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Unpolished   Listen
adjective
Unpolished  adj.  See polished.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Unpolished" Quotes from Famous Books



... this time he carried his point in most arguments regarding the well-being of the settlers, and the Green Mountain boys, as his followers came to be called, fairly worshipped him. He was singularly handsome, with ruddy face, a ready wit, bold, unpolished, brave and almost a giant in size, for though not so tall as Seth Warner he was a much heavier and ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster

... with him in life the friendly nod; hands that were calloused with the axe and shovel, and Judge Temple's aged slave in narrow home—all sleeping beneath the same sward and glancing shadows are not less honored now than is the plain, unpolished slab of stone, bearing two dates,—of birth and entrance into the life eternal of James ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips

... pregnant with meaning, and uttered with rectitude of articulation, and force of emphasis, of which I had entertained no conception previously to my knowledge of him. Notwithstanding the uncouthness of his garb, his manners were not unpolished. All topics were handled by him with skill, and without pedantry or affectation. He uttered no sentiment calculated to produce a disadvantageous impression: on the contrary, his observations denoted a mind alive to every generous and heroic feeling. ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... Virginia, where, it is said, the fine mailed and plumed, noble-natured, maiden-rescuing, wrong-redressing, adventure-seeking knight of romance is accepted and believed in by the peasantry with pleasing simplicity, while they reject with scorn the plain, unpolished verdict whereby history exposes him as a braggart, a ruffian, a fantastic vagabond; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... conscientious was she, that she allowed the question to be debated in her mind for half a minute, answering then, 'No, not uncivil. I cannot exactly explain . . . . He certainly did not intend to be uncivil. He is only an unpolished, vexatious man; enormously tall.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... intensity I recognised that electric light which played round the submarine boat like a magnificent phenomenon of phosphorescence. After shutting my eyes involuntarily, I opened them, and saw that this luminous agent came from a half globe, unpolished, placed in the roof ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... churchyard. The grave was noticeable because it was well kept, and utterly devoid of the tawdry ornamentation inseparable from such places in Italy. It was marked by a monument distinctly unique in a European country. It was a huge unpolished boulder, over which ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich

... contain much that is quaint, but also much that is beautiful and true; yet they are the least poetical of his works. His 'Arcadia' is a glorious unfinished and unpolished wilderness of fancy. It is a vineyard, the scattered clusters of which are so heavy, that, like the grapes of Eshcol of old, they must be carried on a staff. Here is one of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... simplicity of its narrative, which contrasts with the artificial graces of later Sanscrit poetry. The poetry of Kalidasa, for instance, is ornate and beautiful, and almost scintillates with similes in every verse; the poetry of the Maha-bharara is plain and unpolished, and scarcely stoops to a simile or a figure of speech unless the simile comes naturally to the poet. The great deeds of godlike kings sometimes suggest to the poet the mighty deeds of gods; the rushing of warriors suggests the rushing of angry elephants ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous

... awkward, ungraceful, inelegant, and dull fellows say what they will in behalf of their solid matter and strong reasonings; and let them despise all those graces and ornaments which engage the senses and captivate the heart; they will find (though they will possibly wonder why) that their rough, unpolished matter, and their unadorned, coarse, but strong arguments, will neither please nor persuade; but, on the contrary, will tire out attention, and excite disgust. We are so made, we love to be pleased better than to be informed; information is, in a certain ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... began to speak with awkward gestures, and he gave the impression that he was able to speak well and eloquently, and that he merely assumed his stupid, unpolished manner of speaking. ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... strong as his habits of renewal, and he and Romoldo scoured the floors of my new establishment until the shiny black accretions of twenty-five years of petroleum and dirt had given way to unpolished roughness, and then I set to work to get a new polish. Then we took hold of the furniture—heavy, wooden, Viennese stuff—and scrubbed it with zeal. My landlord came to look in occasionally and was hurt. He said plaintively that they had had no contagious diseases, and he asked ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... they kept as curiosities, using them as counters at their card-tables. An officer, who had been removed from the Portuguese settlements in India to serve in Brazil, suspected that these stones were diamonds, and sent a few to Portugal. The jewellers of Lisbon, having never seen a diamond in its unpolished state, laughed at the idea of such rude pebbles being of any value, and so the inquiry was for some time dropped. But the Dutch consul at Lisbon managed to procure one of the stones, and sent it to Holland, then almost the only country in Europe where diamond-cutting was ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various

... why not? I tell you, Lilla, blunt, even coarse, if you like, as he is, unpolished, hasty, yet he has a better heart by far than many of those more elegant and attractive sprigs of nobility, amongst which perhaps your romantic fancy has wandered, as being the ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... counteract the effect produced by the distrust that the young man expressed of Judith's devotion to her filial duties. Had another said as much as Deerslayer, the compliment would most probably have been overlooked in the indignation awakened by the doubts, but even the unpolished sincerity, that so often made this simple minded hunter bare his thoughts, had a charm for the girl; and while she colored, and for an instant her eyes flashed fire, she could not find it in her heart to be really angry with one whose very soul seemed truth and manly kindness. Look her reproaches ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... his great burly figure and plain face, there was something very pleasant about him. He was rough and unpolished, his dress was careless and of colonial cut; and yet one could not fail to see he was a gentleman. His boyishness and fun would have delighted Dick, who was of the same calibre; only Dick was far cleverer, and had more in his little finger than this great ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... increased, he drifted into a sort of superstition, into a devout belief in certain processes and methods. He banished oil from his colours, and spoke of it as of a personal enemy. On the other hand, he held that turpentine produced a solid unpolished surface, and he had some secrets of his own which he hid from everybody; solutions of amber, liquefied copal, and other resinous compounds that made colours dry quickly, and prevented them from cracking. But he experienced some terrible worries, as the absorbent nature of ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... little likelihood that the young and rich Glanville, possessed of the most various accomplishments, and the most remarkable personal beauty, should be supplanted by a needy spendthrift (as Tyrrell at that time was), of coarse manners, and unpolished mind; with a person not, indeed, unprepossessing, but somewhat touched by time, and never more comparable to Glanville's than that of ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... unpolished stipes, blending above with the substance of the thick unpolished walls; the ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... warlike, because by their feuds and competitions they consider themselves as surrounded with enemies, and are always prepared to repel incursions, or to make them. Like the Greeks in their unpolished state, described by Thucydides, the Highlanders, till lately, went always armed, and carried their weapons ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... gayest colors, —their whole attire decked over with bits of gauze ribbon and other fantastic finery. The shades of night soon closed over the plantation, and then could be heard the rude music and loud laugh of the unpolished slave. It was about ten o'clock when the aristocratic slaves began to assemble, dressed in the cast-off finery of their master and mistress, swelling out and putting on airs in imitation of those they were forced to obey from day ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward

... of the first natural genius, aided with all the powers of polite learning, polite books, and polite company—to be dragged forth to the full glare of learned and polite observation, with all my imperfections of awkward rusticity and crude unpolished ideas on my head—I assure you, Madam, I do not dissemble when I tell you I tremble for the consequences. The novelty of a poet in my obscure situation, without any of those advantages which are reckoned necessary for that character, at ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... proceedings. They were polished and aristocratic men, not specially interested in the welfare of the common people. They were strongly desirous of perpetuating the class distinctions observed in Virginia society. A very marked contrast was apparent between them and the tall, gaunt, coarse-attired, unpolished ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.

... villages to provide the priests with rice seed of superior varieties, the crop of which can be exchanged with farmers for common rice. This is done on a profitable basis, because the shrines exchange unpolished rice for polished. A go of seed rice makes only ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... oblige us to be, and in order to defend ourselves it is just that nobody should shirk, that all should obey. Discipline does not quarrel with Revolution. Remember the armies of the first Republic—all citizens, Generals as well as soldiers, but Hoche, Kleber and the others were rough-hewn, unpolished benefactors who knew how to command ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... possible mishaps, he gave his wife a foretaste of their guests. He told her that they were rather noisy, talkative, and unpolished, and that they would, no doubt, astonish her by their manners and their accent, but that, as they had great influence, and were excellent men, they deserved a good reception. It was a very useful precaution, for when they came into ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... perpendicular rocks, which have breasted the storms for ages; gentle slopes, swelling away until their summits seem to dip in the blue sky; streams, cold and clear, leaping from crag to crag, and rushing down nobody knows whither. Like the country, may we not look to find the people unpolished, rugged and uneven, capable of the noblest heroism or the most infernal villainy—their lives full of lights ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... which was opened by the occupant of the apartment. He was an artist and a man of very marked characteristics. Seven years later Hawthorne wrote as follows of him: "He is a plain, homely Yankee, quite unpolished by his many years' residence in Italy. He talks ungrammatically; walks with a strange, awkward gait and stooping shoulders; is altogether unpicturesque, but wins one's confidence by his very lack of grace. It is not often that we see an artist ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... be cultivated in youth—however much it may be distinguished for great thoughts and wonderful attainments, still the peculiarities born of the forest cling about it in all its roughness—a fit setting to the unpolished diamond of the soul. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... the polish of language. The disposition, temperament, and morals of a people who have no written language go far toward giving their language its leading characteristics. The Grebo people are a well-made, quick, and commanding-looking people. In their intercourse with one another, however, they are unpolished, of sudden temper, and revengeful disposition.[90] Their language is consequently monosyllabic. A great proportion of Grebo words are of the character indicated. A few verbs will illustrate. Kba, carry; la, kill; ya, bring; mu, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... awkwardness. Of course, much must be placed, in both cases, to the account of clumsy instruments; but the instrument of speech differs from others in this: it is fashioned by, as well as for, its use; and a rude, unpolished language is, therefore, an index, in two ways, of the want of eloquence among the people who ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... that some people have become accustomed to feel a repugnance to Latin writing because they have fallen in with some unpolished and inelegant treatises translated from bad Greek into worse Latin. And with those men I agree, provided they will not think it worth while to read the Greek books written on the same subject. But who would object to read works on important subjects expressed in well-selected ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... remember that our hero Smooth is a man most unpolished, though never so bad as he seems. But we will let him speak for himself, and as his letters are addressed to Uncle Sam, of course those may read ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... walk unwittingly in the direction of Parc Monceau. The solitude of the Champs-Elysees pleased him. While passing before an important club with its windows lighted, he instinctively shuddered. Through the lace-like branches of the trees, he looked at the green shades, the lustres, the unpolished sconces, with the backgrounds of red and gold hangings, and the great, gold frames, and he imagined that they were discussing the causes of his defeat and ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... the gas range were smeared with grease. Scarcely a cooking utensil but was sticky. The silver went unpolished. The yolk of egg ("the very stickingest thing there was" Janice declared,) could be found on the edges ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... Kinvarra Castle. She had forgotten, or rather she had never noticed, that he was a short, thick-set, middle-aged man, that he wore mutton-chop whiskers, and that his lips were overhung by a long dark moustache. His manners were those of an unpolished and somewhat commonplace man. But while she thought of his grey eyes her heart was thrilled with gladness, and as she dreamed of his lonely life of labour and his ultimate hopes of success, all her old sorrows and ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... help not a little the masters of these exercises and to please all those who therein have taste and pleasure. This I have striven to do with that accuracy and with that good faith which are essential for the truth of history and of things written. But if my writing, being unpolished and as artless as my speech, be unworthy of your Excellency's ear and of the merits of so many most illustrious intellects; as for them, pardon me that the pen of a draughtsman, such as they too were, has no greater power to give them outline and shadow; and as for yourself, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari

... close contact with the populace and to preserve an esprit de corps. They believed that their only associates, on terms of equality, should be of their own order, as the clergy or medical profession, representing an educated aristocracy. The masses were illiterate, unpolished and, in the estimation of the lawyers, unfit for companionship with the cultivated classes, whose policy it was to inspire the plain people with profound respect for ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... the theory of knowledge, ethics and physics. His relations with Cleanthes, contemporaneously criticized by Antipater, are considered under STOICS. He is said to have composed seven hundred and fifty treatises, fragments alone of which survive. Their style, we are told, was unpolished and arid in the extreme, while the argument ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... when Shakespeare had lately produced "Antony and Cleopatra," when Bacon was writing his "Wisdom of the Ancients" and Ralegh his "History of the World," when the English Bible was hastening into print; when, nevertheless, in the opinion of most foreigners and many natives, England was intellectually unpolished, and her literature ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... corner contained a piece of fine statuary. From the centre of the ceiling depended a large gold basin of beautiful design and workmanship, in which played a miniature fountain of perfumed water that filled the air with a delicate fragrance. The walls were divided into panels of polished and unpolished granite. On the unpolished panels hung paintings of scenery. The dull, gray color of the walls brought out in sharp and tasteful relief the few costly and elegant adornments of the room: a placid landscape with mountains ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... plain. Pointing to the wet muddy state of the bridge, splashed by a recent rain, and then to the feet of the wayfarer, and lastly to the brush in his hand, he appeared to be deeply regretting that a gentleman of Israel's otherwise imposing appearance should be seen abroad with unpolished boots, offering at the same time ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... Simonides was a bad poet. I bore it at first, with difficulty indeed, yet nevertheless I bore it. And then I bade him at least take a myrtle-wreath and recite to me some portion of Aeschylus; and then he immediately said, "Shall I consider Aeschylus the first among the poets, full of empty sound, unpolished, bombastic, using rugged words?" And hereupon you can't think how my heart panted. But, nevertheless, I restrained my passion, and said, "At least recite some passage of the more modern poets, of whatever kind these clever things ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes

... severity and fearless independence the vices of the monks and the priestcraft of the established religion, he is always elegant, amusing, and, what pleases and surprises most in a writer of so unpolished an age, strikingly delicate and chastised. I prefer him infinitely to Chaucer. If you wish for a good specimen of Boccacio, as soon as you have finished my letter, (which will come, I suppose, by dinner-time,) send ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... back to the point under discussion. A pearl, or a glass bead, may owe its pleasantness in some degree to its lustre as well as to its roundness. But a mere and simple ball of unpolished stone is enough for sculpturesque value. You may have noticed that the quatrefoil used in the Ducal Palace of Venice owes its complete loveliness in distant effect to the finishing of its cusps. The extremity ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... wretched indeed, but they answered Stewart's purpose, better than better things. I ought not to have given any signature to them whatsoever. I never dreamt of acknowledging, either them, or the Ode to the 'Rain.' As to feeble expressions, and unpolished lines—there is the rub! Indeed, my dear sir, I do value your opinion very highly. I think your judgment in the sentiment, the imagery, the flow of a poem, decisive; at least, if it differed from ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... hit;" who observed, that those fastidious dames of antiquity, to whatever country belonging, of apparent asperity to the present times, would do well in laying aside unfounded prejudices; that the age to which Miss Macgilligan so frequently alluded, was one of the most ignorant barbarism; and the unpolished females of that day unequal to a comparison with those of the present, as much so, as the savage squaws of America with the finished beauties of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... exists only in a manuscript, having never been printed, being entirely written for the satisfaction of a friend's curiosity, in relation to the original manners and customs of the people of which it treats, and which, being those of savages in the primitive state of unpolished nature, may perhaps, to a philosophical enquirer, afford more amusement and instruction than those of the most refined societies. What man really is, appears at least plainer in the uncultivated savage, than ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard

... the Great Pyramid of Egypt, which comprises 75 million. From several of these repositories pottery and ornamental sculpture have been taken, and various articles in silver and copper, also stone weapons, some composed of hornstone unpolished, and much resembling in shape some ancient flint implements found near Amiens and other places in Europe, to be alluded to ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... necessarily increased dissatisfaction among the Royalists, since the property of the emigrants had not been restored to its old possessors, even in those cases in which it had not been sold. It was the fashion in a certain class to ridicule the unpolished manners of the great men of the Republic compared with the manners of the nobility of the old Court. The wives of certain generals had several times committed themselves by their awkwardness. In many circles there was an affectation of treating with ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... they will not know why till they hear of Christ. He sees in every land where the Gospel is being taken 'a people prepared for the Lord.' He sees the gold gleaming in the crevices of the caves, the gems, rough and unpolished, lying in the matrix. He looks not merely on the great mass of idolaters, but He sees the single souls who shall hear. It is for us to look on the same mass with confidence caught from His. Neither apathetic indifference ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... little foolish. "I will tell you the difference, as it seems to me, between Jan and other people," she said. "Jan is like a rough diamond—real within, unpolished without—but a genuine diamond withal. Many others are but the ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... generous instincts that were quite free from vanity. Her natural kindliness gave her the charm of good-breeding, and this settled her in the estimation of Mrs. Lawrence. She might have possessed all the virtues in the calendar, but an inharmonious, unpolished turn or act would have tabooed her. We generally ascribe this grace to life-long culture, or a certain inheritance of blood, but it occasionally springs ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... long enough to draw it in the usual manner. The whole equipment was that of a rude warrior, negligent of his exterior even to misanthropical sullenness; and the short, harsh, haughty tone, which he used towards his attendants, belonged to the same unpolished character. ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... description. A few young men had found their way hither from the distant seaports; and these were the models of fashion to their rustic companions, over whom they asserted a superiority in exterior accomplishments, which the fresh though unpolished intellect of the sons of the forest denied them in their literary competitions. A third class, differing widely from both the former, consisted of a few young descendants of the aborigines, to whom an impracticable philanthropy was endeavoring to ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... locks, still plentiful, clustered about his head. His cocked hat (of the antique pattern which, early in his ministry, he had imported by the dozen from Versailles) never altered in pattern. Buckles of unpolished silver shone dully at his knee and bent ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... twenty-one, and, at the head of each of them, he has placed a short table of the contents. This is the only liberty he has taken with the original Memoirs, the translation itself being as near as the present improved state of our language could be brought to approach the unpolished strength and masculine vigour of the French of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... of love, but something finer—nothing less, indeed, than the jewel natural, uncut, unworked, unpolished, blazing out of a twofold crown that sat, yoke-like, upon their heads for all to see. Since, however, they met no one, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... case when forming their all-too-hasty conclusions. These extracts will be found at the end of "Nietzsche contra Wagner." While reading them, however, it should not be forgotten that they were never intended for publication by Nietzsche himself—a fact which accounts for their unpolished and sketchy form—and that they were first published in vol. xi. of the first German Library Edition (pp. 99-129) only when he was a helpless invalid, in 1897. Since then, in 1901 and 1906 respectively, they have been reprinted, once in the large German Library Edition (vol. xi. pp. 181-202), ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... had climbed over his back. Now having become aged in the ordinary honors of the Senate, unpolished, married to a brewery girl, poor, lazy, disillusioned, his old Jacobin spirit and his sincere contempt for the people surviving his ambition, made of him a good man for the Government. This time, as a part of the Garain combination, he imagined he held the Department ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... relations in the far off home—and is as livable as a bachelor would be likely to make it. There is a billiard table in the corridor. The dining-room, which is reached by going out of doors, with its red-tiled floor and walls of dark, unpolished wood, is very pretty. In the middle of the dinner table there is a reflecting lake for "hot-house flowers;" and exquisite crystal, menu cards with holders of Dresden china, four classical statuettes in ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... between the two, if some allowance, also, be made for the unfavorable temper in which he wrote, it will appear, perhaps, that in the Custom House he found human nature about as it is always in an office having to do with sea business, in which naturally a rough, racy, unpolished, original, sturdy stock took a leading part, and a place was found for the retired old hulks of the profession to ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... The large-grained, unpolished rice sold at "Food-Reform" stores at 3d. per lb. absorbs the water and cooks much more easily than a smaller variety sold at 2d. I have found ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel

... confusion. You are, perhaps, expecting me to say that I took a distinctive dislike to him from the moment he arrived? On the contrary, I had every reason to be predisposed toward him; and, indeed, was rather agreeably surprised than otherwise—he was not nearly so uncouth and unpolished as, somehow, I had pictured his life would have made him. Do you understand, Jimmie? He was kind, sympathetic; and, in an apathetic way, I liked him. I say 'apathetic' because I think that best describes my ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... unpolished walnut table had no shade or globe upon it, and it glared with all the brilliancy of clean glass, and much wick and oil. The dining-room was orderly as ever. The map of Palestine, the old Bible, and some newly-acquired ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... dreamt that she was in possession of a casket containing portraits of herself and her lord, on one side of which were set nine precious stones of great beauty encircling a rough, unpolished pebble. In her dream she carried the casket to a lapidary, and asked him to take out the rough stone as unworthy of such goodly company; but he advised her to allow it to remain, and afterward it shone forth more brilliantly than the lustrous gems. The later ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... occasion by the elchi was characteristic of the people he represented—that is, unadorned, unpolished, neither more nor less than the truth, such as a camel-driver might use to a muleteer; and had it not been for the ingenuity of the interpreter our Shah would neither have been addressed by his title of King of Kings, or of the Kebleh ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... is quite obvious that what he adds comes from genuine and original talent, from his own musical individuality; but he is not master of himself; he has no style; he is an untrained musician. If he be a diamond, he is certainly in the rough and unpolished." ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... in 1159 that this little company arrived in England, and for seven years they preached without repression. Gerhardt, their leader, was the only educated man amongst them, the rest being described as "rustic and unpolished." Some have termed them Publicani or Paulikians; whether they really belonged to that body is uncertain. William of Newbury says they were a sect which came originally from Gascony, and was scattered over Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Germany. ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... satisfied with a reasonable amount. There is something lacking and this makes itself known in cravings, which demand more food than is needed to nourish. I have noticed many times that children are satisfied with less of whole wheat bread than of white bread, and that the brown unpolished rice satisfies them more quickly and completely than the polished rice. In other words, depriving the foods of their salts is one of the factors that ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... inception. The Lenox estate was a range of wild land, far away even from the suburbs of the city, and owned by a plain, plodding merchant, whose son is the munificent and benevolent James Lenox, of whom New York may be justly proud. A strong-minded German of unpolished aspect, and with something of a foreign accent, kept a fur store at the corner of Pearl and Pine Streets, and displayed upon his sign the name of John Jacob Astor. He was then buying up from time to time pieces of land in the vicinity of the city, and the advance of price ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... clay from this pueblo, which are but few in number, are either of polished black ware or unpolished of the natural tierra amarilla or yellow earth, color, but more or less blackened by use. This ware is of precisely the same character and quality as the black pottery from Santa Clara. The pitchers, cups, and basins are evidently modeled after introduced patterns from civilized ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Indians of New Mexico in 1880 • James Stevenson

... the peasants doubtless possess; such are inseparable from human nature. The petty jealousies always to be found where men do congregate exist here, and as long as the earth revolves they will continue to exist; but underneath the rough, unpolished exterior there is a reef of gold, far richer than the mines of South Africa will ever produce, and as immortal as the souls in which it lies so deeply ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... toiling, and its turns more frequent. You have already come a distance of two leagues, and still one- third of the ascent remains unsurmounted. You are not yet in Galicia; and you still hear Castilian, coarse and unpolished, it is true, spoken in the miserable cabins placed in the sequestered nooks which you ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... were bold innovations in a state in which tradition was still so powerful; but they could scarcely have been of serious danger to Julia, if her passionate temperament had not led her to commit a much more serious imprudence. Agrippa, compared to her, was old, a simple, unpolished man of obscure origin who was frequently absent on affairs of state. In the circle which had formed about Julia there were a number of handsome, elegant, pleasing young men; among others one Sempronius Gracchus, a descendant of the famous tribunes. ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... darling bard, Accept from me at least one tributary line; Yet how much more should be thy just reward, Than any wild unpolished ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... however ignorant and unpolished, the epitaphs were drawn up with far greater propriety than can be shown in those which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... ill-mannered, insulting, uncouth, bluff, coarse, impertinent, raw, unmannerly, blunt, discourteous, impolite, rude, unpolished, boorish, ill-behaved, impudent, rustic, untaught, brusk, ill-bred, insolent, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... the national character is to be seen. He always reminds me of the mother-of-pearl shell, rude and unpromising on the outside, but by friction exhibiting a fine interior. However it may be thought a paradox to pronounce the Frenchman unpolished, I hold to my assertion. If the whole of "jeune France" sprang on their feet and clapped their hands to the hilts of their swords, or more probably to their daggers, to avenge the desecration of the only shrine at which nine-tenths of them worship, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... various authors and certain books which have fallen by chance into their hands, works treating of the vast regions hitherto unknown to the world, and of the Occidental lands lying almost at the Antipodes which the Spaniards recently discovered. Despite its unpolished style, the novelty of the narrative charmed them, and they besought me, as well on their own behalf as in the name of Your Holiness, to complete my writings by continuing the narrative of all that has since happened, and to ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... went to Athens to examine some of Solon's laws which were still in force. The laws framed by the decemvirs were engraved on twelve bronze tablets and set up in the Forum. A few sentences from this famous code have come down to us in rude, unpolished Latin. They mark the beginning of what was to be Rome's greatest gift to civilization—her ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... SPIFFKINS corresponds with, that family is fully posted upon everything which might just as well have happened here as not. SPIFFKINS is too real a gentleman at heart to be much of one in appearance. If his boots and manners are equally unpolished, I know that his heart is in the right place—just where his pocket-book is; and if his linen is dirty and his face unshorn, I feel certain that his soul is clad in immaculate spiritual lawn, and that his better nature is ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various

... eighth, an ivy goblet, very precious, inlaid with gold. The ninth, a cup of fine Obriz gold. The tenth, a tumbler of aromatic agoloch (you call it lignum aloes) edged with Cyprian gold, after the Azemine make. The eleventh, a golden vine-tub of mosaic work. The twelfth, a runlet of unpolished gold, covered with a small vine of large Indian pearl of Topiarian work. Insomuch that there was not a man, however in the dumps, musty, sour-looked, or melancholic he were, not even excepting that blubbering whiner Heraclitus, had he been there, but seeing this noble convoy of ships and their ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... painting, Ital. grottesca, "a kinde of rugged unpolished painters worke, anticke ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... was wondering to himself what kind of an unpolished monster his beggarly cousin would appear; and was contemplating how much the poor youth would be surprised, ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... impatient, especially in the last years of physical pain; he often tried to take short cuts to his ends, believing that his ends were worthy and knowing that life was short. He made many mistakes, but he retrieved them nobly. He was in some ways rough-hewn and unpolished, but ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... acids; second, by glowing with an intense (almost unbearably so) light when heated with the blowpipe, but not fusing. Their specific gravity is 2.6, or near it, and hardness about 3, or equal to ordinary unpolished white marble. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... conceits must be supposed to have fallen from his pen, yet as he hath put them generally into the mouths of low and ignorant people, so it is to be remember'd that he wrote for the Stage, rude and unpolished as it then was; and the vicious taste of the age must stand condemned for them, since he hath left upon record a signal proof how much he despised them. In his Play of The Merchant of Venice a Clown is introduced quibbling in a miserable manner, upon which one who bears the character ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... which makes our social intercourse with others pleasurable. A great personal beauty that might at first attract others to itself, would soon repel and even disgust them, should they perceive in its possessor unpolished manners, coarseness, and stupidity. A cultivated intellect, refined feelings, and elegant manners are necessary to adorn personal beauty, and make it a source of pleasure to those who are attracted thereby. It is very certain that in heaven, where our whole nature is to be ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux

... chiselled marble gather Its rubbish back once more. And lie down, undistinguished, In the rough rock as before? Does the costly diamond, blazing On that crowned and queenly one, Look back with sorrowful gazing To the coarse unpolished stone? ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... lend itself to pride of intellect. It is deliberately content to be counted foolish by the world; its sign is the cross, its converts are the poor and insignificant Corinthians, its eloquence the unpolished speaking of the apostle himself. And as to their personal preferences for receiving spiritual benefits from one Christian teacher rather than another, this shows a complete misconception as to the source of the benefit and the position of the teacher. ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... came a fresh bevy of students onward from Williamstown; but they made only a transient visit, though it was still raining. These were a rough-hewn, heavy set of fellows, from the hills and woods in this neighborhood,—great unpolished bumpkins, who had grown up farmer-boys, and had little of the literary man, save green spectacles and black broadcloth (which all of them had not), talking with a broad accent, and laughing clown-like, while sheepishness overspread all, together with a vanity at being ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... qualities. The Count was at first much pleased with him; and soon afterwards, when the Carlists were temporarily dispersed, and the insurrection was seemingly at an end, Major Villabuena accompanied his cousin to France, and was presented to Rita as her intended husband. But his unpolished manners and brutal abruptness made a most unfavourable impression upon the lady, who did not attempt to conceal her repugnance to her new suitor. The Count himself, who, amidst the bustle and activity of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... with a mirror, there was an alarum in unpolished bronze, together with two vases in brown porcelain. And on either side of the mirror hung all sorts of woman's trifles; here, a crumpled glove, there a small satin shoe; and, further, a little rusty iron key. Questioned as to the significance of this last article, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... the ladies opposite in curtsies as profound, if less exquisitely graceful. Off came the hats of the gentlemen; the bows were of the lowest; snuffboxes were drawn out, handkerchiefs of fine holland flourished; the welcoming speeches were hearty and not unpolished. ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... a round table standing on an unpolished parquet floor, of six cane chairs set against the wall, and of a walnut-wood buffet, on the shelves of which stood no plates, or ornaments of any description. The walls were distempered a reddish-pink colour, and here and there the colour ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... cold meat, and in fact everything else on that rough table, were quietly pushed to me, one after the other, without one word being said. That was their way of showing their approval of me. It was unpolished, but ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... of the nineteenth century is the shapeless ball in the lofty position which she was designed fully and nobly to fill. The place is not too high, too large, too sacred for woman, but the type that you have chosen is far too small for it. The woman we declare unto you is the rude, misshapen, unpolished object of the successful artist. From your stand-point, you are absorbed with the defects alone. The true artist sees the harmony between the object and its destination. Man, the sculptor, has carved out his ideal, and applauding thousands welcome ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... coiffure and combed beards. Thou hast tried the loins and the members, resembling soaked leather, which could not be made to stand by all the efforts of the wearied hand; the pathic husband and effeminate bed thou desertest, but still thou fallest into similar couches. Seek out some one rough and unpolished as the Curii and Fabii, and savage in his uncouth rudeness; you will find one, but even this puritanical crew has its catamites. Galla, it is difficult to marry a ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... nominees, except a certain simple, straightforward, firm, though unassuming statement of his opinions; and even this took place but seldom. The recollection of this gentleman confirms the account of Sir Jonah Barrington, that—"His address was unpolished; he spoke occasionally, and never with success; and evinced no promise of that unparalleled celebrity ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... Ideal," which had all the worst faults of the author's earliest compositions in verse. The present poem (with the exception of a very few lines) has been entirely rewritten, and has at least the comparative merit of being less vague in the thought, and less unpolished in the diction, than that which ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... roguery, our Phormio takes peculiar delight in this, which is more rascally than any notorious book. But his malicious will was wanting in power to carry out what he had intended. He could not come up to Erasmus' style, unpolished though it be: for he thus closes his flowery preface: Thus age has admonished, piety has bidden me, while life is still spared in my burdensome age, to cleanse my writings, lest those who follow my mournful funeral should transcribe my ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... The garden is suitable to the house, where arbours, fountains, and walks, are thrown together in an agreeable confusion. There is no ornament wanting, except that of statues. Thus, you see, Sir, these people are not so unpolished as we represent them. 'Tis true, their magnificence is of a very different taste from ours, and perhaps of a better. I am almost of opinion, they have a right notion of life. They consume it in music, gardens, wine, and delicate eating, while we are tormenting ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... disputes ran too high, he sometimes broke them off with the words, "Why so much talk? Now and at my last hour, I say with David—Have mercy, O God, upon me, according to thy loving-kindness. Enter not into judgment with thy servant. More I do not wish to know." He was a diamond, unpolished, it is true, and carelessly set, but always powerful enough to prevent any interference in the government ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... course, let's do it," and we went down to the landing stage. I had never seen the water so calm; half the bay was veiled by the mountain, and opaque like unpolished steel; a little further out, the water was a purple shield, emblazoned with shimmering silver. We called a fisherman and explained what we wanted. When we got into the boat, to my astonishment, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... the Dog whose autobiography I have great pleasure in presenting to the world. Many may object to the unpolished style in which his memoirs are clothed, but all who knew him will easily pardon every want of elegance in his language; and those who had not the honour of his acquaintance, will learn to appreciate his character from the ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes

... Jerusalem, through the Desert, and at Sebastopol; and says he means to get Ticknor to publish his travels, and the story of his whole adventurous life, on his return home. A free-spoken, confiding, hardy, religious, unpolished, simple, yet world-experienced man; very talkative, and boring me with longer visits than I like. He has brought home, among other curiosities, "a lady's arm," as he calls it, two thousand years old,—a piece of a mummy, of course; also some coins, one of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and "Panna") see vols. vi. 15, i. ix. 325, and in latter correct, "Euritic," a misprint for "dioritic." I still cannot believe diamond-cutting to be an Indian art, and I must hold that it was known to the ancients. It could not have been an unpolished stone, that "Adamas notissimus" which according to Juvenal (vi. 156) Agrippa gave to his sister. Maundeville (A.D. 1322) has a long account of the mineral, "so hard that no man can polish it," and called Hamese ("Almas?"). For ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... She kept her mother's room neat, she put the books back in their places; there was a cluster of autumn leaves in a vase, or a sprig of spruce or cedar that for a long while would put forth new leaves. She was very glad now that she had taken so much pains. Was she rather unpolished when they had first come from Laconia. But her circle there was ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... whitening the ground beside him. Or it might describe the outline simply in the air. Speech in its inception was as much expressed by the finger as the tongue; perhaps the fingers talked before the mouth, and in a sense writing preceded language. Uttering the unpolished sound which in their primitive society indicated the mammoth, the savage drew rapidly a figure with his finger, and his companions read his meaning written in the air. To this day it is common for the Italian peasantry ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... thrown over his shoulders, gold bangles on his arms and ankles, a beautifully worked coronet of gold adorned with crimson feathers of the flamingo, two necklaces—one composed of lions' teeth and claws, and the other, and larger, of unpolished stones that seemed to emit a faint glint of ruddy fire—round his neck. He was armed with a sheaf of short, broad-bladed stabbing spears, and was seated on a sort of throne entirely covered with an immense kaross of lions' skin. Behind ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... either the merit or utility of the Roman arts, they destroyed the monuments of them, with an industry not inferior to that with which their posterity have since studied to preserve or to recover them. The convulsions occasioned by the settlement of so many unpolished tribes in the empire; the frequent as well as violent revolutions in every kingdom which they established; together with the interior defects in the form of government which they introduced, banished security and leisure. ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... relation of mine?" Dr. Chalmers, with real or seeming simplicity, answered, "No, my Lord, I did not; but next time I tell the story I can mention the fact." As a pendant to the elder's disclaimer of "mainners" on the part of a lady of rank, I may add an authentic anecdote of a very blunt and unpolished Kincardineshire laird, expressing the same disclaimer of mainners on the part of a servant, but in a far rougher form of speech. He had been talking with a man who came to offer for his service as a butler. ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... an excellent jest. My lord always loads with six small slugs." "Six slugs! ah the bloody minded villain! It is confounded hard that a gentleman cannot pass through life, without being degoute with these unpolished Vandals. Ah, mon cher ami, I will put the affair entirely into your hands: do, pour i'amour de Dieu, bring me out of this scrape as well as you can." "Well my dear Prettyman, I will exert myself on your account; but, upon my ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin

... words, he produced, from inside a purse which he had handy, a transcribed office-philactery, which he handed over to Y-ts'un; who upon perusal, found it full of trite and unpolished expressions of public opinion, with regard to the leading clans and notable official families in that particular district. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... at once turned over. Glory! Its runners were of the round-spring variety—the very best. They were dull blue and unpolished as yet, of course; but that fact was merely an incentive to much coasting. Another knife filled his heart with joy! for naturally the birthday knife was broken-bladed by now. A large square package proved to contain a model steam engine with a brass boiler ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... firm, solid; varying in color from bright red to dull, subdued purplish with a distinct brown; compact; convex, then depressed, dry unpolished; margin even, sometimes cracked and ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard

... military backwoods hero of the party, though secretly impressed by the sudden novelties and splendours of his position (he had never been on board a ship before, and had hardly ever seen the sea except from a distance), understood by a sort of instinct the advantage his surly, unpolished attitude of a savage fighter gave him amongst all these refined Blanco aristocrats. But why was it that nobody was looking at him? he wondered to himself angrily. He was able to spell out the print of newspapers, and knew that he had performed the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... have been led to suppose, from what I said a moment since, that I am never troubled about anything. I merely referred to enjoyments derived from various sources, open alike to rich and poor. There are Marahs hidden in every path; no matter whether the draught is taken in jeweled goblets or unpolished gourds." ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... Unpolished rice contains all the nutritions of the grains, which is approximately 6 per cent. fat, 8 per cent. protein, 79 per cent. carbohydrates. The polished variety contains an average of 88 per cent. nutrition. Polished rice has been robbed ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson

... cabinet-maker have exhausted the resources of their trades. The word "subdued" describes the effect at which those artists have aimed. The woods employed are costly and rich, but usually of a sombre hue, and, though elaborately carved, are frequently unpolished. The light which comes through the stained windows, or through the small diamond panes, is of that description which is eminently the "dim, religious." Every part of the floor is thickly carpeted. The pews differ little from sofas, except in ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... Craigenputtock was soon after announced, and passed a half-hour with us much to our delight. He has very unpolished manners, and a broad Scottish accent, but such fine language and beautiful thoughts that it is truly delightful to listen to him. He invited us to take tea with them at Chelsea, where they now reside. We were as much charmed with Mrs. ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... vandalism of modern improvement, and is to be preserved as a relic of the old Regime in New France. It is a long one-storied structure, originally red-tiled, with graceful, sloping roof, double rows of peaked, dormer windows, huge chimneys and the unpolished architecture of ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway

... arrowheads, cores, and saw-blades. Chert and limestone rough hoe-blades (easily mistaken for palaeolithic implements; they are, however, much flatter); polished serpentine or jasper celts; lentoid (lentil-shaped), amygdaloid (almond-shaped), and discoid beads of cornelian, crystal, obsidian, &c., unpolished; nails of translucent quartz and obsidian (obviously imitations of metal types); hard grey pottery sickles, pottery cones of various sizes, and pottery objects like gigantic nails bent up at the ends; ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various

... of 'em," their occupant confounded, and themselves for sale. "Abe's" old "boss" said he was "astonished," and so he had good reason to be, but everybody could see it without his saying so. His "style" couldn't win among the true and shrewd, though unpolished "boys" in coarse garments. They saw right ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... a portion of their ferocity, but also much of their native simplicity of character, which, in all parts of the world, is so highly interesting a study for the traveller. Their constant intercourse with whalers, who are generally low, unpolished men, leaves behind it a tinge of vulgarity, of which the native women retain the largest portion. In many instances, they quite spoil their good looks, by half adopting the European costume. Those ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... to look at the adjutant, directed his jerky steps down the line. He was evidently pleased at his own display of anger and walking up to the regiment wished to find a further excuse for wrath. Having snapped at an officer for an unpolished badge, at another because his line was not straight, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... that the surface of unpolished glass is formed by a layer of crystals, or of sand, with the faces projecting out in all directions and at all angles. The result is, that a beam of light from the eye strikes one or more of these faces and is diverted from a straight line through the glass. As all the rays are thus changed from ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... Maitre de Forges onwards—this is the aspect on which playwrights have preferred to dwell. Usually, the theme shades off into the almost equally hackneyed Still Waters Run Deep theme; for there is apt to be an aristocratic lover whom the unpolished but formidable husband threatens to shoot or horsewhip, and thereby overcomes the last remnant of repugnance in the breast of his haughty spouse. In The Ironmaster the lover was called the Duc de Bligny, or, more commonly, the Dook de Bleeny; but he has appeared under ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... when at length he did so, great was his disappointment. Instead of the glittering caves which his vivid imagination had pictured, he found that there were no caves at all; that the diamonds were found by washing in the muddy soil; and worst of all, that when found they were dim and unpolished, so that they seemed no better than any other stone. However, he resolved to continue there for a short time, in order to make a little money; but now that Martin had arrived he thought that they could not do better than make their way to the coast as fast as ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... with whom she had little in common. To her he seemed to have but one idea,—the amassing of wealth. With her more intellectual cravings, the continual striving for this, to the exclusion of all higher aspirations, put him on a plane too narrow for her footing. Unpolished he certainly was, but the rough, exposed grain of his unhewn nature showed many strata of strength and virility. In this gentle mood a tenderness had come into view that drew her to him with a ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... modesty which touches a little, I am afraid, on hypocrisy. You are not altogether without merits. You are young, not ill-looking, nobly born, and will, in God's good time, be rich. Then you can ride well, and dance gracefully, and are not generally ill-educated or unpolished. It is quite as necessary, my dear son, that a young man should not undervalue himself, as that he should not think of his deserts too highly. Now that you have some merits is certain—for the rest I desire frankness ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... man who could glory in his obscurity. Shall musicians compose their tunes to their own tastes? and shall a philosopher, master of a much better art, seek to ascertain, not what is most true, but what will please the people? Can anything be more absurd than to despise the vulgar as mere unpolished mechanics, taken singly, and to think them of consequence when collected into a body? These wise men would contemn our ambitious pursuits and our vanities, and would reject all the honors which the people could voluntarily offer to them; but we know ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... enabled me to scan the appearance of my new acquaintance. He was rather above the medium height, squarely and somewhat stoutly built, and had an easy and self-possessed, though rough and unpolished manner. His face, or so much of it as was visible from underneath a thick mass of reddish gray hair, denoted a firm, decided character; but there was a manly, open, honest expression about it that gained one's confidence in a moment. He wore a slouched ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore

... all these people are, they are far more closely drawn together to common ends and common effort than the filthy savages who ate food rotten and uncooked in the age of unpolished stone. They live in the mere opening phase of a synthesis of effort the end of which surpasses our imagination. Such intercourse and community as they have is only a dawn. We look towards the day, the day of the organized ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... commander of the forces of Malcolm II., King of Scotland, and Constantine, the usurper of that crown, wherein both the generals were killed. About two miles higher up the river, on the Bathgate road, is a circular mound of earth (of great antiquity, surrounded with large unpolished stones, at a considerable distance from each other, evidently intended in memory of some remarkable event). The whole intermediate space, from the human bones dug up, and graves of unpolished stones discovered below the surface, seems to have ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... since the building of their city the Romans had never known any entertainments of the stage. Chance and jollity first found out those verses which they called Saturnian and Fescennine; or rather human nature, which is inclined to poetry, first produced them rude and barbarous and unpolished, as all other operations of the soul are in their beginnings before they are cultivated with art and study. However, in occasions of merriment, they were first practised; and this rough-cast, unhewn poetry was instead of stage-plays ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... theatre upon which I was now placed I had no rival. My mechanical occupation had hitherto been a non-resident; and the schoolmaster, who did not aspire to the sublime heights of science I professed to communicate, was willing to admit me as a partner in the task of civilising the unpolished manners of the inhabitants. For the parson, civilisation was no part of his trade; his business was with the things of a better life, not with the carnal concerns of this material scene; in truth, his thoughts were principally occupied with his ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... was written for the people, and is therefore in a more popular tone than usual: portions strike as abrupt and unpolished, but many stanzas are all his own. I heard him repeat, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... the oldest relics of man. In this way we are able to declare that the difference between the earliest man and his immediate followers lay in the question of polishing his flint instruments. That is to say, the earliest or palaeolithic man had his implements unpolished; his successors polished them, often to a beautifully smooth surface. This Mr. Oldham illustrated with a series of films—your pardon, slides—of the arrow-heads made by palaeolithic and neolithic man. It was a natural step, once man had learned to polish his instruments, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... sacrifices not yet known or understood. Its initiations are endless; its revelations of the infinite law are, at times, too seemingly trifling for recognition; but as the lapidary leaves no facet of the jewel uncut and unpolished, so the guardians—the guides and teachers of the candidates for spiritual unfoldment—omit no least lesson or discipline that can aid in perfecting ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... deliberate purpose run the risk of finding no fit audience. People suppose it is 'the stuff' that interests them; they think, for instance, that the prodigious fine thoughts and sentiments in Shakespeare impress by their own weight, not understanding that the unpolished diamond is but a stone. They think that striking situations, or good dialogue, are got by studying life; they will not rise to understand that they are prepared by deliberate artifice and set off by painful suppressions. Now, I want the whole thing well ventilated, for ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... who shalt stop, where Thames' translucent wave Shines a broad mirror through the shadowy cave, Where lingering drops from mineral roofs distil, And pointed crystals break the sparkling rill, Unpolished gems no ray on pride bestow, And latent metals innocently glow, Approach! Great Nature studiously behold, And eye the mine without a wish for gold Approach—but awful! Lo, the Egerian grot, Where, nobly pensive, ST JOHN sat and thought, Where British sighs from dying WYNDHAM stole, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... answered extremely well the idea M. d'Arblay had given us of him, who in the word brusque rather meant unpolished in manners than harsh in character. He is quite old enough to be father to Madame de la Chtre, and, had he been presented to us as such, all our wonder would have been to see so little elegance in the parent of such ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... her patron, 'perhaps some people may be pleased to say that they do like to hear, in his own unpolished way, what Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown, has gone through. But you must confess that you were born in the lap of luxury, yourself. Come, ma'am, you know you were born in ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... and surely you must remember one Peter Schlemihl, whom you now and then met at my house in former days; a long-shanked fellow, who had the credit of awkwardness because he was unpolished, and whose negligence gave him an air of habitual laziness. I loved him—you cannot have forgotten, Edward, how often, in the spring-time of our youth, he was the subject of our rhymes. Once I recollect introducing ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso

... Sage?" Sir John regarded the bald conical head and gold-rimmed spectacles as if they had been unpolished buttons on parade. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins

... have hit a sore place. To speak truly, dear, I would rather stay unpolished a hundred years than take ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... her master alone to conquer and understand. Her flesh was cold and colorless,—there were no surface tints on it,—it warmed sometimes slowly from far within; her voice was quiet,—out of her heart; her hair, the only beauty of the woman, was lustreless brown, lay in unpolished folds of dark shadow. I saw such hair once, only once. It had been cut from the head of a man, who, quiet and simple as a child, lived out the law of his nature, and set the world at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... echo, Antony, every word of this beautiful passage finds in my own heart, only saddened with the poignant regret that the necessary business and occupation of the passing years have dulled for me such unpolished facility, as I may once have possessed, for perusing my ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... "This turned out a calamitous year for the people of Ferrara, for there occurred a very tragical event in the court of their sovereign. Our annals, both printed and in manuscript, with the exception of the unpolished and negligent work of Sardi, and one other, have given the following relation of it,—from which, however, are rejected many details, and especially the narrative of Bandelli, who wrote a century afterwards, and who does not accord with ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... difference is that Tolstoy is a consummate artist, a creator, in addition to the great preacher. For Marcus Aurelius is no artist. He is merely a speaker; he delivers his message in plain tongue, unadorned, often even unpolished. Epictetus, equally simple, equally direct with Marcus Aurelius, comes, however, already adorned with a certain humor which now and then sparkles through his serious pages. Ruskin brings with him quite a respectable load of artistic baggage; ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... again, and I am now at Les Eyzies, in the valley of the Vzre: a paradise of exceptional richness to the scientific bone and flint grubber on account of the very marked predilection shown for it by the men of the Stone Age, polished and unpolished. It is about five in the morning, and the woods along the cliffs are just beginning to catch the pale fire of the rising sun. Just outside my open window are about twenty chickens in the charge of two mother hens, and as they have not been long awake, they do their utmost to make a noise ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... outside to smoke, my protector came into the sitting-room, and as he had acquired a considerable amount of unpolished sailor man's English, I found him very entertaining and also instructive. First he told me that the Kabaira people were perfectly safe; it was a very peaceful village, and the people liked white men, and he hoped I ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... gallantry. He had vast possessions, was well educated, loved literature, and through life extended to men of letters a generous patronage. {74} 'I know not how I shall offend,' Shakespeare now wrote to him, 'in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden. . . . But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather.' 'The first heir of my invention' implies that the poem was written, or at ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... the amusements of the theatre have in some degree degenerated at court since the time of the Tartar conquest. Dancing, riding, wrestling, and posture-making, are more congenial to the rude and unpolished Tartar than the airs and dialogue of a regular drama, which is better suited to the genius and spirit of the ceremonious and effeminate Chinese. I am led to this observation from the very common custom among ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... fruitful meadows, so much as of the safety and independence of the feudal family. They therefore lived in great isolation, travelling but little, and only at short distances (it was the higher clergy only who travelled). Though born to rank and power, they were yet rude, rough, unpolished. They were warriors. They fought on horseback, covered with defensive armor. They were greedy and quarrelsome, and hence were engaged in perpetual strife,—in the assault on castles and devastation of lands. These castles were generally gloomy, heavy, and uncomfortable, yet ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... are not all as rude, unpolished and grotesque as most of those above quoted. Some of them are simple, noble and dignified, the undistorted outcome of the higher and better traits of the mountaineer's character. Among such are, "Dogs bark at the moon, but the moon does ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... English satire of this entire period was that which we owe to the scurrilous pen of Skelton and the provocative personality of Wolsey. With his work may be mentioned the rude and unpolished, yet vigorous, piece bearing ...
— English Satires • Various

... stories or ranges of dungeons had been already passed, ere the father and daughter arrived at the lowest story of the building, the base of which was the solid rock, roughly carved, upon which were erected the side-walls and arches of solid but unpolished marble. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... down, sobbed in the wings and refused to be comforted, I had dimly recognised the fact that when I met Margaret I should have to be honest with her. Plans for evasion had been half-matured by my inventive faculties, only to be discarded, unpolished, on account of the insistent claims of the endless rehearsals. To have concocted a story with which to persuade Margaret that I stood to lose money if the play succeeded would have been a clear day's work. And I had no ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... his shoulder with a golden clasp, fashioned in the semblance of a boar. His eyes were blue, fierce and shining, and in his hand he held for a weapon the trunk of a young pine-tree, in which was hafted a weighty axe-head of rough unpolished stone. ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... is very hot, so that the people are forced to keep in their little huts, or seek refreshment in caverns, the most part of the day; these desarts have a great number of lions, tigers, and ostriches. The inhabitants are unpolished, savage, and very bold, for they will stand and meet the fiercest lion or tiger. They are divided into families or clans, each head of a family is sovereign in his own canton, and the eldest is always head; ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... surmise, my dear, a dog—we suppose it to have been a dog, though I am not aware that anyone saw the accident. An old man whom you once attended—Mr. Butters; you spoke of him, I remember—found you lying in the road, my child, quite unconscious. He is an unpolished person, but possessed of warm affections. I—I can never forget his tender solicitude about you. He brought you home in his wagon, and carried you into the house. He volunteered to go to Greening ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards

... gazing abstractedly up towards the stove's rusty pipe that ran directly through the ceiling; and what with his pale, waxen countenance, his eyes red and half-closed for the want of sleep, his hair ruffled, his necktie awry, his waistcoat unfastened, his boots unpolished, and the burnt-out cigar which he held between his white, emaciated fingers, he was not the immaculate-looking Rance of old, but presented a very ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco



Words linked to "Unpolished" :   inelegant, raw, unburnished, rough, unrefined, gauche, graceless, dull



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