"Inoffensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... graphic and an illuminating expression; that at one bound he rose triumphant above the limitations of the language and tremendously enriched the working vocabulary of the man in the street. Whereas an Englishman's idea of slinging slang is to scoop up at random some inoffensive and well-meaning word that never did him any harm and apply it in the place of some other word, to which the first word is not related, even by marriage. And look how they deliberately mispronounce proper names. Everybody knows about Cholmondeley and St. John. But take the ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Charlecote came in the forenoon and stayed till night, but slept at home, whither Maria was kindly invited; but Phoebe did not like to send her away without herself or Lieschen, and Robert undertook for her being inoffensive to Mervyn. In fact, she was obliging and unobtrusive, only speaking when addressed, and a willing messenger. Mervyn first forgot her presence, then tolerated her saucer eyes, then found her capable of running his errands, and lastly began to care to please her. Honora had devised employment ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to be shaken," Harry said, smiling, "by the efforts of an old woman of seventy and a young boy and girl; but I can assure you that they are no enemies of France, but simple inoffensive people who have been frightened by the commotion in Paris, and long to return to the country life to which they are accustomed. Come, citizen, you refused the first boon which I asked you, and, methinks, ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... Bunker said, "to call such people 'sportsmen.' There is no real sport in shooting at and laming an inoffensive creature, one that cannot be made use of for food. That excuse does ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... by Colonel Montagu in the case of one which he managed to catch by means of a slight wound in the wing, and which lived with him for upwards of a year. It used to follow its feeder about, and displayed a most inoffensive disposition. With other birds it was on terms, of peace, and goodwill, never threatening them with its big, strong bill. An excellent angler, its skill in capture was seen to greatest advantage when it had to encounter an ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... and came to blows: all these things incensed the captain greatly against him. I believe this unfortunate man was kept warm with liquor, and set on by some ill-designing persons; for, when sober, I never knew a better-natured man, or one more inoffensive. Some little time after, at the hour of serving provisions, Mr Cozens was at the store-tent; and having, it seems, lately had a quarrel with the purser, and now some words arising between them, the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... convention. When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light spar floats him! How few his wants are, after all! Lear was of a cheerful disposition, and seems to have been wholly inoffensive—at a distance. He fabricated his own clothes, and subsisted chiefly on milk and potatoes, the product of his realm. He needed nothing but an island to be a Robinson Crusoe. At rare intervals he flitted like a frost-bitten apparition ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... predominant in heaven Rise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun, He from the east his flaming road begin, Or she from west her silent course advance With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps On her soft axle, while she paces even, And bears thee soft with the ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... think that item of evidence so satisfactory as Isel did. But he had not come with any intention of ferreting out doubtful characters or suspicious facts. He was no ardent heretic-hunter, but a quiet, peaceable man, as inoffensive as ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... stage came along between old Marm Rodger's "bottom," and the Rattle Snake Fork of Paint, the driver discovered poor old Jake laid out, stiff and cold as a wedge! Alas, poor old Jake! Gone! Quite a gloom hung over the "grocery;" Jake was an inoffensive, good old fellow, nobody denied that, and certain young "fellers" who had shaved the tail of Jake's mare the night previous, and set her loose, now felt sort of sorry for the deed. The editor of the "Argus of Freedom" came down ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... with delight, a week ago, at an encampment of Gypsies who had established at Rouen. This is the third time that I have seen them and always with a new pleasure. The great thing is that they excite the hatred of the bourgeois, although they are as inoffensive ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... architect, it was the fault of adverse exigencies which came into collision with his design, but this only strengthens the moral of the building against revivals. Two humble achievements, if we had chosen were certainly within our reach,—perfect adaptation to our object and inoffensive dignity. Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches. For my part I look up with admiration, as fervent as any one untrained in art can, to those divine creations of old religion which soar over ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... inoffensive activity, but if done incorrectly there can be problems with odor and flies. This chapter will show you how to make ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... These inoffensive words caught the ear of the tough man from the East, who was pushing his way to the car platform. He drew his pistol and started for the nearest man on ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... brain a member of the audience with a chair. The Freeman's Journal held that Augusta Goold's supporters had come into the hall supplied with huge stones, which, at a given signal, they had flung at the inoffensive members of Parliament who occupied the platform, adding, as a corroborative detail, that the lady who accompanied Augusta Goold had twice kicked the prostrate Mr. Shea in the stomach. The Daily Independent ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... in this present clash of emotions, Iris little understood what her advice really meant. She was appealing to heaven rather than to the force of arms. To one of her temperament, it seemed incredible that a number of inoffensive strangers should be slaughtered because a South American republic could not agree in choosing a president. Such a thing was unheard of in her previous experience, built on no more solid foundation ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... the inoffensive fool—as they christened that unfortunate man of genius, Adolphe Monticelli, in the dialect of the South, the slang of Marseilles—where he spent the last sixteen years of his life. The richest colourist of the nineteenth ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... man, of polished manners, agreeable in society, not given to monkish austerities—except in the matter of Fridays—nor yet to the Low-Church severity of demeanour. He was thoroughly a gentleman, good-humoured, inoffensive, and sociable. But he had one fault: he was not ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... presumption existed in him only in germ, and, in ordinary times, it would have remained, for lack of nourishment, as dry-rot or creeping mold, But the heart knows not what strange seeds it contains! Any of these, feeble and seemingly inoffensive, needs only air and sunshine to become a noxious excrescence and a colossal plant. Whether third or fourth rate attorney, counselor, surgeon, journalist, cure, artist, or author, the Jacobin is like the shepherd that has just found, in one corner of his hut, a lot of old parchments ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and editors, of the Logical text-books which run in the ordinary grooves——to whom I shall hereafter refer by the (I hope inoffensive) title "The Logicians"——take, on this subject, what seems to me to be a more humble position than is at all necessary. They speak of the Copula of a Proposition "with bated breath", almost as if it were a living, conscious Entity, capable of declaring ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... hairbreadth escapes, and even not a few adventures which are at first not escapes at all. And just as his perpetual bafflement in the Quest salts and seasons his triumphs in the saddle, so does the ruling passion of his sin save, from anything approaching mawkishness,[35] his innumerable and yet inoffensive virtues; his chastity, save in this instance, which chastity itself, by a further stroke of art, is saved from niaiserie by the plotted adventures with Elaine; his courtesy, his mercifulness, his ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Indeed, we had only heard the rumor of their coming, when we awakened one morning after an obscure, stormy night to find them encamped at St. James, westward on the Assiniboine River. Day after day the menacing force remained quiet and inoffensive, and we began to look upon these notorious ruffians as harmless. For our part, vigilance was not lacking. Sentinels were posted in the towers day and night. Nor'-West spies shadowed every movement of the enemy; and ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... The eyes are very small, the blow-hole is directly over them, and the head is small, blunt, and round, and the mouth cannot be opened wide. The colour, when young, is grey, with darker spots on it, and when full grown, of a yellowish-white. It is a very inoffensive animal. It is said to use its horn for the purpose of breaking through the ice to breathe, and neither to destroy its prey nor to defend itself. It swims very fast; when struck, dives rapidly, but soon returns to the ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... practise dust-eating ex professo, and that grub up and eat for the eleventh time what they have already eaten ten times before. For opponents of this sort, however, philology is merely a useless, harmless, and inoffensive pastime, an object of laughter and not of hate. But, on the other hand, there is a boundless and infuriated hatred of philology wherever an ideal, as such, is feared, where the modern man falls down to worship himself, and where Hellenism is looked upon as a ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... who watched all his movements with jealousy and envy, and who were silently preparing instruments for his destruction, was Joseph Martinengo, a Piedmontese count belonging to the prince's suite, whom G——— himself had formerly promoted, as an inoffensive creature, devoted to his interests, for the purpose of supplying his own place in attending upon the pleasures of the prince—an office which he began to find irksome, and which he willingly exchanged for more useful employment. Viewing ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and perfectly unaffected voice (a very rare thing with her—she usually minced a little, intoned, and lisped) she said: 'Oh, what a name to utter! And towards nightfall, too! Don't utter that name!' I was astonished; what kind of significance could his name have for such a harmless and inoffensive creature, incapable—not merely of doing—even of thinking of anything not permissible? Anything but cheerful reflections were aroused in me by this terror, manifesting itself after ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... have any part in the development of the head voice? This inoffensive thing is still the subject of a considerable amount of more of less inflammatory debate both as to what it is and what it does. Without delay let me assure every one that it is perfectly harmless. There is no other one thing involved in singing, ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... bow so plaintive And loud, like a human cry, That the light of the shutter darkened From somebody passing by. A young man peeped at the pensive Great man, so familiar known; His features, if inoffensive, Were ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... house-surgeon. "They entered, as students there—we have several foreigners—about last Christmas—perhaps at the New Year. All that I know of them is that they were like most Easterns— very quiet, unassuming, inoffensive fellows, very assiduous in their studies and duties, never giving any trouble, and very punctual ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... soul, of what might still remain to her of even painful earthly existence; it would surely on the most religious grounds be both our privilege and our duty at once to dismiss any troublesome sufferer who had a soul, to the distant and inoffensive ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... no fear on the subject of any hostility from the natives, for in our own experience, we had as yet always found them inoffensive and peaceable; while should they prove otherwise, I was satisfied that a very slight acquaintance with the effects of gunpowder would be quite sufficient to quell their warlike propensities, but I did fear that they had chosen a very unfavourable ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... distance of nearly three miles, and astonishes every one when first hearing it. The male is pure white, whilst the female is dusky-green; and white is a very rare colour in terrestrial species of moderate size and inoffensive habits. The male, also, as described by Waterton, has a spiral tube, nearly three inches in length, which rises from the base of the beak. It is jet-black, dotted over with minute downy feathers. This tube can be inflated with air, through a communication with the palate; ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... hurt our Nat, it's going to be a bad day for them, that's all," blustered Red, as he pounded his club against an inoffensive stone. ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... But nothing sensational was discovered among the documents which filled his drawers. As to his relations with women, they appeared to have been promiscuous but superficial. He had many acquaintances among them, but few friends, and no one whom he loved. His habits were regular, his conduct inoffensive. His death was an absolute mystery, and ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Though there was no immediate resemblance, Ruth was sure that he was the man whose picture was in Aunt Jane's treasure chest in the attic. The daredevil look was gone, however, and he was merely a quiet, inoffensive old gentleman, for whom life had been none ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... brings Whatever Earth's all-bearing Mother yields ——Fruit of all kinds, in Coat Rough, or smooth-Rind, or bearded Husk, or Shell. Heaps with unsparing Hand: For Drink the Grape She crushes, inoffensive Moust, and Meaches From many a Berry, and from sweet Kernel prest, She ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... beast; but the fear that she might strangle him in her last convulsions once more stayed his hand. Moreover, he felt in his heart a foreboding of a remorse which warned him not to destroy a hitherto inoffensive creature. He even fancied that he had found a friend in the limitless desert. His mind turned back, involuntarily, to his first mistress, whom he had named in derision "Mignonne," because her jealousy was so furious that throughout the whole period of their intercourse he lived in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... animals regarded by them, as it is by us, as a material and unconscious satisfaction of their wants; these grasses, grains, and leaves appear to animals to be living powers which it is necessary to conquer, animated subjects endowed with life, but for the most part inoffensive, and which, unlike the living prey of carnivora, offer ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... interposed the Captain, remembering how much depended on his daughter's marriage, and what a very difficult person he had found her. "Yes, my dear, of course; I respect your honourable feeling; and—er—yes—you may tell Mrs. Sheldon—and that of course includes Mr. Sheldon, since the lady is but an inoffensive cipher—that you are about to be married—to a French gentleman of position. You will, of course, be obliged to mention his name, and then will arise the question as to where and how you met him; and, ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... head over the child and remained perfectly still. He did not dare to move, lest any action, however inoffensive, might induce Moosa to change his mind and ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... eyes rest for a moment on the motley of dressing-gowns, mackintoshes, uniforms, I inevitably see in the line one face set on a slant, one pair of eyes forsaking the stage and fixed on me in a steady, inoffensive beam. ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... in the court-yard, he went to the adjoining house, in which Teligny lived. All the inmates were killed, but he escaped by the roof. Twice he fell into the hands of the enemy, and twice he was spared; he perished at last by the sword of a man who knew not his amiable and inoffensive character. His neighbor La Rochefoucault was perhaps more fortunate in his fate. He had hardly fallen asleep when he was disturbed by the noise in the street. He heard shouts and the sound of many footsteps; and scarcely awake and utterly unsuspicious, he went to his bedroom ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Weymouth and Don, who were on duty there, rapped their knuckles gently, as a reminder to let go and drop back into their kayaks, which they did without grumbling. Indeed, they seemed singularly inoffensive; and, come to get them on deck, they were "little fellows,"—not so tall as we boys even by a whole head. They were pretty thick and stout, however, and had remarkably large heads and faces. I do not think the tallest of them was much, if any, over five feet. Donovan, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... This inoffensive and pretty little creature is found in all parts of the Arctic lands. Its fur is peculiarly fine and thick; and as in winter this is closer and more mixed with wool than it is in summer, the intense cold of these regions is easily resisted. When sleeping rolled up into ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... that they like, and the wonder is that naked men, sleeping on the ground in such places, and poking about dark corners, among their stores of fuel and other chattels, meet with so few accidents. It says a great deal for the mild and inoffensive nature of the snake. Still, the total number of deaths by snake-bite reported every year is very large, and looks absolutely appalling if you do not think of dividing it among three hundred millions. Treated in that way it shrivels up at once, and when compared with ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... shells which are found among the weeds. This kind of food is always to be had in great abundance, so that the turtles have no occasion to quarrel among themselves, for that which is afforded in such plenty for all; indeed they seem to be a very quiet and inoffensive race, herding peaceably together on their extensive feeding-grounds, and when satisfied retiring to the fresh water at the mouth of the rivers, where they remain holding their heads above water, as if to breathe the fresh air, till the shadow of ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... stone, I thus obtained an adequate impression of the magnitude of its dimensions, which produced a calm and speechless but elevated feeling of awe. The Arabs, men, women, and children, came crowding around me; but they seemed kind and inoffensive. I was advised to mount up to the top before the sun gained strength; and, skipping like chamois on a mountain, two Arabs took hold of me by each wrist, and a third lifted me up from behind, and thus I began, with resolution and courage, to ascend ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... would. Still, in disbelieving moments, I cannot help applying to them Charles Lamb's famous speech,—"If dirt were trumps, what a hand they would have of it!" Yet, beggars as they are, they have the reputation at Rome of being the most inoffensive of all the conventual orders, and are looked upon by the common people with kindliness, as being thoroughly sincere in their religious professions. They are, at least, consistent in many respects in their professions and practice. They ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Ernest or Laddie. I had taken no part in the discussion, for I felt no great interest in the matter. Laddie was a nice dog; Ernest was a quiet, inoffensive little fellow, five years younger than myself; that was all I thought about ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... past and struck the ground behind him, close to the fire. Instinctively he turned round to look at it. A kriss without its sheath lay by the embers; a sinuous dark object, looking like something that had been alive and was now crushed, dead and very inoffensive; a black wavy outline very distinct and still in the dull red glow. Without thinking he moved to pick it up, stooping with the sad and humble movement of a beggar gathering the alms flung into the dust of the roadside. Was this the answer to his pleading, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... drew the rocking-chair up to the fireplace, setting it down rather sharply upon the strip of rag carpet that fronted the wide rock-made hearth. "You need not be afraid to be left alone with me. I am a most inoffensive person." ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... followed him into the great North-West to help conquer the wilderness and establish his new home. He had a big heart in a large body, and his great ambition was to be considered a rather terrible and knowing fellow, while, as a matter of fact, he was the most inoffensive of mortals, and as simple in some ways ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... was conscious of nothing save her restless desire to please, her little bursts of frivolous mirth and an ugly twitch of her lips which every now and then revolted him. It was a chance, perhaps, or a mood, which made him look out upon a scene, ordinary enough and inoffensive, through dun-coloured spectacles. He paid his bill and walked thoughtfully homeward, thankful for the cool night air which fanned his forehead. He even entered his bare sitting-room and threw up the window with a positive ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... the last scene, is exceeded in "Old Mortality," and reached, within one or two, both in "Waverley" and "Guy Mannering") that marks the peculiar tone of the modern novel. It is the fact that all these deaths, but one, are of inoffensive, or at least in the world's estimate, respectable persons; and that they are all grotesquely either violent or miserable, purporting thus to illustrate the modern theology that the appointed destiny of a large average of our population is to die like rats in ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... he had been so reserved; since he well knew that merchant seamen generally affect a certain superiority to "blubber- boilers," as they contemptuously style those who hunt the leviathan. But Larry turned out to be such an inoffensive fellow, and so well understood his business aboard ship, and was so ready to jump to an order, that he was exempted from the taunts which he might ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... direction of Lord Burlington, the amateur architect of Burlington House. The stone was given by Sir Edward Gascoigne from Huddlestone. Some of the gravestones were also used for the work. The work cost L2500, which was collected by subscription. The pavement, though inoffensive, is not in keeping with ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... filled with much curiosity concerning and interest in the Marquis of Coombe. She was a clever and well trained person, but socially a simple creature, who in an inoffensive way "loved a lord." If her work had not absorbed her she could not have kept her eyes from this finely conventional and rather unbending-looking man who—keeping himself out of the way of all who were in charge ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... so excellent shelter in an inlet, the coasts of which appeared to be inhabited by a race of people, whose inoffensive behaviour promised a friendly intercourse, the next morning, after coming to anchor, I lost no time in endeavouring to find a commodious harbour where we might station ourselves during our continuance in the Sound. Accordingly, I sent three ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... to Greece, Spain, Morocco, Holland, Italy, Switzerland and the United States. Secret stations were established for supplying submarines with the wherewithal to carry on their war against inoffensive passenger steamers. Agents were kept in the neutral countries to corrupt the local press and poison the wells of information in order to allure the neutrals into belligerency. A highly organized news-distributing ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... dictatorial, and with a peevish whine in his voice like a beaten schoolboy. He is a great advocate for the Bourbons and for the National Debt. The former he affirms to be the choice of the French people, and the latter he insists is necessary to the salvation of these kingdoms. This last point a little inoffensive gentleman among us, of a saturnine aspect but simple conceptions, cannot comprehend. 'I will tell you, sir—I will make my propositions so clear that you will be convinced of the truth of my observation in a moment. Consider, sir, the number of trades that would be thrown ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... of a young man of leisure; but they got accustomed to him. Hector assumed a melancholy expression of countenance, such as a man ought to have who had undergone unheard-of misfortunes, and whose life had failed of its promise. He appeared inoffensive; people said: ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... hardly a family of note or standing within visiting distance of their place, that has not some tradition or reminiscence to relate concerning them; and all agree in describing him as a worthy good sort of man, obliging, inoffensive, kind to the poor, principally remarkable for his devotion to music, and utterly unable to his dying day to familiarise himself with the English language or manners. It is told of him that being required to pay a turnpike toll near the house of a country neighbour whom he was ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... along a rough way. So I married Lydia, and began life in gladness and content. I liked her family and they liked me. It puzzles me to see how the English mother-in-law, who is a grum-voiced, dogmatic and belligerent person with a jointure to bequeath, came to be engrafted on our literature. The inoffensive delicacy of an American elderly woman forbids her the role of her British sister. Our mother-in-law troubles are mostly confined to our low foreign population. Neither have we a character similar to the silly, spiteful, dried-up old maid ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... thunder of horses' hoofs started beyond the little slope he was climbing. When he reached the top, a merry youth, with a red, hatless head was splitting the dirt road toward him, his reins in his teeth, and a pistol in each hand, which he was letting off alternately into the inoffensive earth and toward the unrebuking heavens—that seemed a favourite way in those mountains of defying God and the devil—and behind him galloped a dozen horsemen to the music of ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... favorable to them; many Pharisees had even become Christians. The terrible anathemas of Jesus against Pharisaism had not yet been written, and the accounts of the words of the Master were neither general nor uniform. These first Christians were, besides, people so inoffensive that many persons of the Jewish aristocracy, who did not exactly form part of the sect, were well disposed toward them. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who had known Jesus, remained no doubt with the Church in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... gone, a sort of frenzy came over me. I wasn't hurt; and for the first time in my life I realised what an abominable outrage theft was. The thought that at six o'clock in the evening, in the very heart of a great city like Boston, an inoffensive citizen could be assaulted and robbed, made me furious. I didn't call out. I simply buttoned my coat tight round me and turned and ...
— The Garotters • William D. Howells
... rebuke to the little Doctor's Ego. She was wrong, of course, though her sensibilities were indubitably right. Therefore she feigned enormous engrossment in her algebra, and struggled to make herself as small and inoffensive as she could. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... in the forest I often came across snakes of considerable length, but never found any difficulty in killing them, as they were sluggish in their movements and seemed to be inoffensive. The rubber-workers, who had no doubt had many encounters with reptiles, told me about large sucurujus or boa-constrictors, which had their homes in the river not many miles from headquarters. They told me that these snakes were in possession of hypnotic powers, but this, like many other ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... Just a quiet, inoffensive, respectable-looking man not coarse or low in type; this would have been his comment upon the dead man, if he had known nothing about him. Max shuddered as he withdrew his gaze; and, as he did so, he ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... president had at length taken leave, and Lupinus was again alone, he seized the ticket, threw it on the ground, and trampled it under foot, thus visiting upon the inoffensive ticket the scorn he had not dared exhibit ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... I believe it would prevent them"; the more, that if the author be "so unfortunate to depend on the success of his Labours for his Bread, he must be an inhuman Creature indeed, who would out of sport and wantonness prevent a Man from getting a Livelihood in an honest and inoffensive Way, and make a jest of starving him and his Family." There is other evidence that young men about town were wont to amuse themselves by damning plays 'when George was King.' In the Prologue to ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... sealing-schooners, where it is the custom for the hunters to rank, unofficially as officers. He gave no reason, but his motive was obvious enough. Horner and Smoke had been displaying a gallantry toward Maud Brewster, ludicrous in itself and inoffensive to her, but to ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... like a beaten schoolboy. He was a stout advocate for the Bourbons and the National Debt, and was duly disliked by Hazlitt, we may feel assured. The Bourbons he affirmed to be the choice of the French people, the Debt necessary to the salvation of these kingdoms. To a little inoffensive man, 'of a saturnine aspect but simple conceptions,' Hazlitt once heard him say grandly, 'I will tell you, sir. I will make my proposition so clear that you will be convinced of the truth of my observation in a moment. Consider, sir, the number of trades that would be thrown out of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... and head-lines. Events, like history, repeat themselves, until people have grown weary of them. They want something new. For instance, if you read in your morning paper that a man has shot another man, you know that the man who was shot was an inoffensive person who never injured a soul, stood high in the community in which he lived, and leaves a widow with four children. On the other hand, you know without reading the account that the murderer shot his victim in self-defence, and was apprehended by the detectives late last ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... and important to escape the observation of any part of America or Europe. But as it is a movement of great delicacy, it will require all your address to communicate the subject in a manner that shall be inoffensive to his feelings, and consistent with all the respect that is due from me ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... bones. be good &c adj.; excel, transcend &c (be superior) 33; bear away the bell. stand the proof, stand the test; pass muster, pass an examination. challenge comparison, vie, emulate, rival. Adj. harmless, hurtless^; unobnoxious^, innocuous, innocent, inoffensive. beneficial, valuable, of value; serviceable &c (useful) 644; advantageous, edifying, profitable; salutary &c (healthful) 656. favorable; propitious &c (hope-giving) 858; fair. good, good as gold; excellent; better; superior &c 33; above ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... part at least of Mankind in general. I indulge the hope and expectation that WAR shall one day be universally and finally extinguish'd. But I will confess also, that appearances would tempt us to apprehend that day is far distant. And while we make War for Sport on useful, generous, inoffensive Animals, it is not easy to imagine that we shall cease to make ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... woman's dependence. Perhaps it had something of the character of the benevolence with which we regard our slaves, our children and our domestic animals—everything, in fact, that is weak, helpless and inoffensive. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... inclined to quote poetry—this sort of susceptibleness often affects gentlemen after they have had an excellent dinner flavored with the finest Burgundy. Lord Algy was as mild, as tame, and as flabby as a sleeping jelly-fish,—and in this inoffensive, almost tender mood of his, Marcia pounced upon him. She looked ravishingly pretty in the moonlight, with a white wrap thrown carelessly round her head and shoulders, and her bold, bird-like eyes sparkling with excitement ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... we endeavoured in vain to find an uninhabited cove; and at last were obliged to bivouac not far from a party of natives. They were very inoffensive as long as they were few in numbers, but in the morning (21st) being joined by others they showed symptoms of hostility, and we thought that we should have come to a skirmish. An European labours under great disadvantages when ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... blameless person whom I can not love and have no excuse for hating. It is the innocent fellow-creature, otherwise inoffensive to me, whom I find I have involuntarily joined on turning a corner. I suppose the Mississippi, which was flowing quietly along, minding its own business, hates the Missouri for coming into it all ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... struck by the fact, that the ass so often feeds upon the thistle, he took some specimens of that plant, and, by careful experiment, has succeeded in producing for the table 'a savoury vegetable, with thorns of the most inoffensive and flexible sort.' Whatever be the kind of thistle, however hard and sharp its thorns, he has tamed and softened them all, his method of transformation being, as he says, none other than exposing the plants to different influences of light. Those ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... in it to warrant the belief that it will be selected by a remote posterity to be bound up among the lives of truly great and good men. Catharine II. extended the privileges of the nobility, made wars upon inoffensive nations, corrupted the morals of her people, and manifested her regard for the serfs by giving large numbers of them away to her paramours. The Emperor Alexander I. was ambitious of distinction, as the most cultivated and enlightened sovereign of his time. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... he wanted them to do. The editorials, once the most important feature of a daily paper, are rarely so now. They have become in many cases mere casual comment, in some have been altogether eliminated, in others so neutralized and inoffensive that a man who had bought a certain daily for a year might be puzzled if you asked him its political, religious, and sociological views. He would not be in doubt if asked what his favorite magazine was trying to accomplish in the world. Unless ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... the new settlers a little; and that, finding their labours well requited, it would be the means of their keeping up a constant communication with us which probably might be the means of laying the first stone towards their Christianity. They are a poor harmless, inoffensive set of people, and their wandering and ill-provided way of living seems more to ask for pity from us than to fill our heads with thoughts that they would ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... the wanton killing of a Negro has come to be regarded in some Southern communities is brought out by an incident of the week at Memphis, which hardly needs comment. An inoffensive Negro was hawking chickens about the street, when ——, who was not in uniform at the time, jumped to the conclusion that the chickens had been stolen, and arrested the man. While he went to put on his uniform he left his prisoner in custody of a nearby grocer, rightly named ——, to ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... more behind his stroke than mere awkwardness. It was downright savagery. Generally when a man is in anger or despair he longs to smash things; and these inoffensive tennis-balls were to Thomas a gift of the gods. Each time one sailed away over the backstop, it was like the pop of a safety-valve; it averted ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... fault, might with its opportunities, as the priest says in the text, have stood in a very different position from that which it occupies at present. No! let those who are in search of bigotry seek for it in a church very different from the inoffensive Church of England, which never encourages cruelty or calumny. Let them seek for it amongst the members of the Church of Rome, and more especially amongst those who have renegaded to it. There is nothing, however false and ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... not beat the sea into such rabid foam. It slipped discreetly along as in the maritime silence of the first millennium of the new-born earth. The oceanic inhabitants approached it confidently upon seeing it rolling like a mute and inoffensive whale. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... at first—her too, a little—to keep up this farce of indifference. But every now and then he turned and stared at some inoffensive visitor who was taking interest in them, with such fierce and genuine contempt that Gyp took alarm; whereon he laughed. When she had drunk a little wine and he had drunk a good deal, the farce of indifference came to its end. He talked at a great rate now, slying ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... has been kind. It seemed to the Germans that we employed some special witchcraft to provide the knowledge that we possessed. So they panicked ingloriously, and sought spies everywhere, and hanged inoffensive natives by the dozen to the mango trees. One day one of our whalers entered Tanga harbour the very day the German mines were lifted for the periodical overhaul. The Germans ascribed such knowledge to the Prince of Evil. The ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... did not wholly abandon the decorative convention which he heired, and often employed to excellent purpose, was due in large measure to caution. "He came," says W. E. Henley, "at the break between new and old—when the old was not yet discredited, and the new was still inoffensive; and with that exquisite good sense which marks the artist, he identified himself with that which was known, and not with that which, though big with many kinds of possibilities, was as yet in perfect touch with nothing actively alive." Yet, had he had the full courage of his convictions, ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... carefully selected little parties the Astors invited Eden. In the small drawing room banked with flowers the idea was broached about sending an emissary to talk the matter over with Hitler—some genial, inoffensive person like Lord Halifax (huge land interests) for instance. Eden understood why the Times had suddenly raised the issue of the lost German colonies to an extent greater even than Hitler himself, and Eden emphatically expressed his disapproval. ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... own recollections, how many good, quiet, inoffensive men, unendowed with any extraordinary abilities, have been enabled, by means of divinity, to enjoy a long life in ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... precedes the commencement of the fever, another quarter terminates with the complete eruption, another quarter with the complete maturation, and another quarter terminates the complete absorption of a material now rendered inoffensive ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... are inhabited by a harmless inoffensive race of people; and here, as also in Andaman, are found the edible bird's-nests ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... inoffensive motherliness in her tone which surprised Veronica—a suggestion of possession that irritated her. But she smiled, said a few words, and ordered the carriage to move on,—an operation which, though ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... say. Some people say he is crazy, and some people say he is an escaped criminal—but then people will say anything, particularly when they know nothing about it. Judging from the reports of the two or three men who have met him, however, he appears to be quite inoffensive, and evidently he is a friendly-disposed fellow from your description of him. If you should come across him again you might invite him to come down and see us. I don't suppose he will, but you might ask ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... doubtless lose many another before the book of American history is closed. If anything is new in this activity of the regicide it is found in the choice of victims. The contemporary "avenger" slays, not the merely great, but the good and the inoffensive—an American President who had struck the chains from millions of slaves; a Russian Czar who against the will and work of his own powerful nobles had freed their serfs; a French President from whom the French people had received nothing but good; a powerless Austrian Empress, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... he worked out the whole mine, which afterward, in the hands of skillful refiners, produced a rich vein of ore. As his imagination was always at work, he was frequently absent and inattentive in company, which made him both say and do a thousand inoffensive absurdities; but which, far from being provoking, as they commonly are, supplied new matter for conversation, and occasioned wit both in himself ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... mastered her again and she stopped. I could see the look of amazement on our junior's face, and did not wonder at it. What sudden dislike could her mistress have conceived against this inoffensive and ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... deck some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Once upon the sands, he felt better; the few people who were there were strangers, of course, but they were women and children; and if the expression of those who noticed him was wondering, it was inoffensive—at times even pitying, and Mr. Putchett was in a humor to ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... nominated a ticket divided between Hunkers and Barnburners; and, after condemning the Whig management of the canals as lavish, reckless, and corrupt, readopted the slavery resolutions of the previous year. The Whigs likewise performed their duty by making up a ticket of Fillmore and inoffensive Seward men, pledging the party to the enlargement of the Erie canal. Thus it was publicly announced that slavery should be eliminated from the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... possible; can this be true?" If not, why is it that at the call to arms, even before the nation rallied from the shock of the cowardly deed which sacrificed the lives of inoffensive sailors—why is it, I say, that from under the very paws of the Sphinx, so far away in Arizona—and at the call of Captain O'Neill, the noble mayor of Prescott, there arose the first contingent of fighting volunteers in our ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... spare,—sheets, shirts, and blankets, except one of the latter, which I had reserved as a provision against any further extreme of suffering which might yet await us. There was one poor lascar, a simple inoffensive youth, about nineteen, who was an object of the liveliest commiseration; he was nearly naked, and in that state had been continually drenched by the sea and rain, during the whole of the day and night; he was holding his hands up to heaven ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... old, who had written two or three books of short tales and sketches, not yet famous, and he held a not very lucrative public office, which he had secured, not in the usual way, by party service, but by the political influence of his old college mates, who were strangers to the town. He was inoffensive, but he was not liked, and took no pains to make himself one of the community; he was ignored by the citizens of the place because he ignored them, and when his Washington friends lost power, there was no one else interested in keeping ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... me, that she should look upon me as being so utterly inoffensive. I braced myself up, steeled my heart, and seized her hand; but she withdrew it softly, and moved a little away from me. That just put an end to my courage again; I felt ashamed, and looked out through the window. I was, in spite of all, in far too wretched a condition; I must, above ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... general, and none at all on the life of an unknown swab who deserved his gruel. Then he was of the type that admires a fighting thing much more than a peaceful and placid thing, and he felt the pleasure of a man who has rescued a seemingly weak and inoffensive creature only to find that it has pluck ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... notion to—to spit on you!" she said vehemently, "or kick—" but she didn't finish the sentence. One tan shoe had been drawn back as if to be swung viciously at the inoffensive pile of riding gear; it paused, suspended, then gently, almost caressingly, pushed the leather chaps which suddenly seemed to Carolyn June to look limp and worn and ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... if its brick and mortar were intended to honor monumentally the tales of the host. His first name, August, was not an adjective of limitation as to time, for the proprietor was A. Stuffer every month and day in the year; and his son Emil, a quiet, inoffensive student of birds, a taxidermist, ornithologist and mechanical engineer, and a graduate of the neighboring Stevens Institute, world-famed for the breadth and thoroughness of its training, was a worthy son in practically applying to birds ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... fourteenth century, the line of shoulder remains normal and beautiful, sloping and melting into folds of robe or line of sleeve. We see now for the first time an inclination to tamper with the shoulder line. An inoffensive scallop appears,—or some other decoration, as cap to sleeve. ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... gratifications. I never shot but to miss the mark, and, to confess the truth, was afraid of the fire of my own gun. I could discover no musick in the cry of the dogs, nor could divest myself of pity for the animal whose peaceful and inoffensive life was sacrificed to our sport. I was not, indeed, always at leisure to reflect upon her danger; for my horse, who had been bred to the chase, did not always regard my choice either of speed or way, but leaped hedges and ditches at his own discretion, and hurried ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... persistent nuisance in the little community, and there were good reasons for wanting to be rid of her, and right ways to that end. They took the wrong way and tried her for heresy. In like manner, when the Quakers came among them,—not of the mild, meek, inoffensive modern variety to which we are accustomed, but of the fierce, aggressive early type,—instead of proceeding against them for their overt offenses against the state, disorderly behavior, public indecency, contempt of court, sedition, they proceeded against them distinctly ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... a great blunder: but admirers of Miss Austen have sometimes taken it as being greater than it was. "Vulgaire" and "vulgar" are by no means exact synonyms: in fact the French word is probably used much oftener in a more or less inoffensive ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... profitless one of natural history. Instead, he devoted himself to cultivation, the chief object of his culture being the "yerba de Paraguay," which yields the well-known mate, or Paraguayan tea. In this industry he was eminently successful. His amiable manners and inoffensive character attracted the notice of his neighbours, the Guarani Indians—a peaceful tribe of proletarian habits—and soon a colony of these collected around him, entering his employ, and assisting him in the establishment of an ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... something within urged her to comply. She was like an automobile that gets cranked up and then refuses to go. Church-going instead of being her greatest joy came to be a nightmare. She no longer lingered in the vestibule, for those highly cherished exchanges of inoffensive gossip that constituted her social life. Nobody seemed to have time for her. Every one was busy with a soldier. Within the sanctuary it was no better. Each khaki-clad figure that dotted the congregation claimed her attention as a possible ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... occurred just before my story opens. It was a whole month since the town boys had made our lives unhappy by calling, and howling, and yelling, and squeaking on every occasion they met us the following apparently inoffensive couplet:— ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... doing there, all these feverish workers? They were making a clearance of death on behalf of life. Transcendent alchemists, they were transforming that horrible putridity into a living and inoffensive product. They were draining the dangerous corpse to the point of rendering it as dry and sonorous as the remains of an old slipper hardened on the refuse-heap by the frosts of winter and the heats of summer. They were working their hardest to ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... noxious and innoxious, are not, it must be understood, tossed off in the frenzied instantaneity of the American mode; before a tiny glassful of Curacao or sugar and water, the Gallic "knight of the round table" will sit for hours in utter content, reading the papers, talking, smoking, or clicking the inoffensive domino. Intoxication is almost unknown in the better cafes; their patrons may sear their oesophagi with hot Chartreuse, derange the nerves with Absinthe, stimulate themselves hourly with their little cups of black coffee and brandy; but they never get drunk. Frenchmen are temperate, even in ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... way to get rid of the treasury order. But Mr. Ewing's resolution was too direct. It was deemed a pointed and ungracious attack on executive policy. It must therefore be softened, modified, qualified, made to sound less harsh to the ears of men in power, and to assume a plausible, polished, inoffensive character. It was accordingly put into the plastic hands of friends of the executive to be moulded and fashioned, so that it might have the effect of ridding the country of the obnoxious order, and yet not appear ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... such we must keep aloof, but we must adhere to those who both preserve, as we have already mentioned, the doctrine of the apostles, and exhibit, with the order of the presbytery, sound teaching and an inoffensive conversation." [585:1] "The order of the presbytery" obviously signifies the official character conveyed by "the laying on of the hands of the presbytery," and yet such was the ordination of those who, in the time of Irenaeus, possessed "the succession from the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... laying in of stores of rough household stuffs; but it now apparently included a wider range and more ostentatious quality. Parks' Emporium no longer satisfied them, and this unexpected phase of the situation was practically brought home to the proprietor in the necessity of extending the more inoffensive and peaceful part of his stock. And when, towards the end of the week, a cartload of pretty fixtures, mirrors, and furniture arrived at the tienda, there was a renewed demand at the Emporium for articles not in stock, and the consequent diverting ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Androcles to explain to them this unintelligible mystery, and how a savage of the fiercest and most unpitying nature should thus in a moment have forgotten his innate disposition, and be converted into a harmless and inoffensive animal. ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... about how this could be done or that. Everybody is full of suggestions for somebody else to execute, but nobody does anything. The municipal police nose about in the crowd, and at intervals seize upon some obscure and inoffensive citizen, propelling him violently in the direction of the conflagration with orders to "work." He half-heartedly picks up an old five-gallon petroleum can or a bamboo water-pipe, and starts off to the nearest well, but as ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... confidence inspired by Mr. Shelby's representations, and partly from the remarkably inoffensive and quiet character of the man, Tom had insensibly won his way far into the confidence even of such ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... gate they met a small, inoffensive man, with a brown beard and a walking-stick. There was nothing else to say about him; without the beard and the walking-stick there would have been nothing left to know ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... ourselves between the picket lines of the two armies. Fortune seemed to favor us. It was just getting dusky twilight, and we saw the relief guard of the Yankees just putting on their picket. They seemed to be very mild, inoffensive fellows. They kept a looking over toward the Rebel lines, and would dodge if a twig cracked under their feet. I walked on as if I was just relieved, and had passed their lines, when I turned back, and says ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... insidious spore of evil that might float past on the sultry air. That is why some of us dare not enter the theatre, or encourage others to enter. This is not the place to enter into a full discussion of the subject; but, even when a play may be deemed inoffensive and harmless, the sensuous attractions of the place, the glitter, the music, the slightly-dressed figures of the actors and actresses, the entire atmosphere and environment, which appeal so strongly to the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... authority they have been accustomed to submit. Their character is thus summed up by the travellers quoted: "The few opportunities we have had of studying their characters, induce us to believe that they are a simple, honest, inoffensive, but weak, timid, and cowardly race. They seem to have no social tenderness, very few of those amiable private virtues which could win our affections, and none of those public qualities that claim respect or command admiration. The love of country is not strong enough in their bosoms ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... I suppose," said Mr. May. "We cannot kill them off, if they are inoffensive, and keep the laws. So that, after all, a ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... proceed to her assistance may be of a different stamp: and yet, from the lax state of discipline which exists in the Portuguese army, in comparison with that of England and France, I am afraid that the inoffensive population of the disturbed provinces will say that wolves have been summoned to chase away foxes from the sheepfold. O! may I live to see the day when soldiery will no longer be tolerated in any civilized, or ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... ceiling. Sometimes an extraordinarily large centipede attempts the same thing, but with less success, and has to be seized with a pair of fire-tongs and thrown into the exterior darkness. Very rarely, an enormous spider appears. This creature seems inoffensive. If captured, it will feign death until certain that it is not watched, when it will run away with surprising swiftness if it gets a chance. It is hairless, and very different from the tarantula, or fukurogumo. It is ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... I have invented some and submitted it for St. George's—if not approval—tolerance. 'Carnation' for instance, and 'split my infinitives,' are the most useful, and entirely inoffensive, when one's excited. Also I may have a cigarette with him after dinner, if I like, when we're alone. Only I haven't wanted it yet, for we have so much to say, it won't stay lighted. But now tell me about yourself. Of course we knew you'd come. It was in a paper here, that tells ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... dividing his attentions between his master, his volume of philosophy, and the needs of various old ladies, to whom such men attach themselves as by a kind of generous, manly instinct. Minks was always popular and inoffensive. He ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... tattooed in numbers of short, straight lines on the face. The Marubos, on the Javari, have a dark complexion and a slight beard; and on the west side of the same river roam the Majeronas—fierce, hostile, light colored, bearded cannibals. In the vicinity of Pebas dwell the inoffensive Yaguas. The shape of the head (but not their vacant expression) is well represented by Catlin's portrait of "Black Hawk," a Sauk chief. They are quite free from the encumbrance of dress, the men wearing a girdle of fibrous bark around the loins, with bunches ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... with the title-page,—Will not the gentle reader pity my father from his soul?—to see an orderly and well-disposed gentleman, who tho' singular,—yet inoffensive in his notions,—so played upon in them by cross purposes;—to look down upon the stage, and see him baffled and overthrown in all his little systems and wishes; to behold a train of events perpetually falling out against him, and in so critical and cruel a way, as if they had purposedly ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... he faltered, "the end has come, and the old, dark story will be laid with me in the grave. I know I have sinned grievously, but have atoned with a life of repentance and cruel suffering for the murder of an inoffensive wife." ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... I met with a little misadventure on account of the sheep—an animal which one is accustomed to regard as of a timid and inoffensive nature. When I set out at a brisk pace to walk to the house I have spoken of, in order to make some inquiries there, a few of the sheep that happened to be near began to bleat loudly, as if alarmed, and by and by they came hurrying after me, apparently ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... some conflicting claims, will most assuredly help to teach the warring nations just how far they can go, and will help, consequently, to restrict its subsequent policy within practicable and probably inoffensive limits. It is by no means an accident that England and France, the two oldest European nations, are the two whose foreign policies are best defined and, so far as Europe is concerned, least offensive. For centuries these Powers fought and fought, because one of ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... story of theft and falsehood, Duncan Lisle naturally took the same view of it as had the humble Amy. The master of Kennons had not been ignorant of his wife's systematic persecution of this inoffensive servant. He had more than once spoken to her on the subject—but finding he had but made the matter worse, ceased to interfere. Now, he suspected China to be the victim of a successful plot. His wife had made a bold move, and without his sanction. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... she said to the assembled servants, "is about to suffer condemnation by default for having had the audacity to defend his life against a madman; it was Giletti who meant to kill him. You have all been able to see how gentle and inoffensive Fabrice's character is. Justly incensed at this atrocious injury, I am starting for Florence. I shall leave ten years' wages for each of you; if you are unhappy, write to me; and so long as I have a sequin, there shall be something ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... not above his usual tone, but slowly he turned his fine head as the door opened. He fixed the amused grey-green eyes on old Mr. Fox-Moore: 'A small and inoffensive pillar of the Upper House is in the act of ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... law of intimidation, rules the city. This is what Stendhal meant when, speaking of the "simple and inoffensive" personages in the Vicar of Wakefield, he remarked that "in the sombre Italy, a simple and inoffensive creature would be quickly destroyed." It is not easy to be inoffensive and yet respected in a land of teeth and claws, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... meek endurance seem to be the characteristics of this inoffensive people, so graceful in their rags, so mysterious in their age-old immobility, and so ready to accept with an equal indifference whatever yoke may come. Poor, beautiful people, with muscles that never grow tired! Whose men in olden times moved the great ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... lord chamberlain. The exertions of Hyde, Earl of Rochester, who, although a Tory, was possessed necessarily of some influence as maternal uncle to the queen, procured a recall of this award against a play which was in every respect truly inoffensive. But there was still a more insuperable obstacle to its success. The plot is flat and unsatisfactory involving no great event, and in truth being only the question, whether Cleomenes should or should not depart upon an expedition, which appears far more hazardous ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott |
