"Hard to please" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself, however, that there were a number of drawbacks in the way of his becoming established as the heir of the Dudley mansion-house and fortune. In the first place, Cousin Elsie was, unquestionably, very piquant, very handsome, game as a hawk, and hard to please, which made her worth trying for. But then there was something about Cousin Elsie,—(the small, white scars began stinging, as he said this to himself, and he pushed his sleeve up to look at them)—there was something about Cousin Elsie ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... answered, "If I actually dislike her, I need not marry her; but, of course, the choice is limited, so I must try not to be too hard to please." ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... a comfortable little laugh. "But you must not be so hard to please, my son. You must bring me my ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... flashed across my mind that she meant the Germania musicians. 'They might do passably well, madame,' said I, 'for a quadrille party at a country inn, but for a dress ball or a dinner you would need three of them rolled into one.' 'Oh, you gentlemen are so hard to please,' she replied; and catching sight of the Koh-i-noor on my little finger, she began to smile so sweetly that I fled ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... who felt all this in the very air she breathed, the girl's innocence of the condition of affairs was even a little touching. With all her splendor, she was not at all hard to please, and had quite awakened to an interest in the impending social event. She seemed in good spirits, and talked more than was her custom, giving Miss Belinda graphic descriptions of various festal gatherings she had attended in New York, when she seemed to have been very gay indeed, ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... it is lovely," said Nell; "and what trouble you have taken with it! She will be hard to please if she does ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... if she thought she could be happy in his palace; and Beauty answered that everything was so beautiful that she would be very hard to please if she could not be happy. And after about an hour's talk Beauty began to think that the Beast was not nearly so terrible as she had supposed at first. Then he got up to leave her, and said in his ...
— Beauty and the Beast • Anonymous
... daddy's right down upon us, with an armful of hickories? I tell you, I helt nothin' but trumps, and could 'a' beat the horns off a billy-goat. Don't that satisfy you? Somehow or another, you're d—d hard to please!" About this time a thought struck Simon, and in a low tone—for by this time the Reverend Jedediah was close at hand—he continued, "But may be daddy don't know, right down sure, what we've been doin'. Let's try him with a lie—'twon't hurt, noway: let's ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... have them read what they would read in no one but himself, or he would not give a rush for their applause. He is to be "a chartered libertine," from whom insults are favours, whose contempt is to be a new incentive to admiration. His Lordship is hard to please: he is equally averse to notice or neglect, enraged at censure and scorning praise. He tries the patience of the town to the very utmost, and when they shew signs of weariness or disgust, threatens to discard them. He says he will write on, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... what a fidget the landlord was in about his wines, for he doubted not but such a guest would be extremely critical and hard to please; but, to his great relief, the baron declined taking any wine, merely washing down his repast with a tumbler of cool water; and then, although the hour was very early, he retired at ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... came up to his standard of play; for he was hard to please in style as well as in stakes. Keene did fully; and this, with a certain similarity of tastes, accounted for his liking the latter so well. He had little regard to throw away, and was chary of it in proportion. On the other hand, Royston treated the invalid with ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... true," she said, "but what would you have? I am poor, and I am hard to please. I feel that it would not suit me at all to carry the soup out into the fields, nor to push a hand-cart; to feel the misery of those whom I should love, and have no power to put an end to it; to carry my children in my arms all day, and patch and re-patch a man's rags. The cure tells ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... companion, said, "Egad, George, we're bit!" Our own tendency is, because of our ignorance, to be sceptical and suspicious as to foreign works of art, especially of a kind that are novel and daring. No one is so hard to please as a simpleton. We are so afraid of being taken in, that we are reluctant to commit ourselves in favor of any new thing until we have heard from headquarters; but it appears to be considered a sign of knowledge to vituperate pictures ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... these few words of his proud daughter gave him more satisfaction than all Horatia's delighted thanks, for Sarah was hard to please, and her father always felt that she secretly, and sometimes openly, despised him; but he only said, 'You didn't think your rough, old father knew what dainty young ladies like you and Miss Horatia would like, ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... was used for removing stones from horses' hoofs. Not that Tommy had removed many stones from horses' hoofs, not very many, but if you had a tooth that was loose it was very helpful. Miss Price gave him a new threepenny bit, and Tommy tried hard to please her in arithmetic by reducing inches to ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... regrets. She was content. She was in love, she was loved. Doubtless she had not felt the intoxication she had expected, but does one ever feel it? She was the friend of the good and honest fellow, much liked by women who passed for disdainful and hard to please, and he had a true affection for her. The pleasure she gave him and the joy of being beautiful for him attached her to this friend. He made life for her not continually delightful, but easy to bear, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... daily till it equalled that of his Majesty. The king was despotic, hard, and even cruel, ever ready to sign the sentence of the condemned, and in almost all cases, if what is said at Stuttgart be true, increased the penalty inflicted by the judges. Hard to please, and brutal, he often struck the people of his household; and it is even said that he did not spare her Majesty the queen, his wife, who was a sister of the present King of England. Notwithstanding all this, he was a ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... are selfish; I intend to cure you of being selfish. You will dine here when you have no other engagements; and if it rains you had better put up at the hotel." As long as the good lady could order every body round about her, she was not hard to please; and all the slaves and subjects of her little dowager court trembled ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the fables, by Sir Roger l'Estrange, with its pleasant quaintness of language, lends itself, and how delightfully, to its setting of illustration; and it would surely be a child hard to please who would cavil at ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... are.... Daddy and Mother were simply wild about Germany when they were there two years before the war. They say the German ways are so quaint and the children have such pretty manners, and I am afraid you will be awfully hard to please when you come back, for Daddy and Mother were ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... rather hard to please, perhaps. I remember you used to say that a husband should be just as tender and respectful after marriage as before it. You seem to have broken poor Ned into this; and now you ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... first place, because it would be a good action, and then because, having no friends, she would have no pretext to go out. This miserable Louise is a good lesson for him, my poor Mrs. Pipelet! That's what makes him so hard to please in the choice of a domestic. Such a scandalous affair in a pious house like ours—how horrid! well, goodbye; to-night, when I go to see M. Bradamanti, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... nakedness, its shimmering heat, its cold, star-studded nights. It seems paradoxical, but it is probably true, that a society composed altogether of agreeable people would become a terrible bore. We are a "kittle" lot, and hard to please for long. We know how it is in the matter of climate. Why is it that the masses of the human race live in the most disagreeable climates to be found on the globe, subject to extremes of heat and cold, sudden and unprovoked changes, frosts, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... "Then you're hard to please." Neil turned at the foot of the steps to say, trying to smile as he said it. "Harder than I am. I do ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... it. You know we have tried the experiment two or three times of having a person in our family who should be on the footing of a friend, yet do the duties of a servant, and that we never could make it work well. These half-and-half people are so sensitive, so exacting in their demands, so hard to please, that we have come to the firm determination that we will have no sliding-scale in our family, and that whoever we are to depend on must come with bona fide willingness to take the position of a servant, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... hard to please. I ought to punish your wilfulness by some dreadful doom. Do not cry out again. I will not hear you. My decision is fixed. Mardonius shall bestow you in marriage to a man who is not even a Persian by birth, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... Threatening the pillory and jail: If this you think a pleasing scene, To London straight return again; Where, you have told us from experience, Are swarms of bugs and presbyterians. I thought my very spleen would burst, When fortune hither drove me first; Was full as hard to please as you, Nor persons' names nor places knew: But now I act as other folk, Like prisoners when their gaol is broke. If you have London still at heart, We'll make a small one here by art; The difference is not much between St. James's ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... finally offered it. Charles remained free as air, and a dreadful stigma gradually attached to him as a heartless flirt and a perverter of young girls' minds from men of more solid worth. A man who pleases easily and is hard to please soon gets a bad name among—mothers. I don't think Lady Hope-Acton thought very kindly of him, as she sped up to Scotland ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... you have of my niceness, or being hard to please, let me assure you I am far from desiring my husband should be fond of me at threescore, that I would not have him so at all. 'Tis true I should be glad to have him always kind, and know no reason why he should be wearier of being my master, than he was of being my servant. But ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... elicited satisfactory information; perhaps Mina was not hard to please. At all events, a week later she and the Major got out at Blentmouth station and found Sloyd himself waiting to drive with them to Merrion Lodge; he had insisted on seeing them installed; doubtless he was, as he put it, playing for the break ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... "Some people are very hard to please. If I were you, I should take a course of ventriloquism. Then you can ask yourself questions and give yourself any perishing answers you like. At times ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... dear young lady, the weather is often as uncertain, and as undecided, and as hard to please, too, as an old girl who gets sudden offers on the same day from a widower with ten children, an attorney with one leg, and the parson of the parish. Uncertain, indeed! Why I have known the weather in this grandiloquent ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... over valley and plain, Catching up, in their mischievous whirls, The hats of boys and the bonnets of girls,— Tossing up feathers, and leaves, and sticks, Knocking down chimneys, and scattering bricks, Levelling fences and pulling up trees, Till Eolus—oftentimes hard to please— Clapped his hands as his wine he quaffed, And laughed as ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... matrimony, which is to be observed in many other countries. The opprobious epithet of "old maid" is unknown. A girl is not the less admired because she has been ten or a dozen years in society; the most severe remark made on her is that she is "hard to please." No one calls her passee, or looks out for a new face to admire. I have seen no courting of the young men either in mothers or daughters; no match-making mammas, or daughters looking out for their own interests. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Sorry you don't like the business, Miss Lee." He added dryly: "But then you always were hard to please. You weren't satisfied when I was ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... contained—who shall say? Inwardly she may have been in trembling, coy alarm, in breathless, blushing hesitation. Outwardly she was, however, exceedingly composed and self-possessed. She had been as careful as ever of her toilet—as hard to please; as—dare we say snappish with her maids? The beautiful hair had no one of its aureate threads out of place. The pink of her shell-like cheek was steady, unruffled, fair to behold. Her whole demeanor was admirable in its well-bred repose. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... them each three hundred and fifty pounds on their wedding day,—three hundred pounds to go to their husbands, and fifty pounds for wedding expenses,—on condition that they marry with my approval. I shall not be so hard to please ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... de Chateaubriand was charming! He talked a great deal to you. You don't know him: he passes four or five hours sometimes without saying a word. If you are not satisfied, you are hard to please." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... as a very robust Faust—quite a tenore robusto—and Signor CASTELMARY as the very deuce of a Mephistopheles, with eyebrows and moustachios sufficient to frighten even the gay and festive Marta, played with spirit by Mlle. BIANCOLI. "Mons." DUFRICHE represented the Mons who laboured hard to please, and who, as Valentine, did well and died well. Herr FELD conducted. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... that turn of her head as I do, I'll give her up without scruple. I have made up my mind to this, never to dream of another woman, while she even thinks it worth her while to REFUSE TO HAVE ME. You see I am not hard to please, after all. Did M—— know of the intimacy that had subsisted between us? Or did you hint at it? I think it would be a CLENCHER, if he did. How ought I to behave when I go back? Advise a fool, who had nearly lost ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... author, by experience, finds it true, 'Tis much more hard to please himself than you; And out of no feigned modesty, this day Damns his laborious trifle of a play: Not that its worse than what before he writ, But he has now another taste of wit; And, to confess a truth, though out of time, Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme. Passion's too fierce ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... hard to please," he said, "who would not be enticed to eat by such a display of good victuals. Tea for me, before everything!—How am I to pretend to swallow the stuff?" he murmured, rather than muttered, to himself.—"But," he went on aloud, "didn't that ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... us a great deal of good to have a little amusement just then, for this part of the voyage was a trial of patience more than anything else. Possibly we were rather hard to please, but the south-east trade, which we were expecting to meet every day, was, in our opinion, far too late in coming, and when at length it arrived, it did not behave at all as becomes a wind that has the reputation ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... and dark and promised to be tall. He was quick in movement, quick in temper, resourceful, aye, even shifty, I should say; stubborn, cold in heart, hard to please." ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... know why she has been so long on hand. We are a good deal talked about in our set. We have come to the end of all the ordinary excuses—'She is so young.—She is so fond of her father and mother that she doesn't like to leave them.—She is so happy at home.—She is hard to please, she would like a good name—' We are beginning to look silly; I feel that distinctly. And besides, Cecile is tired of waiting, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... to me to-night one must be hard to please to want a better home than this, especially with an occasional change to city life. I cannot understand why I have so much more to make life beautiful ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... to this period he was not supposed by his friends or by himself to have this capacity. In the letter which his guardian wrote to him after his flight from home, he was reproached with his "natural indolence." His good friend, Mademoiselle Pictet, accused him of being hard to please, and disposed to ennui; and again, as late as 1787, repeats to him, in a tone of sorrow, the reports brought to her of his "continuance in his old habit of indolence," his indifference to society, his neglect of his dress, and general indifference to ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... doublet—deeming the occasion worthy of it—whilst Andrea wore a handsome suit of black, with gold lace, which for elegance it would have been difficult to surpass. An air of pensiveness added interest to his handsome face and courtly figure, and methought that Genevieve must be hard to please if she fell not a victim to ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... guess, at the anxious state of mind in which a sensitive female-woman must have found her experiences since the great Grand Duke left this country. I am told that the Imperial Court of Russia is hard to please in the way of marrying its sons—that nobility is not considered enough, and nothing but the child of an emperor or of a king will satisfy ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... discouraged head. "You seem very hard to please, Sister. I've tried you with Miss and ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... get along nicely together," continued John. "If you are chumps enough to turn out of your comfortable beds at this time of the morning simply to see me, you can't be very hard to please. We shall hit it ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... French, but would have eggs, but she understood him not. And then at last another said he would have eyren, then the good wife said she understood him well. Lo! what should a man in these days now write," adds the puzzled printer, "eggs or eyren? certainly it is hard to please every man by cause of diversity and change of language." His own mother-tongue too was that of "Kent in the Weald, where I doubt not is spoken as broad and rude English as in any place in England"; and coupling this ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... place—no matter which, for it assures their permanence; the one a marvelous cook, the other a competent man; and, by way of society, a lot of fine, old antebellum families, with daughters like the Symphony in Blue, we saw this morning. God! you're hard to please." ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... Sunday the Foreign Legion preserved order of a sort highly displeasing to "a plain sailor," as Farragut, on the Hartford, called himself, and to all the plain sailors of his fleet—who by that time may have been hard to please. On Monday the "plain sailor" bade the mayor, who had once been a plain stevedore, remove the city's women and children within forty-eight hours. But on Tuesday, in wiser mood, he sent his own blue-jackets, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... fond of strange adventures, he will find enough in this volume to delight him all winter, and he will be hard to please who is not charmed by its ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... "You are hard to please," he said, but his heart was full of joy at the thought of trying to please her. If ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... without any sort of warning, she realised that there was some quality in Jimmy which called aloud to some corresponding quality in herself—a nebulous something that made her know that he and she were mates. She knew herself hard to please where men were concerned. She could not have described what it was in her that all the men she had met, the men with whom she had golfed and ridden and yachted, had failed to satisfy: but, ever since she had acquired the power of self-analysis, she had known that it was something ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... made up squads afresh, a corporal to each, then instructed us in our parade work, and drilled us for two hours. Having my two blisters, I did not enjoy it, and the men were groaning all around me. He was as hard to please as the captain; once, looking back along the line as we marched company front, he said, "The ancestors of this bunch certainly must have been a lot of snakes!" But I'll venture to say that none of us, after this, will forget how to ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... in England. The public was, as it always is during the cold fits which follow its hot fits, sullen, hard to please, dissatisfied with itself, dissatisfied with those who had lately been its favourites. The truce between the two great parties was at an end. Separated by the memory of all that had been done and suffered during ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Gregory VII., was looking out for a second husband, she fixed upon Welf of Bavaria, presumably the "dux Noricorum," who, as Bishop Otto tells us, "in the war with the Emperor, destroyed the cities of Freising and Augsburg." Their union did not last long, for Matilda seems to have been hard to please in the matter of husbands; but the fact of his selection looks as if he had been a persona grata with the Papal See. It is somewhat significant, too, that Machiavelli regards the contest between Henry IV. and the Papacy as having been "the seed of the Guelf and Ghibeline ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... you complained, dearest. Nothing can be better than you are at all times and in every way. A man would be very hard to please ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... The women found her frugality of speech piquant; it laid down for her the lines of a reputation for experienced gallantry—the sort which asks a little wearily, Is this worth my while? It seemed to them that in matters of love Roy might be hard to please. This caused a stir in one or two bosoms. A certain Melot, a black-eyed girl, plump, and an easy giggler, avowed in strict confidence to her room-fellow that night, that her fate had been told her by a Bohemian—a slight and dark-eyed youth was ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... not outgrown hate, then? But she said nothing, until he brought out and set on an easel her own portrait. For a moment, she gasped with sheer delight for the colorful mastery of the technique, and she would have been hard to please had she not been delighted with the conception of herself mirrored in the canvas. It was a face through which the soul showed, and the soul was strong and flawless. The girl's personality radiated from the canvas —and yet—A disappointed little look crossed ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... long-sufferingly. 'Your Honour is extremely hard to please. Did not his Excellency talk to you exclusively, with every sign of the most lively pleasure for quite half an hour; whereas he scarcely deigned to throw a word to me, although I wooed his ear with language ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,"— "But seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Woman! in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made: When pain and anguish wring the brow, ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... then what is pleasant, provided that they be lasting. We must begin with what is necessary, for those things which support life affect the mind very differently from, those which adorn and improve it. A man may be nice, and hard to please, in things which he can easily do without, of which he can say, "Take them back; I do not want them, I am satisfied with what I have." Sometimes, we wish not only to, return what we have received, but even to throw it away. Of necessary things, the first class consists of things ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... hard to please at that hour. First, the heat of the past few weeks had worn her down; secondly, her work, and particularly the study of a female head intended to represent the Melancolia and not finished in time for the Salon, was unsatisfactory; thirdly, Kami had said as much two days before; fourthly,—but ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... a year or two," said Nick. "I haven't talked it over with my wife yet. There's no knowing. She may object. Wives are sometimes hard to please, you know." He flung a humorous glance at Max, and turned to leave them. "You will excuse me, I am sure, with the utmost pleasure. I am going to play spelicans with ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... it's hard to please you," laughed Arina Prohorovna, "one minute he must stand with his face to the wall and not dare to look at you, and the next he mustn't be gone for a minute, or you begin crying. He may begin to imagine something. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... very hard to please. She is not only remarkably handsome but she has a vigorous personality—a sort of native force that is sure ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... not hard to please, nor is true human love, for it is a dim reflection of His own. We do not estimate our love-gifts by their intrinsic value, but rather by the love they express. Well do we remember a little incident which occurred ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... I had no more to say, except that I should instruct my friends to abide by the weapons I had mentioned. On this he lost his temper and exclaimed that it was murder. I said that was my desire; that they were hard to please; and that bowie-knives exhausted the list of weapons ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... fall in love with a girl named Betty Jones, but, as Swift told a friend, he had had experience enough "not to think of marriage till I settle my fortune in the world, which I am sure will not be in some years; and even then, I am so hard to please that I suppose I shall put it off to the other world." Soon afterwards an opening for Swift presented itself. Sir William Temple, now living in retirement at Moor Park, near Farnham, had been, like ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... answered Ruth: "for angels don't eat; or, at least, if they do, for I doubt if you will grant that they don't, I am certain that they are not so hard to please as some people down here. The poor, dear lady is delicate—you know she has always been—and I am not ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... elementary). Occasionally in the midst of this display of fantasticality there is a work of promise or even of positive interest. The observer who has not a weak side for the graceful conceits, invariably daintily presented and beautifully modelled, of M. Moreau-Vauthier for example, must be hard to please; they are of the very essence of the article de Paris, and only abnormal primness can refuse to recognize the truth that the article de Paris has its art side. M. Moreau-Vauthier is not perhaps a modern Cellini; he has certainly never produced anything that could be classed with ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... finished in five weeks, and in hot haste, and for months again I was left wondering what the outcome of it all was to be—whether Wraxall was reading my story, or whether—oh, horror!—some other reader less kindly disposed, and more austere and critical, and hard to please, had been told off to sit in judgment upon ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... shook his woolly head. "No," he said, "I's 'orrible stoopid. Nebber could get nuffin' to come out o' my brain—sep w'en it's knocked out by accident. You's hard to please, massa. S'pose you mix de two,— dis'pintment an' content,—an' call ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne |
