"Graceless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... merchant do in such a predicament, when his Sovereign stooped to beg as a favour what his lonely heart yearned to grant? Before he was many minutes older he was clasping his child to his breast; and was even shaking hands with her graceless husband. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... of God. How is it possible for him to admit any to the Lord's table, when he is but a judge himself?" How is it possible to excommunicate, when he ought to be excommunicated himself? So, brethren, a graceless elder is a ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... him up wi' care! An', if he live to be a beast, To pit some havins in his breast! [put, behavior] An' warn him, what I winna name, [will not] To stay content wi' yowes at hame; [ewes] An' no to rin an' wear his cloots, [hoofs] Like ither menseless graceless brutes. [unmannerly] 'An neist my yowie, silly thing, [next] Gude keep thee frae a tether string! O may thou ne'er forgather up [make friends] Wi' ony blastit moorland tup; But ay keep mind to moop an' mell, [nibble, meddle] Wi' sheep o' credit like thysel! 'And ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... other, while the Georges reigned—creeping in upon us with such pictures as we painted under the reign of West, and such houses as we built under the reign of Nash, till the English eye required to rest on that which was constrained, dull, and graceless. For the last two score of years it has come to this, that if a man go in handsome attire he is a popinjay and a vain fool; and as it is better to be ugly than to be accounted vain I would not counsel a young friend to leave the beaten ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... that. David was that rare builder, a man who can work with his hands and see all the time inside his soul the completed work. He could no more endure slipshod work or graceless lines in his building than the knight himself could do a cowardly or dishonest thing. David would have done his task faithfully in any case, but it rejoiced his soul to find that the knight and his lady would know not only that their village ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... seek het water beneath cauld ice, Surely it is a great follie; I have asked grace at a graceless face, But there is nane for ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... child," said Mr. Pelby, after they had left the house, "I'd half kill him but what I'd make a better boy of him! I never saw such an ill-behaved, graceless ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... some other fellow stepping in And doing it as well. If one essay To pick a pocket he is sure to feel (With what disgust I need not say to you) Another hand inserted in the same. You crack a crib at dead of night, and lo! As you explore the dining-room for plate You find, in session there, a graceless band Stuffing their coats with spoons, their skins with wine. And so it goes. Why even undertake To salt a mine and you will find it rich With noble specimens ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... single arch is much to be commended, especially when, coming from the direction of the railway- station, you see it frame with its sharp compass-line the perfect picture, the reach of the Canal on the other side. But the backs of the little shops make from the water a graceless collective hump, and the inside view is the diverting one. The big arch of the bridge—like the arches of all the bridges—is the waterman's friend in wet weather. The gondolas, when it rains, huddle beside the peopled barges, and the young ladies from the hotels, vaguely ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... of distinction for their new king, they made a general subscription, and bought him a fine cap ornamented with a white feather, and round it was engraved in letters of gold, "Peter Pippin, King of the Good Boys." A few days after Peter was chosen King, as George Graceless, Neddy Neverpray, and two or three other boys, as naughty as themselves, were playing at marbles in the church-yard, George Graceless's brother Jack, who was a very good-natured little boy, happened to stop ...
— The History of Little King Pippin • Thomas Bewick
... raged and wondered aloud what he had done that he should be saddled with such a graceless nephew. It was in vain that Mr. Rushton offered to make good ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... misfortunes crowd upon me. That graceless wife has fled from me in company with a fishmonger," ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... know their children? Would they own the graceless town, With never a ranter to worry And ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... behind, could not as yet obtain a view of the coveted sight; "we know enough of his looks, let us hear something of hers. But you girls are ever the same: if a troop of sister angels came down from heaven, headed by the Virgin Mother herself, and a graceless cavalier appeared at the other side, you would turn your backs to the angels and your eyes upon Beatrice. Is she as handsome as the young Lady Beatrice, the count's sister, who married ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... obedience; Too little payment for so great a debt. Such duty as the Subject owes the Prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband; And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending Rebel And graceless traitor to her loving Lord? I am ashamed that women are so simple To offer war, where ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... glad that he hadn't heard my satirical description of "donation-parties" at Weston, nor the