"Unpretending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we are noticing aspires to and rightly claims a foremost place among the literary productions of America, despite a certain homely flavor and a certain unpretending way which its author has of saying things which are really great and fine. The main thought illustrated is not new, but it is brought out so forcibly, and illustrated by such encyclopedic learning, that it has the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... contemplative, has become one of fatigue and excitement. Rumors of your advance escape before you, and a happy and grateful community rise up in their clustering cities, towns, and villages, impede your way with demonstrations of respect and kindness, and convert your unpretending journey into a triumphal progress. Such honors frequently attend public functionaries, and such an one may sometimes find it difficult to determine how much of the homage he receives is paid to his own worth, how much ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... can but again assure you that I take the liveliest interest in them. The modesty of your claims, dear friend, is very much out of proportion with the importance of the services you have rendered. One rarely meets with demands that are as just and as unpretending as yours. Be assured of my sincere readiness to promote your interest in higher quarters, and to do what I can to ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... of my original plan, I have added more questions and answers in the text of each new English edition of the Catechism, leaving it to its translators to render them into whichever of the other vernaculars they may be working in. The unpretending aim in view is to give so succinct and yet comprehensive a digest of Buddhistic history, ethics and philosophy as to enable beginners to understand and appreciate the noble ideal taught by the Buddha, and thus make it easier for them to follow out the ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... is well written, in a simple, unpretending style, and the dialogue is natural and easy. It is destined to great popularity among all classes of readers. Parents who object placing 'love tales' in the hands of their children, may purchase this volume without fear. The oldest and the youngest will become interested ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... straight to Mr. Medler's office, which was upon the ground floor of a gloomy old house in one of the dingier streets in the Soho district, and in the upper chambers whereof the attorney's wife and numerous offspring had their abode. He came down to his client from his unpretending breakfast-table in a faded dressing-gown, with smears of egg and greasy traces of buttered toast about the region of his mouth, and seemed not particularly pleased to see Mr. Nowell. But the conference that followed was a long one; and it is to be presumed ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... accused himself of not having done full justice to all their worth. He took a pleasure in dwelling on Mr. Wyllys's high moral character, so happily tempered by the benevolence of cheerful old age; he remembered the quiet, unpretending virtues of Miss Wyllys, always mingled with unvarying kindness to himself; and could he forget Elinor, whose whole character was so engaging; uniting strength of principle and intelligence, with a disposition so lovely, so endearing? ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... or eight around a table. When you get near enough, you generally find they are talking of the dismissal of their last commander. Here and there a lady walks rapidly by, closely veiled, mostly dressed in black, with an unpretending bonnet. The gallop of a horse is distinctly audible—in other times one would never have noticed such a thing; it is an express with despatches, a Garibaldian, or one of the Vengeurs de Flourens, who is hoisted on a heavy cart-horse that ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... among the plain working farmers of the village in which he lived. He was a good, unpretending fellow-citizen who put on no airs, who attended town-meetings, took his part in useful measures, was no great hand at farming, but was esteemed and respected, and felt to be a principal source of attraction to Concord, for strangers came flocking to the place as if ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... your queries. I am Monsieur Mangin, the great charlatan of France! Yes, gentlemen, I am a charlatan—a mountebank; it is my profession, not from choice, but from necessity. You, gentlemen, created that necessity! You would not patronize true, unpretending, honest merit, but you are attracted by my glittering casque, my sweeping crest, my waving plumes. You are captivated by din and glitter, and therein lies my strength. Years ago, I hired a modest shop in the Rue Rivoli, but I could not sell ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... receiving the guests, and exchanging with them the salutations and commonplaces of the evening. Mrs. Elwood, though not beautiful, nor even handsome, was yet every way a comely woman; and the quiet dignity and the unpretending simplicity of her manner, together with a certain intelligent and appreciating cast of countenance, which always rested on her placid, features, seldom failed to impress those who approached her with feelings of kindness and respect. She looked pale and fatigued, from the labors and anxieties ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... brilliant group, there stood an elderly female, dressed in deep black, and three men, all past the meridian of life, with quiet, thoughtful looks, and unpretending aspect. These were the sister and the sons of Burns. His sister!—and half a century has wellnigh gone past since the hot heart of the brother was stricken cold, and the manly music of his voice made dumb for ever! Was it too much to believe that, through these many long years ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... lived at No. 10, the house opposite. There had already been some discussion in Holloway about Lord Hampstead, but nothing had as yet been discovered. He might have been at the house on various previous occasions, but had come in so unpretending a manner as hardly to have done more than to cause himself to be regarded as a stranger in Holloway. He was known to be George's friend, because he had been first seen coming with George on a Saturday afternoon. He had also called on a Sunday and walked away, down ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... posthumous son. He was called Maxwell, after the physician who attended his father, but he died in infancy. The spot where the poet was laid was in a comer of St. Michael's churchyard, and the grave remained for a time unmarked by any monument. After some years his wife placed over it a plain, unpretending stone, inscribed with his name and age, and with the names of his two boys, who were buried in the same place. Well had it been, if he had been allowed to rest undisturbed in this grave where his family had laid him. But well-meaning, though ignorant, officiousness ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... 687).—The peculiar charm of this most unpretending pattern is chiefly due to the variety of material and colour introduced into it. The netted ground is made of dark brown Cordonnet 6 fils D.M.C No. 25, worked over, in the first instance, with loop stitches in a pale grey, which are afterwards ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... quiet mocking irony he modestly recommends to the approbation of the public his own exemplary discretion and forbearance. The world begins to know Thackeray rather better than it did two years or even a year ago, but as yet it only half knows him. His mind seems to me a fabric as simple and unpretending as it is deep-founded and enduring—there is no meretricious ornament to attract or fix a superficial glance; his great distinction of the genuine is one that can only be fully appreciated with time. There is something, a sort of "still profound," revealed in the ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... and on, and on, and on, and down, and down, and down He sped, until one night, with only one to greet Him, He arrived. His disembarkation so unpretending, so quiet, that it was not known on earth until the excitement in the cloud gave intimation that something grand and glorious had happened. Who comes there? From what port did He sail? Why was this the place of His destination? ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... not many minutes later, this spring wagon stopped, was not a fine old family mansion like that of Midbranch, but it was a comfortable dwelling, though an unpretending one. The gentleman on the back seat, and the driver, who was an elderly negro, both turned toward the hall door, which was open and lighted by a lamp within, as if they expected some one to come out on the porch. But nobody came, and, after a moment's hesitation, the gentleman got down, ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... unmerited ridicule should be poured upon the head (or handle) of the devoted Umbrella, it is hard to say. What is there comic in an Umbrella? Plain, useful, and unpretending, if any of man's inventions ever deserved sincere regard, the Umbrella is, we maintain, that invention. Only a few years back those who carried Umbrellas were held to be legitimate butts. They were old fogies, careful of their health, and so on; but ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... lady-like and pretty woman, fair and graceful, and her daughter Laura closely resembled her; both sweet specimens of unpretending womanhood; both devoted to the discharge of their simple duties and to one ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... unpretending little place, with the bill of fare wafered to the door, and red curtains in the windows, setting off a display of joints, cauliflowers, and red herrings. He passed through into a long, low room, with dark-brown grained walls, partitioned ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... landscapes greeted the eye on either side? What a garden-like air of universal cultivation! What beautiful smooth slopes! What green, quiet meadows! What rich round trees, brooding over their silent shadows! What exquisite dark nooks and romantic lanes! What an aspect of unpretending happiness in the clean cottages, with their little trim gardens! What tranquil grandeur and rural luxury in the noble mansions and glorious parks of the British aristocracy! How the love of nature thrilled my heart with a gentle and delicious ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... keen sense of humour, though in other respects he was simple and unpretending. He was a great reader of old-fashioned novels, which indeed in those days were the only works of the kind to be met with. The Arabian Nights, Robinson crusoe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and such like, were his favourites, ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... industriously and expensively. She did not keep a carriage and pair and an old family coachman because that, she felt, would be considered pushing and presumptuous; she had the sense to stick to her common unpretending 80 h.p. Daimler; but she wore a special sort of blackish hat-bonnet for such occasions as brought her near the centre of honour, which she got from a little good shop known only to very few outside the inner ring, which hat-bonnet she was always careful to sit on for a few minutes ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... its southern suburbs along the Fontainebleau road, comes upon an ancient pile, extended and renovated by modern hands, whose simple, unpretending architecture would scarcely claim a second look. Yet it was once the scene of an experiment of such momentous consequences that it will ever possess a peculiar interest both to the philanthropist and the philosopher. It was there, in that receptacle of the insane, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... legitimate successor, and occupy a position of almost dangerous elevation; but if you can continue as heretofore to be yourself, simple, honest, and unpretending, you will enjoy through life the respect and love of friends, and the homage of millions of human beings who will award to you a large share for securing to them and their descendants a government ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... and came the following morning. Dennis watched them with much solicitude. When once they understood his thought, their delight and admiration knew no bounds. The professor turned and stared at him as if he were an entirely different person from the unpretending youth who had been introduced on ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... hurriedly and rather sharply in answer, but I could not for the life of me mark what it was. I opened my eyes again, and looked towards the object that had before riveted my attention. It was neither more nor less than the Captain's cloak, a plain, unpretending, substantial blue garment, lined with white, which, on coming below, he had cast carelessly down on the locker, that ran across the after part of the cabin behind him. It was about eighteen feet from me, and as there was no light nearer it than the swinging lamp ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... prejudices, when they could not make their opponents subdue theirs, and thus prove themselves to be the truest disciples of the Prince of Peace. "Let the contest," said he, "be only which shall serve our common master best, by leading a life of unpretending holiness. Schism does infinitely more harm by the enmity it engenders, than it does good by the zeal it kindles. Controversial ardour is rather the death than the life ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... leaders than the body. In the Dawton faction, the best, the purest, the wisest of the day were enrolled; they took upon themselves the origin of all the active measures, and Lord Dawton was the mere channel through which those measures flowed; the plain, the unpretending, and somewhat feeble character of Lord Dawton's mind, readily conceded to the abler components of his party, the authority it was so desirable that they should exert. In Vincent's party, with the exception of himself, there was scarcely ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... likeness of himself in spectacles. It has suffered from the fading of colors and the cracking of the paint, as so many of Sir Joshua's best pictures have done; but it still presents him amiable, cultivated, and unpretending, the accomplished artist and the kindly friend, and affords the best possible illustration of the character which Goldsmith drew ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Charles Edward about 1776 stands in the most remote and peaceful quarter of Florence. A few quiet streets, unbroken by shop-fronts and unfrequented by vehicles, lead up to that quarter; streets of low white-washed convent walls overtopped by trees, of silent palaces, of unpretending little houses of the seventeenth or eighteenth century, from behind whose iron window-gratings and blistered green shutters one expects even now, as one passes in the silence of the summer afternoons, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... of St. Hospital is plain and unpretending, with a brewhouse on one hand and on the other the large kitchen with its offices. Between these the good Master passed, and came to a second and handsomer gate, with a tower above it, and three canopied niches in ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... traversed, and listening to the evening song of the robin, we could not help contrasting the equanimity of nature with the bustle and impatience of man. His words and actions presume always a crisis near at hand, but she is forever silent and unpretending. ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... indicate the sort of nervous agitation arising from contradictory impulses, from love too tender, and scorn too fretful, by which already in childish days the inner peace had been broken up, and the nervous system shattered. This revelation, though so unpretending and simple in manner, of the drama substantially so fearful, that was constantly proceeding in a quiet and religious parsonage—the bare possibility that sufferings so durable in their effects should be sweeping with their eternal storms a ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the hearth, with his knees almost up to his chin and his trousers wrinkled up ever so far above his stout Oxford shoes, leaving a considerable interval of gray stocking. He was a man of about thirty, pale, and unpretending of aspect, who fortified his native modesty with a pair of large binoculars, which interposed a kind of barrier between himself ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... language. The general impression left by these cases is that the lines of doctrine in the English Church are regarded by the judicial mind as very faint, and not much to be depended upon; and that these judgments may be the first steps in that insensible process by which the unpretending but subtle and powerful engine of interpretation has been applied by the courts to give a certain turn to law and policy; applied, in this instance, to undermine the definiteness and certainty of doctrine, and in the end, the understanding itself which ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... which was ajar, and which led up-stairs. Without any waste of valuable time, he slyly stepped through the doorway, and ascended the stairs. The rebels were so busy in listening to the great stories of Captain de Banyan, that they did not immediately discover the absence of the unpretending young man. ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... vases for the oecus, the exedra, and the wings, and enough of lamps to hang up; enough of candelabra to place in the saloons. Stretch carpets over the costly mosaic pavements and even over the simple opus signinum (a mixture of lime and crushed brick) which covered the floor of the unpretending chambers with a solid incrustation. Above all, replace the ceilings and the roofs, and then the doors and draperies; in fine, revive upon all these walls—the humblest as well as the most splendid—the bright and vivid pictures now effaced. What light, and what a gay impression! ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... first business was to find an inn; and in this they had unexpected difficulty, since for some reason or other—possibly the fine weather—many of the nearest at hand were full of tourists and commercial travellers. He led her on till he reached a tavern which, though comparatively unpretending, stood in as attractive a spot as any in the town; and this, somewhat to their surprise after their previous experience, they found apparently empty. The considerate old man, thinking that Baptista was educated to artistic notions, ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... cosy cradles; but all clean, safe, and happy. What needs it to say whether the good ladies who tended them wore the habit of St. Vincent de Paul, the poke-bonnet of the Puseyite "sister," or the simple garb of unpretending Protestantism? The thing is being done. The most helpless of all our population—the children of the working poor—are being kept from the streets, kept from harm, and trained up to habits of decency, at 4, Bulstrode Street, Marylebone Lane. Any one can go and see it for himself; and ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... exquisitely touching, and among the purest compositions in the language. Certain it is that the poetical power was early manifested; for we find that, in 1836, he gave his first poems to the public. The unpretending volume attracted the attention of John Black, who was then the distinguished editor of the Morning Chronicle. Ever ready to recognise genius wherever it could be found, and always prepared to lend a hand to lift into light the unobtrusive author who laboured in the shade, he ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Whittier, the Hon. James G. Birney, George Thompson, Theodore, or Angelia Weld, Joseph and Thankful Southwick were quietly looking about for such of the anti-slavery brothers and sisters as were too little known to be likely to receive invitations. Always kindly unpretending, clear-sighted to perceive the right, and faithful in following it wherever it might lead. They were upright in all their dealings with the world, tender and true in the relations of private life and the memory they ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... insufficient to make religious doctrine understandable, or to shake the superstitions which have been imbibed in infancy. Missionaries must live among the people as fathers or friends, labour with them—in short, share their trials and pleasures, and draw them towards them by an exemplary and unpretending mode of life, and gradually instruct them in a way they are capable of understanding. They ought not to be married to Europeans for the following reasons:—European girls who are educated for missionaries frequently make this their choice only that they ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... me see, it is situated in one of the most beautiful valleys of Western Pennsylvania, our village is environed by the most lovely hills, and nestling among the trees, with its simple churches and unpretending homes of quiet beauty and good taste, it is one of the most pleasant and picturesque places I ever saw. And, besides, as you love to hunt and fish, we have one of the finest streams of trout, and some of the most excellent game ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... which were always well-trimmed. He was scrupulously neat in his dress, and usually wore a dark brown frock coat and a black vest, while his neck was covered with a black satin scarf, which was arranged in graceful folds across his breast. Despite his unpretending manner and his plain attire, there was something about his appearance which never failed to attract attention. His voice was low and musical, and when conversing on any subject in which he was deeply interested he spoke with a degree ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... conversion of the natives, that his little chapel could not contain the numbers who resorted to his ministrations: to Father Marest, the first preacher against intemperance; and, finally, to Marquette, the best and bravest of them all, the most single-hearted and unpretending! ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... large city each street has its peculiar feature. Such a street is sacred to commerce—a private residence in it would appear out of place. Such another is devoted to unpretending dwellings: the modest grocery shop of the corner looks conscious of being there on sufferance only. Here resides the well-to-do—the successful merchant; further, much further on, dwell the lowly—the poor. Between both points there exists ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... a fine table, two or three common chairs, a closet, a bed, and a harp—the relic of better and happier days. The uncarpeted floor was almost as white as snow—and certainly no snow could be purer or whiter than the drapery of her unpretending couch. ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... fares richly, while you and yours are eating the sweat of your brows. He is no man for a pewter spoon and two-pronged fork! No, my countrymen! He must have a gold spoon for some of his dishes, and you will find it hard to believe—plain, unpretending, republican farmers as you are, but it is not the less true—he must have forks of silver! Fellow-citizens, Hugh Littlepage would not put his knife into his mouth, as you and I do, in eating—as all plain, unpretending republicans do—for the world. It would choke him; no, he ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... from thy earthly home unsullied and unknown. No longer a child of the dust, thou steppest forth almost too delicately attired at such a season as this. Ye winds of heaven: "breathe on it gently." Ye showers descend on my Snowdrop with the tenderness of dew. Little flower, I love thy look of unpretending innocence: thou art the child of simplicity. Thou art a flower, even though colourless. Wert thou never gay as others? Where are the hues thou once didst wear? Hast thou lent them to the rainbow, or to gay and gaudy flowers, or why so pale? Dost ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... Jackson, who died the 22nd of December, 1828, aged 61. Her face was fair, her person pleasing, her temper amiable, her heart kind; she delighted in relieving the wants of her fellow-creatures, and cultivated that divine pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods; to the poor she was a benefactor; to the rich an example; to the wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an ornament; her piety went hand in hand with her benevolence, and she thanked her Creator ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the red South African sunset burned beyond the flattened western ridge of the semicircle of irregular hills that fence in the unpretending hamlet town that lies on the low central rise, Owen Saxham sat, as for his miserable weekly wage he must sit, twice daily for two hours at a stretch, enduring torments akin to those of the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... out of single stones, and raised in different parts of India to commemorate the conquests of Hindoo princes, whose names no one was able to discover for several centuries, till an unpretending English gentleman of surprising talents and industry, Mr. James Prinsep, lately brought them to light by mastering the obsolete characters in which they and their deeds had been inscribed upon them.[16] These pillars would, however, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... at once the treasures of domestic life and the ornaments of society. She it was who soothed the nervous irritability of her mother's sick chamber and perpetual peevishness, and graced her father's drawing-room by a presence that was attractive to both old and young, from its sweetness and unpretending modesty; her two younger sisters called forth all her tenderness, from the extreme delicacy of their health; but her brothers were even greater objects of solicitude—handsome spirited lads—the eldest waiting for a situation, promised, but not given; the second also waiting for a cadetship; while ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... of persons, were such as would have turned any head but his own. He retained the same simplicity of manners and appearance which had struck me so forcibly when I first saw him in the country: his dress was suited to his station; plain and unpretending, with sufficient attention to neatness: he always wore boots, and, when on more than usual ceremony, buckskin breeches. His manners were manly, simple, and independent; strongly expressive of conscious genius and worth, but without any indication ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... interesting. It has been remarked that if a spirit like hers, so daring, so persevering, so tenacious, had been given to a man, history would have counted a Magellan or a Captain Cook the more. But what strikes us as most remarkable about her was the absolute simplicity of her character and conduct; the unpretending way in which she accomplished her really great achievements; her modesty of manner and freedom from pretension. She went about the world as she went about the streets of Vienna; with the same reserve and quietness of demeanour, apparently unconscious ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... monuments adorn the churchyard; head-stones of all sizes meet the eye, some worn and leaning against a shrub or tree for support, others new and white, and glistening in the sunset. Several family vaults, unpretending in their appearance, are perceived on a closer scrutiny, to which the plants usually found in burial-grounds are clinging, shadowed too by large trees. The walls where they are visible are worn and discolored, but they are almost covered with ivy, ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... choicest children of the land have been selected and brought together as at a fair for a prize? No. Am I in some strange foreign clime where the children are marvels that we know not of? No. Then where am I? Yes—where am I? I am in a simple, remote, unpretending settlement of my own dear State, and these are the children of the noble and virtuous men who have made me what I am! My soul is lost in wonder at the thought! And I humbly thank Him to whom we are but as worms of the dust, that he has been pleased to ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... well known to Mr. Edwards by report, that it was most gladly that he received him into his house and family. There the impression Brainerd made was of a singularly social, entertaining person, meek and unpretending, but manly and independent. Probably rest and brightness had come when the terrible struggle of his early years had ceased, and morbid despondency had given way to Christian hope, for he became at once a bright and pleasant member of any society where he formed a part, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... held to bridge the gap between those two extremes in a felicitous way. A more purely artistic mood, instinct with the serene joy and clear warmth of Italian skies, combining a good deal of youthful buoyancy with a sort of quiet and unpretending philosophy, is here represented. And it is submitted that the little classical fancies which Mrs. Shelley never ventured to publish are quite as worthy of consideration as her more ambitious ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... had just reached his fifth year. My friends often came to visit me. In all that surrounded me, there was nothing either rare or beautiful. It was nature with her simplest ornaments, and family life in the most unpretending tranquillity. But nothing was wanting. I had space, verdure, affection, conversation, liberty, and employment,—the necessity of occupation, that spur and bridle which human indolence and mutability so often require. I was perfectly content. When the soul is calm, the heart full, and ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... meanings; polished, yet vernacular and cordial, it sounds like the dialect of wise, ancient, and true-hearted men: in poetry, brief, sharp, simple, and expressive; in prose, perhaps still more pleasing; for it is at once concise and full, rich, clear, unpretending and melodious; and the sense, not presented in alternating flashes, piece after piece revealed and withdrawn, rises before us as in continuous dawning, and stands at last simultaneously complete, and bathed in the mellowest and ruddiest sunshine. It brings to mind what the prose of Hooker, Bacon, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... of modesty, could incur nothing harsher than that of bashfulness. It was printed at the obscure market-town press of Newark, was altogether a very homely, rustic work, and no attempt was made to bespeak for it a good name from the critics. It was truly an innocent affair and an unpretending performance. But notwithstanding these, at least seeming, qualities of young doubtfulness and timidity, they did not soften the austere nature of the bleak and blighting criticism which was then ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... startled to see, by my watch, how late it was. I had just resolved to leave a line fixing an appointment for the morrow, and so depart, when I heard Vivian's knock,—a knock that had great character in it, haughty, impatient, irregular; not a neat, symmetrical, harmonious, unpretending knock, but a knock that seemed to set the whole house and street at defiance: it was a knock bullying—a knock ostentatious—a knock ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eyes that were absolutely indescribable as human features, with a certain boyish awkwardness of manner, but with the most urban-like courtesy and affability. From noon till dark, the time is spent in conversation, continued, various, and eloquent. What a presence is there in this humble, unpretending cottage! And as the stream of Olympian sweetness moves on, now in laughing ripples, and again in a solemn majestic flood, what a past do we bring before ourselves! what a present! For this is he that talked with Coleridge, that was the friend of Wilson,—and—what furnishes a more sublime suggestion—this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... bright; and her hair, her father often said, resembled the fire at the top of Shadrach. Howat knew that she was as impersonal, as essentially unstirred, as himself; but he had a clear doubt of Mrs. Gilkan. The latter was too anxious to welcome him to their unpretending home; she obviously moved to throw Fanny and himself together, and to disparage such suits as honest Dan Hesa's. He wondered if the older woman thought he might marry her daughter. And wondering he came to the conclusion that the other thing would please the mother almost as well. She ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of those with whom an adverse destiny had so singularly connected us. In this we succeeded; for no one, up to the present moment, has imagined either my wife or myself to be other than the simple and unpretending Frank and ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... mortals in the world. The good cheer disposed of, he gathered up his feet upon his mat for the night, and slept as men do who have nothing to fear from robbers. When in the morning he awoke, he found the old dame astir, preparing for him an early breakfast, which was of a quality unexpected in so unpretending a mansion. When breakfast was prepared, and after he had finished eating it, the old woman made him understand by signs that he was to go into the adjoining room and there replenish his dilapidated wardrobe. She supplied him with a new suit from head to heel, and then urged him to tie around his ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... intellectual power; the Queen's face was of Grecian shape, and had a thoughtful and intelligent expression. The face and features were good in form, but the complexion was highly coloured, and looked as though affected by some kind of inflammation. They were a quiet, unpretending, well-meaning, and moral couple. They purified the tainted precincts of the Court, and thus rendered it fit for the abode of the youthful and gracious ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... being thus reminded of the gross allusion to a deformity conspicuous in the head of their illustrious statesman; but Artaphernes, quite unconscious of his meaning, continued: "The noble structure is worthy of him who planned it. Yet the unpretending beauty of some of your small temples makes me feel more as if I were in the presence of a god. I have often marvelled what it is in those fair white columns, that charms me so much more than the palaces of the East, refulgent ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... the old town: people standing in their doorways, old women popping their heads from the chamber-windows, and stalwart men idle on Saturday at e'en, after their week's hard labor—clustering at the street-corners, merely to stare at our unpretending selves. Except in some remote little town of Italy (where, besides, the inhabitants had the intelligible stimulus of beggary), I have never been honored with nearly such ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gratification of her friends. From these notes the present volume has been prepared. The interest which the friends of missions in this country have long cherished for that people—youngest born in the family of Christian nations—will lead them to welcome these unpretending sketches, as affording both instruction and entertainment to themselves and ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... Dyceworthy could catch a glimpse through the trees of the principal thoroughfare of Bosekop—a small, primitive street enough, of little low houses, which, though unpretending from without, were roomy and comfortable within. The distant, cool sparkle of the waters of the Fjord, the refreshing breeze, the perfume of the flowers, and the satisfied impression left on his mind by recent tea and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... no one knew of it but her husband, not even her brothers and sisters, and, of course, she constantly heard speculations as to the authenticity of the book, and was often appealed to for her opinion. She is very unpretending and sweet in her manners; talks little, and seems not at all like ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... In this unpretending memoir may its subject live again, and not in vain. May teachers gather from her example fresh inspiration, and the benevolent Christian fresh impulses in doing good. May they who enjoy advantages superior to those of her proscribed race, take heed lest the latter, by the better improvement ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood
... and from the moment the collision was seen to be unavoidable till the actual contact a whole minute elapsed. A minute,—an age under the circumstances. And no one thought of the homely expedient of dropping a simple, unpretending rope-fender between the destructive ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... told her how much he must have felt her cutting words. He was proud, too, and she liked him for it, although she was striving to humble her own pride. What would she not have given to have recalled those words! The Rowland Prothero of London, esteemed and loved by the wise and good, for his unpretending but strenuous parochial labours, his clear, forcible, but very simple preaching—was to her quite a different person from him of Glanyravon Farm, the son of her father's tenant. In short they were ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... he followed the lead of Defoe. But though he turned from the more frivolous temper of the enfeebled playhouse audience, to commune in free air with the country at large, he took fresh care for the restraint of his deep earnestness within the bounds of a cheerful, unpretending influence. Drop by drop it should fall, and its strength lie in its persistence. He would bring what wit he had out of the playhouse, and speak his mind, like Defoe, to the people themselves every post-day. But he would affect no pedantry of moralizing, he would appeal to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... recently rebuilt or modernised, is of a style not less appropriate and admirable than that of the dwelling-houses and other structures. How sacred the spirit by which our forefathers were directed! The Religio loci is no where violated by these unstinted, yet unpretending, works of human hands. They exhibit generally a well-proportioned oblong, with a suitable porch, in some instances a steeple tower, and in others nothing more than a small belfry, in which one or two bells ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... without any portion whatever, while he divided his kingdom between the other two, having previously married them to princes of high rank. Cordiella was, however, at last made choice of for a wife by a French prince, who, it seems, knew better than the old king how much more to be relied upon was unpretending and honest truth than empty and extravagant profession. He married the portionless Cordiella, and took her with ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Ptolemy or for Antigonus, and equally thought that they were guarding a province for his heir; and it was through fear of loosening their hold upon the faithfulness of these their best troops that Ptolemy and his rivals alike chose to govern their kingdoms under the unpretending title of lieutenants of the King of Macedonia. Hence, upon the death of Alexander AEgus, there was a throne, or at least a state prison, left empty for a new claimant. Polysperchon, an old general of ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... aisle may be made the road to heaven. Many a man who was unaffected by what the minister said has been captured for God by the Christian word of an unpretending layman on ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... in mind, I never entered a secluded neighbourhood without being on the look-out for some unpretending photographic studio which would combine ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... not the money with me," said Vanel, frightened almost by the unpretending simplicity, amounting to greatness, of the man, for he had expected disputes, difficulties, opposition ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... thousand mis-statements of Hume's which becomes a memorable one from the stress which he has laid upon it, and from the manner and situation in which he has introduced it. Standing in the current of a narrative, it would have merited a silent correction in an unpretending note: but it occupies a much more assuming station; for it is introduced in a philosophical essay; and being relied on for a particular purpose with the most unqualified confidence, and being alleged in opposition to the very highest authority [viz. ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... their consolation. But the truth must be told. It was well observed by Sir James Mackintosh, whose knowledge of these times was unequalled, that Addison never, in any official document, affected wit or eloquence, and that his despatches are, without exception, remarkable for unpretending simplicity. Everybody who knows with what ease Addison's finest essays were produced must be convinced that, if well-turned phrases had been wanted, he would have had no difficulty in finding them. We are, however, inclined to believe, that the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sensation when she came down dressed for church on Christmas Day in a dark blue velvet jacket, deeply trimmed with silver fox, and a hat and muff en suite, matching with her serge dress, and though unpretending, yet very handsome. ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unpretending of human beings. She moved about the house with a step as stilly as the falling dews. Indeed, such was her walk through life. She seemed born to teach mankind unostentatious charity. Yet, under this mild, calm exterior, she had a strong, controlling will, which all around her felt and acknowledged. ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the chance of making friends among better people than your father. Didn't I use to talk to you about your school friends, and encourage you when they seemed of the right kind? And now you tell me that they don't care for your society because you live in a decent, unpretending way. I should think you're ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... his own Thalaba. A "chevelure" like this, with black eyes, aquiline features, and figure tall and slender, without attenuation, assisted in presenting such an image as is seldom viewed in reality; while the effect of the whole was enhanced by easy, unpretending and affectionate manners. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... committed the most momentous affairs to his direction. And yet, notwithstanding the illustrious position which Antipater thus occupied, and the great influence and control which he exercised in the public affairs of Macedon, he was simple and unpretending in his manners, and kind and considerate to all around him, as if he were entirely devoid of all feelings of personal ambition, and were actuated only by an honest and sincere devotedness to the cause of those whom he served. Various anecdotes were related of him in the Macedonian ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and sipped their wine, a liquor of unpretending vintage, moderately enjoyed. Mr. Malone, indeed, would much rather have had whisky; but Mr. Donne, being an Englishman, did not keep the beverage. While they sipped they argued, not on politics, nor on ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... his scanty education, strong prejudices, and family distresses. The least of these considerations always inclined Butler to measures of conciliation, in so far as he could accede to them without compromising principle; and thus our simple and unpretending heroine had the merit of those peacemakers, to whom it is pronounced as a benediction, that they ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... reflection arises, which, if it be less pleasing and poetical, is, perhaps, more useful—that the impetuous course of the mountain torrent, though gratifying to the lover of nature, is unaccompanied with any other benefit to man, while the stream that pursues its unpretending path through the plains, bestows fertility on a thousand fields. Such thoughts as these, however, only arise in the mind when it has become somewhat familiar with the surrounding scenes. The roar of the cataract, the savage appearance ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... is a pleasant little Dutch city, on a dot of island a few miles southwest of Massachusetts. For a city entirely unobtrusive and unpretending, it has really great attractions and solid merit; but the superior importance of other places will not permit me to tarry long within its hospitable walls. In fact, we only arrived late at night, and departed early the next morning; but even a six-hours sojourn ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... dogmatic statements of religion acquire a singular and living force when we perceive them carried out and realised in the actual affairs of life in a degree to which our personal experience is a stranger. Influenced as human nature is by example, these unpretending narratives, whose whole strength lies in the facts which they record, and not in the art of the biographer, undeniably strike the mind with an almost supernatural force. They enchain the attention; they compel us to say, Are these things true? Are these things ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... the chief in his seat. At his side rode a far different figure. Mounted upon a slight-made, active thorough-bred, whose drawn flanks bespoke a long and weary journey, sat Sir Arthur Wellesley, a plain blue frock and gray trousers being his unpretending costume; but the eagle glance which he threw around on every side, the quick motion of his hand as he pointed hither and thither among the dense battalions, bespoke him every inch a soldier. Behind them came a brilliant staff, glittering in aiguillettes and golden trappings, among ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... unpretending. One would think that it was I who was doing the favour and he who was the beggar. I thought of that passage about making the heart of the widow sing for joy. He made my heart sing for joy, I can tell you. Are you coming up ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a champion HAD come. Issuing from the forest came a knight and squire: the knight gracefully cantering an elegant cream-colored Arabian of prodigious power—the squire mounted on an unpretending gray cob; which, nevertheless, was an animal of considerable strength and sinew. It was the squire who blew the trumpet, through the bars of his helmet; the knight's visor was completely down. A small prince's coronet ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... backwards and forwards, as adroitly as any practised thief eluding the hot pursuit of the police. At last she paused and looked back, and thinking she had shaken me off (for knowing the game well I had hastily effaced myself in a doorway) plunged into the entrance of a small unpretending hotel in a quiet, retired square—the Hotel Pierre Fatio, certainly ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... of the Houses the numerical strength of the respective parties was fairly tested by the vote on the Speakership. The Reformers nominated as their candidate John Willson, one of the members for Wentworth. Mr. Willson was an unpretending farmer, of strong political convictions, but of good sense and calm judgment, who had allied himself with the Reformers, and who might safely be depended upon to discharge the duties incidental to the Speakership with judicial impartiality. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... little doubt that he had access to the best existing authorities on his subject. Besides the public chronicles and the archives of his own house, he is said to have drawn on Greek sources. Niebuhr, also, takes a high view of his merits; and the unpretending form in which he clothed his work, merely a bare statement of events without any attempt at literary decoration, inclines us to believe that so far as national prejudices allowed, he endeavoured to represent faithfully ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... from the interesting volumes recently published by Mr. Knight Hunt, under the unpretending title of The Fourth Estate: Contributions towards a History of Newspapers, and of the Liberty of the Press, has been very kindly recommended to our attention by The Examiner. We gladly avail ourselves of the suggestion, and shall be pleased to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... quiet days of expectation, hoping that, should the existing government, so hostile to him, be suppressed by another, his wishes might be at last fulfilled. These wishes were, by the way, of a rather unpretending character. "If I could only live here quietly, at Paris," he once remarked to his friend Bourrienne, "and rent that pretty little house yonder, opposite to my friends, and keep a carriage besides, I should be the ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... you no more than a few illustrated papers, and is more handy to bestow when you have read it. As for the contents, they are eight slight stories, in Mrs. Clifford's best manner. Yet, simple and unpretending as they are, they contain the real novelist's touch. There is nature, drama, character, in these short histories, and, above all, that command of simple pathos which Mrs. Clifford has more than most writers. We do not know many living writers who could have done either ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... roadway the ground is slightly elevated, and near to, but outside of, the gilt-tipped railings which enclose the Temple Church lies a very unpretending slab of marble. Rising but a few inches above the level, one corner sunken and green with earth-mould, it is but a single remove from the general decay around it. No fence protects it, children play and fight their mimic battles thereon, and when last we saw it a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... mostly written in a clear, unpretending style, with a sparing use of technical expressions; and so far as we have discovered, they do ample justice to all recent discoveries. The articles by Professor Bache on the "Tides," Professor Dalton on "Embryology," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... that there is something very engaging in a frank and unpretending manner; some persons have it more than others; in some persons it is a great grace. But it must be recollected that I am speaking of times of persecution and oppression to Christians, such as the text foretells; and then surely frankness will become nothing else than indignation at the oppressor, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... This, indeed, seems to be a characteristic of several other nations—an inordinate desire to become denationalized by imitating whatever is meretricious and absurd in other people; and you need not be surprised should you fail to recognize even your unpretending friend and correspondent on his return to California; for although I still pretend to write a little English, I no longer speak it except in broken accents. Having also worn out three good hats practicing ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... was benevolent and placable, yet could deal sternly with the impenitent offender; lowly in his deportment, yet with a full measure of that self-respect which springs from conscious rectitude of purpose; modest and unpretending, yet not shrinking from the most difficult enterprises; deferring greatly to others, yet, in the last resort, relying mainly on himself; moving with deliberation, - patiently waiting his time; but, when that came, bold, prompt, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... tea and the officers like to carry their canes and swagger sticks with them "over the top" into battle. A brave, unpretending man, who likes his own ways and wishes to be allowed to follow them and who is willing to fight and die that others also may be free—such is the English Tommy. With him it is all a part of the game, the game of war, and the greatest game of all, the game of life. He must ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... succeeded wonderfully, in taking himself and his readers into the heart of the age he describes. What is more, he has uttered words and thoughts which stir up the deep places of the soul. Let those read who wish to commune with the true and unpretending martyr-spirit, the spread of faith and endurance, courage, self denial, ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... that at this time his domestic affairs were in a satisfactory condition: "Plain and unpretending; never kept any liquor in the house—treated my friends to every civility except liquor; used an ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... It takes Possession, all Night, of the Fancy.——It has Witchcraft in every Page of it: but it is the Witchcraft of Passion and Meaning. Who is there that will not despise the false, empty Pomp of the Poets, when he observes in this little, unpretending, mild Triumph of Nature, the whole Force of Invention and Genius, creating new Powers of Emotion, and transplanting Ideas of Pleasure into that unweeded low Garden the Heart, from the dry ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... starting. Otto looked so sad—usually he was in high spirits—that most of these early customers spoke to him or to Joe Schwartz about his health. There were few of them who did not know what was troubling him. Among those friendly and unpretending and well-acquainted people any one's affairs were every one's affairs—why make a secret of what was, after all, only the routine of human life the world over and the ages through? Thus Otto had the lively but tactful sympathy of ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... chief vegetation for many miles round. The hacienda itself, a fine large building, stands lonely and bleak in the midst of magueys. A fine chapel, left unfinished since her husband's death, attracted our attention by its simple architecture and unpretending elegance. It is nearly impossible to conceive anything more lonely than a residence here must be; or in fact in any of the haciendas situated on these great plains of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... first retreat he had entirely wandered; and now, steering vaguely west, it was his luck to light upon an unpretending street, which presently widened so as to admit a strip of gardens in the midst. Here was quite a stir of birds; even at that hour, the shadow of the leaves was grateful; instead of the burnt atmosphere of cities, there was ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... and sister,—the sister to whom he was so fervently attached. The father was a plain, homely man,—nothing more, and assuming to be nothing more, than a Dublin tradesman.[F] The mother evidently possessed a far higher mind. She, too, was retiring and unpretending,—like her son in features,—with the same gentle, yet sparkling eye, flexible and smiling mouth, and kindly and conciliating manners. It was to be learned long afterwards how deep was the affection that existed in the poet's heart for these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... on the little rosy sea of his romance! And this was he. Was it a wonder that Elsa had "spells"? Here was a true heart-breaker. Just the type to play havoc with a girl. What place was there left for the mild, unpretending Gard? And still she deserved far better than Von Tielitz. Perhaps it was this feeling that added to her unhappiness. His vulgarity! To talk as Von Tielitz did about one who might become his wife, and to a stranger, was a new form of German brutality. It steadied ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... legislatures at once voted measures for general defense, ordered the levy of an army, and set George Washington at its head. No nobler figure ever stood in the forefront of a nation's life. Washington was grave and courteous in address; his manners were simple and unpretending; his silence and the serene calmness of his temper spoke of a perfect self-mastery. But there was little in his outer bearing to reveal the grandeur of soul which lifts his figure, with all the simple majesty of an ancient statue, out of the smaller ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... varied experience of life in primitive surroundings which needed to be part of their requisite equipment. It was indeed as if the two friends were fitted by the plan of Providence for this great enterprise which they concluded in such simple, unpretending, yet minutely thorough fashion. Neither thought himself a hero, therefore each was one. The largest glory to be accorded them is that they found their ambition and their content in the ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... acquainted with foreign lands, yet superior to their ladies; so able to see all the meaning of good words, and to value them when offered quietly; so sweet in his manner, and voice, and looks; and with all his fame so unpretending, and—much as it frightened her to think it—really seeming to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Livingstone was very simple and unpretending, and used to be annoyed when he was made a lion of. Once a well-known gentleman, who was advertised to deliver a lecture next day, called on him to pump him for material. The Doctor sat rather quiet, and, without ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... have a mellow look, and in Mrs. Glegg's day there was no incongruous new-fashioned smartness, no plate-glass in shop-windows, no fresh stucco-facing or other fallacious attempt to make fine old red St. Ogg's wear the air of a town that sprang up yesterday. The shop-windows were small and unpretending; for the farmers' wives and daughters who came to do their shopping on market-days were not to be withdrawn from their regular well-known shops; and the tradesmen had no wares intended for customers who would go on ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... thought; and it is more than merely legitimate that they should form the criterion of prose style, because within the scope of those qualities, according to Mr. Saintsbury, there is more than just the quiet, unpretending usefulness of the bare sermo pedestris. Acting on language, those qualities generate a specific and unique beauty—"that other beauty of prose"—fitly illustrated by these specimens, which the reader needs ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... fancied she could hear the voice of Ethiopian troops hailing the Regent as king—could see Ani decorated with the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, seated on Rameses' throne, and herself by his side in rich though unpretending splendor. She pictured herself with her son and daughter as enjoying Mena's estate, freed from debt and increased by Ani's generosity, and then a new, intoxicating hope came into her mind. Perhaps already at this moment her daughter was a widow, and why should she not be so fortunate ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... musical composition and though unpretending and not on the level of Gounod's "Margaretha", it does not deserve to ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... in the mind. It is like the red "chigoe" which inserts his tiny head in the flesh and burrows until he causes a throbbing fester. For instance, I have never forgotten a speech which was addressed to me over twenty years ago. It was just after we had built an unpretending, but thoroughly cozy summer cottage, nestled in a grove of trees that threw long shadows into a silvery lake. The man in question told me he never saw our light at night from the other side of the pretty ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... church on this Christmas morning. The small parish church of Vavasor, an unpretending wooden structure, with a single bell which might be heard tinkling for a mile or two over the fells, stood all alone about half a mile from the Squire's gate. Vavasor was a parish situated on the intermediate ground ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... young man, Napoleon wrote several works in French, such as the Souper de Beaucaire, the Memoire sur la Culture du Murier, &c. Some of the manuscripts of these writings must be still extant; and a comparison of the spelling of his unpretending youth, with that of his aspiring {204} manhood, would show at once whether the "orthographe extraordinairement estropiee" of his later productions was the result of habit ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... son-in-law when on his frequent voyages, by keeping, as she had done ere his return from foreign parts, a humble school. It was attended by two little girls, the children of a distant relation but very dear friend, the wife of a tradesman of the place,—a woman, like herself, of sincere though unpretending piety. Their similarity of character in this respect could hardly be traced to their common ancestor. He was the last curate of the neighbouring parish of Nigg; and, though not one of those intolerant Episcopalian ministers that succeeded in rendering their Church thoroughly hateful ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... very humble means, by the energy and courage of two unpretending men, was the long-disputed problem of the course of the Niger at length ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... tolerably old gentleman—an old bachelor, moreover—and, what is more to the point, an unpretending and sober-minded one. Lest, however, any of the ladies should take exceptions against me in the very outset, I will merely remark, en passant, that a man can sometimes become an old bachelor because he has too much heart as well as ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... rather than conduced towards it. Varro and the more sagacious men in general evidently gave up the task of annals as hopeless; at the most they arranged, as did Titus Pomponius Atticus, the official and gentile lists in unpretending tabular shape—a work by which the synchronistic Graeco-Roman chronology was finally brought into the shape in which it was conventionally fixed for posterity. But the manufacture of city-chronicles of course did not suspend its activity; ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... is served in this unpretending little book, ... which contains an amount and kind of information that it would be difficult to find elsewhere without great labor. The author's subject is the Ghetto, or Jewish quarter in European ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... I, with a start, as my eye ranged over the various articles of luxury and elegance around, so unlike the more simple and unpretending features of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... he sought to control the lightning, that he might strip them of their power to harm. Sagacious in the study of causes, he was still more sagacious in tracing their connection with effects; and his speculations often lose somewhat of their grandeur by the simple and unpretending directness with which he adapts them to the common understanding and makes them minister to the common wants of life. The ambition which quickened his early exertions met an early reward. He was ambitious to write well, and he became one of the best writers in our language. He was ambitious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... baron may be a good, substantial, unpretending man, something after the manner of an American farmer. A German prince or duke, since the absorption of the smaller principalities of Germany by Prussia, may have nothing left him but a barren title and a meagre rent-roll. ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... thought his place was in the clubs of Piccadilly if not (at that particular hour) at a tea table on the river terrace of the Houses of Parliament. On the other hand, there wasn't a trace of self-importance in his habit, it achieved distinction solely through the unpretending dignity ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... influences. Squire Oliver Montague, a lawyer who had retired from the practice of his profession except in rare cases, dwelt in a square old fashioned New England groves. But it was just a plain, roomy house, capable of extending to many guests an unpretending hospitality. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... edition, though at his own expense. Unfortunately the printers quarrelled about the MSS., and, as the writer understood, the entire concern broke up in a row in consequence. And, in fact, when we reflect on the amount of fierce attack and recrimination we reflect this unpretending and peaceful little volume elicited after the appearance of the fifth English edition, and the injury which it sustained from garbled and falsified editions, in not less than three unauthorised reprints, it would really seem as if this first ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... personal merit of the wife of the great Conde, did the little she had justify the wretchedness of her destiny? No: some beauty, wit, virtue, courage, a timid disposition perhaps, an unpretending virtue, a courage even mediocre, easily overthrown, and which needed the pressure of circumstances and danger for its development,—in all this there was nothing to invoke the ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... position in the eyes of the law rendered them almost a negative factor in the later life of New England. No great movement can be traced to their initiation, no great leader to birth within their borders, and no great work of art, literature, or scholarship to those who belonged to this unpretending company. The Pilgrim Fathers stand rather as an emblem of virtue than a moulding force in the ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... party arrived before a handsome flight of steps, with two magnificent camphor-trees on either side. The gate at the top being thrown open, we all entered the unpretending yet clean abode of the governor. A few inferior officers were sitting or standing about in the vestibule. They saluted us with a careless air, and one of them then announced our arrival, when the ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... meditated on that word, Tradition: how we inherit not Life only, but all the garniture and form of Life; and work, and speak, and even think and feel, as our Fathers, and primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, have given it us?—Who printed thee, for example, this unpretending Volume on the Philosophy of Clothes? Not the Herren Stillschweigen and Company; but Cadmus of Thebes, Faust of Mentz, and innumerable others whom thou knowest not. Had there been no Moesogothic Ulfila, there ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... possessed of a deep insight into the human mind and human affairs, he has in some of his productions, Le Glorieux, Le Philosophe Marie, and especially L'Indecis, shewn with great credit to himself what true and unpretending diligence is by itself capable of effecting. Other pieces, for instance, L'Ingrat and L'Homme Singulier, are complete failures, and enable us to see that a poet who considers Tartuffe and The Misanthrope as the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... the heavy coach—like the dove of old, my dear Martin—and it will be a week before we again deposit, our olive-branches in the passage. When I say olive branches," observed Mr. Pecksniff, in explanation, "I mean our unpretending luggage." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Aramis, turning in the carriage towards his companion, "weak creature as I am, so unpretending in genius, so low in the scale of intelligent beings, it has never yet happened to me to converse with a man without penetrating his thoughts through that living mask which has been thrown over our mind, in order to retain its expression. ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
