some particularly insulting epithet. With a dexterous movement my friend and I, who had been ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... you mistake me," the Boy replied. "If there be one thing I deprecate more than another it is the impertinent ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... religious instruction, during the school-hours, from their respective pastors. The present system of the Public Schools in the United States professes to exclude all religious exercises. We are often told that this is the American system, and that it is very impertinent for foreigners to wish to bring religion into schools against the American idea. Now the assertion that the exclusion of all religion from the schools is truly American, that it is an essential part ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... in its fashions, and as touchy in the temper of its wearers. To pull a guardsman by his coat-tail would be as unpardonable an offence as to tread on a lady's skirt; and to offer an opinion upon a lancer's cap might be considered as impertinent as to criticise a lady's bonnet. Having, however, been bold enough to commit offences of the latter description, we will now venture to brave the wrath of the whole of Her Majesty's forces, horse, foot, and artillery, while we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... the widow is called impertinent and ignorant by a lawyer of whom she demands back her fee, on his returning her brief and declining to plead for her. This draws ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... leaves and twigs, and perhaps piping a little aria at intervals, congratulating himself on having found a pleasant, quiet place, when, lo! a gang of English sparrows crowd around him, peering at him now with one eye, now with the other, canting their heads in their impertinent way, bowing and scraping and blinking, and for all the world seeming to make such derisive remarks as, "Oh, what a fine fellow! Quite stuck-up, ain't he? Isn't that a stylish topknot, though? He! ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... the impertinent Visits of the Apothecaries, and non-sensical, troublesome, and discouraging, frightful discourses to the Patient, of whom no man can expect more then the Common Proverb gives to Praters, and impertinent Speakers, That they talk ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... have done well, Madam, (said D'Elmont, looking on her with Eyes sparkling with Indignation) you have done well, by your impertinent Curiosity and Imprudence, to rouze me from my Dream of Happiness, and remind me that I am that wretched thing a Husband! 'Tis well indeed, answer'd Alovisa, (who saw now that there was no need of ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... you suffer as I do," cried Amy, "for you don't have to go to school with impertinent girls, who plague you if you don't know your lessons, and laugh at your dresses, and label your father if he isn't rich, and insult you when your nose ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... decided bearing on any theory of heredity. Does the occurrence of near-by cases have no significance? We are not yet in a position to state this as a fact. Does inquiry concerning religion seem especially impertinent? What if some future investigation should prove that cancer everywhere, is more prevalent among the Christians than the Jews? Does the social condition of the sufferer seem to have no relation to cause? What if we discover, ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... it is hard to be quite yourself. But he puts the wind into your sails; and, my word, he can take it out of your sails, if he likes! I have only seen him really angry about twice, and then it was really appalling. Once was when a man lied to him, and once was when a man was impertinent to him. He simply blasted them with his displeasure—that is the only word. He hates getting angry—I expect he had a bad temper once—and he apologises afterwards; but it's no use—it's like a thunderstorm apologising to a tree which has been struck. I don't ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... very honestly Dryden's Virgil, to let the reader know, that this is not that Virgil so much admired in the Augustaean age, an author whom Mr. Dryden once thought untranslatable, but a Virgil of another stamp, of a coarser allay; a silly, impertinent, nonsensical writer, of a various and uncertain style, a mere Alexander Ross, or somebody inferior to him; who could never have been known again in the translation, if the name of Virgil had not been bestowed upon him in large characters in the frontispiece, and in the running title. Indeed, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... there were serious faces, more than one, in that house where it was impertinent to speak of death and eternity. It is true, that for a time gay visitors were admitted to Helen's chamber, and there was hollow laughter there, as they talked of balls, parties, and new fashions, and told the poor girl that she ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... asked, with a sort of breezy diffidence, if I would go with him. I was glad to do so. It flashed across my mind that yonder on the terrace he might suddenly blurt out: "I say, look here, don't think me awfully impertinent, but this money's no earthly use to me. I do wish you'd accept it as a very small return for all the pleasure your work has given me, and— There, PLEASE! Not another word!"—all with such candor, ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... not sweep and dust the parlor to suit me, and I took her to task about it. She threw down her broom and said she would take no words from me. Then I told her to pack her trunk and leave the house. She grew more impertinent than ever, and said she would go, but I would have to pay her her wages regularly anyway. I asked what she meant. Then she told me to go and look for the ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... I tell? When I made the same inquiry of him he merely answered that he was tired of being trumpeted to the world by these 'impertinent Yankee reporters!' The next day he left me alone in that stupid place and went out on his 'business,' whatever that was. And when he returned in the evening he told me that the 'business' was happily concluded, and that we might ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... sharply open, and the tangle-haired, rosy-cheeked Britta confronted him with an aspect which was by no means encouraging or polite. Her round blue eyes sparkled saucily, and she placed her bare, plump, red arms, wet with recent soapsuds, akimbo on her sturdy little hips, with an air that was decidedly impertinent. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... proper. To judge whether he is fit to be employed, may surely be trusted to the discretion of the employers, whose interest it so much concerns. The affected anxiety of the lawgiver, lest they should employ an improper person, is evidently as impertinent as it is oppressive. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... Lesbia: you know I dont wish to be impertinent; but these are not the correct views for an ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... parish was called together, and an invitation extended to Brother Johns to continue his ministrations for a month further. Of course the novitiate understood this to be the crucial test; and he accepted it with a composure, and a lack of impertinent effort to please them overmuch, which altogether charmed them. On four successive Saturdays he drove over to Ashfield,—sometimes stopping with one or the other of the two deacons, and at other times with Squire Elderkin,—and on one or two occasions taking his wife by special invitation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... narration, and if the celebratinge the memory of eminent and extraordinary persons, and transmittinge ther greate virtues for the imitation of posterity, be one of the principle endes and dutyes of History, it will not be thought impertinent in this place to remember a losse, which noe tyme will suffer to be forgotten, and no successe or good fortune could repayre; In this unhappy battell was slayne the L'd Viscounte Falkelande, a person of such prodigious partes of learninge and knowledge, of that inimitable ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... ultimate reconciliation of father and son. At all events, it would do no harm to learn more of this extraordinary suitor, and meanwhile he must treat him with respect while carefully guarding his own dignity against possibly impertinent advances. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... at her during that long evening, I felt that it was impertinent to probe her heart with my wonderings and surmises. I knew instinctively just how carefully she was hiding her hurt from all human eyes. I knew how her fierce pride was bearing up under the cruelty of it. I felt how she had rushed from the humiliation one man ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... He remained silent for a few seconds, then turning again to Harry, he said: "I wonder if you would consider me very impertinent if, upon the strength of our extremely brief acquaintance, I were to offer ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... "only think of our Wenna being married to Mr. Trelyon, and how happy and pleased and pretty she would look as they went walking together! And then how proud he would be to have so nice a wife! and he would joke about her and be very impertinent, but he would simply worship her all the same, and do everything he could to please her. And he would take her away and show her all the beautiful places abroad; and he would have a yacht, too; and he would give her a fine house in London. And don't you think our Wenna would fascinate everybody ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... example of humour—provoking to smiles while touching to tears—with a wonderful introductory piling up of definitions: "A Poor Relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature,—a piece of impertinent correspondency,—a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity,—an unwelcome remembrancer," and so on. "This theme of poor relations is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic associations that it is difficult to keep the account distinct without ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... like to hear about everything that goes on in the world. It isn't curiosity, and yet in a way it is. I'm curious about everything that goes on—everywhere. It isn't impertinent curiosity, anyway." ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... and waved his hand as if dismissing all impertinent offers of insignificant sums from his mind, "well, it won't do any harm to the district if I do stop the working there a bit—on the contrary, it'll teach folk to stick to their land. But they'll feel it in the ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Cotton Mather's Breviate of the trial of George Burroughs, we shall see how slight and inadequate was what Increase Mather could have heard, at the Trial, to prove that Burroughs had exhibited strength which the Devil only could have supplied. The most trivial and impertinent matter was all that was needed, to be added to spectral testimony, to give it fatal effect. The value, by the way, of Increase Mather's averment, that "more than that which is called Spectre Evidence" was adduced against the persons convicted, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... ruins of the fore world. Here the foundations of the hills were laid; here the earth-giants wrought and builded. They constrain one to silence and meditation; the whispering and rustling trees seem trivial and impertinent. ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... COMPANY, say 1,000 pounds a year, as my Angels know], which used to be the readiest item of my Pittance. But M. le Duc de Choiseul will triumph over Luc in one way or other; then what joy! I suppose he shows you my impertinent reveries. Do you know, Luc is so mad, that I don't despair of bringing him to reason [persuading him to give up Cleve, and knuckle as he should, in this Peace Affair]. That were what I should call the true Comedy! I should like to have your advices on the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... thought of the three flights of stairs which were the only escape from them—three long, steep flights, which left her breathless, her knees trembling under her great weight, and which led out on the narrow side street, full of noisy, impertinent children and clattering traffic. Beyond that, nothing—a city full of strangers whose every thought and way of life were foreign to her, whose very breath came in hurried, feverish gasps, who exhaled, as they passed her, an almost palpable emanation of hostile indifference to ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... standing up and fingering his hat round and round, "I said I talked no doctrine now; but I must unsay that; and—you will not think me impertinent if I ask ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... torpid snake, it put him into immediate motion. He now took off his spectacles, as if to indulge himself with a view of me by the naked eye; and after a scrutinizing look, which, in another place and person, I should probably have resented as impertinent, but which here seemed part of his profession, he rose from his seat and ushered me into another apartment. This room was probably his place of reception for criminals of a more exalted order; for it was lined ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... decidedly in his favor. While we smile at the simplicity of his heart and the narrowness of his views, which made him regard everything out of the direct path of his daily duty, and the rigid exigencies of the service, as trivial and impertinent, which inspired him with contempt for the swelling vanity of some of his coadjutors, and the literary exercises and curious researches of others, we cannot but applaud that strict and conscientious ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... snarled Vidac. "But I tell you what I will do. I'll confine you to your quarters for ten days for that impertinent request! And if I so much as see your noses outside your quarters, I'll really get ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... and dried-up wells. There is a certain class of vain and sneering mortals, in whose conceit nothing is such proof of superior sense as discarding the greatest number of topics and arguments as obsolete or impertinent. It is to be reckoned on that some of these, on hearing again the old maxims, that a people without divine instruction must be a vicious one, and that a vicious people must be an unhappy one,—and those maxims accompanied with a description of the old pagan world as illustrative evidence,—will ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... advance to the door pointed out, and put his head inside, and there, on beholding a group of young ladies of all ages, from eight to fourteen, and no little brother, and finding all eyes turned upon himself as an impertinent intruder, he drew his head back quickly, and was met with a loud laugh from Jane, which so annoyed him, that without stopping to think, he ran off to his own room as fast as he could. The voice of Mary Roscoe however reached him as he ran along the gallery, uttering these words: "I'll take care of ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
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