account I gave of our two boys, our salary of five hundred dollars, and the various comical shifts we had to make to live comfortably on that sum and support aged parents and graceless relations. Little touches told Mr. Lewis the whole story. I knew very well that Mr. Remington would be entirely abroad about such a social existence as ours in Weston, travel he ever ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... side, upon a low stool, was seated a fair girl, whose attire was as plain as that of the more aged woman; but that lovely form needed no aids of the toilet to enhance its beauty. The fair brown hair brushed off from the white brow, in the graceless mode of the day, hid nothing of a face which had all the purity of some beautiful Madonna; although the cheek was pale, and the lines of the physiognomy were already more sharpened than is usual at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... prepare savory meat for thy father, that he may bless thee before his death.[83] Do as I bid thee, obey me as thou art wont, for thou art my son whose children, every one, will be good and God-fearing—not one shall be graceless." ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... malice and thine; but now am I overcome, and since I know that I must die, I have now no fear, and this is why I am bold to tell thee this that I have spoken, though I wot now I shall be presently slain. And now I tell thee I repent it, that I have asked grace of a graceless face." ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... wanton amatory glances of a few pairs of graceless eyes, twinkling through their cunning waters, to reflect so evil a light on a whole community? Verily the sad benighted orbs of that noble relict—the Lady Rachel Russell—blinded through unserene drops for her dead Lord,—might atone ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... not in the least afraid. She knew pretty well what ugly face would look up at her when she spoke; for she felt sure that the slouching, ungainly figure was that of Simon Hartley. Her heart burned with indignation against the graceless, thankless churl who could rob the man on whose charity he had been living for two years. She made a step forward, with words of righteous wrath on her lips; then paused, as a new thought struck her. This man was an absolute ruffian; and though ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... would not walk back; his feet were lacerated, swollen, and almost in a state of putrefaction. The savages saw this, and took him back by water, but only to experience new torments. The young ones imitated their elders, and these graceless little rascals pulled out his beard and whiskers, and eyebrows and eyelashes. In order to save himself some part of the pain of this wretched process of their amusement, he was permitted to perform a part of this ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... Too little payment for so great a debt. Such duty as one owes a prince, Even such, a woman oweth to her husband: And when she's froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel And graceless traitor to her loving lord? I am asham'd that women are so simple To offer war, where they should kneel for peace; Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway, When they are bound to serve, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... and poetry which could not but please his "green unknowing youth." In the years before he left Stratford, and after he left school (1577-87?), I can easily suppose that he was not ALWAYS butchering calves, poaching, and making love; and that, if he could get books in no other way, this graceless fellow might be detected on a summer evening, knitting his brows over the stories and jests of the chained Ovid and Plautus on his old schoolroom desk. Moi qui parle, I am no genius; but stories, romance, ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... had been a mule-skinner once, and for five glorious minutes he did himself proud while the graceless young cowpuncher ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... round again," says that observant "avuncular" hopefully. He is compelled to be at his office in the city much of the time, but comes up this day as a matter of course, and has a brief chat with his graceless nephew at the guard-house. Billy's utter lack of spirits sets Uncle Jack to thinking. The boy says he can "tell him nothing just now," and Uncle Jack feels well assured that he has a good deal to tell. He goes in search of Lieutenant Lee, for whom he has conceived a great ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... yet mellow light of the sunny autumn noontide, the blacks and roans and smoked drabs of the low old brick front looked more dingy to his eye than ever. It spoke of antiquity, no doubt, but it was a dismal and graceless antiquity of narrow purposes and niggling thrift. It was so little like the antiquity, for example, of Hadlow House, that the two might have computed their age by the chronological systems of different planets. Although his sister's married name was Dabney, and ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... had thrown down the barrier law had built; and law dared not, or neglected to—erect it again! "Rebecca," like Jack Cade, had pronounced her law—"sic volo, sic jubeo"—and we rode through, by virtue of her most graceless Majesty's absolute edict—cost free. It was really a very singular feeling we experienced on the first of these occasions. I assure thee, my reader; believe me, my pensive public! I never was transported—never held up hand at the Old Bailey, or elsewhere; am not conscious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... spinster heart—they were so gay, so appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The longer Rebecca lived in the brick house the more her Aunt Jane marveled at the child. What made her so different from everybody else. Could it be that her graceless popinjay of a father, Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some strange combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows, the color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways and words, proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer tribe; but what an enchanting ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... goddess in Greek and in hieroglyphics. As a building is often the work of years, while sculpture is only the work of weeks, so the fashion of the former is always far less changing than that of the latter. The sculptures on the walls of this beautiful portico are crowded and graceless; while, on the other hand, the building itself has the same grand simplicity and massive strength that we find in the older ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... fault on both sides, but, in spite of the brilliant advocate who has pleaded Thorn's cause, I cannot but admit that he was decidedly the more to blame. He carried things with a high hand, indeed, treating the partners as he might a graceless lot of undisciplined midshipmen. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... by side on a sofa, each with an elbow on its back and the elbows near together. Nor was Medora Phillips, though plump, at all the graceless, dumpy little body she ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... Reverend John Hapgood grieved for his wayward son the members of his household knew it not, save as they might place their own constructions on the added sternness to his eyes and the deepening lines about his mouth. "Paul," when it designated the graceless runaway, was a forbidden word in the family, and even the Epistles in the sacred Book, bearing the prohibited name, came to be avoided by the head of the house in the daily readings. It was still music in the hearts of the women, however, though ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... Street! how do I bemoan thee, Whose graceless children scorn to own thee! Their filial piety forgot, Deny their country like a Scot; Though by their idiom and grimace, They soon betray their native place. Yet thou hast greater cause to be Ashamed of them, than they of thee, Degenerate from their ancient ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... thin little woman, with movements as nervous and as graceless as those of a grasshopper. Her dun-colored garments seemed to have all the hue bleached out of them with wind and weather. Her face was brown and wrinkled, and her bright eyes flashed restlessly, deep in their sockets. Two front teeth were conspicuously missing; ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... golden hair and silvery voice become an actress of genuine mettle as well as gentle grace, is ESTELLE, the heroine; Miss EMILY MESTAYER is the Commanding Sister of Col. EPEE who is personated by Mr. FISHER; Mr. WYNDHAM is the Graceless Private, who, having spent his last penny, enlists in the Lancers and spends vast sums in beneficiary beer in company with his comrades; Mr. WILLIAMSON is the Kindly Sergeant; Mr. RINGGOLD is the Genial Artist, whose velvet coat suggests ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... godless, graceless, witless child, Hast thou Drupad's virtuous daughter thus insulted ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... by cavaliers that rode in the levies of the first Charles, and of his pusillanimous father. There were worldly pride and great vanity, with much and damning ungodliness, in the wars that I have seen, my children; and yet the carnal man found pleasure in the stirrings of those graceless days! Come hither, younker; thou hast often sought to know the manner in which the horsemen are wont to lead into the combat, when the broad-mouthed artillery and pattering leaden hail have cleared a passage for the struggle of horse to horse, and man to man. Much of the justification ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... Heavenly host Boil wi' the rabidest rage at dire default of a husband Learning the manifold thefts of her omnivolent Jove, 140 Yet with the Gods mankind 'tis nowise righteous to liken, * * * * * * * * Rid me of graceless task fit for a tremulous sire. Yet was she never to me by hand paternal committed Whenas she came to my house reeking Assyrian scents; Nay, in the darkness of night her furtive favours she deigned me, 145 Self-willed taking ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... and you must not hope that this venerable quality will survive their public exposure upon the furniture wagon. There it instantly perishes, like the consequence of some country notable huddled and hustled about in the graceless and ignorant tumult of a great city. To tell the truth, the number of things that turn shabby under the ordeal of moving strikes a pang of unaccustomed poverty to the heart which, loving all manner of makeshifts, is rich ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Put clothes clean—white like anything. Sit down. One day eat nothing. Then feast plenty. Good goat of my country—more fatter." (It was a graceless cut, for the previous day I had given him a well-grown kid). "No messin' abeaut. Plenty talk with friend. Walk about bazaar. Full up people—clean, nice. No row—nothing. Subpose I make lucky. I find one pearl, I go along my own ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... which to ponder, and soon arrived at a fairly accurate understanding of the whole situation. He remembered vaguely the report of a row between Watson and Busby, and he was aware of the reckless cruelty of the dead man. It might be that in revenge for some savagery on his part, some graceless act toward Rita, this moody, half-insane youth had crept upon the rancher and ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... maiden of whom he was in search, but not one foot could he find to fit it. So he examined them closely whether indeed every one was there; and the Prince confessed that he had left one daughter behind, "but," said he, "she is always on the hearth, and is such a graceless simpleton that she is unworthy to sit and eat at your table." But the King said, "Let her be the very first on the list, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... the life he led poor Juno, we often wondered why she did not turn grayer than ever, having to deal with this graceless young reprobate. If he found her trying to sleep a little, he would bite her ears and pull at her tail, bracing himself back on all four of his absurd little feet, and sometimes tumbling over in ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... human life is greater than all its possible appraisers, assessors, and critics. In comparison with the fact of Spencer's actual living, such critical characterization of it as I have been at all these pains to produce seems a rather unimportant as well as a decidedly graceless thing. ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... It sounds cheap enough, put that way—but it's the rule we live under, all of us. And the amazement of finding her suddenly outside of it, oblivious of it, unconscious of it, left me, for an awful minute, stammering at her like a graceless dolt.... Perhaps it wasn't even a minute; but in it she had gone the ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... is it! You always did agree with me as to my own faults. Is it not true, Corona? Can you not take my part against that graceless husband of yours? He is always abusing me—as though I were his property, or his guest. Orsino, my boy, go away—we are all quarrelling here like a pack of wolves, and you ought to respect your elders. Here is your father calling me ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... what they ought to be. It is something of a reminder and a rebuke to them: and it is just as well that mankind at large should not know too much of the actual fact as to those above them. I should never object to calling a graceless duke Tour Grace: nor to praying for a villariously bad monarch as our most religious and gracious King (I know quite well, small critic, that religious is an absurd mistranslation: but let us take the liturgy in the sense in which ninety-nine out of every hundred ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... take much notice, gone through metamorphoses of Bonapartism, Constitutional Liberalism, and what not. But still du Bousquier /is/ alive, as well as all the minor assistants and spectators in the battle for the old maid's hand. Suzanne, that tactful and graceless Suzanne to whom we are introduced first of all, is very much alive; and for all her gracelessness, not at all disagreeable. I am only sorry that she sold the counterfeit presentment of the ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... a good riddance," said I, who really did not see why Jack should be so afflicted about such a graceless young ragamuffin. "Do you know Mrs Nash has given us both warning over ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... as he strode along in the midst of half a dozen silent guards, were as harsh and graceless as their architecture. Whereas the Atlanteans had been white skinned and uniformly red haired—save for those of Hudsonian blood—the inhabitants of Jarmuth almost without exception were black haired ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... made a poor marriage of it, my sweet wife,' said Eugene. 'A shattered graceless fellow, stretched at his length here, and next to nothing for you when you ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... alkaline grin Jim felt his faith in himself wavering. He remembered unworthy thoughts he had entertained, graceless things he had done; he felt that his presence here as a knight of unassailable purity was hypocritical. He winced at all points from the uncertainty as to the point to be attacked. His life was like a long frontier and his enemy was mobilized for a sudden offensive. He would know the point selected ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... studied rather as a duty and as a step to the ministry of the Church, the desire of his heart from the first. At school, his companions respected him heartily, and loved him for his unselfish kindness and sweetness, while a few of the more graceless were inclined to brand him as soft or slow, because he never consented to join in anything blameable, and was not devoted to boyish sports, though at times he would join in them with great vigour, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... graceless dog!" exclaimed Don Manuel. "Thy impertinence justly deserves most exemplary ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... he said kindly. 'I ask ye not to tarry in what ye must deem a graceless household;' and he looked sadly across at his two sons, boys in age, but seniors in excess. 'I would we had mair lads like you. I fear me ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but all agreed that she must have seen upwards of a hundred winters. Her eyes dimmed, and almost white with age—her face dark and withered, like a baked apple—her voice tremulous and feeble, except when raised in fury to reprove her graceless grandsons, who were fond of playing her all sorts of mischievous tricks, indicated the very great age ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... unlatch for every graceless unthrift that chooses to pummel at Giles Dauber's wicket, I shall have but sorry bedding ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... angry. Not that I cared for the gibe; but because I disliked that one there should hear me called by so graceless a name. ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... stay would be short, the captain bore these neighborly attentions with mild forbearance. It was guests more graceless than these who had ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... might please. No sooner did the god of day His glorious locks enkindle, Than both the wheels began to play, And from each whirling spindle Forth danced the thread right merrily, And back was coil'd unceasingly. Soon as the dawn, I say, its tresses show'd, A graceless cock most punctual crow'd. The beldam roused, more graceless yet, In greasy petticoat bedight, Struck up her farthing light, And then forthwith the bed beset, Where deeply, blessedly did snore Those two maid-servants tired and poor. One oped an eye, an arm ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... have told me, warriors gathered the gift-hall round, folk-leaders faring from far and near, o'er wide-stretched ways, the wonder to view, trace of the traitor. Not troublous seemed the enemy's end to any man who saw by the gait of the graceless foe how the weary-hearted, away from thence, baffled in battle and banned, his steps death-marked dragged to the devils' mere. Bloody the billows were boiling there, turbid the tide of tumbling waves horribly seething, with sword-blood hot, by that doomed one dyed, who in den of ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... opposing currents of emotion in breasts not so nicely attuned, and to inspire such expressions as "Fish!" or even "Blat!" It may well be a considerate office, therefore, not to submit our lovers to the graceless manners of the unsympathetic, but to let them enjoy ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... not well help it then. Tom Thornton was a villain, by his own confession. My uncle had declared that he had stained his soul with crime for his son's sake. Whichever was the greater villain, it was clear that the son was the more obdurate, graceless, and unrepentant of the two. I had no patience with him. I had no respect for him, and I certainly had no fear of him. Even policy would not permit me to treat him with a consideration ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... habitations; and many a house which looked so very picturesque at a distance was found, on a nearer inspection, to be a very dirty domicile. Still the views from them were beautiful. Nature has done everything; it is graceless man who is in fault that all is not in accordance with it. At the corner of one of the streets we saw a number of horses, and mules, and donkeys, standing ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... smiling humor, and yet, in spite of himself, he could almost have smiled at the very consistency of the fellow. It was egotism still: aesthetic disgust at the graceless contour of his conduct, but never a hint of simple sorrow for the pain he had given. Rowland let him go, and for some moments stood watching him. Suddenly Mallet became conscious of a singular and most illogical impulse—a desire to ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... meadows those paradisiacal experiences which formerly she had shared with faithless Captain D——. But once more her happiness received an unexpected check. Lord Mark Kerr, a soldier and a gentleman, becoming aware of the footing upon which his graceless grand-nephew was enjoying the Blandys' hospitality, wrote to the attorney the amazing news that his daughter's lover already had a wife ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... but—no—her once devoted admirer was resolved to follow the lady's advice, and place his "affections upon a worthier object than Caroline Dalton;" and, thought he to himself, she shall at last see that I have found one; nor shall wild Tom, my graceless nephew, who lives upon my fortune, ever more touch one penny of it. The postman rapped, and in a few minutes his housekeeper appeared with many apologies for bringing to him her own newspaper, but perhaps in it he might ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... salvation is above all doctrine the most dangerous, if it be received in WORD only by graceless men; if it be not attended with a sensible need of a Saviour, and bring them to him; for such men only as have the NOTION of it, are of all men most miserable; for by reason of their knowing more than heathens, this shall only ...
— Miscellaneous Pieces • John Bunyan
... himself together a little, however, and began to use phrases again about his "graceless son," and "the young villain," and "not a penny of his." (He was, of course, genuinely angry; ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... reckless, passionate, uncontrollable, unthinking fool without method and moderation, that's what I am—a creature without any sense of right and honour, distrustful, hotheaded, loveless, graceless, crabbed and born crabbed! Yes, yes, I'm everything that I wish some one else was! Is this credible? There's not a viler man alive, a man more unworthy of heaven's kindness, of having a mortal soul love him or ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... "You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you, but you must be eating fire, and I know not what—what have you got there, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... it first," was Laura's graceless reply, as she returned to her stony contemplation of ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... long nights she lay moaning, and in almost delirious agonies respecting that future world which she quite ignored when she was in good health.—Picture to yourself, oh fair young reader, a worldly, selfish, graceless, thankless, religionless old woman, writhing in pain and fear, and without her wig. Picture her to yourself, and ere you be old, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had broken them in London handsomely once before, when, mad with jealousy, he had fled like a thief in the night, burned his boats behind him, and, as he thought, obliterated every trace by which that loved and graceless woman could discover his real name or family holding; and now had come home prepared to do his duty to society and himself. That is, prepared to marry a nice girl of his own kind, keep the estate well in hand, and set an example of respectability and orthodoxy, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... strongly suspected to have been purloined by one Isaac Beardsley, an unscrupulous man, of some influence, who used, for amusement, to potter about in various antiquarian enterprises of no moment, but who had now been dead for some fifteen years. I then also recollected that he had an only child, a graceless gallows-bird of a son, who broke his father's heart, then wasted his substance in riotous living, and, after being long a disgrace and nuisance at home, had sunk out of sight amid the lowest strata of vice and crime in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... extremes represented by shabby, crack-brained Cousin Parnelia and elegant, sardonic old Professor Kennedy, there were many other habitual visitors at the house—raw, earnest, graceless students of both sexes, touchingly grateful for the home atmosphere they were allowed to enter; a bushy-haired Single-tax fanatic named Hecht, who worked in the iron-foundries by day, and wrote political pamphlets by night; Miss Lindstroem, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... exaggerated compliments in which men pay them off,—"Angelic creatures!" "Poet's theme!" and so on,—stuff that springs from what Diogenes calls the spooney view of women, and only applicable to the young and handsome,—a very small minority. It is sad to see the graceless, the "gone-off," and the downright elderly smirk complacently at a few phrases which are only aimed at them in derision. The others, too, one would think, ought to care little for adulation that fades ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... pertinently asked, how did she manage during her frequent business tours in the country? He gave it as his conviction that Malka merely took the clothes-brush away to afford herself a handle for returning. But then Ephraim Phillips was a graceless young fellow, the death of whose first wife was probably a judgment on his levity, and everybody except his second mother-in-law knew that he had a book of tickets for the Oxbridge Music Hall, and went there on Friday ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... text be read, An' touch it aff wi' vigour, How graceless Ham leugh at his dad, Which ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... sight of such splendor, the poet lies palsy-stricken on this bank of the river, the "graceless, barren, and desert bank" unable to rise and sing. Then Life, like a merciful Fairy, takes him into the humble hut of the present and makes him forget the other bank and nourishes him until, at last, waking into the new world, he weaves the whole day ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... you here, lecher? O intemperate king! Wilt thou not see me? Come, come, show your face, Your grace's graceless, king's unkingly face. What, mute? hands folded, eyes fix'd on the earth? Whose turn is next now to be murdered? The famish'd Bruces are on yonder side, On this, another I will name anon; One for whose head this garland I do bear, And this fair, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... tetragonal aspect to Saturn, associated with Mercury. Thou wilt be soundly peppered, my good, honest fellow, I warrant thee. I will be? answered Panurge. A plague rot thee, thou old fool and doting sot, how graceless and unpleasant thou art! When all cuckolds shall be at a general rendezvous, thou shouldst be their standard-bearer. But whence comes this ciron-worm betwixt these two fingers? This Panurge said, putting the forefinger of his left hand betwixt the fore and mid finger ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... plants have long been cultivated as a source of profit; whence arose the saying that a graceless fellow is not worth a "kurse" or cress—in German, kers. Thus Chaucer speaks about a character in the Canterbury Tales, "Of paramours ne fraught he not a kers." But some writers have referred this saying rather to the wild cherry or kerse, making it of the same significance ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... foe And know no peril, neither with poison 450 Nor with treacherous token in time of evil. There God's warrior works him a nest, With doughty deeds dangers avoids, He distributes alms to the stricken and needy, He tells graceless men of the mercy of God, 455 Of the Father's help; he hastens forth, Lessening the perils of this passing life, Its darksome deeds, and does God's will With bravery in his breast. His bidding he seeks In prayer, with pure ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... it. I would my mother had been here, soon would she have persuaded you. And yet,' he added, with the smile of his accustomed gaiety, 'it would have been an unco thing, as we say in Scotland, for her ladyship to have waited upon you, as her graceless son has done, and hopes to do again ere long. Down the cliffs I came, and up them I must make way back again. Now adieu, fair Cousin Lorna, I see you are in haste tonight; but I am right proud of my guardianship. Give me just one flower for token'—here he ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... these people only as they struck me poetically; their whimsical ways and a certain picturesqueness in their mode of life entertained me; but I was neither amused nor corrupted by their vices. In short, I mingled among them, as Prince Hal did among his graceless associates, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... him for what he was— a man passionate and revengeful, the leader of that side of the valley's life which she deplored. She did not trust him. Nevertheless, she felt his fascination. He made that appeal to her which a graceless young villain often does to a good woman who lets herself become interested in trying to understand the sinner and his sins. There was another reason why just now she showed him special favor. She wanted to blunt the edge of his anger against the Texan ranger, though her reason ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... work voluntarily undertaken by the scout to aid the boy, as he termed Bucks, in identifying his graceless assailants was vindicated when, the next morning, the party with their prisoners arrived on a special train at Point of Rocks, and Bucks immediately pointed to Seagrue as the man who had first fired ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... shown myself, and the people have thrown me money—a silly life, good to no man or beast. Oh yes, that I know full well now; and I have killed Phoebus because you looked at me; and my mother, who has loved me all her life, is old before her time through my fault. I am a graceless fool, a mountebank. When I put off my spangles and stand thus, you see the rude peasant that I am. And yet in all the great, wide, crowded world I know there does not live another who could love you as I love—seeing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... taken of the change. His mother's thoughts were all concentrated on his scapegrace younger brother. For two years she had rarely spoken to Yan peaceably. There was a hungry place in his heart as he left the house unnoticed each morning and saw his graceless brother kissed and darlinged. At school their positions were reversed. Yan was the principal's pride. He had drawn no more caricatures, and the teacher flattered himself that that beating was what had saved the ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... tell you," returned the graceless lad. "I have had rather a good time of it. I knew Herrick was getting pretty sick of me." Here Cedric rolled over on his back, and tilted his straw hat over his eyes. "Familiarity breeds contempt and all that sort of thing. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... stupidity; and your equals, your competitors in cleverness, are naturally your deadly rivals. The fact is this cleverness, after all, is merely egotism in its worst and unwisest phase. It is an incontinence of brilliance, graceless and aggressive, a glaring swagger. The drunken helot of cleverness is the creature who goes about making puns. A mere step above comes the epigram, the isolated epigram framed and glazed. Then such impressionist art as Crichton's pictures, mere puns in paint. What they mean is nothing, they ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... great, wondrous world she has seen more Than you, my little brook, and cropped its store Of succulent grass on many a mead and lawn; And strayed to distant uplands in the dawn. And she has had some dark experience Of graceless man's ingratitude; and hence Her ways have not been ways of pleasantness, Nor all her paths of peace. But her distress And grief she has lived past; your giddy round Disturbs her not, for she is ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... Mars himself in battle, so riddled has it been by lances, spears, darts, arrows, and I know not what besides. Don't be ashamed of it, Baron!—these holes are honourable to you. Many a shirt of fine linen, ruffled and embroidered, according to the latest fashion, disguises the graceless person of some rascally parvenu—and usurer as well perhaps—who usurps the place of his betters. Several of the great heroes, of immortal fame, had not a shirt to their backs—Ulysses, for example, that wise and valiant man, who presented himself before the beautiful Princess ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... kend he took up what I said. And a' his distress is about Miss Edith's marriage; and I ne'er saw a man mair taen down wi' true love in my days,—I might say man or woman, only I mind how ill Miss Edith was when she first gat word that him and you (ye muckle graceless loon) were coming against Tillietudlem wi' the rebels.—But what's the matter ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... for words that grandly roll. Hence some have questioned if the Muse we call The Comic Muse be really one at all: Her subject ne'er aspires, her style ne'er glows, And, save that she talks metre, she talks prose. "Aye, but the angry father shakes the stage, When on his graceless son he pours his rage, Who, smitten with the mistress of the hour, Rejects a well-born wife with ample dower, Gets drunk, and (worst of all) in public sight Keels with a blazing flambeau while 'tis light." Well, could Pomponius' sire to life return, Think ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... from the dispute, it did seem such folly to Evan's common sense, that he spoke with pleasant bonhommie about it. That done, he entered into his acted part, and towered in his conceit considerably above these aristocratic boors, who were speechless and graceless, but tigers for their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as it enables me to plead honourably 'not guilty' to one of the absurd charges of cruelty trumped up against me with respect to my stepson. Let my detractors apologise, if they dare, for the conduct of a graceless ruffian who trips up the heels of his own natural guardian and ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a huge, three-story box of gray-white stone with a slate roof, a little turret en poivriere at each corner, and a graceless classic doorway in the principal facade. A wide double gate, with a coronet in a tarnished gold medallion set in the iron arch-piece, gave entrance to this place through a kind of courtyard formed by ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... gains and loses, loses and gains, And she, Perhaps, O even she May look as she looked when I knew her In those old days of childish sooth, Ere my boyhood dared to woo her. I will not seek nor sue her, For I'm neither fonder nor truer Than when she slighted my lovelorn youth, My giftless, graceless, guinealess truth, And I only lived to rue her. But I'll never love another, And, in spite of her lovers and lands, She shall love me ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... y muy experimentado y prudente en negocios," says Oviedo of the cardinal, "pero a vueltas de las negociaciones desta vida, tuvo tres hijos varones," etc. Then follows a full notice of this graceless progeny. Quincuagenas, MS., bat. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... erring infidel Speak of our faith as of a gloomy creed, Inspiring fear and boding wretchedness. Her figure has recurr'd; for she did love The sabbath-day, and many a time has cross'd These fields in rain and thro' the winter snows. When I, a graceless boy, wishing myself By the fire-side, have wondered why 'she' came Who might have sate at home. One only care Hung on her aged spirit. For herself, Her path was plain before her, and the close Of her long journey near. But then her child Soon to be left alone in this bad world,— That was a ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... thy hands. For any office could the slave be good, To cleanse the fold, or help the kids to food. If any labour those big joints could learn, Some whey, to wash his bowels, he might earn. To cringe, to whine, his idle hands to spread, Is all, by which that graceless maw is fed. Yet hear me! if thy impudence but dare Approach yon wall, I prophesy thy fare: Dearly, full dearly, shalt thou buy thy bread With many a footstool ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... her, and spirited, After the graceless insults to the Court The Paris journals flaunt—not voluntarily, But by his ordering. Magician-like He holds them in his fist, and at his squeeze They bubble what he wills!... Yes, she's a girl Of patriotic build, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... sleeping were in bed Nothing but troubled dreams run in their head, At length an angel did to them appear Saying awake, and unto me give ear. A messenger I'm sent by Heaven kind To let you know your lives are both design'd; Your graceless child, whom you love so dear, She for your precious lives hath laid a snare. To poison you the devil tempts her so, She hath no power from the snare to go: But God such care doth of his servants take, Those that believe on Him ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... and, with the exception of one, (named Richard Hunter,) not one has ever done for us a week's honest labor. I have taken them into my service, have fed and clothed them, year after year, on their arrival from the States, and in return I have generally found them rogues and thieves, and a graceless, worthless, thriftless, lying set of vagabonds. That is my very plain and very simple description of the darkies as a body, and it would be indorsed by all the western white men ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... on many an impromptu stage. And that especial pet horror of supersensitive godliness—the godless German cotillion—even forced itself into the gayeties of the winter. Great was the wrath of the elect against all amusements of the kind—but chiefest among outrages was this graceless German. But despite the denunciations, the ridicule, and even the active intervention of one or two ministers, the young soldiers and their chosen partners whirled away as though they had never heard a ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... of transformations long before becoming a baccalaureus. You may meet with him a few years later, in the uniform of some Higher School, and find it difficult to recognize your former pupil,—now graceless, taciturn, secretive, and inclined to demand as a right what could scarcely, with propriety, be requested as a favour. You may find [432] him patronizing,—possibly something worse. Later on, at the University, he becomes more formally ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... peasant which remains with the great ladies of the old civilisation of Italy, and has so long disappeared from those of the younger civilisations of France and England—a paradox. The peasant's gravity, directness, and carelessness—a kind of uncouthness which is neither graceless nor, in any intolerable English sense, vulgar—are to be found in the unceremonious moments of every cisalpine woman, however elect her birth and select her conditions. In Italy the lady is not a creature described ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell |
