"Inappropriate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or abstruse reasoning; is often very dull of apprehension. Ideas are not presented in logical order, but seem to fall out promiscuously, and fairly represent the condition of a disordered brain. Attempts at joking are generally failures, as the jest is sure to be inappropriate or vulgar, and no one but himself sees any occasion for laughter except at his stupidity. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... going to use an inappropriate word, and say, the superb ease with which He grappled with, and overcame, all types of disease is a revelation on a lower level of the inexhaustible and all-sufficient fullness of His healing power. He can cope with all sin-the world's sin, and the individual's. And, as I believe, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... word Satraps (Satrapes) made one of the ordinary and most inappropriate titles (borrowed, no doubt, from the Byzantine Court), by which the Saxons, in their ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hands and closed eyes for a few minutes when his task was done, trying to remember "Our Father", which was the prayer he had learned at his mother's knee many years before. It was the only prayer that occurred to him then, and it was not so inappropriate as it seemed. Then he went back to the first hole that he had dug, and, carefully filling it in, made a little cross of plaited sticks, which he planted at the head of the grave that held ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... articles to stand, in the main, substantially as written immediately after the close of hostilities. The opening paragraphs, while less applicable, in their immediate purport, to the present moment, are nevertheless not inappropriate as an explanation of the general tenor of the work itself; and they suggest, moreover, another line of reflection upon the influence, imperceptibly exerted, and passively accepted in men's minds, by the quiet passing of even a single ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... We have no account of sprinkling and pouring until the third century. The Novatians practised it in the third century. When we understand the true object of baptism, and what it represents, we find that sprinkling and pouring would be altogether inappropriate. ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... to see you concerning an affair which, although not serious, necessitates a conversation with you. I would have spoken to you on this subject this evening when at Mr. Van de Werve's, but the place was inappropriate to such discussions." ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... Barton, who thought that a little familiarity would not be inappropriate, 'I've asked you to meet me so that we might come to some agreement about the rents. We've known each other a long time, and my family has been on this estate I don't know for how many generations. Therefore—why, of course, I should be very sorry if we had any falling out. I don't know much about ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... regarding me (as they seemed to suppose), while I, in a different part of the room, could hardly repress a smile at their mistake, solemnized as they were, and I too, for that matter, by my recent demise. A sensation (the word you see is material and inappropriate) of etherealization and imponderability pervaded me, and I was not sorry to get rid of such a dull, slow mass as I now perceived myself to be, lying there on the bed. When I speak of my death, let me be understood to say that there was no change, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... just described, lives almost entirely among the branches of the trees. In shape it is somewhat like a weasel, and is the largest of the tree martens. It is known as the wood-shock or pekan, and is also called the black cat, and fisher. This last term is inappropriate, as it is not in any way piscivorous. It is of a dark brown hue, with a line of black shining hair reaching from the neck to the extremity of the tail. The under parts are lighter; some entirely white. It possesses also a very large, full, and ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Peterkin's idea was not inappropriate, for, what with the sea roaring in white foam up to our very feet, and the spray flying in white sheets continually over our heads, and the water dripping heavily from the ledge above like a curtain in front of our cave, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... all, it isn't the food and drink, nor yet the unusual surroundings, that bring you back to these places. It's the—well, one has to use, once in a while, the hard-worked and generally inappropriate word "atmosphere." Like "temperament" and "individuality" and the rest of the writer-folk's old reliables, "atmosphere" is too often only a makeshift, a lazy way of expressing something you won't take ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... bored; her simple words irritated him with their unexpected and inappropriate repentance; but for the tears in her eyes he might have thought her to be ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... in painting; a landscape painter, for instance, when he has finished a picture of mountains and crags, will not hesitate to draw, in the very middle of the sky, a circle, or a lozenge, or some kind of framework, within which he will represent anything incoherent and inappropriate: a bonze fanning himself, or a lady taking a cup of tea. Nothing is more thoroughly Japanese than such digressions, made without ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... and aslant against the wind, as if leaning against a wall. The two ladies disappeared into the house; rather, to speak truly, they were blown into the house. Their two frocks, blue and white, looked like two big broken flowers, driving and drifting upon the gale. Nor is such a poetic fancy inappropriate, for there was something oddly romantic about this inrush of air and light after a long, leaden and unlifting day. Grass and garden trees seemed glittering with something at once good and unnatural, like a fire from fairyland. It seemed like a strange sunrise at ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... The architects, who learned their craft from the designs of Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren, had no ambition to express their own fancy. They were loyally obedient to the tradition of the masters, and the houses which they planned, plain in their neatness, are neither pretentious nor inappropriate. Nowhere in Boston will you find the extravagant ingenuity which makes New York ridiculous; nowhere will you be disturbed by an absurd mimicry of exotic styles; nowhere are you asked to wonder at mountainous blocks of stone. Boston is not a city of giants, but of men who ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... great difference in opinion regarding the advisability of telling fairy stories to very young children, and there can be no question that some of them are entirely undesirable and inappropriate. Those containing a fierce or horrible element must, of course, be promptly ruled out of court, including the "bluggy" tales of cruel stepmothers, ferocious giants and ogres, which fill the so-called fairy literature. Yet those which are pure in tone and gay with ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... a common tradition, a common literature, or a common religion. Each had a temperament and genius of its own, and each needed a different channel of expression. Laws applicable to one island were meaningless or noxious in the other; taxation applicable to a rich industrial island was inappropriate and oppressive for a poor agricultural island. And upon a system comprising all these incompatibilities there was grafted the ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... of the royal pair at my 'umble home, all its surroundings began to lose the charm of rustic simplicity, and appear shabby, inappropriate, and unendurable. It became evident that the entire place must be raised, and at once, to ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... of nearly equal height,* [The eastern and western tops, are respectively 27,826 and 28,177 feet above the level of the sea.] which form a line running north-west. It exposes many white or grey rocks, bare of snow, and disposed in strata* [I am aware that the word strata is inappropriate here; the appearance of stratification or bedding, if it indicate any structure of the rock, being, I cannot doubt, due to that action which gives parallel cleavage planes to granite in many parts of the world, and to which ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... disproportion by its immortal pause. It does not bid us follow man or woman to an illogical conclusion. Mrs. Micawber never does desert Mr. Micawber. Considering her mental powers, by the way, an illogical conclusion for her would be manifestly inappropriate. Shakespeare, indeed, having seen a life whole, sees it to an end: sees it out, and Falstaff dies. More than Promethean was the audacity that, having kindled, quenched that spark. But otherwise the grotesque man in literature is immortal, and with something more significant than the immortality ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... inappropriate, the Tenor thought, and he got up. "It does not often happen so," he said; "but now I think of it I believe I have some Burgundy in the house. The dean sent me a dozen the last time I was out of sorts, and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... New York from Gray Manor with his mind pleasantly at ease so far as Gordon Forsyth was concerned. His associates noticed a certain smugness and satisfaction about him and they often caught him smiling at inappropriate moments and then pulling himself together as though his thoughts had been wandering far from fields ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... applied by analogy to things so different in their own nature as a lump of sugar, a young lady, a tune, a poem, and so on. Again, because the head is the highest part of man, the highest part of a stream is called by analogy 'the head.' It is plainly inappropriate to make a separate class of analogous terms. Rather, terms become equivocal by being extended by analogy ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... seemed singularly inappropriate; dust could not be transformed, even in imagination, into snow, nor heat into frost, any more easily than we could turn dried apples into roast beef and plum-pudding. Excellent food as dried fruit is, yet it is apt to become monotonous when it must do duty for breakfast, dinner, and ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... darling, Florence is truly the city of flowers, and it is not inappropriate that she should have a red lily for her emblem. It is ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... His boyish face was deeply flushed; he had sucked and bitten his blond moustache into a wisp; he was breathing heavily, with his mouth ajar; his very large and conspicuous blue eyes glittered with a sort of passion. (He wore those eyes in his odd little ugly face like some inappropriate decoration.) ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... archaeology or philosophy, so the literary teacher is apt to dazzle his pupils with brilliant but to them unintelligible criticism, or to surfeit them with literary history, or to impose upon them an inappropriate literary diet because it happens to suit his maturer taste or even his caprice. No one is likely to deny that such errors are possible; but I should not venture to speak so decidedly, if I were not aware of having too often fallen into them myself. And the only safeguard for the teacher ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... the dramatic entertainments wherewith it is proposed to celebrate Theseus's marriage. In Spenser's 'Teares of the Muses' each of the Nine laments in turn her declining influence on the literary and dramatic effort of the age. Theseus dismisses the suggestion with the not inappropriate comment: ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... all through the 29th with the opposition led by Richard Bland, George Wythe, Peyton Randolph, Speaker Robinson, and Benjamin Harrison contending that the time was inappropriate for more resolutions. Both house and council were already on record against the Stamp Act which no Virginian wanted. More resolutions were unnecessary, especially resolutions which were as inflammatory ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... joke that misfortune had precisely the opposite effect upon Dennis. If there was a bit of chaff left unchaffed in all Ireland, from Malin Head to Barley Cove, I believe it came into Dennis's head on this inappropriate occasion, and he forthwith discharged it at Alister's. To put some natures into a desperate situation seems like putting tartaric acid into soda and water—they sparkle up and froth. It certainly was so with Dennis O'Moore; and if Alister could hardly have been more raven-like ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... gratification, Tancred had nevertheless been an unusual number of hours without food. He had made during the period no inconsiderable exertion, and was still some distance from the city. Though he resigned himself perforce to the care of his little attendants, their solicitude therefore was not inappropriate. He partook of some of their dishes, and when he had at length succeeded in conveying to them his resolution to taste no more, they cleared the kiosk with as marvellous a celerity as they had stored it, and then two of them advanced with a nargileh and a chibouque, to offer ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... inappropriate at the close of this railway chapter to quote Steele's account of the ride given him out of compliment to his work and that of the Police generally, on the train which was the first to go through to the coast after Donald A. Smith had driven at Craigellachie ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... swinging, occur very often and generally remain unnoticed. The houses are on this account generally of but one story, and the loose volcanic soil on which they are built may lessen the violence of the shock. Their heavy tiled roofs, however, appear very inappropriate under such circumstances. Earthquakes are also of frequent occurrence in the provinces, but they, as a rule, cause so little damage, owing to the houses being constructed of timber or bamboo, that ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... should not be lacking in the kitchen. Pictures and fancy articles are inappropriate; but a few pots of easily cultivated flowers on the window ledge or arranged upon brackets about the window in winter, and a window box arranged as a jardiniere, with vines and blooming plants in summer, will greatly brighten the room, and thus serve to lighten the task of those ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... his caution. If he was patrolling a shallow on one side of an oyster-bar,—at the rate, let us say, of two steps a minute,—and took it into his head (an inappropriate phrase, as conveying an idea of something like suddenness) to try the water on the other side, he did not spread his wings, as a matter of course, and fly over. First he put up his head—an operation that makes another bird of him—and looked in all directions. ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... to obtain the grubs or larvae beneath. They are beneficial to vegetation. Ignorance is responsible for the misapplied names given to many of our well disposed and useful birds, and it would be well if teachers were to discourage the use of inappropriate names and familiarize the children with those ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... as ladies generally do at the sauciness of a young male; but proposed an amendment. She would open her wardrobe, and look out all the contents for Edward's inspection; and, if the mere sight of them did not convince him they were inappropriate to a bride, why then she would coincide with his views, and resign ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... little thermometer in her hand-bag. She had it by her and rose to put it under his tongue. He struck it from her, and she stared at him. He stood quivering like an overdriven horse. He called her a name highly proper in a kennel club, but inappropriate to ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... been provided. The little feast looked somewhat meagre, and the doctor spoke irreverently of his housekeeper and proceeded to abstract a jar of her best strawberry jam from the convenient store-closet, and to collect other articles of food which seemed to him to be inviting, however inappropriate to the occasion. The guest would have none of the jam, but Dr. Leslie cut a slice of the loaf of bread for himself and one for Nan, though it had already waned beyond its last quarter, and nobody knew what would happen ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... head in a whirl. It was a remarkably good dinner that Thrush ordered, if as inappropriate to the occasion as to his own weight. His guest, however, knew no more what he was eating or drinking than he knew the names of the people in diamonds and white waistcoats who stared at the distraught figure in the country clothes. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... bright service to the cause of Nature in the matter of the cat, she had decorated him, not with a button or a garter—though neither would have been inappropriate—but with a ring bearing his initials gorgeously entwined. Then proud and happy was Morris Mogilewsky, and wild was the emulation of other members of the First Reader Class. Then serious was Teacher's account with a jeweller over in Columbia Street and grave her doubts as to Herr Froebel's blessing ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... a good degree of accuracy. The southern half of the village of Ercildoun came next in the track of the storm-cloud. As this is the only village over which the tornado traveled, a brief description would not be inappropriate. ...
— A Full Description of the Great Tornado in Chester County, Pa. • Richard Darlington
... other hand, may be innocent,—that is to say, when they are extremely young. Of course they outgrow it when they arrive at years of flirtation; but up to—say—their tenth or eleventh year, they rarely go in for muddy boots and inappropriate peanuts,—at least not to the same extent as boys. The average little girl is, moreover, seldom found at the CIRCUS. She prefers WALLACK'S, or BOOTH'S theatre,—whereas your usual boy despises the legitimate drama, and prefers to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... perhaps, inappropriate, as the whole mass of cells arises from a single one, and may properly be looked upon as ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... by some spirited parishioners, in front of Mount Hermon Cemetery; a not inappropriate monument on their part to the memory of the ancient and worthy patron of the parish. St. Michael's Church was weekly honoured by the attendance of the Sovereign's representative and suite when inhabiting ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... anything (the “business” of columns in architecture) except some rather feeble statuary, and do seriously block the entrance. Were they added with the idea of fitness? That can hardly be, for a portico is as inappropriate to such a building as it would be to a parlor car, ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... required) in foreground. When looking for backgrounds he may feel quite sure he has one if it is the sort of thing he would never dream of photographing on its own account. Besides being too interesting, most backgrounds are inappropriate and distracting. The frequent commendations and prizes accorded to good subjects having these faults and therefore devoid of unity tell how little even photographic judges and editors think on the appropriate and essential ensemble ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... Shelley in hand, within the summer-house. The bench was narrow, hard, and broken; and there were some snails which discomposed her;—but, nevertheless, she would make the best of it. Her darling "Queen Mab" must be read without the coarse, inappropriate, every-day surroundings of a drawing-room; and it was now manifest to her that, unless she could get up much earlier in the morning, or come out to her reading after sunset, the knob of ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... adjective was ludicrously inappropriate, but she understood Bernard's meaning, and appreciated his ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... to my mind, should be one of our main sources of happiness; and under the inappropriate word art, I am obliged, as usual, to group all such activities of soul as deal with beauty, quite as much when it exists in what is (in this sense) not art's antithesis, but art's origin and completion, nature. Nay, art—the art exercised by ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... round; in an undertone] What's the good of talking about it, you see for yourself that this is an uneducated country, with an immoral population, and it's so dull. The food in the kitchen is beastly, and here's this Fiers walking about mumbling various inappropriate things. Take me with you, ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... felt she had a grievance against Dave. He had not lived down to her conception of what a raw Western youth should be. Even the act of burning the agreement and the cheque, dramatic though it was, had a poise to it that seemed inappropriate. Dave should have snatched the papers—it would have been better had the partners fought over them—he should have crumpled them in rage and consigned them to the fire with curses. Mrs. Hardy felt that in such conduct Dave ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... shocked Pee-wee's sense of fitness, inasmuch as they were scouting and "roughing it," was not inappropriate, for even as Tom spoke the patter of ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... this series, there are a number of instances where the use of the comma in the printed book seems to me inappropriate. However, I have adhered to the punctuation as printed (except for obvious printing errors, which are ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... tanks must constantly shift their load according to the motions of the crew and their masses of equipment that were constantly being shifted during installation. For already the observatory was hard at work, and its time must not be stolen by inappropriate wobbles ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... sure, I almost know. Nijeradze! Don't clown!" he cried abruptly, growing pale, "I've restrained myself several times already at your fool pranks. I have until now held you as a man of conscience and feeling. One more inappropriate witticism, and I'll change my opinion of you; ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... think—but for your letter—that any reasonable reader could possibly attach a scriptural reference to a passage in a book of mine, reproducing a much abused social figure of speech, impressed into all sorts of service on all sorts of inappropriate occasions, without the faintest connexion of it with its original source. I am truly shocked to find that any ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... think in Saxony that the words make good music? If an inappropriate word can spoil the music, which is true, then we ought to be glad when we find that words and music are one and not try to improve matters even if the ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... he thought, "but what use would there be in it? I shall only say something inappropriate about boudoirs, about women, about what is honest or dishonest. What's the use of talking about what is honest or dishonest, if I must make haste to save my life, if I am suffocating in this cursed slavery and am killing myself? . . . One must ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... not printed in the number of Punch published the day preceding—in other words, because it did not occur to Bradbury and Evans to exceed their legitimate functions as proprietors and publishers, and to require the insertion of statements on a domestic and painful subject in the inappropriate columns of a comic miscellany. No previous request for the insertion of this statement had been made either to Bradbury and Evans, or to the editor of Punch, and the grievance of Mr. Dickens substantially amounted to this, that Bradbury and Evans did not take upon themselves, unsolicited, to gratify ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... celebrated my stage jubilee in 1906, I suddenly began to feel exuberantly young again. It was very inappropriate, but ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... intended as a separate residence (for the imperial consort), on her visit to her parents, it is likewise imperative that we should comply with all the principles of etiquette, so that were words of this kind to be used, they would besides be coarse and inappropriate; and may it please you to fix upon something else ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... III, V. and the torn letter. But Sprot never deserts his model. This is an argument for the authenticity in substance of Letter IV. The other three contain nothing that is not in Letter IV, and everything that is in it, except what is personal to Gowrie, and would be inappropriate if addressed to the Unknown (I, III, V), or to ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... connecting it with the latter, while the six pieces that form the two outer circles, being separate to the base, give it the technical character of the former. It is still called Hyacinthus non-scriptus—but as the true hyacinth equally wants the inscription, the name is singularly inappropriate. The botanical name of the hyacinth is Hyacinthus orientalis which applies equally to all the varieties of ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... retired to the Grey Sisters, such scenes being inappropriate to her mourning, and besides her apartments being needed for the influx of guests. There, in early morning, before the revels began, Grisell ventured to ask for an audience, and was permitted to follow the Duchess when she returned from mass to ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some doubt about the true meaning of Penwith; Mr. Baring-Gould gives it as "headland of blood," which it might well be as the last battle-ground of a defeated people; another interpretation says the "wooded headland." To speak of it as wooded now seems inappropriate, though we cannot forget the submerged trees of Mount's Bay, nor can we say what might have been beyond when the point reached farther westward. But it is as the last land in England that we cross this windy moorland to reach the sea; and beyond, visible on days of rare clearness, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... visitors, distributing a mixture made in the housekeeper's room, is to reduce the most social and friendly of ceremonies to a formal giving out of rations. Better the pretty influence of the tea cups and saucers gracefully wielded in a woman's hand than all the inappropriate power snatched at the point of the pen from the unwilling sterner sex. Imagine all the women of England elevated to the high level of masculine intellectuality, superior to crinoline; above pearl powder and Mrs. Rachael Levison; above taking ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... was not inappropriate to an invalid about to begin the fifth act in a roystering night's adventure. And still ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... their fashion: they declare that the play is the tragedy of irresolution; but all Shakespear's projections of the deepest humanity he knew have the same defect: their characters and manners are lifelike; but their actions are forced on them from without, and the external force is grotesquely inappropriate except when it is quite conventional, as in the case of Henry V. Falstaff is more vivid than any of these serious reflective characters, because he is self-acting: his motives are his own appetites and instincts and humors. Richard ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... country occasioned many awkward moments which, thanks to his talent for amiable raillery, he usually succeeded in rendering harmless. Not infrequently Page's fellow guests at the dinner table would think the American attitude toward Germany a not inappropriate topic for small talk. "Mr. Page," remarked an exaltedly titled lady in a conversational pause, "when is your country going to get into the war?" The more discreet members of the company gasped, but Page was not disturbed. "Please give us at least ninety days," he answered, and an exceedingly ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... wide sheets of canvas, became fairly visible, the omens thickened, rumors spread, and hundreds collected on the spot, which, in Manhattanese parlance, would probably have been called a battery. Nor would the name have been altogether inappropriate, as a small battery was established there, and that, too, in a position which would easily throw a shot two-thirds of a league into the offing; or about the distance that the stranger was now ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and Crane came into the room and overheard my last remark, so I had to tell them the whole thing over again. Both of them laughed tremendously, but Crane, who was captain of the college cricket eleven, and President of the Mohocks, which was the inappropriate name of the St. Cuthbert's wine club, seemed to be more amused at the solemn way I told the story, while Bagshaw said he would have given anything to have seen the Subby rushing down-stairs. They laughed loudly, and as soon as I could ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... he passed by with a grin as inappropriate to the climate. Cod Liver Oil failed to interest him, as did the Provident Cast Iron Range and the Clean-Press Cider Mill. But he paused speculatively before Punching Bags, for he had the clean pride of body, typical of lusty Western youth, and loved all forms of exercise. Could he find space, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... execrable; and the interior, the finest part of the church, reminds one irresistibly of a good puzzle badly put together. The weak tower is a sufficient excuse for the absence of the other; from the tower the roof slopes sharply and unreasonably, and the rose-window is perched, with inappropriate jauntiness, to the left of the main portal. The whole structure is not so much the vagary of an architect as the sport of Fate, the self-evident survival of two unfitting facades. Walking through narrow streets, one comes upon the apse as upon another church, ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... some very interesting architectural features. Too little care seems, however, to have been spent upon it at some previous time. The verger shows with a pride little short of proprietary a mahogany altar said to have been taken from one of the vessels of the Armada (and therefore oddly inappropriate for a Church of England service), and the tomb of one Alan Grebell, who, happening one night in 1742 to be wearing the cloak of his brother-in-law the Mayor, was killed in mistake for him by a "sanguinary butcher" named ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... and carried into effect. The cottage was named the Red Eric, and the property was named the Whale Brae, after an ancestral estate which, it was supposed, had, at some remote period, belonged to the Dunning family in Scotland. The title was not inappropriate, for it occupied the side of a rising ground, which, as a feature in the landscape, looked very like a whale, "only," as Glynn said, "not quite so big," which was an outrageous falsehood, for it was a great deal bigger! A small wooden palace was built for Jacko, and many a portrait was taken of ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... selected for the measure was most inappropriate. If good in itself, it was bad at the time it was passed. Home Rule coming across to us from America had taken the guise of rebellion. I have met gentlemen who, as Home-Rulers, have simply desired to obtain for their country an increase of power in the management of their own affairs. These ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... what is happening now to humanity at this time of transition through which we are passing, from the pagan conception of life to the Christian. The socialized man of the present day is brought by experience of life itself to the necessity of abandoning the pagan conception of life, which is inappropriate to the present stage of humanity, and of submitting to the obligation of the Christian doctrines, the truths of which, however corrupt and misinterpreted, are still known to him, and alone offer him a solution ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... persistent the desire to be told that Charles was a real hero; and how bitter the regret that Mary was no better than she should be! Mankind at large wants heroes that are heroes, and heroines that are heroines—and nothing so inappropriate ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... reader they appear shocking, inappropriate, or even improper, it must be remembered that as to the first this may be the effect of my crude statement. For the rest I will only remark here that this is not a story ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... for a pitying angel hovers over the abode of suffering virtue, and hallows all its woes. On a rude bench, before the fire, sat a lady, between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in a thin, coloured muslin gown, the most inappropriate garment for the rigour of the season, but, in all probability, the only decent one that she retained. A subdued melancholy looked forth from her large, dark, pensive eyes. She appeared like one who, having discovered ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... No. 100 South Bridge, Edinburgh. [It has since been removed.] N.B. There is a tradition that the venerable bust in question was once dislodged by 'Colonel Grogg' and some of his companions, and waggishly placed in a very inappropriate position." ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... infinitesimally extensive. All over these seas, the word "nuee" is significant of quantity. Its repetition is like placing ciphers at the right hand of a numeral; the more places you carry it out to, the greater the sum. Judge, then, of Kooloo's esteem. Nor is the allusion to the ciphers at all inappropriate, seeing that, in themselves, Kooloo's profession turned out to be worthless. He was, alas! as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; one of those who make no music unless the clapper ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... ballad of Young Beichan (E), and partly into Jamie Douglas. Thus Scott did not MAKE the stanza, and we cannot suppose that, if he knew the stanza in any form, he either "accidentally pitchforked" or wilfully inserted into Jamie Telfer anything so absurdly inappropriate. The inference is that Scott worked on another copy, not the ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... loss in the midst of the inexplicable animosity. He watched them all intently, with wrinkles in his serious young brow. When, from behind, another hand thrust him sharply upon his jaw, he rose as quickly as possible, swaying a little upon the inappropriate legs. Another suddenly knocked his hind legs from under him, and he sat heavily upon his haunches. The laughter ran ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of the real man. He did not come to your bedside commiserating with you over your misfortune. He was totally unlike the average visitor, whose one aim seemed to be to impress on you some appropriate—often most inappropriate, considering your condition—text of scripture. Well, he was with me, and we talked and smoked, the knight and the private soldier, both blind, but both completely ignoring the fact. During our talk darkness seemed to vanish, and I saw a great ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... an external voice. I could not reproduce this voice, if I can call that a voice which had no sound. This voice formed words and presented them to my spirit." The Life of Saint Teresa abounds in similar descriptions, in which she tries to convey, by the inappropriate language of the senses, what she saw, not with her ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... exhibitions that more enlists the imagination than the study of the "dealers" themselves? The gentlemen who preside at art exhibitions fall, rather violently, into three, perhaps four, classes. You have, I dare say, been repeatedly struck by the quaintly inappropriate character in appearance of those of one of these classes. I mean, of course, those very horsey-looking men, with decidedly "hard" faces, loudly dressed, and dowered with hoarse voices. They would seem to be bookmakers, exceedingly prosperous publicans, bunco-brokers, militant ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... rather inappropriate—remark to the effect that he hoped Mr. Bingham had made the most of such unrivalled opportunities, adding, with a deep sigh, that no lovely young lady had ever saved his life that he might live for her, ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... define colors. The terms used for a single hue, such as pea green, sea green, olive green, grass green, sage green, evergreen, invisible green, are not to be trusted in ordering a piece of cloth. They invite mistakes and disappointment. Not only are they inaccurate: they are inappropriate. Can we imagine musical tones called lark, canary, cockatoo, crow, cat, dog, or mouse, because they bear some distant resemblance to the cries of ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... you will say; yet the delightful naturalness which Miss GLADYS COOPER and Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY bring to the situation gives it almost an air of possibility. But, once we are at Ostend, and have been introduced to Trotter's incredibly inappropriate fiancee (she is a niece of the same aunt and has followed under protection of a tame escort), we are prepared to launch freely and fearlessly into the rough ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... accomplish, when she takes it into her head to become sculptor. On a lofty cone, yet little elevated above the surrounding masses, the very emblems of desolation, stands the image of a man, with a shaggy mantle thrown across his shoulders, and one arm raised as if in the act of speaking,—no inappropriate monument to him who, though the greatest of the prophets that lived under the Law, was in his day of mortality less than the least of those to whom the Gospel ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... Ben Taylor—he rightly dislikes "Mister," perhaps the ugliest and most inappropriate word in the English language—if the shootings and hangings which figure so prominently in the stories of the romancers were not exaggerations. He said he certainly was of that opinion. I said: "As a matter of fact, did you ever see a man either shot or hung for ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... mendacious umbrella is a sign of great moral degradation. Hypocrisy naturally shelters itself below a silk; while the fast youth goes to visit his religious friends armed with the decent and reputable gingham. May it not be said of the bearers of these inappropriate umbrellas that they go about the streets 'with a lie in their ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whine which he had caught from the exhorters who were the terror of his youth. The brothers began to guy him without mercy. They requested him to "cheese it"; they assisted him with uncalled-for and inappropriate applause, and one of the party got behind him and went through the motion of turning a hurdy-gurdy. But he persevered. He had joined the club to practise public speaking, and he got a good half hour out of the brothers before ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... not finish. Considering all that you have in your well-furnished brain beside your accumulated papers, half the contents of which you do not yourself know, your expression "aufraumen,"—to put in final order, is singularly inappropriate. There will always remain some burdensome residue,—last things not yet accounted for. I beg you, then, not to abuse your strength. Be content to finish only what seems to you nearest completion,—the most advanced of ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... reached the opening he uttered a loud exclamation, then leaped into the cave. Both chairs were empty, the ropes lying cut beside them. He sprang back to the rude doorway and gave the usual signal—the screech-owl's cry. It was inappropriate at this time, yet he could not risk less, and he sent it ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... of the sales of obvious and expensive attire conducted in the lower salons of pleasure hotels. There were airy piles of chiffon and satin, inappropriate hats and the inevitable confections of silk and lace. "It's not necessary to ask if you were right at home with your father's family," Mrs. Condon observed with an assumed casual inattention. "I can see you sitting with those old women ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... head fully exposed,—the rustle and dimensions of crinoline,—the heavy masses of unctuous false hair attached to the back of the head, deforming its shape and often giving a coarse monstrosity to its naturally graceful poise and proportions,—the inappropriate display of jewelry and the long silk trains of the expensive robes trailing on the dirty walk, and continually caught beneath the feet of careless pedestrians,—all unite to render the exhibition repulsive to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... accomplished my favourite determination of planning a town without winding streets or crooked lanes. I offer it to the MIRROR as an amusing novelty for the entertainment of its numerous readers. I think it would be not inappropriate to call it the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... and peas. It is easy to be severe on him in this matter; but for a creature like man, who has the same tastes, who eats the enormous buds of the cabbage, the cauliflower, and the brussels sprouts, or the more tender buds which he calls heads of lettuce, it seems particularly inappropriate that he should throw stones at this little creature whose tastes are so ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... of disputing it.' One may, however, ask what it means. I have already observed that the view of the non-moral character of motive was a natural corollary from the purely legal point of view. I must now consider the results of applying it unreservedly in the inappropriate sphere of ethics. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... thing if I conduct one of Beethoven's symphonies before a few friends, but to be a regular concert conductor, before whom they place the scores of concert pieces, etc., so that he may beat the time to them—that, I feel, is the deepest disgrace. This thoroughly inappropriate character of my position led me to the resolution of sending in my resignation after the fourth concert. But of course I was talked out of it, and especially my regard for my wife, who would have heard of ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... that most photoplay producing companies are led to use unoriginal titles because of the poor and inappropriate titles given the stories sent in to them by the authors themselves. Your duty, then, is to help to keep the producing company from "going wrong" in this respect by supplying them with the very best and most original ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... Until the matter was settled on a "higher level," Thomas concluded, the services were not required to go further than had been their custom, and until Vandegrift decided on segregation or integration, setting quotas for the different branches in the corps was inappropriate. Thomas himself recommended that segregated units be adopted and that a quota be devised only after each branch of the corps reported how many Negroes it could use in segregated units.[6-57] Vandegrift approved Thomas's recommendation for segregated black units, and the Marine Corps lost the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... Mr. Ellsler, he lost his temper and only controlled it when he was told that there was no one else to take the part; if he would not play with me, the theater must be closed for the night. Then he calmed down and condescended to look the girl over who was to play such an inappropriate role. ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... comfortable nor happy. There was an unwonted flurry of life and violation of sanctions and traditions. Meals were irregular and protracted, and there were midnight chafing-dish suppers and bursts of laughter at the most inappropriate hours. ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... just the most inappropriate time for that disclosure. The long smouldering antagonism to my endowment of motherhood ideas had flared up into an active campaign in the EXPURGATOR, and it would be altogether disastrous to us if I should be convicted of any personal irregularity. It was just because ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... this communication I trust that it will not be deemed inappropriate to the occasion and purposes upon which we are here assembled to indulge a momentary retrospect, combining in a single glance the period of our origin as a national confederation with that of our present existence, at the precise interval of half a century from ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... for immediately afterwards Polycarp exhorts the Philippians to pray for their persecutors and their enemies,—an admonition which obviously has something more than "a general reference." Such an advice would be inappropriate when persecution was asleep, and when no enemy was giving disturbance. But, at the date when Ignatius is alleged to have been martyred, Polycarp could not have exhorted the Philippians to pray for "the kings," as there was then only one ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... circulated around our camp fire was a rather curious one, told by Boisverd, and not inappropriate here. Boisverd was trapping with several companions on the skirts of the Blackfoot country. The man on guard, well knowing that it behooved him to put forth his utmost precaution, kept aloof from the firelight, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the sword. In France the conveyance of the remains of Napoleon took on quite another character. It was first and foremost a show, in which, as always happens in our country, many people desired to play a part which was inappropriate and sometimes ridiculous. I had often to interfere to get things put to rights again. At La Bouille, for instance, which we reached at nightfall, to meet the river flotilla to which we were to be transferred, I was shown, as the vessel which was to receive the coffin and the staff of the escort, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... the field of philosophy, we find much the same thing. Take Confucianism. It is inappropriate, in some ways, to call Confucius a great thinker (but we shall see that he was something very much more than that). He taught no religion; illuminated in nowise the world of mind; though he enabled millions to illumine it for themselves. He made hardly a ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... and when he sate down his reputation as an orator and a constitutional lawyer was established. He went through the expressions which were used in the information to describe the offence imputed to the Bishops, and showed that every word, whether adjective or substantive, was altogether inappropriate. The offence imputed was a false, a malicious, a seditious libel. False the paper was not; for every fact which it set forth had been proved from the journals of Parliament to be true. Malicious the paper ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bodily structure as our bones, muscles, and blood-vessels. In fact, it was this very substantiality that at the beginning prevented their proper recognition, and handicapped them with their present absurd and inappropriate name. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... that they are wholly unused. A lady visiting an institution for the deaf and dumb a few years ago poetically called the pupils the "children of silence." Considering the tremendous volume of noise they are able to keep up with both feet and throat, the title is amusingly inappropriate. A deaf-and-dumb institution is the noisiest place in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... condoled with, and fed. It had, in the course of years, imparted a singularly caressing sadness to her voice, and given her the habit of ending her sentences with a melancholy cooing and an unintelligible murmur of agreement. It was undoubtedly sincere and sympathetic, but at times inappropriate and distressing. It had lost her the friendship of the one humorist of Tasajara, whose best jokes she had received with such heartfelt commiseration and such pained appreciation of the evident labor involved as to reduce him ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... harmonious and suited to the occasion and consequently to the hour of the day. But how many, many violations of this rule we see! Ostrich feathers worn with shirtwaists; low shoes on the street; dressy hats in the morning; jewels at breakfast—all inappropriate and unrelated! ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... his face that marred the impression which his delicate regular little features would otherwise have conveyed. Indeed, I do not think he was quite of equal rank with the rest of the company, for his dress was inappropriate to the occasion (and he apparently was an invited, while I was an involuntary guest); and one or two of his gestures and actions were more like the tricks of an uneducated rustic than anything else. ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the size of the room, with a due regard to the place a piece of furniture or ornament will occupy. The order of arrangement in furnishing is subject to individual taste, but the following suggestions may not be inappropriate:— ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... section of the town where the girls lived, the Americanized foreigners had little in common with such families as those of the girls of True Tred Troop. In fact, few happenings in the mill community ever reached the ears of the so-called "swells," that inappropriate term being applied to those whose fathers held some executive position in the great silk ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... herself had bestowed the name of Scrooge on the successful draper, to whom, as far as his personal appearance went, it was absurdly inappropriate. ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... prices, bringing relief and prosperity to an industry that was much depressed. The value of the grain crop of the United States is estimated by the Secretary to be this year $500,000,000 more than last; of meats $150,000,000 more, and of all products of the farm $700,000,000 more. It is not inappropriate, I think, here to suggest that our satisfaction in the contemplation of this marvelous addition to the national wealth is unclouded by any suspicion of the currency by which it is measured and in which the farmer is paid for the products of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... "fittest" was chosen for this reason. When it is remembered that these cases outnumber all others—that there are more species of parasites than there are species of all other animals put together—it will be seen that the expression "survivorship of the better" is wholly inappropriate, and the argument Mr. Martineau bases upon it quite untenable. Indeed, if, in place of those adjustments of the human sense-organs, which he so eloquently describes as implying pre-arrangement, Mr. Martineau had described the countless elaborate appliances which enable parasites ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... rich robes, and every ornamental article of dress, were abundantly supplied to her from this source, but that sets of body linen worked with black silk round the bosom and sleeves, were regarded as no inappropriate offering from peers of the realm to the maiden-queen. The presents of the bishops and of some of the nobility always consisted of gold pieces, to the value of from five to twenty or thirty pounds, contained in embroidered silk purses. Her majesty distributed ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... by the area-rails looking up and down the street. He darted upon me, in a great rage, to know 'what I meant by it?' I drew myself up as tall as I could, hissed 'Blind leader of the blind!' at him, and, with this inappropriate but very effective Parthian shot, slipped ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... p. 335.).—An occasional contributor wishes the Editor to note down this Query. What could have led your correspondent J. G. FITCH to use so peculiarly inappropriate a synonym for Martin Luther as "the great Iconoclast?" Has he any historical evidence for Luther's breaking ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... quite unintentionally. Dame Wheatfield only intended hospitality; but in her eyes "Miss" was merely a poor governess, and that to the little Waylands—mere interlopers in the eyes of the Belamour tenantry. So the good woman had no idea that the rough gallantry of the young farmer guests was inappropriate, viewing it as the natural tribute to her guest's beauty, and mistaking genuine offence for mere coyness, until, finding it was real earnest, considerable affront was taken at "young madam's fine airs, and she only a poor kinswoman of my Lady's!" ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be an inappropriate place to speak of this wonderful mode of decoying ducks, termed toling, so extensively practised upon the Chesapeake bay and its tributaries, where the canvass-back and red-heads resort in such numerous quantities every ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... as an amendment to the address, "That this house views, with the deepest sorrow and anxiety the severe distress which now afflicts the country, and will immediately proceed to examine into its cause, and into the means of effectually providing the necessary relief." His lordship said that a more inappropriate and unsatisfactory speech had never been addressed to any public assembly. The speech said that distress existed "in some parts" of the country: he asked, in what part it did not exist? The kingdom, he asserted, was in a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the influence of a learned study of mythology, full of quaint and far-fetched allusions and symbols. The culmination of this learned mythology is to be seen in the great altar of Pergamon, on which the gods who are in combat with the giants include not only all figures, appropriate and inappropriate, from the Hellenic pantheon, but many other deities whose right of admission to that pantheon is more than doubtful. The figures of the gods no longer correspond to the belief in any real divinities, but are either mere ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... that, though he taunted his adversaries with having failed to prove the existence of their Lord, he himself did not deny the existence of a Supreme Being. Kapila, however, went further. He endeavoured to show that all the attributes which the Mystics ascribed to their Lord are inappropriate. He used arguments very similar to those which have lately been used with such ability by a distinguished Bampton Lecturer. The supreme lord of the Mystics, Kapila argued, is either absolute and unconditioned (mukta), or he is bound and conditioned (baddha). ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... the times to which he belongs is inestimable. For it shows us what has survived, as well as what was doomed to decay, in the life of the nation with which that mind was in sensitive sympathy. And it therefore seemed not inappropriate to approach, in the first instance, from this point of view the subject of this biographical essay,—Chaucer, "the poet of the dawn." For in him there are many things significant of the age of transition in which he lived; in him the mixture of Frenchman and Englishman is still ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward |
