"Inartistic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nuisance in Chicago because more light and heat penetrate its murky atmosphere than are to be found in cities only a few miles farther north? The truth is, we must regard the bad spelling nuisance, the bad grammar nuisance, the inartistic and rambling language nuisance, precisely as we would the smoke nuisance, the sewer-gas nuisance, the stock-yards' smell nuisance. Some dainty people prefer pure air and correct language; but we now recognize that purity is something more than an ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... Courtesy prevented a full expression of their feelings, but they affected no undue delight at the presence of their new-found relative—whom they had very sincerely forgotten, along with many other details of a somewhat inartistic youth—and turned to their other guests with a frank relief when they had established him, with a cup of tea, a sandwich, and Aunt Julia, in the ...
— Julia The Apostate • Josephine Daskam
... an urgent warning to our young female singers not to sacrifice themselves to any of the modern screaming operas, unsuited for singing; but to preserve and watch over their voices, and to guard them from immoderate, continued, and often inartistic exertion; in fact, to sing always in the voice-register with which nature has endowed them, and never to shriek; to renounce the present, fashionable, so-called "singing effects," and the modern scene-screaming, as Jenny Lind and Henrietta Sontag have always done. ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... stately architecture, were the bonds that held him bound to the "old historic Church of England". His emotions, not his intellect, kept him Churchman, and he shrunk with the over-sensitiveness of the cultured scholar from the idea of allowing the old traditions, to be handled roughly by inartistic hands. Naturally of a refined and delicate nature, he had been rendered yet more sensitive by the training of the college and the court; the exquisite courtesy of his manners was but the high polish of a naturally ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... was inartistic, and helplessly, childishly stupid as to any literary merits,—a mere mass of gossip and twaddle; but after all, when one remembers the taste of the thousands of circulating-library readers, it must not be considered ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... shall hold him, if I can, or shoot him if I cannot hold him! Both of us will blow police-whistles with which we shall be provided and Inspectors Dunbar and Kelly will raid the premises. But I am hoping for an interval. I do not like these inartistic scrimmages! The fact that these people foregather at an opium-house suggests to me that a certain procedure may be followed which I observed during the course of the celebrated 'Mr. Q' case in New York. 'Mr. Q.' also had an audience-chamber ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... thing as robbing a story of its reality by trying to make it too true, and The Black Arrow is so inartistic as not to contain a single anachronism to boast of, while the transformation of Dr. Jekyll reads dangerously like an experiment out of the Lancet. As for Mr. Rider Haggard, who really has, or had once, the makings of a perfectly magnificent liar, he is now ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... at the mad act, for although her judgment told her they were not worth keeping, she realized that her father must have passed many laborious hours on them. But now that it had dawned on him how utterly inartistic his work was, in humiliation and disgust he had wiped it out of existence. With this thought in mind, the ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... and smelt of turpentine. The furniture consisted of a few bent-hardwood chairs and a rickety table covered with a gaudy cloth. The nickeled lamp, which diffused an unpleasant odor, was of florid but very inartistic design; the plain stove stood in an ugly iron tray, and its galvanized pipe ran up, unconcealed, to the ceiling. A black distillate had trickled down from a bend in ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... in its best examples resembles not so much the book of yesterday as that of some earlier days, and we may count this fact a fortunate one, since it relegates to oblivion the books made in certain inartistic periods, notably of the one preceding the present revival. It is rather the best of the whole past of the book, and not the book of to-day alone, that influences the character to be taken by the book of to-morrow. This element is a historical one and a knowledge ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... he resumed. "The singer, though trying to act out the character he assumes, must not forget to sing. The combination of fine singing and fine acting is rare. Nowadays people think if they can act, that atones for inartistic singing; then they yield to the temptation to shout, to make harsh tones, simply for effect." And the famous baritone caricatured some of the sounds he had recently heard at an operatic performance with such gusto, that a member of the household came running in from an adjoining room, thinking there ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... Philistinism—that is, with a view to comfort. There are no subtle harmonies in the papers and chintzes; there are no hidden suggestions of form and tone in the cornices and bell handles; all is barren of proportion, concord, and meaning. Still, this poor woman, with her inartistic eye and foolish heart, loves this wretched shelter, and would pour out her idiotic tears if she were ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... theatre to encourage what is best in modern art is due to the fact that the public is unimaginative and inartistic. ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... better had Philip planted the cannas either in the round bed or against the fence as a screen. As a general rule the planting in tubs, kettles, kegs and similar receptacles is not only inartistic, but gives the plant very confined and cramped quarters. When possible plant right out in the ground. Window boxes and roof gardening ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... a King in Thule," was retouched. In the Urfaust the duel between Valentin and Mephistopheles does not occur, and we have only Valentin's soliloquy on the ruin of his sister; and the scenes, Wald und Hoehle, the Walpurgis Nacht, the Walpurgisnachtstraum, generally condemned by critics as inartistic irrelevancies, are likewise lacking.[241] ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... an inartistic directness that was in painful contrast to the cadenza, "what has the Major got to ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Allardyce, who was vexed at a fine chance for his peculiar craft being spoiled by mere brutality of handling. All this was most inartistic. Brodie never had ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... grief or worry prematurely attains a look of age, or to one whose features are irregular. The straight brim across the face is very trying. It casts a shadow deepening the "old marks" and instead of being a frame to set off, it seems to cut off, the face at an inartistic angle. ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... Extravagance is inartistic—so for that reason I could wish for moderation in stage dressing. Heavens, what a nightmare dress used to be to me! For months I would be paying so much a week to my dressmaker for the gowns of a play. I thought ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... the illusion being aided by panoramic scenery; scenery that acted in company with toads, dragons, horses, snakes, crazy valkyrs, mermaids, half-mad humans, gods, demons, dwarfs, and giants. What else is all this but old-fashioned Italian opera with a new name? What else but an inartistic mixture of Scribe libretto and Northern mythology? Music-drama—fudge! Making music that one can see is a death-blow to a lofty ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... same church he did the curious conventional painting of the Trinity on a gold ground. The subject is inartistic, because unapproachable; the attempt to paint that which is a deep spiritual mystery degrades both the art and the subject; the latter because it lowers it to human grasp, the former because it shows its powerlessness to shadow forth the infinite. There ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... together to find the Chippendale bookcase; and on its shelves stood books that had formed a bond between us, and copies of old reviews containing my fugitive contributions. A spurious Japanese dragon in faence, an inartistic monstrosity dear to her heart, at which I had often railed, grinned forgivingly at me from the mantel-piece. I have never realised how closely bound up with my habits was this drawing-room of Judith's. I stopped once more by ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... circumstance which, apart from all else in connection with the defective acoustic arrangements of the stage,(26) not only compelled the actor to exert his voice unduly, but drove Livius to the highly inartistic but inevitable expedient of having the portions which were to be sung performed by a singer not belonging to the staff of actors, and accompanied by the mere dumb show of the actor within whose part they fell. As little were the givers of the Roman festivals ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and, we must say, takes most clumsy and hopeless and long-roundabout methods of accomplishing crimes, to which one would have thought a lady of her imputed sagacity would have found much shorter cuts. It is amazing and inartistic, however, that after all her awkwardness she should fail. Given a blockhead like Armadale, and a dreamer like Midwinter, there is no reason in nature, and no reason in art, why a lady of Miss Gwilt's advantages should not marry both of them; and the author's overruling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... apologized even indirectly for the freedom of his criticisms, which might well have been much bolder. The real attraction of the work he undertook was, that it would give him scope for widely-ranging comment; and it is the inevitable, by no means inartistic or unhealthy discursiveness of the treatment which makes it difficult to do justice to it. But we will venture upon a point or two ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... April afternoon she came, like a dark-eyed Flora, her hands loaded with daffodils that might bring a glow of the beauty of spring even to an inartistic spirit. The front door stood open, and a flat has an unrelenting way of laying bare all the skeletons that find no closet room. Mrs. Lenox surprised a scene of domestic economy in the tiny parlor. The curtains had been taken down for fear they would fade, and a large piece ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... infinite complexities of things, they will be found cautious of creed and timid of assertion. You have probably noted that at Waterloo Station, in London, no porter will ever bind himself to a definite statement concerning any train. It is only the inartistic who hold that black is black and white is white, unconditionally, irretrievably; and who have invented the proverb "He'd say black's white" to express the Sophist in excelsis. It must be true, as Ruskin contends, that not one man ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... respects, this piece of Heywood is very inartistic, and carelessly finished: instead of duly developing the main action, the author distracts our attention by a second intrigue, which can hardly be said to have the slightest connection with the other. At this we need hardly be astonished, for Heywood was ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... artist, has been most cunning; to find the most stimulating products of art a mere irritation. And when one's curiosity is in excess, when it overbalances the desire of beauty, then one is liable to value in works of art what is inartistic in them; to be satisfied with what is exaggerated in art, with productions like some of those of the romantic school in Germany; not to distinguish, jealously enough, between what is admirably done, and what is done not quite so well, in the writings, for instance, of Jean ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... strong individuality depicting the points which made another one of the most marked characters of her day. It is always agreeable to follow Mrs. Howe in this; for while we see marks of her own mind constantly, there is no inartistic protrusion of her personality. The book is always readable, and the relation of the death-scene ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... herself, and she daily grew more and more inexplicable. She began to read: Max brought the books, and she read them. She began to practice: Max liked music, and wanted to sing with her. She stopped crimping her hair: Max said it was unnatural and inartistic. She went to scientific lectures and astronomical lectures and literary ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... king was perhaps Kanishka himself, Fa-hien mixing up, in an inartistic way, different legends about him. Eitel suggests that a relic of the old name of the country may still exist in that of the Jats or Juts of the present day. A more common name for it is Tukhara, and he observes that the people were ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... we have abundance of beautiful gold-work from remote times, of such fine design and execution that there is nothing in the world to equal it. The modern work of countries where gold is found in quantities is commonplace, vulgar and inartistic, when compared with the work of the old Irish period. Torques, or twisted ribbons of gold, of varying size and shape, were worn as diadems, collars, or even belts; crescent bands of finely embossed sheet-gold were worn above the forehead; ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... exercise, with a view to health, used to be the privilege of the upper class; we have been teaching the people to play games and go in for healthy sports. At the same time there has been considerable aesthetic progress. England is no longer the stupidly inartistic country of early Victorian times; there's a true delight in music and painting, and a much more general appreciation of the good in literature. With all this we have been so busy that politics have fallen ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... boots. There was a stable with a tarred roof in the rear, to be discerned beyond the conventional side lawn that was broken into by the bay window of the dining-room. There, in that house, his two children were born: there, within those inartistic walls, Eliza Preston lived a life that will remain a closed book forever. What she thought, what she dreamed, if anything, will never be revealed. She did not, at least, have neurasthenia, and for all the world knew, she may have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... trunk, her eyes half closed, the tone of Anthony's violin came like a heavenly message to a tired, despairing soul. Remember that in her secluded life she had heard only such harmony as Elvira Reynolds evoked from her piano or George Reynolds from his flute, and the Reynolds temperament was distinctly inartistic. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... onward, I feel that some explanation of my choice is necessary. Men's conceptions of the heroic change with changing years, and vary with each individual mind; hence it often happens that one person sees in a legend only the central heroism, while another sees only the inartistic details of mediaeval life which tend to disguise ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... and knew it not. The maker of the bowl was an artist, and knew it not. You will get no finish from either — the lines are often blurred, the design but half fulfilled; and yet the effect is not inartistic. It has been well said that greatness is but another name for interpretation; and in so far as these nameless workmen of old interpreted themselves and the times in which they lived, they have attained ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... fury boiled and seethed as, during the first and second acts, he found in the wings Signorina Car-r-r-r-r-r-avaggio absorbed in pleasant but very significant chat with his deadly enemy, the crude, unmusical, inartistic, soulless Biffo de Bates-s-s-s! But, ah! There was another act to come, the third act, at the beginning of which the property man handed him the long, sharp, wicked-looking, bloodthirsty knife with which he was to fight Escamillo, and with which in the ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... if she was only saved from perpetrating some of the school-girl trash in the way of drawing, it was a gain to her intellect, for what can be more lowering to intelligence of perception than the utterly inartistic frivolities which are supposed to inculcate art in a country out of which the sense of it had been all but eradicated in Puritan England, though some great artists had happily reappeared! Mary at least learnt to love literature and poetry, and had, by her love of reading, a universe ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... caravan overtook him Uncle Enoch had captured the runaways and was leading them back to where the wrecked wagon lay by the roadside. More or less butter was mixed with the sandy chin whiskers and an inartistic yellow smooch down the front of his coat showed that the eggs had ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... doubt that a certain type of tourist, ignorant of Japanese art, by greedily buying strange, gaudy things at high prices, has stimulated a morbid production of truly unaesthetic pseudo-Japanese art. But this accounts for only a small part of the grossly inartistic features of Japan. The instances given of hideous worsted bibs for babes and collars for dogs, combining in the closest proximity the most uncomplementary and mutually repellent colors, has nothing whatever to do with foreign ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... stayed on the farm, and dreamed in his studio and tried to teach his little, inartistic Edith to draw, and mourned. As for business, he said, "Go to the devil!"—except as he looked after Maurice Curtis's affairs; this because the boy's father had been his friend. But it was the consciousness of the bartered birthright and the dead pictures in his studio which kept ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... tonic, beyond which its virtues are of course mythical. It is held by the surrounding populace to be an infallible remedy in the instance of unfruitful women, and is the constant resort of that class from far and near. These chapels at Guadalupe are decorated in the crudest and most inartistic manner, entirely unworthy of such belief as is professed in the sacredness of the place, or of the virtues attributed by the priests to them as a religious shrine. Money enough has been wasted, but there seems to be an ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... tongue of the people, the great poets of England have almost always had to struggle against a complete dissonance between their own aims and interests and those of the nation. The result has been that England, the most inartistic of the modern races, has produced the largest number of exquisite literary artists. [Footnote: ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... a happy one. The elements in some of the Hindoo myths specially repulsive to European taste are their monstrosity, their inartistic and hideous exaggeration, their accumulation of sanguinary horrors, and their childish triviality. Few of the classical myths exhibit these characteristics. The vanity or policy of Tiberius and Alexander in believing ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... orally in the presence of either; so that what a drunken cabman would be deservedly kicked for saying in a lady's hearing may be honourably printed for a lady's reading by a scholar and a sage. It was once thought otherwise, but I am arguing here, not against realism per se, but against the inartistic introduction of gross episodes. Every reader of Mr. Hardy will recognise my meaning, and the passage in my mind ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... six words at a glance, setting the natural limit of length for strong features in an advertisement. Artistic arrangement helps an advertisement because carefully balanced matter is more attractive than inartistic combinations. A well-balanced advertisement, an advertisement in which the points are properly subordinated, conveys its meaning to the reader more easily than a badly distributed statement of the same arguments. In the last ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... which have been abandoned either because of their age, or because of the completion of the cells occupying the most distant part; she builds her cells by dividing these corridors into unequal and inartistic chambers by means of rude earthen partitions. The Osmia's sole achievement in the way of masonry is confined to these partitions. This, by the way, is the ordinary building-method adopted by the various Osmiae, who ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... name of fighting for the Don, upon the understanding that the railroad was not to be meddled with. The directors had been paying 100,000 francs a month. As will be easily believed, there was a difficulty in the distribution of the money among so many greedy and inartistic robbers, and the discontented determined to hold up the railroad itself and stop all trains. Unluckily, the train we were on was the one they proposed to experiment on first, and they proposed drastic measures, too—in fact, had blown up or ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... stay at Nieuwediep but at The Helder. Thirty years ago, however, one could have done nothing so inartistic, for then, according to M. Havard, the Hotel Ten Burg at Nieuwediep had for its landlord a poet, and for its head waiter a baritone, and to stay elsewhere would have been a crime. Here is M. Havard's description of these ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... doubt, for modern playwrights to let themselves go in the matter of length, and then print their plays with brackets or other marks to show the "passages omitted in representation." This is, however, essentially an inartistic practice, and one cannot regret that it has gone out of fashion. Another point to be considered is this: are Othello and Lear really very complex character-studies? They are extremely vivid: they are projected ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... caused a curious mixture of joy and anxiety in the artist's breast. Standing on the soil of France, he, for the first time, was destined to conquer his fatherland, but on a spot which belonged to the "Grand Opera," and where all the inartistic qualities were fostered that he endeavored to supplant. As his native land was closed to him, he went to work with his usual earnestness, and, as though it were a reward for his faithfulness, there came during the preparations the long-desired amnesty, ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... two-shilling pieces, and four separate shillings, all the coins being well-worn silver of the realm, the undoubted inartistic product of the reputable British Mint. This seemed to dispose of the theory that he was palming off illegitimate money. He asked me if I were interested in any particular branch of antiquity, and I replied that my ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... elders if we have any good in us, but we are far from feeling a similar interest in them. We see in our imaginations wonderful pictures, and we hear wonderful words, for everything we dream of partakes of an unknown perfection and completely throws into the shade the inartistic commonplaces of daily life. As John Short grew older, he often regretted the society of his old tutor and in the frequent absence of important buttons from his raiment he bitterly realised that there was no longer a motherly Mrs. Ambrose to inspect his linen; but when he took leave ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... the celebrants the words, "Zarathustra and we." These words do not prove that the hymns are not by him. As explained by Dr. Mills, the hymns are seen to be very fully charged with meaning and with sentiment. Uncouth and inartistic in expression, and demanding an immense amount of patience and ingenuity to trace their connection of thought, they surprise the reader when once he seizes their meaning, by the depth and spirituality of their contents, and force him to acknowledge that they are ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... one hand upon the table, looking down at the carpet. He had known for a long time, in a vague fashion, that he lacked something; that his success—a wholly inartistic one—had yielded him little gratification; that the comfort of his home was a purely monetary product and not in any sense atmospheric. He had schooled himself to believe that he liked loneliness—loneliness physical and mental, and that in marrying a pretty, but pleasure-loving girl, he had insured ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... by our complicated, bewildering, and inartistic mode of procedure, in the hands of ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... a remarkable painting. On the same wall are two or three canvases by Velasquez, but none by other artists of repute. On the walls of a large hall, called by the guide the Hall of Battles, is painted a most crude and inartistic series of pictures, only worthy of a Chinese artist, representing a series of battles ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... We see this in the portrait of Vice-Admiral Kortenaar at Amsterdam, where the conception of forms, and the unscumbled character of the strokes of the brush, recall Hals. The same may be observed in two larger pictures with archers in the Town Hall at Haarlem, where the inartistic arrangement and monotony of the otherwise warm flesh tones point to the earlier time of the painter. By about the year 1640 his character was more fully developed. His arrangement of portrait-pieces with numerous figures became very artistic and easy, his tone excellent, and his drawing masterly. ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... has another claim to our notice beyond the inartistic design. It marks one of the very rare efforts in this direction of ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... a good deal—as a pantomime, a distorted caricature of Goethe, and a thoroughly inartistic production. But it proved the greatest of all Henry's financial successes. The Germans who came to see it, oddly enough, did not scorn it nearly as much as the English who were sensitive on behalf of the Germans, and the Goethe Society wrote a tribute to Henry Irving after his death, acknowledging ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... poor enough successor of the dainty and playful art of Louis XV, or the somewhat more refined and restrained art of Louis XVI: but he would say that it was art still, and the period a not wholly inartistic period; and even of the dull times of the Napoleon of Peace, from 1830 to 1848, while he would confess to a great deal of languor and lack of public spirit of all sorts, except in the struggle which the Romantic artists, headed by Delacroix, waged with the Classicists, headed by ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... in. My father was sitting at his desk working on the plan of a bungalow with Gothic windows and a stumpy tower like the lookout of a fire-station—an immensely stiff and inartistic design. As I entered the study I stood so that I could not help seeing the plan. I did not know why I had come to my father, but I remember that when I saw his thin face, red neck, and his shadow on the wall, I wanted to throw my arms round him and, as ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... not blame other rich men for being as little quixotic with their money. We do not expect a financier to back a young inventor because he is a genius, in preference to backing some other inventor because he has discovered a saleable, though quite inartistic, breakfast food. So if Mr. de Lauributt produces six versions in his six different theatres of Cuddle Me, Constance, it is only because this happens to be his way of making money. He may even be spending his own evenings secretly at the "Old Vic." For he runs ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... good Shag or Cavendish.' Another knows so little of the art of smoking that he never 'stops' his pipe, and so allows the light dust of the burnt weed to fly about him in flakes and minute particles, to the permanent damage of his own and his neighbors' clothes. But in nothing is the inartistic character of English smoking so conspicuously exemplified as in the use of 'lights.' Those who form the great majority of smokers amongst the English-speaking races seem to consider that, so long as their pipes are set alight, it matters not how or from what source the light is obtained. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... wall of Calvary Church there had been painted, when the church was built, a Latin cross. This cross had been the source of almost endless dispute among the church-members. Some said it was inartistic; others said it was in keeping with the name of the church, and had a right place there as part of its inner adornment. Once the dispute had grown so large and serious that the church had voted as to its removal or retention on the wall. A small majority ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... me for life, and the object of which was to give me an absolutely free hand, also contributed to my present state of mind, and made me feel confidence in everything I undertook. Although my plans for the present seemed to exclude all possibility of being realised, thanks to the indifference of an inartistic public, still I could not help inwardly cherishing the idea that I should not be for ever addressing only the paper on which I wrote. I anticipated that before long a great reaction would set in with regard to the public and everything connected with our social life, and I believed ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... the past tense, I might pause here to consider whether this emotion was a genuine one or a mere figment for literary effect. As I am writing in the present tense, such a pause would be inartistic, and shall not be made. I must seem not to be writing, but to be actually on the spot, suffering. But then, you may well ask, why should I stay here, to suffer? why not beat a hasty retreat? The answer is that my essay would then seem skimpy; and that you, moreover, would know hardly anything ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... which was described at that time as "a picturesque ruin." It was entirely rebuilt on its original plan. The gateway to the courtyard was repaired and modernised by Bishop Barrington, with the existing inartistic result. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... ELIHU RICH(1) gives a very full list of stones and their supposed virtues. Each sign of the zodiac was supposed to have its own particular stone(2) (as shown in the annexed table), and hence the superstitious though not inartistic custom of wearing ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... singularly few descriptions of cities in ancient Chinese history, but here again we may safely assume that most of them were in principle, if only on a small scale, very much what they are now, mere inartistic, badly built collections of hovels. Soul, the quaint capital of Corea, as it appeared in its virgin condition to its European discoverers twenty-five years ago, probably then closely resembled an ancient vassal Chinese prince's capital of the very best kind. Modern trade is responsible ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... be inartistic, but they look mighty touching, pathetic, and wonderful, not only the individual whose legs you step over but that almighty race combine—whatever you call it[4]—which he represents.... Ladies were stealing ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... the charm of the pervading wit and humor of the tale, which embodies a study of character as skillful and true as anything we have lately had, but at the same time so simple and unpretentious as to be very welcome indeed amid the flood of inartistic analysis which we are compelled to accept in so many recent ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... very strict standpoint that all Base Ball games should be played without mistake or blunder this world's series may be said to have been inartistic, but it is only the hypercritical theorist who would take such a cold-blooded view of ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... after this time we hear no more of him. Oligarchical in his sympathies, he offended his own party and was distrusted by the democrats. Andocides was no professional orator; his style is simple and lively, natural but inartistic. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... treasures which, strange to say, is a piece of modern sculpture given by the present "Monseigneur of Avignon." It is small, and badly placed on a marble altar of discordant toning, with a draped curtain of red gilt-fringed velvet for its background. Yet in spite of these inartistic surroundings it has lost none of its tender charm. Seated, with a scroll on her knees, the aged mother is earnestly teaching the young Virgin who stands close by her side. The slender old hand with its raised forefinger emphasises the lesson, and the loving expression of the ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... pieces, we generally find the parts come from various sources; and having served last in pagan Rome for pagan purposes, had been slightly refashioned for Christian decorative art,[125] before the Byzantine inartistic taste, and barbaric splendour of metal-work patterns, had extinguished all the gay fancy of the arts of ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... suggests that it may interest some to know du Maurier drew the label for a most popular mineral water. It is safe to predict that not one person in the tens of thousands looking at it yearly would connect du Maurier with it. It is that elaborate and rather inartistic design on Appollinaris water, for which he received fifty guineas from his friend—one of the proprietors. Anyone following his work in Punch must have noticed that he was a hypochondriac. Hypochondriasis was a disease with him, he was always thinking ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... the Legations are quite comfortable, pretty and unpretentious, with the usual complement of furniture of folding pattern, so convenient but so inartistic, and a superabundance of cane chairs. Really good furniture being very expensive in Teheran, a good deal of the upholstery of the Teheran Legations is conveyed to the country residences for the summer months. Perhaps nothing is more amusing to watch than one of ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... with a smile. "I am wrong. It is not good manners; it is vulgar. In French you would call it inartistic. It is better to be frank than to harbor cold or hostile feelings towards a friend, and you have already proved yourself my friend. Perhaps I have gone too far with you. You must take me to be a very ordinary woman."—Rodolphe made many signs of denial.—"Yes," said the ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... is an appeal to inartistic people; all means are welcomed which help towards obtaining an effect. It is calculated not to produce an artistic effect but an effect upon the ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... to overstep the limits insisted upon by such proportion, are inartistic thoroughly, and tend to reveal the paucity of the means used, instead of concealing the same, as required by Art ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... local merchants, and even invading private homes in search after beautifying material. Jim Lane drove his buckboard one hundred and sixty miles to Cheyenne to gather up certain needed articles of adornment, the selection of which could not be safely confided to the inartistic taste of the stage-driver. Upon his rapid return journey loaded down with spoils, Peg Brace, a cow-puncher in the "Bar O" gang, rode recklessly alongside his speeding wheels for the greater portion of the distance, apparently in most jovial humor, and so unusually inquisitive as to make Mr. Lane, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... slightest kind. Second, there must also have been an actual physical sensitiveness to sights, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. that made her perceive what others failed to notice. This led to an artistry manifested by her nice work in music and decoration and also by an excessive displeasure at the inartistic. ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... attempts to do the whole work of creation before the acting begins is an inartistic usurper of the functions of others, and will fail of proper accomplishment at the end. The dramatist must deliberately, in performing his share of the work, leave scope for a multitude of alien faculties whose operations he can neither precisely foresee nor completely control. ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... readily as to me. Until the actual event comes off we are practically in the position if not of comrades, at least of business partners. Until the event comes off, therefore I should suggest that quarrelling would be inconvenient and rather inartistic; while the ordinary exchange of politeness between man and man would be not only ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... in which perhaps a great number of apartments are got upon the ground, but which the visitor is obliged laboriously to learn before he can find his way about them. That is not only inconvenient but inartistic planning, and shows a want of logic and consideration, and, in addition to this, a want of feeling for artistic effect. I saw not long ago, for instance, in a set of competitive designs for an important public building, a design ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... altogether without a reason that I speak of them in this order. Aunt Maria was the active partner of their establishment. She was a clever, vigorous, well-educated, inartistic, kindly, managing woman. She was not exactly "meddling," but when she thought it her duty to interfere in a matter, no delicacy of scruples, and no nervousness baulked the directness of her proceedings. When she was most sweeping or uncompromising, Uncle Ascott would say, ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... native Christian may ask a dollar for two fowls, but he will also lease out his wife for a similar amount. Time was, in the Ellices, when the undue complaisance of a married woman meant a sudden and inartistic compression of the jugular, or a swift blow from the heavy, ebony-wood club of the wronged man. Nowadays, since the smug-faced native teacher hath shown them the Right Way, such domestic troubles are condoned by—a dollar. That is, if it be a genuine American dollar or two British ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... yesterday night, after having supped, I grew so restless that I was obliged to go out in search of some excitement. There was a half-moon lying over on its back, and incredibly bright in the midst of a faint grey sky set with faint stars: a very inartistic moon, that would have ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... later hand thought it worth while to add three lines to tell the world what became of him. A strange way to write history, and a most imperfect narrative, surely! Yes, unless there be some peculiarity in the purpose of the book, which explains this cold-blooded, inartistic, and tantalising habit of letting men leap upon the stage as if they had dropped from the clouds, and vanish from it as abruptly as if they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... mistaken impression that they lend vivacity and vividness, should be totally eschewed. They offend against almost every principle of the short story, and they have nothing to recommend them. Usually they are irrelevant and inartistic asides by the author. The proper sentence structure for the bulk of the short story is the simple straightforward declarative sentence, rather loose, of medium length, tending to short at times to avoid monotony ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... cemeteries. These are nearly always picturesquely situated, adorned with beautiful trees, and exquisitely kept in order. Indeed, the cemeteries are in striking contrast to those of European countries. The hideous and inartistic tombstones and monuments, the urns and angels, and the stereotyped conventionalities of graveyards in this country are all absent. There is usually only a simple tablet over each grave bearing the name ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... been unexpectedly expelled the House was soothed with the strains of Peace, Perfect Peace. But those days were over. A new headmaster had come with an ear for music, and the riot of melody that surged from the V. A table seemed to him not only blasphemous, but also inartistic. And so hymn-singing stopped, and only a few prayers ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... on it is a very suitable mount for small heads, fish and birds. Artificial branches and trees for mounting birds should be avoided if possible; they are made by wrapping tow around wires, coating with glue and covering with moss or papier mache and painting. The result I consider unnatural and inartistic. ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... useless of all the uniforms I know. The helmets and cocked hats are of the pattern affected by theatrical managers, the decorations tawdry, the swords absurd, the whole appearance indicative of a taste unmilitary and inartistic. The parade uniform has been designed by a lot of unsoldierly politicians and tailors about Washington. Their notion of military glory is confused with memories of St. Patrick's Day processions and Masonic installations. They have made the patient ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... in Plautus some of the oddest incongruities arise from the continual intrusion of Roman law-terms and other everyday home associations into the Athenian agora or dicasteries, in Terence this effective but very inartistic source of humour is altogether discarded, and the comic result gained solely by the legitimate methods of incident, character, and dialogue. That this stricter practice was inaugurated by Caecilius is probable, both from the praise bestowed on him in spite of his ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... and Western German is still to-day, as he was in the days of Madame de Stael, artistic and poetic, brilliant and imaginative—a lover of song and music. The Prussian remains as he has always been, inartistic, dull, and unromantic. Prussia has not produced one of the great composers who are the pride of the German race; and Berlin, with all its wealth and its two million inhabitants, strikes the foreigner ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... rather late, but it has quickly gained a secure position. The more elaborate the production, the more frequent and the more skillful the use of this new and artistic means. The melodrama can hardly be played without it, unless a most inartistic use of printed words is made. The close-up has to furnish the explanations. If a little locket is hung on the neck of the stolen or exchanged infant, it is not necessary to tell us in words that everything will hinge ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... others. Not until we artists all reach the point when we can take counsel with each other about our mistakes and deficiencies, and discuss the means for overcoming them, putting our pride in our pockets, will bad singing and inartistic effort be checked, and our noble art of singing come into its ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... broke other columns concentrated on the station buildings, until the inartistic surroundings of the little centre became black with men and animals. In appearance it might well be likened to a swarm of bees in temporary possession of a window-frame. Amongst the troops waiting for rolling stock was a wild company of over-sea Colonials—men of independent ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... different scenes of a play, but in the careful working out of each scene. Ab ea must be supplied after descriptae from a qua above. — ACTUM: the common comparison of life with a drama is also found in 64, 70, 85. — INERTI: the sense of 'ignorant' 'inartistic' (in, ars), has been given to this by some editors (cf. Hor. Ep. 2, 2, 126 praetulerim scriptor delirus inersque videri, and Cic. Fin. 2, 115 artes, quibus qui carebant, inertes a maioribus nominabantur), but the meaning 'inactive', 'lazy', 'slovenly' seems to suit neglectum better. ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero |
