"Unpretentious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doctor of the town who was noted for his smart cravat, his affability to the ladies, and the delicious odour of violets which his garments always diffused. Pascal's parents did not understand him any better than other people. When Felicite saw him adopting such a strange, unpretentious mode of life she was stupefied, and reproached him for disappointing her hopes. She, who tolerated Aristide's idleness because she thought it would prove fertile, could not view without regret the slow progress of Pascal, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... pure, unpretentious, and simple. His speeches were often embellished with references to ancient and modern history and mythology with which he seemed to ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... involved them in a presentation to me, and between us we contrived to elide Mrs. Ricker and Kitton from all save her perfunctory office, until her voice and lips ceased their trembling. Poor little hostess, in her starched lawn which had seemed to her adequate for her unpretentious role of mother! All her humour and independence and self-possession had left her, and in their stead, on what was to have been her great night, had settled ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... manufacturing firms, whom it would be invidious to name, and whose high reputation renders them independent of any recommendation, have adopted this principle, and, as a result, there is now no difficulty in obtaining well designed and soundly constructed furniture, which is simple, unpretentious, and worth the price charged for it. Unfortunately for the complete success of the new teaching, useful and appropriate furniture meets with a fierce competition from more showy and ornate productions, ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... trolley indicated Prospect Avenue and I hurried up the street until I came to the house, a neat, unpretentious place. Looking at the address on the card first to make ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... and great trees with leafy branches rose on every side.... As they rode on beneath the leafy trees from every tree the birds sang out, for the spell of silence over the lonely moor was broken for ever." This unpretentious story, a child's story, is as engaging as a gem. And so, I think, are most of the others. One more example to illustrate the quality of Leamy's style—say, the description of the contest of the bards before the High King at the Feis of Tara in the story called ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... and the fact that a negro family was now in process of "moving in" was manifested by the presence of a thin mule and a ramshackle wagon, the latter laden with the semblance of a stove and a few other unpretentious household articles. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... morning on the deck of the hospital transport, or had he thought about it at some other time? Was the sentence stored in the man's memory, or did it come with the first gleam of returning consciousness from a soul laid open by disaster? I think racial words, simple and unpretentious, may lies in any man close to the bone like that to be rived out with a mortal hurt. That's what keeps me wondering about the words he used. And he ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... for a needle in a haystack to try to find a meadowlark's nest, an unpretentious structure of dried grasses partly arched over and hidden in a clump of high timothy, flat upon the ground. But what havoc snakes and field-mice play with the white-speckled eggs and helpless fledglings! The care of rearing two or three broods in a season and the change of plumage to ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... too affectionate, too bitter, and he has, moreover, springs of humor which bubble up continually. (You cannot imagine an archangel with a sense of humor.) But it is this very mixture in the man that holds the character student. Lloyd George is quite unpretentious, loves children, will join heartily in the chorus of a popular song, and yet there is concealed behind these softer traits a stark and desperate courage which leads him always to the policy of make or break. He is flamingly sincere, and yet no subtler statesman ever walked the boards at Westminster. ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... material. The result will be a sham that will deceive no one, and you will soon tire of it, and the sooner the better. Be honest. If you have only cheap material to work with, be satisfied with unambitious undertakings. Let them be in keeping with what you have to work with—simple, unpretentious, and without any attempt in the way of deception. The humblest home can be made attractive by holding fast to the principle of honesty in everything that is done about it. It is not necessary to imitate in order to make it attractive. Think out things ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... Being is entirely unpretentious. There is no bluster and no cant about him. He does not claim our gratitude for the doubtful boon of life. He does not pretend to be just, while he is committing, or winking at, the most intolerable injustices. He does not ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... must have a fund of information concerning every current Chicagoan of importance, and this fact alone was certain to be of value. Then the old man was direct, plain-spoken, simple-appearing, and wholly unpretentious—qualities which Cowperwood deemed invaluable. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... separated little towns, the names of which gave evidence of the mixed population. It was, of course, an exceedingly prosperous country, a fact manifest in the substantial little towns, if not in the crude and unpretentious homes of the farmers. The acreage of farms ran from a section, six hundred and forty acres, ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... too far from the Hall of Meeting. Though the depth of the fortress prevented me from knowing the time, it felt to be early afternoon by that strange internal clock that so seldom errs. It was correct, as usual. There was a quaint fireplace on the far wall of the room with a small, unadorned and unpretentious mantle, decorated like the rest of the fortress in a practical and experienced way, finding just the right flavor between the ornate, the practical, and the quaint, and avoiding all the while the clutter brought by superfluous ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... the most normal and unpretentious tone that she hated the moon. I talked to the same lady several times afterwards; and found that this was a perfectly honest statement of the fact. Her attitude on this and other things might be called a prejudice; but it could not possibly be called a fad, still less an affectation. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... clay as doorsteps or lintels, or lying about at random, or utilized as seats at the house entrance; they date from Roman or earlier times—columns, too, some of them adorned with the lotus-pattern, the majority unpretentious ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... for his examination drew near Malcolm Malcolmson made up his mind to go somewhere to read by himself. He feared the attractions of the seaside, and also he feared completely rural isolation, for of old he knew it charms, and so he determined to find some unpretentious little town where there would be nothing to distract him. He refrained from asking suggestions from any of his friends, for he argued that each would recommend some place of which he had knowledge, and where he had already acquaintances. As Malcolmson wished ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... could not well be said, nor was to be. [Pause.] It hurts me when I see thee thus, benumbed By all these overladen moments, that Scarce walk upright beneath their heavy burden. But let me say, all good things enter in Our souls in quiet unpretentious ways, And not with show and noise. One keeps expecting To see Life suddenly appear somewhere On the horizon, like a new domain, A country yet untrodden. Yet the distance Remains unpeopled; slowly then our eyes Perceive its traces ling'ring here and yonder, And that it compasses, embraces us, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... thrown out. It was an obvious lure, a lure to draw him away from the fret and fury that possessed him so inconveniently, but its obvious nature did not detract from its effectiveness. Yeovil had pleasant recollections of the East Wessex, a cheery little hunt that afforded good sport in an unpretentious manner, a joyous thread of life running through a rather sleepy countryside, like a merry brook careering through a placid valley. For a man coming slowly and yet eagerly back to the activities of life from the weariness of a long fever, the prospect of a leisurely ...
— When William Came • Saki
... not fancy me possessed of either castle or keys. I was to him only an unpretentious English companion in attendance on Madame Blanc in the woods ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... allowed his title to be used, as he shrank from the notoriety which the knowledge of his position and wealth would create among the settlers of that region. He had come there in an unpretentious way, and he wished to leave as quietly. There would be time enough, he thought, to resume his honors when he and his bride should go out into ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... is Camelford House (Lord Hillingdon), an unpretentious building in a courtyard, once the property of the Pitts, Earls of Camelford. George Grenville occupied it in 1805, and subsequently H.R.H. Princess Charlotte and her husband, afterwards Leopold I. of ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... esplanade, and up a steep incline to the Villa Bleue. The hospitable little parsonage seemed an exact materialization of the personality of its owners. Canon and Mrs. Clark were both small and smiling and charitable and particularly kind, and their tiny unpretentious dwelling, with its sunny aspect and its flowers and its pet birds, was absolutely in keeping with their tone of mind. From some houses seem to emanate certain mental atmospheres, as if they reflected the sum total of the thoughts that have collected there, and sensitive visitors receive subconscious ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... a frien', la veuve Gravois, who lives ver' quiet. She have one room, and I ask her tek you in, Davy." He led the way through the empty Rue Chartres, turned to the right at the Rue Bienville, and stopped before an unpretentious house some three doors from the corner. Madame Gravois, elderly, wizened, primp in a starched cotton gown, opened the door herself, fell upon Monsieur Vigo in the Creole fashion; and within a quarter of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... whether it was not unseemly to go about during the whole week in Sunday clothes. After all he was but an ordinary, commonplace person with whom he was well content, and he came to the conclusion that he had a better chance of living in peace with himself if he lived a simple, unpretentious, unassuming life. ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... prefer our way of serving it. Of course, what the French are real geniuses at is the omelet. I remember, when we put in at Toulon for coal, I went ashore for a stroll, and had the most delicious omelet with chicken livers beautifully cooked, at quite a small, unpretentious place near the harbour. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... adequately to repay you for your many valuable services to me and mine. Nevertheless, in recognition of what you have been to us, allow me to dedicate this unpretentious volume to you. I shall have more respect for my little stories if in some way they ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Possum Villa was an unpretentious-looking place, with one, bow-window and a narrow verandah in front. It was surrounded by a small garden in which were a few sparse flowers—the especial delight of Mrs. Hableton. It was, her way to tie an old handkerchief round her head ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... they like those who wade through a stream in winter; irresolute like those who are afraid of all around them; grave like a guest (in awe of his host); evanescent like ice that is melting away; unpretentious like wood that has not been fashioned into anything; vacant like a valley, and dull ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... the body, skirt, and arms—a rolling collar, low-down, disclosing his long thin, shrivelled throat uncovered and exposed. No man in all New York appeared that night more simple, more unassuming, more modest, more unpretentious, more conscious of his own defects than Abraham Lincoln; and yet we now know that within his soul there burned the fires of an unbounded ambition, sustained by a self-reliance and self-esteem that bade him fix his gaze upon the very pinnacle of American fame and ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... lunch that seemed a festivity at Solferino's never gave us the holiday sense Paris filled us with from the early hour in the morning when, after our little breakfast, we met downstairs in the unpretentious hotel in the Rue St. Roch where most of us stayed—if we did not stay instead at the Hotel de l'Univers et Portugal for the sake of the name. The Rue St. Roch was convenient and if we were willing to climb to the top of the narrow house, where the smell of dinner ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... by the vines and almonds that La Malene was not far off. Soon came that sight, ever welcome to the wayfarer—the village where he intends to seek rest and refreshment. The inn here was as unpretentious as the one at Les Vignes; but with hare, en civet, a dish of trout, and a bottle of the wine grown upon the sunny terrace above the houses, I had as good a meal as any hungry tramp has a right to expect. As for myself, I never expect anything so sumptuous, and in this way I ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... meet in the evening at the house of the local magnate. The granddaughter of a former governor or justice of the Supreme Court comes home from her typewriter and her brother from the cotton mill or the lumber yard. Social life in a small town—and most Southern towns are small—is simple and unpretentious, although here too the influence of prosperity is beginning to be manifest. Social affairs are more elaborate than they were ten or fifteen years ago, and there is also less casual expression of informal hospitality. The higher prices of food ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... The unpretentious house of Lenard et Morellet of Paris now and then effects deals so enormous that financial circles are staggered, and the world stands amazed. The true facts of who is actually behind that apparently unimportant firm are, however, ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... history of the academy ship and her crew of boys, with their trips into the interior as well as voyages along the coast of Ireland and Scotland. The young scholar will get a truer and fuller conception of these countries by reading this unpretentious journal of travel, than by weeks of hard study ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... a conscious thought connection. She remembered that Mrs. Bell had told her of her faithful landlady, Mrs. Mellen, with whom she always stopped when she came North; she remembered calling there many times for Mary, her smart motor waking the quiet, unpretentious street. Now she remembered recalling the boarding house and seeking shelter there in her fear and pain. Fear and pain—why, what was it? There was something cataclysmic, overpowering, that had happened. What could it be? Something was hanging over her head, some dreadful ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... home, and found to his astonishment that the world-renowned physician, statesman, pathologist, anthropologist was domiciled in a little apartment of the most modest equipment, up two flights, in a house of most unpretentious character. Everything was entirely respectable, altogether comfortable, to be sure; but it was a grade of living which a man of corresponding position in America could not hold to without finding himself quite out of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... Louis begins to peter out into brick-and limestone-kilns and great scars of unworked and overworked quarries, the first and more unpretentious of its suburbs take up—Benson, Maplehurst, and Ridgeway Heights intervening with one-story brick cottages and two-story packing-cases—between the smoke of the city and the carefully parked Queen Anne quietude of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... many books in the world! A cloud of dust rose under his feet as he went up to the cases and tried to read the tarnished titles of the volumes on the shelves. Again Chance led him aright, and his eye brightened as he discovered an unpretentious volume that proclaimed itself: The Official Visitors' Guide to the City of New York for the Year 1905. He pulled out the book and opened it. Of course it contained what he wanted, a large folding map, and spreading the latter out upon a table Constans set himself to studying it earnestly; this ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... range, at the same time thorough and unpretentious, is a rarity; a philologist who is neither perversely wrongheaded nor the victim of a preconceived theory is a still greater one; yet we find both characters pleasantly united in the author of these Lectures. Decided in his opinions, Mr. Marsh is modest in expressing them, because they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Hans Christian Andersen, and Fanny Kemble, with her sister, Mrs. Sartoris, and Lady Oswald, a sister of Lord Elgin. Thackeray's daughter, Miss Anne Thackeray (now Lady Ritchie), still finds vivid her girlish memory of Mrs. Browning,—"a slight figure in a thin black gown and the unpretentious implements of her magic," by her sofa, on a little table. Lady Ritchie turns back to her diary of that winter to find in it another of her early impressions of Mrs. Browning, "in soft, falling flounces of black silk, with her heavy curls ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... high above the sea, which is seen far below, through vast masses of woodland. Steps lead down towards the water, from the centre of the scene. To the left, a large, low country-house, of unpretentious character, in the style of the late eighteenth century. Gardens belonging to the same period, and now somewhat neglected and overgrown, stretch on either side. The edge of the terrace is marked by a stone balustrade, with a stone seat running ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... of tragic attitudes and accessories, of an imposing background. The beauty which we find so touching has grown simpler; it makes less stir and wins closer to our heart. And this is why destiny sought out in obscurity a little hospital nurse, one of many thousands of others. The sight of her unpretentious portrait does not tell one whether she was rich or poor, a humble member of the middle classes or a great lady. She would pass unnoticed anywhere until the hour of trial, when glory recognizes its elect; and it seems ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Songs and Sonnets. After reading this with ever-growing surprise and delight, Rose never had another doubt about the writer's being a poet, for though she was no critic, she had read the best authors and knew what was good. Unpretentious as it was, this had the true ring, and its very simplicity showed conscious power for, unlike so many first attempts, the book was not full of "My Lady," neither did it indulge ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Queen's Road West. It is named after Sir W. Tite, M.P. The houses are modern, built in the Queen Anne style, and are mostly of red brick. To this the white house built for Mr. Whistler is an exception; it is a square, unpretentious building faced ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... little to the left and perhaps a hundred yards away. It was a disappointing house to find in that great enclosure, for though it was certainly neither small nor trivial, it was as certainly far from possessing anything like grandeur. It had been in its day a respectable, unpretentious square structure of three stories, entirely without architectural beauty, but also entirely without the ornate hideousness of the modern villas along the route de Clamart. Now, however, the stucco was gone in great patches from its stone walls, giving them an unpleasantly ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... similar bounties of nature, and the fauna lively with squirrels, wood-chucks, and the like; where the leading sportsmen snare patridges, as they are called, and "hunt" foxes with guns; where rabbits are entrapped in "figgery fours," and trout captured with the unpretentious earth-worm, instead of the gorgeous fly; where they bet prizes for butter and cheese, and rag-carpets executed by ladies more than seventy years of age; where whey wear dress-coats before dinner, and cock their hats on one side when they feel conspicuous and distinshed; where ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... shook the large flowering shrubs and their perfumed crimson petals fell like rain, almost to the church itself. Thence we marched to the ceremony, very far off. Our little procession of sailors was very unpretentious, but the coffin remained conspicuously wrapped in the flag of France. We had to traverse the Chinese quarter, through seething crowds of yellow men; and then the Malay and Indian suburbs, where all types of Asiatic faces ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... present day know how plain and unpretentious were the dwellings of the burghers of Paris in the sixteenth century, and how simple their lives. Perhaps this simplicity of habits and of thought was the cause of the grandeur of that old bourgeoisie which was certainly grand, free, and noble,—more so, perhaps, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... judgment since coming under my command. The firmness and coolness with which he always met the responsibilities of a dangerous place were particularly strong points in Gregg's make-up, and he possessed so much professional though unpretentious ability, that it is to be regretted he felt obliged a few months later to quit the service before the ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... service of a nondescript kind; while a tattered gray blanket that had done duty for many a month as a bed by day and a cloak by night, and was now in the last stage of dissolution from age and general infirmity, completed his unmilitary and unpretentious toilet. Having at first no one to identify them, Glazier and his companion were as strangers among friends, and necessarily without official recognition. At length, however, after much searching, they found Lieutenant Wright's old ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... names I hold in honor and whose writings are in my library. If any such failed to receive our cards of invitation, it was an accident which, if I had known, I should have deeply regretted. So far as we could judge by all we heard, our unpretentious party gave general satisfaction. Many different social circles were represented, but it passed off easily and agreeably. I can say this more freely, as the credit of it belongs so largely to the care and self-sacrificing efforts of Dr. Priestley ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... afternoon, at the royal shooting-box outside of Bucharest, the King talked freely about his motives and the cause of his people. We had finished luncheon and he had dismissed his suite. He and the Crown Prince and myself were left in the unpretentious study. Here, over a map-strewn table, it was the custom of the King to study the problems of the campaign. A tired, harassed-looking man of about sixty, clad in the blue uniform of the Hussars of his ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... they stay a few days and enjoy the advantage of having some one other than themselves cook their meals and make their beds. The hotel, a relic of old times, with its patio and long portal, its rooms whose lower floors were on the ground level, its unpretentious spaciousness, appealed strongly to Bartley as something unusual in the way of a hostelry. It seemed restful, romantic, inviting. It was a place where a man might write, dream, loaf, and smoke. Then, incidentally, it was not far from the Lawrence ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... a preface to explain or to apologize for a book. I shall do neither: I have tried to explain my meaning simply and clearly in the book itself, and I am optimistic enough to think that my favourite game is too popular to require an apology for increasing its literature, however unpretentious the attempt may be. Moreover, I am still too much affected by the "brilliant and feverish glow" of enthusiasm to dream of ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... unlike the newer one in which folks take a sort of ghastly pride, one lot differing from another lot in glory, is an unpretentious place, enclosed by crumbling walls, the iron gates of which have rusted ajar. It is a grassy, bird-haunted, tree-shaded spot, with some dozen or so old family vaults, some modest monuments that bear stately ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... of the avenue. The trembling trees bowed toward him as he advanced, the sun-rays quivered, frightened, yet curious, through the green leaves, and in the blue heaven above there swam visibly a golden star. The Emperor wore his unpretentious-green uniform and the little world-renowned hat. He rode a white palfrey, which stepped with such calm pride, so confidently, so nobly—had I then been Crown Prince of Prussia I would have envied that horse. The Emperor sat carelessly, almost laxly, holding his rein with one hand, and with the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... countrified garments, both in tears and evident great distress, who, as Viner walked in, rose from their chairs and gazed at him sadly and wistfully. They reminded him at once of the type of spinster found in quiet, unpretentious cottages in out-of-the-way villages—the neither young nor old women, who live on circumscribed means and are painfully shy of the rude world outside. And before either he or Miss Penkridge could speak, the elder of the two broke ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... world. There are palaces in France and Italy, and great country houses in England, to the embellishment of which generations of owners have devoted the best art of their own time; but in America there is something of it everywhere. Many unpretentious houses have drawing-rooms possessing colour-decoration which would distinguish them as ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... following was one that he strongly approved of, because it had the originality to cut diagonally across the rectangular plan of the town. The houses on either hand were small and unpretentious, but tidy little homesteads, and he did not like to think of the mortgages with which, according to Chittenden, the "boom" had weighted more than one modest roof. In the strong sense of general disaster which he was struggling under, ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... dusty road beyond it. As we drove along in the soft clouded sunshine I looked over the hedges on either side, and I could see fields and hedgerows and red roofs clustering here and there, while the low background of blue hills spread towards the horizon. It was an unpretentious homely prospect intercepted each minute by the detestable advertisement hoardings recommending this or that rival pill. 'Tongues in trees' indeed, in a very different sense from the exiled duke's experience! Then we come within sight of the running brook, uncontaminated as yet; the river ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Browne was born about forty-five years ago, in an unpretentious cottage, which is still standing near the northeast corner of the cross-roads, on the top of Mount Pleasant, or Vinegar Hill, as it was then called, about a mile west of Colora. She is the oldest child of William A. Browne and Hester A. Touchstone, sister of the late James Touchstone. ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... yearning to go—every line of the girl's figure yearning. In "The Chamber called Peace" we see a simple English room, bed with white curtains, window valance and door, as may be found in many thousand unpretentious houses; but far off, through the open window, we behold the sun uprising out of a great plain, and Christian ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the contrary, is, on reaching his unpretentious home, received with a gentle, loving heartiness and the fondest caresses. He sits down to a frugal meal, but everything he eats is excellent; and how could it be otherwise? It is Pamela herself who has prepared it all. They eat with enjoyment, talking of their affairs, their plans, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... unpretentious poem, describing in six short cantos the six seasons into which the Hindus divide the year. The title is perhaps a little misleading, as the description is not objective, but deals with the feelings awakened by each season in a pair of young lovers. Indeed, the poem might be called ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... there a phrase in our language more eloquently significant of physical and mental refreshment, more expressive of remission of toil and restful relaxation, or so rich in associations with the comforts and serenity of home life, and also with unpretentious, ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... his death. Sir Isaac Newton lived in the little street off the south side of the square, at the back of the big new Dental Hospital. His house is still standing, and bears a tablet of the Society of Arts. It is quite unpretentious—a stucco-covered building with little dormer-windows in the roof. The great scientist came here in 1710, when he was nearly sixty, and his fame was then world-wide. Men from all parts of Europe sought the dull little street in order to converse with one whose power ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... been transformed! No one would have recognized it, covered as it was with a wealth of pure white blossoms and dark-green leaves, for it looked more like the throne of a fairy than like anything so ordinary and unpretentious. Mrs. Seabrook, who possessed exquisite taste, had so massed the blossoms around her and daintily perched an inverted one on her head that the effect was exceedingly beautiful and picturesque. Katherine, who had chosen to be "Lady Poppea," made a brilliant ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the city are for the most part exceedingly plain and unpretentious. In striking contrast is the new Russian cathedral, the recently erected school, and a large retail store built by a resident Greek, all of which are fine specimens of Russian architecture. Among its institutions ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... lay the success of this local brother's unpretentious discourse:—It cheered us, one and all. Faces brightened and drooping heads were lifted up as the old man pursued his way. The last hymn was the heartiest of all, not because, as is sometimes the case, the people were encouraged by the thought of approaching liberation, but because ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... lads called out things in mock English; but when it was understood that we were seeking the house of the "Master" we inspired immediate respect, and a dozen eager volunteers put themselves at our service and accompanied us in a body to where, at the eastern edge of the village, there stands an unpretentious square stone house of no great antiquity, surrounded by a garden ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... who has advanced into philosophical territory and now is pushing his investigations into the field of psychology. Modest and wholly unpretentious he sets up as no original genius, and is content with his double role of close observer and respectful critic. He is rather a guide to men than a light. He has nothing new to say, but nothing foolish. His words are words of purest wisdom, though you may have ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... Lonely Ranch was seated before the table in his unpretentious sitting-room. Before him were piled a number of open account-books, and books containing matters relating to ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... as if I were drunk ..." she thought. She did not feel giddy any more. She could see the familiar outline of the House against an unpretentious sky, and that calm shape ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... the club-house, a simple, unpretentious little building, with wide, open verandas in front, which afforded no shelter from the biting wind. The whole procession staggered in, a choking, coughing, sputtering crowd, and from one end of the line to the other rose imprecations ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... and he led Ricardo to an unpretentious little hotel in the centre of the town. Ricardo sent in his name, and the two visitors were immediately shown into a small sitting-room, where M. Hanaud was enjoying his morning chocolate. He was stout and broad-shouldered, ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... from the main village by a number of wretched lanes, lay the Jewish quarter. A decided improvement in the general condition of the houses which formed this suburb was plainly visible to the casual observer. The houses were, if possible, more unpretentious than those of the serfs, yet there was an air of home-like comfort about them, an impression of neatness and cleanliness prevailed, which one would seek for in vain among the semi-barbarous peasants of Southern Russia. To the inhabitants of these poor huts, home was everything. The ordinary ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... homespun ever turned out by the very humblest of workmen. His poetry, it would be pretty safe to wager, must be looked for exclusively in his plays: but there, if not remarkable for depth or height of imagination or of passion, it will be found memorable for unsurpassed excellence of unpretentious elevation in treatment of character. The unity (or, to borrow from Coleridge a barbaric word, the triunity) of noble and gentle and simple in the finest quality of the English character at its best—of ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... If anyone observed the unpretentious master and myself as we walked away from the crowded pavement, the onlooker surely suspected us of intoxication. I felt that the falling shades of evening were sympathetically drunk with God. When darkness recovered from its nightly ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... mandolin, guitar and piano by ear. These men were not only grateful to Von Barwig for his kindness, but they loved him, and recognising in him the real artist had unbounded respect for him. As for Von Barwig, he found them simple fellows, sentimental, unpretentious and good-hearted, and he liked them and felt at ease with them because they did not seek to probe into that part of his life which he preferred should remain unknown to them. They merely accepted him as they found him and for this Von Barwig was grateful. As time went on, ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... common interests against the encroachment of a common enemy—the ambitious house of Hapsburg. The lake formed at once a bond and a highway between them. On the first day of August, 1291, more than six hundred years ago, a group of unpretentious patriots, ignored by the great world, signed a document which formed these lands into a loose Confederation. By this act they laid the foundation upon which the Swiss state was afterward reared. In their naive, but prophetic, faith, the contracting parties called this agreement a perpetual pact; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... inevitable, he sold his goods, distributed the money to the poor, read the Koran through once every three days, and died in the holy month of Ramadan. His tomb at Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana, still exists, a simple brickwork building, rectangular in shape, and surrounded by an unpretentious court. It was restored in 1877, but is again in need of repair. The illustration here shown is from a photograph sent by Dr. Neligan of Teheran. Though dead, the great Persian has still a large practice, as his tomb ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... Frenchman and to Baltimore belongs the credit of the erection of the first monument to the memory of Christopher Columbus. This shaft, though unpretentious in height and material, is the first ever erected in the "Monumental City" or in the whole United States. The monument was put up on his estate by Charles Francis Adrian le Paulmier, Chevalier d'Amour. ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... closer to Forster by the fact that I was thus constituted his representative and champion in the Press, and I became a somewhat frequent visitor at his delightful but unpretentious residence on the banks of the Wharfe at Burley. It was on my first visit to him after his resignation that an incident took place which touched me deeply. I was sitting with his and my old friend, Canon Jackson, of Leeds, in the library after ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... of the then rural Kensington Gardens, accompanied by her elder and half-sister, the Princess Feodore, and attended by a single servant. Many elderly people still remember the extreme simplicity of the child's attire, and the quiet and unpretentious appearance and manners of her sister, who was one day seen to stop the tiny carriage to indulge the fancy of an unknown little girl by allowing her ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... the time-honoured trappings that characterize this rather feeble literature of the supernatural. On the contrary, the scenes enacted in houses that appear to be really haunted are generally very simple and insignificant, not to say dull and commonplace. The ghosts are quite unpretentious and go to no expense in the matter of staging or costume. They are clad as they were when, sometimes many years ago, they led their quiet, unadventurous life within their own home. We find in one case an old woman, with a thin grey shawl meekly ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Dorchester, a very unpretentious structure of logs and thatch, was completed in 1631, and no free-holder was allowed to plant his domicile farther than the distance of half a mile from it, without special permission of the fathers of the town. It stood near the intersection of the present Pleasant and Cottage streets, and that ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... the garden and the road. Above the hedge showed an occasional shrub; at the corner nearest to the car a chestnut flourished. The wooden gate, once white, which they had passed, was grimed and rickety. The road itself was still the unpretentious country lane that the advent of the electric car had found it. When Carrados had taken in these details there seemed little else to notice. He was on the point of giving Harris the order to go on when his ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... her life it was absolutely necessary for her to winter in a warm climate. Lord Brougham, the ex-Lord Chancellor, had virtually created Cannes, as far as English people were concerned, and the few hotels there were still unpretentious and comfortable. ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... picture—might better never have been planted. For myself, I would rather have a bare and open pasture than such a yard as that shown in Fig. 9, even though it contained the choicest plants of every land. The pasture would at least be plain and restful and unpretentious; but the yard would be ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... The elegant, the unpretentious, the quiet soir,e to which the woman of fashion shall welcome the litt,rateur and the artist, the aristocrat who is at the top of the social tree and the millionaire who reached his culmination yesterday, would seem to be that Ultima Thule for which all people have been sighing ever since ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... hosts had received her as a welcome guest, and they certainly did not seem to be poor. The house was spacious, and though it was old and unpretentious it was comfortable and furnished with artistic taste. The garden had amazed her by the care lavished on it; she had seen a hump-backed gardener and several children at work in it. A strange party-for every one of them, like their chief, was in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... who lived in an unpretentious abode in New York, occupied a peculiar and very influential position at the White House. Bound to the President by intimate friendship, he has always refused to accept any Ministerial appointment, ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... animals being forced to do things which Nature has forbidden them to do—things which we can do so very much better than they, without any trouble. Heaven defend me from those meaningless palaces! But the little old music-halls have always attracted me by their unpretentious raciness, their quaint monotony, the reality of the enjoyment on all those stolidly rapt faces in the audience. Without that monotony there would not be the same air of general enjoyment, the same constant guffaws. That monotony is the secret of the success of music-halls. It is not ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... be congratulated. They provided a good unpretentious evening's entertainment. No dull and pedantic realism for them. The dialogue was bright, occasionally to the sparkling point. The players were competent and zealous. Mr. KENNETH DOUGLAS gave the right variety to his three parts, Goring as he was, Goring as he was assumed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... that the ladies, "one and all," had spoken with entire enthusiasm of their afternoon at the unpretentious home of my neighbor, I, nevertheless, deemed it vital to hold plain speech with that impulsive woman immediately. I saw, indeed, that I should have acted after the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Morgan's home was unpretentious but comfortable. The hand of a careful and thoughtful housekeeper was in evidence everywhere. In the big living room, at the front, were several lounging chairs, and along one wall, between the front windows ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... us at once into a room, half library, half smoking-room, that opened out of the low-ceilinged hall. The Manor House gave the impression of a rambling and glorified farmhouse, solid, ancient, comfortable, and wholly unpretentious. And so it was. Only the heat of the place struck me as unnatural. This room with the blazing fire may have seemed uncomfortably warm after the long drive through the night air; yet it seemed to me that the hall itself, and the whole atmosphere of the house, breathed ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the unwonted spaciousness will impress him and have a tendency to check the behavior that goes with tenement- house conditions. We of the profession are so impressed with the atmosphere that should pervade a library, that a very small and unpretentious collection of books brings our voices involuntarily to the proper library pitch. But this is not true to the small arab, who, coming from the cluttered little kitchen at home to a small, crowded children's room where the ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... site was Rialto and Market-place for the overgrown mining camp. The wall moss which blew in with the trade winds, and the semi-tropic growth of old ivies and rose-bushes, had given to these houses the seasoning of two centuries. Unpretentious hovels beside the structures of stone turrets and mill-work fronts by which later millionaires shamed California Street and Van Ness Avenue, they had the simple dignity of a mission, a colonial ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... years there stood in a side street in Kiel an unpretentious old frame house which had a forbidding, almost sinister appearance, with its old-fashioned balcony and its overhanging upper stories. For the last twenty years the house had been occupied by a greatly respected ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... consecration," the low, three-legged altar-table, and cultus vases. To complete the list, a potsherd was found with the Double Axe moulded upon it, an indication, perhaps, that some who claimed kin with the masters of Crete paid their devotions at this unpretentious shrine.'[*] The smallness of the shrine at Gournia may be compared with the smallness of the sacred rooms at Knossos, and seems to have been characteristic of ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... good by stealth and blush to find it fame [Pope], hide one's light under a bushel, cast a sheep's eye. Adj. modest, diffident; humble &c 879; timid, timorous, bashful; shy, nervous, skittish, coy, sheepish, shamefaced, blushing, overmodest. unpretending^, unpretentious; unobtrusive, unassuming, unostentatious, unboastful^, unaspiring; poor in spirit. out of countenance &c (humbled) 879. reserved, constrained, demure. Adv. humbly &c adj.; quietly, privately; without ceremony, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... cottage was humble and unpretentious, and in keeping with the wildness of the landscape, its interior gave evidence of the cultivation and refinement of its inmates. An aquarium, containing goldfishes, stood on a marble centre-table at one end of the apartment, while a magnificent grand piano occupied the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... secluded court, opening from a narrow lane in the old city of Norwich, stands an unpretentious house, which at first sight presents little to attract the attention of a visitor. A closer inspection, however, discloses a marble slab affixed over the door, bearing the following inscription: ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... wife, and a modern mural tablet with medallion to Viscountess Waldegrave. In the churchyard is a weather-worn but fine cross, with a canopied crucifix. The Communion plate is pre-Reformation, dating from 1511. The neighbouring Priory (Earl Waldegrave) is an unpretentious modern building, occupying the site of an ancient Benedictine house, afterwards tenanted by Carthusians. Portions of the old causeway which once connected the priory with the church ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... Leonardo studied Nature at first hand —he took nothing for granted—Nature was his one book. Stuffy, fussy, indoor professors—men of awful dignity—frighten folks, cause children to scream, and ladies to gaze in awe; but Leonardo was simple and unpretentious. He was at home in any society, high or low, rich or poor, learned or unlearned—and was quite content to be himself. It's a fine thing to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... a solicitor, and all his early circumstances were homely, unpretentious, and rather straitened. His mother died when he was eight years old, and when his father followed her five years later, two of his uncles provided means for continuing at Cambridge the education which had been begun in the rural grammar-school of Hawkshead. It was in 1787 that he ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... and an unpretentious majesty of character breathed all about him. An indwelling vehemency, a powerful will, and a firm confidence could readily be seen, but calm and mellowed with generous kindness, without a trace of selfishness or vanity. ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... unpretentious, but excellent, almost perfect in its way. A clear soup, a sole, an entree or two, a bit of venison, a sweet—with good wines, but not too ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... some unpretentious pages of prose which were particularly calculated to display the genius of Corinne. He first pointed out the peculiar merit of her work, and said that that merit partly consisted of her profound study of foreign literature: she united, in the ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... be said about skating, and the allied sports of tobogganing, sleighing, curling, ice yachting, and last, but by no means least, sliding—that unpretentious pastime of the million. Happy the boy who has nails in his boots when Jack-Frost appears in his white garment, and congeals the neighbouring pond. But I must turn away at the threshold of the humorous aspect of my subject (for ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... Hill School stood the little vermin-infested house in which the Cavers family lived after they abandoned the weed-choked farm on the river-bank. This unpretentious log house had been the first home of Mr. and Mrs. Steadman, and was part of the "improvements" specified by the Government to show that a homestead is entered in good faith. The land had been rich and productive, and ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... 1700. Threading narrow streets, with the stenographic reporter of the courts, Mr. R. A. West, for my guide, we came into a quiet locality where the ancient landmark reared its steeple, like the finger of faith pointing heavenward. Few indeed must be the fashionable Christians who worship under its unpretentious roof, but there is an air of antiquity surrounding it which interests every visitor who enters its ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... In an unpretentious lodging-house in Pennsylvania avenue, near the Capitol, the man who as much, if not more than any other agitator, is said to have blazed the way to the Civil War, the writer who stirred this nation to its core by his anti-slavery philippics, and the promoter ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... a small town in France about midway between the ancient and romantic cities of Tours and Poitiers. To-day it is an exceedingly unpretentious and an exceedingly sleepy place; but in the seventeenth century it was in vastly better estate. Then its markets, its shops, its inns, lacked not business. Its churches were thronged with worshipers. Through its narrow streets proud noble and prouder ecclesiastic, thrifty ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Heaven's sake, don't worry about such a thing as that!... A pearl is not less beautiful because it comes from some unpretentious jeweller's shop. I am too fond of jewels for their own sake, to trouble about the ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... and respect for her great-grandmother, and everything that was fine and good in the child instinctively responded to the atmosphere of her little home. It was an unpretentious home, even for Los Lobos: only a whitewashed California cabin with a dooryard full of wall flowers and geraniums, and pungent marigolds, and marguerites that were budding, blossoming, and gone to rusty decay on one and the same bush. The narrow paths were outlined with white stone ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... his companion into a small private dining-room. Maxendorf was sitting there alone, smoking a cigarette over the remnants of an unpretentious feast. He welcomed them without a smile; his aspect, indeed, as he waved his hand towards ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spare, he wrote or read in the noiseless rooms we had taken entre cour et jardin. Of course the rent of the lodgings was an additional expense. Altogether, when we summed up the accounts after the first year, we were dismayed to see what was the cost of such an unpretentious existence; but with youthful hope we counted upon the income that art could not fail ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... have such magazines now-a-days? We have philosophical and scientific articles on the one hand, and insipid stories and travels on the other, but no such unpretentious miscellanies which the ordinary person can read in comfort—such as Chambers's or Cassell's or the Strand in England—which supply the general reader with a simple, but satisfying fare and are of the greatest use ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... Athenian liberty, and unpretentious style of living; the peace and learned leisure which they so abundantly enjoy. To dwell among such men, he declared, is to dwell with philosophy; a single-hearted man, who has been taught to despise wealth, may here preserve ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... events were happening at Vivey, the person whose name excited the curiosity and the conversational powers of the villagers—Marie-Julien de Buxieres—ensconced in his unpretentious apartment in the Rue Stanislaus, Nancy, still pondered over the astonishing news contained in the Auberive notary's first letter. The announcement of his inheritance, dropping from the skies, as it were, had found him quite unprepared, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... his panting grew less violent before he sauntered down the gas lit, unpretentious street, with ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... to her own house gave her real friends a great deal of satisfaction, for some of them had feared she would not go there. It would have been difficult for them to know how to greet Mrs. Cliff at a hotel, even such an unpretentious one as that of Plainton. All these friends found her the same warm-hearted, cordial woman that she had ever been. In fact, if there was any change at all in her, she was more cordial than they had yet known her. As in the case of Willy ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... untravelled eye could not even dimly realise. No troubles of travel, no greasy cookery or breadless meals could matter one jot if this was the reward. The view repaid the enterprise even if the path by which it were approached led only to a wayside inn of the most unpretentious type, but its joys were enhanced by the anticipation of a visit to a couple well known for their hospitality to strangers. The host being a fellow-countryman who had had the good fortune to marry a Dutch lady of most distinguished family. Almost at the summit of the hill, about ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... distinction of a French woman. General Merlin married her in Madrid in 1811, and brought her to Paris, where she created a sensation. Being an accomplished musician, she gave delightful concerts, and though also gifted as a writer she was as simple and unpretentious as if she had been created to remain obscure. In addition, she was so truly good that she had almost no enemies; her charity was inexhaustible, and she possessed one of those hearts which live only to ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... of The Merchant of Venice, "Soga um Kaupmannen i Venetia"[32] which appeared in the same year, nothing need be said. It is a simple, unpretentious summary of the story with a certain charm which simplicity and naivete always give. No name appears on the title-page, but we are probably safe in attributing it to Madhus, for in the note to Kaupmannen i Venetia we read: ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... flower that required the sun. Only her sun was happiness. She was in soft white chiffons, her hair and frock alike girlish and unpretentious. Her mother, coming into her dressing room, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... track towards the ranges in which the little mining camp was situated. The sun was well towards the west when they came in sight of the rough, bark-roofed shed with uncovered sides, which contained the battery plant, and Fraser's equally unpretentious dwelling, which, with three or four miners' huts constituted the camp. A bright, brawling little mountain stream, with high banks lined with the graceful whispering she-oaks, gave a pleasant and refreshing appearance to the scene, and the clash and rattle ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... with courage of a high order, and, above all, dominated by a deep reverential, a keenly alert, love for God. He will be beautiful in person and, in sharp contrast with earth's kings, while marked personally with that fine dignity and majesty unconscious of itself, will be gentle and unpretentious in His bearing. His relations with God are direct and very intimate, being personally trained and taught by Him. Backed by all of His omnipotence, He will be charged with the carrying out of His great plans for the chosen people and ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... of devotion to others, is needed as an uplift," he went on earnestly, "but why dwell upon one remote—obscured by claims of a God-jugglery which belittle it if they be true—when all about you are countless plain, unpretentious men and women dying deaths and—what is still greater,—living lives of cool, relentless devotion out of sheer ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... by the outcome of the American Revolution. Officers and soldiers, who had served in the American war, reported to their French countrymen marvelous tales. At the frugal table of General Washington, in council with the unpretentious Franklin, or at conferences over the strategy of war, French noblemen of ancient lineage learned to respect both the talents and the simple character of the leaders in the great republican commonwealth beyond the seas. Travelers, who had gone to see ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... afterward. German opera was also given throughout a large part of the season at the Thalia Theater, the manager being Mr. Gustav Amberg, and the conductor John Lund, who had come into notice at the Metropolitan Opera House by reason of the death of Dr. Damrosch. These performances were unpretentious, and divided between operetta and the type of opera which grew out of the Singspiel. Their significance, so far as this history is concerned, lay in the evidence which they bore of a considerable degree of interest on the part of the public outside of the patrons of the Metropolitan ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a story. THE ENGINEER'S THUMB (God forgive me) was narrated as a piece of actual and factual history. Nay, and more, I who write to you have had the indiscretion to perpetrate a trifling piece of fiction entitled THE BOTTLE IMP. Parties who come up to visit my unpretentious mansion, after having admired the ceilings by Vanderputty and the tapestry by Gobbling, manifest towards the end a certain uneasiness which proves them to be fellows of an infinite delicacy. They may be seen to shrug a brown shoulder, to roll up a speaking ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conclusively about it. Compared with this creative statesmanship, the administering of a routine or the battle for a platitude is a very simple affair. But genuine politics is not an inhuman task. Part of the genuineness is its unpretentious humanity. I am not creating the figure of an ideal statesman out of some inner fancy. That is just the deepest error of our political thinking—to talk of politics without reference to human beings. The creative men appear in public life in ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... Underwood had rather liked it, and it remained. It was a subject of ridicule with the two girls; but they had never ventured to urge its withdrawal, and after his wife's death Sir Thomas never alluded to the subject. Popham Villa it was, therefore, and there the words remained. The house was unpretentious, containing only two sitting-rooms besides a small side closet,—for it could hardly be called more,—which the girls even in their mother's lifetime had claimed as their own. But the drawing-room was as pretty as room could be, opening ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... came upon a throng issuing from the portals of a large church, the congregation that had been attending some celebration at Notre Dame. He recognised the church as he passed it, still driving, however, by the quays. Then they came to a low building, with a dirty, ill-kept, unpretentious doorway. The cab passed through into an inner court, stopped, and Gascoigne was ordered ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... I went to visit a friend in the country, a modest man, with a quiet country home. It was just a simple, unpretentious house, set about with big trees, encircled in meadow and field rich with ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... an unpretentious house at the end of the lane. The driver got out and walked up to the back door, which seemed to be ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... is not at all a doctrinaire; he deals with any objections that one makes courteously and frankly, and even covers his opponent's retreat with a polite quoting of possible precedents. Without being a well-bred man, he is so entirely unpretentious that he could hold his own in any company. He would sit next a commercial traveller and talk to him pleasantly, just as he would sit next the King, if it fell to his lot to do so, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the home just described arose the spacious but unpretentious residence of President Davis, the Confederate "White House" (in this case only in a figurative sense, for the executive mansion was of dark brown stone or stucco). As nearly as I can remember, the main entrance was on Clay Street. On one side the windows opened ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... saw them frequently. They all liked him, from Lady Lapith downwards. True, he was not very romantic or poetical; but he was such a pleasant, unpretentious, kind-hearted young man, that one couldn't help liking him. For his part, he thought them wonderful, wonderful, especially Georgiana. He enveloped them all in a warm, protective affection. For they needed protection; they were altogether too frail, too spiritual for this ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... a grim excitement. Across the street from the small, poorly lighted railway station there was an eating-house. Leaving the car in the shelter of a freight shed, we sloshed through the shiny rivulet that raced between the curbs and entered the clean, unpretentious little restaurant. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... We did not often dine out. Dr. Theobald was one impediment, the risk of recognition was another. But there were exceptions, when the doctor was away or the patient defiant, and on these rare occasions we frequented a certain unpretentious restaurant in the Fulham quarter, where the cooking was plain but excellent, and the cellar a surprise. Our bottle of '89 champagne was empty to the label when the subject arose, to be touched by Raffles in ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... been admitted to the Union only four months before. Whatever the speculation aroused by the personnel of the party, however, the business that called them to Ann Arbor caused little comment, if we are to judge from contemporary reports. Yet this unpretentious gathering of notables was charged with the inauguration of what was to become one of the most significant developments in the history of American education,—the establishment and successful maintenance of a University by the ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... he said to me. And from that day on, I often dined with him informally with M. and Mme. Lockrou, Meurice, Vacquerie and other close friends. The fare was delightful and unpretentious, and the conversation was the same. The master sat at the head of the table, with his grandson and granddaughter on either side, saying little but always something apropos. Thanks to his vigor, his strong sonorous voice, and his quiet good humor, he did not seem like an old man, but rather ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... at this list will show that, at least as regards animal life, the native word is likely to be the more familiar and unpretentious. But we must not leap to the conclusion that, taking the language as a whole, the simple, easy word is sure to be native, the abstruse word classic. In the following list one word in each pair is simpler, oftentimes much simpler, than the other; yet both are ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... relation of individual experiences—however devoid of stirring incident and adventure—should be written in the first person. At the same time, the writer of this unpretentious story of a summer's tramp cannot but feel that he owes his readers—should he have any an apology for any avoidable egotism. His excuse is that, no twit notwithstanding ding the glamour attaching to the old mining towns, it is almost incredible how little is known of them by the average ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... simply as "the pond"—a designation which ignores the existence of several neighbouring ponds, the gifts of nature, and gives the whole credit to the handiwork of man. For "the pond" is just a small artificial affair of cement, entirely unpretentious. ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... the passage, and who was laughing heartily, and I began to laugh in my turn, especially when I saw Marchas's face. Then motioning the nun to the seats I said: 'Sit down, Sister: we are very proud and very happy that you have accepted our unpretentious invitation.' ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... being greedy and a libertine, he had found himself, with regard to women, in the position of a pastry-cook who loves sweetmeats. His habits of vice had become to him a second nature; he could not live without a good dinner, without gambling, in short, without the life of an unpretentious fine gentleman, in which men of powerful faculties so generally indulge when they have allowed excessive dissipation to become a necessity. Hitherto, he had lived in style without ever being expected to entertain; ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... identify himself satisfactorily, but declared that everything was "on a higher plane" in his present state of being, and that all life was "continuous and progressive." Mrs. Horner spoke of herself as a "psychic"; but otherwise she seemed oddly unpretentious and matter-of-fact; and Eugene had no doubt at all of her sincerity. He was sure that she was not an intentional fraud, and though he departed in a state of annoyance with himself, he came to the conclusion ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington |
