"Unconventional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... between Northiam and the Vicarage door. Debt was the man's proper element; he used to skulk from arrest in the chancel of his church; and the speed of Captain may have come sometimes handy. At an early age this unconventional parson married his cook, and by her he had two daughters and one son. One of the daughters died unmarried; the other imitated her father, and married 'imprudently.' The son, still more gallantly continuing the tradition, entered the army, loaded himself with debt, was forced to sell out, took refuge ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the house of a highly respected family in Copenhagen, that of a prominent scientist, a good-natured, unpractical savant, very unsuited to be the mentor of such an unconventional young man. He was conspicuous among the native Danish freshmen for his elegant dress and cosmopolitan education, and was so quick at learning that before very many weeks he spoke Danish almost without a mistake, though with a marked foreign accent, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... himself to intensest listening and questioning, and presently followed his questions with suggestions which showed that unconventional ways of working were not altogether new ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... She was a breezy old lady with a military moustache and an unconventional manner with her clientele. 'You come to me an hour a day, and, if you haven't two left feet, we'll make you the pet of society ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the carriage and in strange hotels, and too young to appreciate 'grown-up' sights. Picture-galleries and cathedrals were only a drag to her, and if the experiences that were put into Rosella's mouth for the benefit of her untravelled sisters could have been written down, they would have been as unconventional as Mark Twain's adventures. Rosella went through the whole tour, and left a leg behind in the hinge of a door, but in compensation brought home a Paris bonnet and mantle. She seemed to have been her young mistress's chief comfort, next to an occasional game of play with her father, or a walk, ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "misanthropes." The morning visit to the Agora "to tell or to hear some new thing"[] will be followed by equally delightful idling and conversation later in the day at the Gymnasia, and later still, probably, at the dinner-party. Easy and unconventional are the personal greetings. A little shaking out of the mantle, an indescribable flourish with the hands. A free Greek will despise himself for "bowing," even to the Great King. To clasp hands implies exchanging a pledge, something for ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Pollyanna talked. Pollyanna was in her element now. Pollyanna loved to talk. That there was anything strange or unwise or even unconventional in this intimate telling of her thoughts and her history to a total stranger on a Boston park bench did not once occur to Pollyanna. To Pollyanna all men, women, and children were friends, either ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... no exception to the rule. It began at 7 A.M., and, with a brief intermission between lunch and afternoon tea, continued strenuously till 8.30 P.M. Cooks were broadly classified as "Crook Cooks" and "Unconventional Cooks" by the eating public. Such flattering titles as "Assistant Grand Past Master of the Crook Cooks' Association" or "Associate of the Society of Muddling Messmen" were not empty inanities; they were founded on solid fact—on actual achievement. If there were no constitutional affiliation, strong ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Burton?" she asked, "and how long have you been officiating as child's companion? You're certainly a happy-looking trio—so unconventional. I hate to see children all dressed up and stiff as little manikins, when they go out to ride. And you look as if you had been having SUCH a ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... I have disapproved of her for some time," Juliet spoke thoughtfully. "She is very unconventional, you know. And I—well, at heart I fancy I must be rather a prude. Anyhow, I disapproved, more and more strongly, and at last I ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... convenient height for the monster. None but a madman would invite the Bear to eat by shooting at him now. So Pedro flattened himself face downward on the platform, and, with his mouth to a crack, he poured forth prayers to his representative in the sky, regretting his unconventional attitude and profoundly hoping that it would be overlooked as unavoidable, and that somehow the petitions would get the right direction after leaving the ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... House he devoted himself assiduously to learning the intricacies of his department. Very soon reforms began to be manifested. The Board of Trade, an old and historic department, largely bound up with red tape, became the most unconventional office in Whitehall. Moreover, the activities of the Board of Trade began to get an importance in Parliament that they had never hitherto possessed. Novel measures were brought in by Lloyd George and, what ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... later we were seated, all four, in the small sitting-room of Signora Lucca, listening to her remarkable narrative of those sinister events, the ending of which we had chanced to witness. She spoke in rapid and fluent but very unconventional English, which, for the sake of clearness, I ...
— The Adventure of the Red Circle • Arthur Conan Doyle
... depends upon how we look at things." She touched the parrot-cage with her foot, and Rajah hissed. "What would you say if I told you that I was unconventional enough to ask the purser to ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... as an exception, and that he contrived to leave it really exceptional. It did not in the least degree break the rounded clearness of his loyalty to social custom. It did not in the least degree weaken the sanctity of the general rule. At a supreme crisis of his life he did an unconventional thing, and he lived and died conventional. It would be hard to say whether he appears the more thoroughly sane in having performed the act, or in not having ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... me at her home, that afforded me the opening for which I was longing. We were sitting on a grassy hummock, weaving garlands, when I replied to the apology by declaring my intention of marrying her, with or without her mother's consent. Unconventional as the declaration was, to my surprise she showed neither offense nor wonderment. Dropping the flowers with which we were working, she avoided my gaze, and, turning slightly from me, began watching our horses, which had strayed away some distance. But I gave her little ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... great tenderness and tact then; while in ordinary life her voice was rather loud, her movements were free and angular, and her expressions very unconstrained. Nobody ever saw Mrs. Marx anything but neat, whatever she possibly might be doing; in other respects her costume was often extremely unconventional; but she could dress herself nicely and look quite as becomes a lady. Independent was Mrs. Marx, above ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... tranquilizing; nevertheless the young man appeared out of harmony with it. His face wore a feverish flush; his eyes had a restless gleam. He had only a short time before come to town, entering in unconventional fashion. As the train had slackened at a siding on the outskirts he had quietly, and unperceived, slipped off the back platform of the rear car; then made his way by devious and little frequented ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... introduced and could only throw myself upon her indulgence. Perhaps the other lady, the one I had had the honor of seeing the day before, would have explained to her about the garden. That was literally what had given me courage to take a step so unconventional. I had fallen in love at sight with the whole place (she herself probably was so used to it that she did not know the impression it was capable of making on a stranger), and I had felt it was really a case to risk something. ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... woman, too, my dear, although my life has been sheltered. Otherwise, what has happened to you might have happened to me. And besides, I am what is called unconventional, I have little theories of my own about life, and now that you have told me everything I understand you and love you even ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in Greek tragedy were the heroes of well-known popular legends. In abandoning the well-trodden circle Aeschylus has here ensured an undying freshness for his work—it is novel, free and unconventional; more than ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... pleasure that they do all in their power to make their guest's stay as agreeable as possible. Life in a large convent has much resemblance to that of a lord of the manor in Eastern Europe. Nothing can be more unconstrained, more unconventional. A visitor lives as independently as in an hotel, and many of the visitors behave themselves as if it were one. I have seen a subaltern official arrive, summon the head servant, move into a room, order his meal, and then inquire casually whether the padre, who was an utter stranger ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... "ring" at Chantilly is often graced with a most distinguished and aristocratic assemblage. Amongst the beauties of this brilliant company may be especially noticed Madame de Viel-Castel, the young princesse Amede de Broglie, the duchesse de Chaulnes with her strange, unconventional type of beauty, Madame Ferdinand Bischoffsheim, the comtesse Beugnot, the comtesse Tanneguy-Duchatel and the princesse de Sagan. And when all this gay party has dispersed, and the duke is left to his cigar—as constant a companion as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... a most delightful circle. Generally they all managed to meet every day, and the usual trysting-place was The Haven, partly because it was in so central a situation for everybody, but chiefly because the kind-hearted, unconventional Castletons were ready at any and every time to welcome visitors, and would allow friends to 'drop in' in true Bohemian fashion, quite regardless of whatever happened to be taking place in the household. From the studio, indeed, they were excluded while Mr. Castleton was at his ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... concern; but after hours of thought she had come to the conclusion that to address, under the circumstance, the recipient of the letter as 'Dear Mr. Everard' would hardly do. The only possible justification of her unconventional act was that there existed already a friendship, an intimacy of years, since childhood; that there were already between them knowledge and understanding of each other; that what she was doing, and about to do, was but ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... impossible to give a fair sketch of her character; she was what would now be called unconventional, and was ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... human dove, and of course a married one. Camus was a divine of views which one does not call "liberal," because the word has been almost more sullied by ignoble use in this connection than in any other—but unconventional and independent; and he provoked great wrath among his brethren by reflecting on the abuses of the conventual system. Palombe appears to be not uninteresting, but after all it is but one of those parasitic exercises ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... wealth, it certainly raised his reputation with the book-selling world. A connexion already begun with Smollett's 'Critical Review' was drawn closer; and the shrewd Sosii of the Row began to see the importance of securing so vivacious and unconventional a pen. Towards the end of the year he was writing for Wilkie the collection of periodical essays entitled 'The Bee'; and contributing to the same publisher's 'Lady's Magazine', as well as to 'The Busy Body' of one Pottinger. In these, more than ever, he was finding his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... the cities of the East, word of which had come to him through various channels. To her these things were no longer novel,—if they had ever been so—and so for her romance must come from the new, the unusual, the unconventional. The West was all ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... As he sat eating he kept reading a letter over and over, and each time he read he grinned —he did not smile like a well-behaved man of the world, he did not giggle like a well-veneered Egyptian back from Paris, he chuckled like a cabman responding to a liberal fare and a good joke. A more unconventional little man never lived. Simplicity was his very life, and yet he had a gift for following the sinuosities of the Oriental mind; he had a quality almost clairvoyant, which came, perhaps, from his Irish forebears. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "It was—quite unconventional. But I felt that you would understand, Mr. Conniston. I guess I didn't stop to think. And I am afraid of lightning, too. But I wanted to see you. I didn't want to wait until tomorrow to hear about what happened up there. ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... for novelty, always novelty, he grows too original, too unconventional, this sin is unusual enough to approach the estate of a virtue. But his oddity is not mere sensation-mongering. It is his individuality. He could make the same reply to such criticism that Schumann made; he thinks in strange rhythms and hunts curious effects, because ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... real poetical imagination of it is unchangeable; the allegory, subtle and profound and yet simple, is cast into the form of a dramatic narrative, which moves with unconventional freedom to a finely impressive climax; and the reader, who began in idle curiosity, finds his intelligence more and more engaged until, when he turns the last page, he has the feeling of one who has been moving in worlds not realized, and communing ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... bolt right across and nab him. The sister sitting next stopped her. Judging from the glimpses I had as the party spoke together and leaned to look, it was quite a sensation. But apparently by common consent they left whatever move was to be made to the bride; and to my surprise this move was most unconventional. She got up with an abrupt gesture and started over to our table—alone. This, for a girl of her sort, was going some. I glanced doubtfully at ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... Enraged at this, she tells her father that she will not be appeased until married to Cephalo. But she loses her life through the falling of an old, dilapidated castle wherein she has been keeping an unconventional tryst, and Cephalo becomes the intimate friend of ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... when they did, they thought it was the best idea there: and it was all your idea, Owen," said Mrs. Elmore, in accents of such tender pride that he knew she must now be approaching the difficult passage of her narration. "It was so perfectly new and unconventional. She got on very well speaking Italian with the officers, for she knew as much of it as ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... most of all), succeed only in being themselves, and that is what Borrow does. His attraction is rather complex, and different parts of it may, and no doubt do, apply with differing force to this and that reader. One may be fascinated by his pictures of an unconventional and open-air life, the very possibilities of which are to a great extent lost in our days, though patches of ground here and there in England (notably the tracts of open ground between Cromer and Wells in Borrow's own county) still recall them. To others ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... one-half or two-thirds of all the voting men of the community or nation, plus one. But that average man, forgetful of the multitude of yesterday and ungrateful, has none the less wrought into his very fibre and spirit the uncompromising individualism, the unconventional neighborliness, and the frontier fellowships of yesterday. It is of that that he is consciously or unconsciously instructed at every turn. And he is now beginning to think more and more of the invisible ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... me where that great man of God made that great discovery. I know that he made it in his own closet, and on his own knees, and in his own evil heart. And so, also, when I come nearer home. Whenever I hear a single unconventional, immediate, penetrating, overawing petition or confession in a minister's pulpit prayer or in his family worship, I do not need to be told out of what prayer-book he took that. I know without his telling ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... that about this period, 1669, she accepted the protection of some admirer. Who he may have been at first, how many more there were than one, how long the various amours endured, it is idle to speculate. She was for her period as thoroughly unconventional as many another woman of letters has been since in relation to later times and manners, as unhampered and free as her witty successor, Mrs. de la Riviere Manley, who lived for so long as Alderman Barber's kept mistress and died in his house. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... said the large-featured woman with a voice equally pronounced, "in reference to a request from you, which, though perhaps unconventional in the extreme, I have been able to meet by the intervention of this young lady's company. My name on this card may not be familiar to you—but I am ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... after her, and the pen, momentarily grasped, had fallen from Straws' hand. Instead of reaching for the ink-bottle he reached in the cupboard for the other bottle. Again she came near entering through the window—having many unconventional ways of coming into a room!—but after looking in for a moment, changed her mind after her fashion and floated away into thin space like the giddy, volatile mistress that she was. After that she appeared no more—probably making ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... walking by his side down the smooth marble stairs and out through the grand entrance into Fifth Avenue. The strange part about it was, she was not in the least excited over a very unconventional situation. She had allowed a handsomely groomed, young, red-haired adventurer to pick her up without the formality of an introduction, in the Public Library. She hadn't the remotest idea of his name—nor had he of hers—yet there was something about him that seemed oddly familiar. ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... the old school: he likes things done decently and in order. He worships bright buttons, and exact words of command, and a perfectly wheeling line. He mistrusts unconventional movements and individual tactics. "No use trying to run," he says, "before you can walk." When we see him, we dress the company and ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... the self-educating type: John, by virtue of the quickness of his parts; George, on account of the strangeness of his interests and his thirst for a knowledge of men and the tongues in which they communicate to each other their ideas. It would be impossible for an unconventional linguist, such as George Borrow was by instinct, to remain uneducated, and it was equally impossible ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... There was something decidedly attractive and breezy about the newcomer. Her dark eyes danced and twinkled as she spoke, and there was an unconventional jollity in the very high-pitched tone of her voice, and an infectious ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... breakfasts occasionally squeezed in between. All this, I supposed, was carried on without Mrs. Sewall's knowledge. I ought to have known better than to have excused it. It was my fault. I blame myself. Such an unconventional affair deserved to end in catastrophe. But to Edith it ended not in spilled milk, but in a spilled pint ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... their eyes was frank to revelation. But for the clear girlish liking for herself she saw in Betty Vanderpoel's, Mary would have known her next speech to be of imbecile bluntness. She had heard that Americans often had a queer, delightful understanding of unconventional things. This splendid girl ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... tents (a Puritan strain was responsible for the illustration) she felt disarmed. Besides, she was rather ashamed of her maladroitness in mistaking Lord Chilminster for a common motor-man. It argued gaucherie. Perhaps he thought her unconventional call a violation of good taste—considered her forward! He had plainly shown his annoyance about that obnox—that embarrassing paragraph, and that fact spiked most of her batteries. He might, after all, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... house in proper style. This house was noted as early as 1690. In one of its halls were white cases full of books. His aunt had wished to put them in order. She had found frivolous books in them, ornamented with engravings so unconventional ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... understand. Heroically resisting a tendency to scream, she thus secured space for second thought, and, being a shrewd woman of the world, ended by making up her mind to tell no one about the matter. Evidently, Jennie had been having some decidedly unconventional experience, and the less publicity given to all such passages in young ladies' lives the better for their prospects. It so happened that in the bustle attending the approach to the terminus and the prospective change of cars everybody was too busy to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... "Call it unconventional," she supplemented. "It sounds better. And now do go and order some food for 'G. Smith and sister.' ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... nice little place here for her work—quiet and unconventional. I hope you think well of her talent, sir? You might go further and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... I must go myself," she said at last. "It is unconventional, but there is no other way." And she bent over and touched the pony again and turned the corner without any ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... praise has been to some extent undiscriminating. It has now become almost a tradition to hold up to our admiration Coleridge's chapter on poetic diction, and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, in a preface that is as unconventional in manner as it is stimulating in most of its substance, maintains the tradition. As a matter of fact, what Coleridge has to say on poetic diction is prolix and perilously near commonplace. Instead of making to Wordsworth the wholly sufficient answer that much poetry of the highest ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... is not so pleasant a place for a confidential chat as the unconventional postscript. The real value and the true purpose of the preface is to serve as a telephone for the writer of the book and to bear his message to the professional book-reviewers. On the other hand, only truly devoted readers will track ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... the first printed editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Malory's Morte d'Arthur. His own English translation of the Golden Legend, a mediaeval Latin collection of lives of the saints, is scarcely less in importance. Among many other titles the following may serve to show how unusual and unconventional ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... fool me," she exclaimed, shaking her finger at him in the most unconventional way. "It was intended to be a disguise. There is absolutely nothing the ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... too, the whole place began to be scandalised by her vagaries, her mysterious expeditions on the big brown horse, and her constant appearance in public with a coterie of young men about her. At a time when anything unconventional in a girl was clear evidence of vice to all the men and most of the women who knew of it, Beth's reputation was bound to suffer, and it became so bad at last that Dr. Hardy forbade Charlotte to associate with ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... lawyer, and in their conversation, a reference to "Brickdust Row" gives Blinker the knowledge that he is the owner of that tenement—that it is his own fault which gives rise to such unconventional practices as Florence has innocently indulged in. It is too late, he thinks, now—too late to change things. His dream of ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... our care-free and unconventional life began to circulate, and presently our Eden was invaded by the only serpent I have ever found in the newspaper world—a girl reporter from Boston. She telegraphed that she was coming to see us; and though, when she came, we had been warned ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... has told the story in his own way is doubtless the only excuse necessary to offer for the many unconventional ...
— Geronimo's Story of His Life • Geronimo
... unconventional and foolish. I respect the conventions. They're so sensible. And because it would be unfair to you, and to Mrs. Fenger, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... young man had spoken only to his horse, words of encouragement uttered in a pleasant voice, and both girls were still too stunned by the sudden peril and their equally sudden rescue to realize their very unconventional situation; Edith with both arms around the stranger, her cheek pressed into his shoulder; Fran sitting on the saddle-bow, held in position by his left arm while his right hand ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... are of a wide range, and jealousy in intercommunication is almost entirely shut out. Many of my friends were special "characters." For the most part they had made their own way in the world, like myself. I found among them a great deal of quaint humour. Their talk was quite unconventional; and yet their remarks were well worth being treasured up in the memory as things to be thought about and pondered over. Sometimes they gave the key to the comprehension of some of the grandest functions in Nature, and an insight into the operation ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... lightly. Of course it was an exaggeration of the other girl, but it showed that some people who seem very innocent will bear looking after. Too bad that pretty girls must spoil everything by being vain and—well, careless! But the two I mention are very unconventional." ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... against the wall, her bandaged foot resting on a decrepit suit-case. Her eyes were sparkling, her lips ever ready to part in the joy of laughter, the colour leaping into her cheeks in response to the amazing quips of these unconventional vagabonds. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... any rate the result was much natural and genuine irritation, which they were hardly prepared for. Whether on general grounds they were wise in startling and vexing friends, and putting fresh weapons into the hands of opponents by their frank disclosure of so unconventional a character, is a question which may have more than one answer; but one thing is certain, they were not wise, if they only desired to forward the immediate interests of their party or cause. It was not the act of cunning ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... So utterly unconventional had their proceedings been, so thoroughly had the spirit of the remote little island possessed them, and so all-sufficient had they been to one another, that the thought of an engagement ring had troubled his mind as little as the lack of it had troubled Margaret's. ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... rose a hoarse titter. The girl glanced up, and for the first time became aware that her position was somewhat unconventional. A very faint color sprang into her cheeks, but she was not the kind to retreat in disorder. West dodged through the blockade in time to hear her say with ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Inkle and Yarico, which had made him feel very sorry for poor Mr. Inkle; so that his ideas might not have been below a certain mark of the literary calling; but his spelling and diction were too unconventional. ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... contributor of signed articles to the Liberal journals, the Speaker and Daily News. He established himself from the first as a writer with a distinct personality, combative to a swashbuckling degree, unconventional and dogmatic; and the republication of much of his work in a series of volumes (e.g. Twelve Types, Heretics, Orthodoxy), characterized by much acuteness of criticism, a pungent style, and the capacity of laying down the law with unflagging ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... more am I. We must think of the future, not the past, and I feel very sure that if we married, the result would be death to our friendship. We had a splendid time, and we might still have a splendid time, if you could be unconventional and realise how many other women are also. But probably you have decided against my suggestions, or I should have heard from you. So I suppose you hate me, and I'm awfully sorry to think it. You won't come to me, then. But that doesn't lessen my obligations, ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... of the parable surrounds us. Here is a fitting scene for such a drama of lawless violence, cowardly piety, and unconventional mercy. In these caverns robbers could hide securely. On this wild road their victim might lie and bleed to death. By these paths across the glen the priest and the Levite could "pass by on the other side," discreetly turning their heads away ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... unconventional meeting," he said. "I received your letter, Charles, and I am bound to say the contents would have astonished me exceedingly had they been written by anybody but an Evors. But our race has always been a law unto itself, with more or less disastrous consequences. ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... receive her. Signora Grassini is not the woman to do unconventional things of that kind. But I wanted to hear about Signor Rivarez as a satirist, not as a man. Fabrizi told me he had been written to and had consented to come and take up the campaign against the Jesuits; and that is the last I have heard. ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... to know the natives of the country intimately, like other unconventional desires I had at times experienced, might have remained a sneaking wish until this day, but for an accident which freed me for a time from English supervision. My people had provided me with introductions to several influential English residents in Syria, among others to a family ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... 'crystallization' of public sympathy around the young Duc d'Orleans when he suddenly appeared in Paris. The Government was completely bewildered and demoralized by this 'bolt out of the blue.' Instead of quietly reconducting the prince to the frontier with a reprimand for his inconsiderate and unconventional patriotism, it stupidly locked him up in a prison haunted by legends disgraceful to the Republic, proceeded against him with clumsy vehemence, gave him time to show himself to the French people, in the words of the Duc d'Aumale, as a 'pur sang,' a straightforward, dashing young ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... are conversing politely, they are attended by their real, unconventional selves, who interrupt to say what the women actually think and mean. Compare Ninah Wilcox Putnam's Orthodoxy (Forum, June, 1914, 51:801), in which everyone in church says what he is thinking instead of ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... inferences about Philip Norris when he wanted to be direct. He had fairly taken her breath away. Melissy's instinct told her there was something humiliating about such a wooing. But picturesque and unconventional conduct excuse themselves in a picturesque personality. And this man had that ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... my business. You are young, amiable, unconventional; you suit me and will save me from the tediousness of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... theme, "Make Germany Pay!" was initiated by Col. CLAUDE LOWTHER, who not long ago produced a specific scheme for extracting twenty-five thousand millions from the enemy—a scheme which by its unconventional handling of the rules of arithmetic excited the amazed admiration of professional financiers. Possibly Mr. BONAR LAW, as ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, was jealous because he had not thought of it first. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... farewells, for people soon grow familiar and unconventional at sea. Blair shouted, "Lennard's a born hospital nurse, but he'll overfeed your patient." Then amid falling shades and hollow moaning of winds the yacht drove slowly away with her foresail still aweather, and the fleet hung around awaiting the admiral's final decision. The night dropped down; ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... am pleased," said Edna, "that you should be more independent and unconventional and assert yourself—which is all that Nietzsche really meant. You mustn't carry it too far, ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... cheek-bones marked with scarlet, and a wide, humorous mouth that was somehow droll in its expression even when she was angry or serious. She was rarely angry; she was unexacting, good-humoured, preferring animals to people, and unconventional in speech and manner. Her father and Anne sometimes discussed her anxiously; they confessed that they were rather fearful for Alix. For Cherry, neither one had ever ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... hats, bags or boxes; no trace remained of the obstinate conspiracy of gloves and veils, handkerchiefs and ribbons, to break the captivity of the drawer. The room was like an unoccupied guest-chamber. Yet in every detail of furniture and decoration it spoke of an unconventional but exacting taste. Trent, as his expert eye noted the various perfection of colour and form amid which the ill-mated lady dreamed her dreams and thought her loneliest thoughts, knew that she had at least the resources of an artistic nature. His interest in this unknown personality ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... perfectly," said Mrs. Belloc with a ready sympathy that made Mildred appreciate the advantages of the friendship of unconventional, knock-about people. "Nothing could be easier. You've got no luggage but that bag. I'll take it up to the Grand Central Station and check it, and bring the check back here. You can send for ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... intervals of the serious business of tracing No. 5 or running No. 10 to earth in the corner of a warehouse, I made many pleasant acquaintances and received kindest words and notes of welcome from unknown friends. All this warm-hearted, unconventional kindness goes far to make the stranger forget his "own people and his father's house," and feel at once at home amid strange and unfamiliar scenes. After all, "home" is portable, luckily, and a welcoming smile and hand-clasp act as a spell to create it in any place. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... with dignity. "We need not go over the ground. Mr. Fenton made us acquainted, I presume, because he agrees with me in seeing nothing wrong in my position, however unconventional it may be. You will see that if I had been ashamed of the fact I could easily have kept it ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... them away slowly and sat down on the sofa. "I'm tired," she said a little defiantly, "that's all—you know if you will come and call at such dreadfully unconventional hours you mustn't expect to find people with all the paint on. I never put mine on ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... absorbed in the issue. He was too unconventional a thinker ever to find himself in harmony with all the declarations of any party, and yet it was a necessity of his nature to be in the melee. He had his own array of facts, his own peculiar deductions; his own special charges of iniquity against this party and of criminal forbearance against ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... unmapped land, the gates of which are closed, locked, barred, and chained against all but a very few of his countrymen, teach him to love many things which all right-minded people very properly detest. The free, queer, utterly unconventional life has a fascination which is all its own. Each day brings a little added knowledge of the hopes and fears, longings and desires, joys and sorrows, pains and agonies of the people among whom his lot is cast. Each hour brings ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... by his frequent coming. And Richard was peculiarly a man to like and to lean upon. Not in any way brilliant, and with no literary tastes, he was well educated enough, and very well informed; a thorough business man. I think he was ordinarily reserved, but our intercourse had been so unconventional, that I did not think him so at all. He was rather good-looking, tall and square-shouldered, with light-brown hair and fine dark-blue eyes; he had a great many ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... he went to France, accompanied by his mother, to study pianoforte playing and the theory of music at the Paris Conservatoire under Marmontel and Savard respectively. Here one of his fellow students was Debussy, even then looked upon as having curious and unconventional ideas on his art. ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... known just what comfort he would have needed; whereas a Fraulein would know nothing about a screw, beyond the German for it, and the gender, of course. And of what use is that to a child? It may sound very unconventional, and I suppose it was so, to go to a strange house and ask for Thomas, and my only excuse a small ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... delicate feminine flutter that meant Annette, was sounding in the hall. And now at the entrance stood Annette in a white dress, her neck showing a faint rim of tan above her girlish decolletage; Annette smiling rather formally as though this conventional passage after their unconventional meeting and acquaintance sat in embarrassment on her spirits; Annette saying in that vibrant boyish contralto which came always as a surprise out of her ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... and hurled Mayor and Corporation out of the window; those of the victims who still showed signs of life were dispatched with clubs—in fact, a clean-up of municipal authorities took place. Public spirited certainly, unconventional, you may say; but if the Bohemian is to have no power ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... He could not but feel that, if the elder sister came face to face with his marvellous machine, good must result for his plans. Rebecca walked with nervous haste, dreading Phoebe's possible discovery of this most unconventional conduct. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... suffrage movement had need of exactly such an infusion of fresh and ardent blood; so that the new society was warmly welcomed, and met with immediate success, finding recruits alike among the rich and the poor. Its unconventional methods, its eager and militant spirit, were felt to supply a lacking element, and the first picturesque and dashing exploits of the Union were on the whole well received. The obvious sincerity and earnestness of these very fresh recruits covered the rashness of ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... of the States and Territories that lay between Oak Forks and the Pacific Coast. Ernest, whose education was decidedly superior to his companion's, was able to give him some information. So they plodded on, enjoying the unconventional life and the scenery ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... respectable gentlemen who have brought before the public the necessity of commemorating two great poets are on the lookout for talent of the kind that Keats and Shelley exhibited? How many of them, if they came across a latter-day young poet, indolent, unconventional, crude, fantastic, would encourage him to be true to his ideas and to work out his own salvation on his own lines? Which of them, if they had been confronted with our two poets in the flesh, would have encouraged Keats to be Keats and Shelley to be Shelley? Would they not rather have ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... other cases whatever, the greatest decorative art is wholly unconventional—downright, pure, good painting and sculpture, but always fitted for its place; and subordinated to the purpose it has to serve in ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... Bill Jones had been unconventional in other relations besides that of sheriff. He once casually mentioned to me that he had served on the police force of Bismarck, but he had left because he "beat the Mayor over the head with his gun one day." He added: "The Mayor, he didn't mind it, but the Superintendent ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... to see you here, dear, but it's very nice—so unconventional. You must let me put away those poor flowers!" She went to the silver cup and bent over them. "My dear boy, they're quite nasty! Do throw them outside somewhere; it's so dreadful, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... indeed, she assured herself, if he fancied that she meant more than friendship by the constant exchange of letters with him. It might be eccentric; it might be looked upon as utterly and unpardonably unconventional, but it could never be regarded as a flirtation by letter. The proof of that, Veronica argued to herself, was that both of them knew that it was nothing of the sort, a manner of begging the question familiar to those who wish to do as they ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford |
