"Inoffensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to acquire courage to ask what reason she could have for hating any one who looked so gentle and inoffensive, when the woman resumed, ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... his coils around his captive. Brought up in a rigid school of courtesy toward his elders, the Tyro sought some inoffensive means of breaking away; but when the other hooked an arm into his, alleging the roll of the vessel,—though not in the least needing the support,—he all but gave up hope. For an interminable quarter of an hour the marplot jurist teased his captive. Then, with the air of one making ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the dark street, his impulse was to flee—get out, get away from the whole business. A sullen shame was pumping the hot blood up into his neck and cheeks. He strove to find an inoffensive name for what he was proposing to do, but ugly terms, synonym after synonym, crowded in to characterise the impending procedure, and he walked on angrily, half frightened, looking back from moment to moment at the house he had ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... people, or who, speaking of politics, tell us of the current situation. Excessive laughter, jokes, and violent gestures are not permitted. Every one keeps his limbs quiet, even avoiding those vivacious and inoffensive gestures which are the natural accompaniment of conversation; the tone of voice is so modulated as to be scarcely audible. The ancient preacher would say, "These people have carried out St. Paul's exhortation to an exaggerated ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... Cole," as the boys derisively called him, an inoffensive little man, with a weak, limp woman for a wife, and three or four weaker and limper children, had for many years vegetated on one corner of an hundred-and-sixty acres of woods, having made but a small clearing, and managed in some unknown way to live on it. His feeble condition exposed him to ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... country farmer, who, living in the Isle of Sheppy, in Kent, had the misfortune to have his grounds overflowed, and all his cattle drowned. His habit was now neat but rustic; his air and behaviour simple and inoffensive; his speech in the Kentish dialect; his countenance dejected; his tale pitiful—wondrous pitiful; a wife and seven helpless infants being partakers of his misfortunes; so that if his former stratagem answered his wishes, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... his intercourse with friends and acquaintances, and forbearing towards strangers (with whom he ever maintained the most cordial relations, unmarred by the gross familiarity-too common among dogs of inferior breeds), inoffensive in his daily walk and conversation, the deceased was universally respected and his loss will ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... somewhere, I suppose," said Mr. May. "We cannot kill them off, if they are inoffensive, and keep the laws. So that, after all, a country ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the children were in a state of intimidation. It was plain that their mother was fairly aroused, and each deemed it best to be as quiet and inoffensive as possible. The reappearance of harmony being thus restored, Mrs. Abercrombie, whose head and heart were now both throbbing with pain, retired in a most unhappy state of mind to her chamber, where she threw herself into a large chair, ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... party resumed its former tranquillity. Other guests had come in, among them a lame old Spaniard of mild and inoffensive aspect leaning on the arm of an elderly Filipina, who was resplendent in frizzes and paint and a European gown. The group welcomed them heartily, and Doctor De Espadana and his senora, the Doctora Dona Victorina, took their seats among our acquaintances. Some newspaper ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... of a lover for nature, in the fields, in the woods and in the animals. Of aristocratic birth, he hated instinctively the year 1793, but being a philosopher by temperament and liberal by education, he execrated tyranny with an inoffensive and declamatory hatred. His great strength and his great weakness was his kind-heartedness, which had not arms enough to caress, to give, to embrace; the benevolence of a god, that gave freely, without ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... confronted her. Beautiful she certainly was, at that moment; but it was the beauty of an angry serpent. She had a pencil in her hand, with which, a little while before, she had been sketching heads of some of the passengers in her little notebook. She was now handling this inoffensive object in such a way as to justify the fancy that, had it been charged with a deadly poison in its point, instead of with a bit of plumbago of the HH quality, she would have driven it into ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... of shelter that they like, and the wonder is that naked men, sleeping on the ground in such places, and poking about dark corners, among their stores of fuel and other chattels, meet with so few accidents. It says a great deal for the mild and inoffensive nature of the snake. Still, the total number of deaths by snake-bite reported every year is very large, and looks absolutely appalling if you do not think of dividing it among three hundred millions. Treated in that way it shrivels up at once, and when compared with the results ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... resonant titles which make you something more than human in your own eyes. I would not for the world be mistaken for one of those literary roughs whose brass knuckles leave their mark on the foreheads of so many inoffensive people. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that she would read with greedy haste and then tear into shreds. Philippina came into her room once quite suddenly; Dorothea, terrified, hid a photograph she had been holding in her hand. When Philippina became indignant at the secrecy of her action, she said with an air of inoffensive superiority: "You would not understand it, Philippina. That is something I cannot discuss with ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... which is very good. There is a quantity of reeds growing round them, also tea-tree. From this we followed the creek to the north, thence north-east towards the lake, but the water being too brackish, I returned to the springs, the natives walking with us all the time; they seemed very inoffensive. In following down the creek, another native joined us from the creek, carrying a net in which were some small fish; the net was ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... never knew a college besides ours whereof the members were so perfectly well satisfied with one another, and so inoffensive to the other part of the University. All the Fellows I have yet seen are both well-natured and well-bred; men admirably disposed as well to preserve peace and good neighbourhood among themselves as to preserve it wherever ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he is so, that he does not seem to be aware of it. An absence of all straining after effect; a solicitude rather to avoid than to court observation. If there is any thing positively indicative in his expression, by which I include his manner, it is that of a good-humoured indifference, an inoffensive, unobtrusive stoicism. He would seem to have adopted the excellent advice given by the Apostle to the Thessalonians—"STUDY TO BE QUIET." This is his rule of life, and he acts upon it upon great and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... said Strickland. "The question is, who killed Imray? Don't talk—I have a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I took most of Imray's servants. Imray was guileless and inoffensive, wasn't he?" ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... and martyrs sang in the fire, and all the sacred tears were shed for no other end than that a race of creatures of such unexampled insipidity should succeed, and protract in saecula saeculorum their contented and inoffensive lives,—why, at such a rate, better lose than win the battle, or at all events better ring down the curtain before the last act of the play, so that a business that began so importantly may be saved from ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... whether thus these things, or whether not, Whether the Sun, predominant in Heaven, Rise on the Earth, or Earth rise on the Sun; He from the east his flaming round begin, Or she from west her silent course advance With inoffensive pace that spinning sleeps On her soft axle, whilst she paces even, And bears thee soft with the smooth air along— Solicit not thy thoughts with matters ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... bear with the ignorant and thoughtless. From Maximus I learned to command myself, and to put through business efficiently, without drudging or complaint. From my adoptive father I learned a smooth and inoffensive temper, and a greatness proof against vanity and the impressions of pomp and power; I learned that it was the part of a prince to check flattery, to have his exchequer well furnished, to be frugal in his expenses, not to worship the gods to superstition, but to be reserved, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... resemble the Kenyahs, being well-built and vigorous; their skin is of very light yellow colour, and their features are regular and well shaped. Mentally they are characterised by extreme shyness and timidity and reserve. They are quite inoffensive and never engage in open warfare; though they will avenge injuries by stealthy attacks on individuals with the blow-pipe and poisoned darts. Their only handicrafts are the making of baskets, mats, blow-pipes, and the implements used for working the wild ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... one Jason Kirchner, was an inoffensive-looking little fellow with a Caspar Milquetoast mustache and an underslung jaw. He wore an Elks watchcharm, an Odd Fellows ring, and a Knights of Pythias lapel-pin. He looked at Rand's credentials, including the letter Humphrey Goode had ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... was abandoned, the idea of sending ambassadors to the Council still offered the most inoffensive and amicable means of preventing the danger of subsequent conflict. Its policy or impolicy was a question to be decided by France. Several bishops, and Cardinal Bonnechose among the rest, urged the Government to resume its ancient privilege, and send a representative. But two powerful ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... community, and there were good reasons for wanting to be rid of her, and right ways to that end. They took the wrong way and tried her for heresy. In like manner, when the Quakers came among them,—not of the mild, meek, inoffensive modern variety to which we are accustomed, but of the fierce, aggressive early type,—instead of proceeding against them for their overt offenses against the state, disorderly behavior, public indecency, contempt of court, sedition, they proceeded against them distinctly ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... souls of his people. Very Faithful himself stood before the bar of Judge Jeffreys in the person of Richard Baxter. It took all the barefaced falsehood and scandalous injustice of the crown prosecutors to draw out the sham indictment that was read out in court against inoffensive Richard Baxter. But what was lacking in the charge of the crown was soon made up by the abominable scurrility of the judge. 'You are a schismatical knave,' roared out Jeffreys, as soon as Baxter was brought ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... if we count the odd troopers in the last scene, is exceeded in "Old Mortality," and reached, within one or two, both in "Waverley" and "Guy Mannering") that marks the peculiar tone of the modern novel. It is the fact that all these deaths, but one, are of inoffensive, or at least in the world's estimate, respectable persons; and that they are all grotesquely either violent or miserable, purporting thus to illustrate the modern theology that the appointed destiny of a large average of our population is to die like rats in ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... popular. He was a dark-haired, good-looking man, of polished manners, agreeable in society, not given to monkish austerities—except in the matter of Fridays—nor yet to the Low-Church severity of demeanour. He was thoroughly a gentleman, good-humoured, inoffensive, and sociable. But he had one fault: he was not a ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... for a moment uncertain; then turned away and walked up the street, his eyes so blinded by the greater glory that he all but ran down an inoffensive passer-by. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... derived from some distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of "Dungaree Jack"; or from some peculiarity of habit, as shown in "Saleratus Bill," so called from an undue proportion of that chemical in his daily bread; or from some unlucky slip, as exhibited in "The Iron Pirate," a mild, inoffensive man, who earned that baleful title by his unfortunate mispronunciation of the term "iron pyrites." Perhaps this may have been the beginning of a rude heraldry; but I am constrained to think that it was because a man's real name in that day rested solely upon ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... to confess, that the hospitable reception given to American vessels in the ports of Spain gives his Majesty a double right to expect, that their conduct should at least be inoffensive. In the present case, (as stated in your Excellency's letter) I am fully convinced of the justice of this demand, that I should not hesitate to comply with it, even though made on a similar occasion by the Court of Portugal, from whose affected neutrality ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... of the fifty-nine privileged partakers of the pontifical clemency. He is an advocate; at least he was until the day when he obtained his pardon. He related to me the history of the tolerably inoffensive part he had played in 1848; the hopes he had founded on the amnesty; his despair when he found himself excluded from it; some particulars of his life in exile, such, for instance, as his having had recourse ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... understood, tossed off in the frenzied instantaneity of the American mode; before a tiny glassful of Curacao or sugar and water, the Gallic "knight of the round table" will sit for hours in utter content, reading the papers, talking, smoking, or clicking the inoffensive domino. Intoxication is almost unknown in the better cafes; their patrons may sear their oesophagi with hot Chartreuse, derange the nerves with Absinthe, stimulate themselves hourly with their little cups of black coffee and brandy; but they never get drunk. Frenchmen are temperate, even in ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... once more banging the inoffensive music with his stick. "Scabs! We called out our men and they put in scab carpenters. The carpenters went out and the plumbers have gone out; they've all gone out, and now it's only fair—that—you should go out. Stick together and we'll win; in other words, 'united we stand, divided we ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... came on deck absolutely drunk, but he was saturated with rum to the very marrow of his bones. A devil of cruelty, hate, and murder glared from his eyes, and his blasphemies could come from no other place but the lowest depths of the bottomless pit. The mate was comparatively a gentle and inoffensive lamb. He did not curse and swear more than was considered decent and proper on board ship, did his ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... O Yudhishthira, what the nature of thy heart is, and how inoffensive is thy disposition. Thou wilt not, however, by inoffensiveness alone, succeed in ruling thy kingdom. Thy heart is inclined to mildness, thou art compassionate, and thou art exceedingly righteous. Thou art without energy, and thou art virtuous and full of mercy. People, therefore, do not regard ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... enough man for that, all right," suggested another member of the same group, "there wasn't any of them who could pull a bead quicker than our grazing Chief yonder." Wilbur turned and saw crossing the room a quiet-looking, spare man, light-complexioned, and apparently entirely inoffensive. "I guess they were ready enough to give him a wide berth when it came ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... necessity of providing some other entertainment for itself, another brighter genius (or perhaps the same) conceived the humour of impeaching casual passers-by, as Old Bailey spies, and wreaking vengeance on them. Chase was given to some scores of inoffensive persons who had never been near the Old Bailey in their lives, in the realisation of this fancy, and they were roughly hustled and maltreated. The transition to the sport of window-breaking, and thence to the plundering of public-houses, ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... its subtlety and inoffensive humor was the pleasantry with which young Philip Yorke (afterwards Lord Hardwicke), answered Sir Lyttleton Powys's banter on the Western Circuit. An amiable and upright, but far from brilliant judge, Sir Lyttleton had a few pet phrases—-amongst ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... It was now late, and the old clerk came down the stairs with inoffensive imprecations upon the head of his untimely caller, but his mutterings soon gave way to ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... afterward, my interjections were not quite so inoffensive. A torrent of passion burst from me, and he, whose malignity could not justly assert I wanted learning, might, had he stayed, have collected sufficient proofs ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... a cross-town car, effected a transfer, and in a quarter of an hour after leaving the Sanctuary was huddled, an inoffensive heap, like a tired-out workingman, in a corner seat of a Long Island train. From here, there was only a short run ahead of him, and, twenty minutes later, descending from the train at Forest Hills, he ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... neighbors were the Howes, and beyond the impish pleasure she derived from taunting Martin, they had no interest for her. The sisters were timid, inoffensive beings enough; but had they been three times as inoffensive they were nevertheless Howes; moreover, Ellen did not care for docile people. She was a fighter herself and loved a fighter. That was the reason she had always cherished a covert admiration for Martin. His temper ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... has been destroyed, and the vilest atrocities have been committed upon the people. The greater part of the men have, in despair, taken up arms, and, when they get the chance, will avenge their wrongs upon inoffensive Protestants who have ventured to remain in their dwellings. Savagery has begot savagery, and even such a protection order as you have received would go for little with these half-maddened wretches. I should say, therefore, that so long as there are a considerable ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... for murdering or maiming the person injured. It is a weapon invented for us by Nature before Colonel Colt ever lived, and it has this advantage, that one is permitted to wear it in the most law-abiding communities as well as amongst miners and backwoodsmen. If inoffensive people were ever to cast it aside, then wicked men would have everything their own way and make life intolerable. Fortunately the evil-doers always have the fear of this intangible six-shooter before them; a wholesome feeling, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... the blue-bottle fly, are an excellent bait for trout, though they are not good to look at nor pleasant to handle. These can be cultivated by placing offal in a tin can, and keeping it where it will be safe from rats or mice and inoffensive to the nostrils of passersby. In this the blue-bottles will lay their eggs, which will soon develop into gentles. They can be kept in a box filled with moist sand or bran. If kept too long they ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... and she stopped. I could see the look of amazement on our junior's face, and did not wonder at it. What sudden dislike could her mistress have conceived against this inoffensive and devoted creature? ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... them. On the other hand, the militia included in their ranks most of those who had taken part in the murderous expedition of two months before; this fact, and their general character, made it certain that the peaceable and inoffensive Indians would, if encountered, be slaughtered as pitilessly as ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... whether they are really the descendants of the hardy barbarians who so long withstood the military power of the Japanese. But the effect of centuries of repression and conquest must be taken into account. The Ainos have become the peaceable and inoffensive people which we now find them, by many generations of cruel and imperious restraint. That they should have become in this sequence of events a quiet and submissive people is not wonderful. The number of Ainos in the island of Yezo is given in 1880, which is the last census made of them, ...
— Japan • David Murray
... common source of error. It is fatally easy for men to be misled by the names which are applied to things. Sir William Hamilton invented for a certain type of metaphysical doctrine the offensive epithet "nihilism." It is a type which appeals to many inoffensive and pious men at the present day, some of whom prefer to call themselves idealists. Many have been induced to become "free-willists" because the name has suggested to them a proper regard for that freedom which is justly dear to all men. We can ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... shortly after we effected the capture of the batilla; but, being a quiet, inoffensive sort of man, I don't think his loss affected any one very much, while Mr Chisholm the middy, who was made an acting sub-lieutenant in his place—such is the fortune of war— was the reverse of sad when he came up to us presently ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... around him." As a child, his brother informs us, his exemplary behaviour was so conspicuous, that mothers were satisfied of their children's safety, if they learned that they were in company with "Bob Tannahill." Inoffensive in his own dispositions, he entertained every respect for the feelings of others. He enjoyed the intercourse of particular friends, but avoided general society; in company, he seldom talked, and only with a neighbour; he shunned the acquaintance of persons of rank, because he disliked patronage, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... her successor; and he was not of a character which rendered a sentiment either so wise or so liberal would originate with him. At the present period it seems incredible that the learned, accomplished, unassuming, and inoffensive Robinson should neither be tolerated in his peaceable mode of worship in his own country, nor suffered quietly to depart from it. Yet such was the fact. He left his country by stealth, that he might elsewhere enjoy ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... recollections, how many good, quiet, inoffensive men, unendowed with any extraordinary abilities, have been enabled, by means of divinity, to enjoy a long life in ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... on rare occasions. It took something genuinely out of the ordinary to turn an inoffensive pink celluloid doll with one of its legs off into an angry Choolie. But when they were mad the family had discovered by painful experience that the only thing to do was to leave Jane ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... challenges the first nation, whose principles it abhors as much as its own are abhorred—in these circumstances it is hopeless to talk of reconciliation till one or the other is down. Actually, Germany's monstrous conduct in violating the neutrality of a small, industrious and inoffensive Power—a neutrality to which, be it marked, Germany was as much a partner as England or France—has put her hopelessly in the wrong with the civilised world. But that does not alter the fact that the War is primarily ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... chief, this Year,—Schweidnitz still sticking in some people's throats: "Dangerous; a man with such rash practices, rapidities and Pandour tendencies!" Daun is to command in Silesia; Loudon, under him, obscure to us henceforth, and inoffensive to Official people. Reichs Army shall take charge of Saxony; nominally a Reichs Army, though there are 35,000 Austrians in it, as the soul of it, under some Serbelloni, some Stollberg as Chief—(the fact, I believe, is: Serbelloni got angrily ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Presidents by murder, and will doubtless lose many another before the book of American history is closed. If anything is new in this activity of the regicide it is found in the choice of victims. The contemporary "avenger" slays, not the merely great, but the good and the inoffensive—an American President who had struck the chains from millions of slaves; a Russian Czar who against the will and work of his own powerful nobles had freed their serfs; a French President from whom the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Morality to the Taste of the Beau Monde, with all the Embellishments that can please the nice Ears of an intelligent Reader, and with that inoffensive Satir, which corrects the Vices of Men, without making them conceive any Aversion ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... idem: chapter 1.—Translator's Note.) and Weevil, the Sphex (Cf. idem: chapter 4 to 10.—Translator's Note.), Locust, Cricket and Ephippiger (Cf. "The Life of the Grasshopper," by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapters 13 and 14.—Translator's Note.): all these inoffensive peaceable victims are like the silly Sheep of our slaughter-houses; they allow themselves to be operated upon by the paralyser, submitting stupidly, without offering much resistance. The mandibles gape, the legs kick and protest, the body wriggles ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... on the doorstep. I would have stooped to his forehead, but he put up his arm with an extremely boyish, inoffensive gesture, almost with a sob, I thought, to draw ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... felicity would afford me few gratifications. I never shot but to miss the mark, and, to confess the truth, was afraid of the fire of my own gun. I could discover no musick in the cry of the dogs, nor could divest myself of pity for the animal whose peaceful and inoffensive life was sacrificed to our sport. I was not, indeed, always at leisure to reflect upon her danger; for my horse, who had been bred to the chase, did not always regard my choice either of speed or way, but leaped hedges and ditches at his own discretion, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... order and decency was wont to be observed, for he would not endure to hear or see any thing that was rude or unhandsome, but made it the habit of all who kept his company, to entertain themselves with quiet and inoffensive amusements. But in the middle of this entertainment, those who sought occasion to quarrel, fell into dissolute discourse openly, and making as if they were very drunk, committed many insolences on purpose to provoke him. Sertorius, being ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... funny instead of pathetic? I myself had been amused by them many a time. In a book which I had just read, a shop woman, being vexed with an omnibus conductor, had thrown a superannuated orange at him. It had found its billet not on him, but on a perfectly inoffensive spectator. The missile, we are told, "'it a young copper full in the hyeball." I had enjoyed this when I read it, but now that fate had arranged a precisely similar situation, with myself in the role of the young copper, the fun of the thing appealed ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... who endeavoured to serve you, and whose politics were never your concern. If you are a Whig, as I rather hope, and as I think your principles and mine (as brother poets) had ever a bias to the side of liberty, I know you will be an honest man and an inoffensive one. Upon the whole, I know you are incapable of being so much of either party as to be good for nothing. Therefore, once more, whatever you are or in whatever state you are, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fourteenth year. His father was a journeyman ship carpenter—an honest, temperate, hard-working man, who was obliged to struggle with the realities of life in order to win a comfortable subsistence for his large family. In the inoffensive sense of the term, he was a poor man; that is, he lived from hand to mouth, and had not saved a single dollar with which to meet the misfortunes of life. But he had brought up his family as well as he could, and given ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... pressure of the hand, for there was still the possibility of the enemy being close in front. Though as the minutes crawled slowly by, and no fresh sound was heard, the feeling grew stronger and stronger that they had attributed the creeping noise to the enemy, when it was probably some inoffensive wild creature seeking for food, while the enemy had passed the spot in the dark, and were ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... Mackenzie had a habit that was droll, She spent her morning seated on a rock or on a knoll, And threw with much composure A smallish rubber ball At an inoffensive osier By a little waterfall; But Matilda's way of throwing Was like other people's mowing, And she never hit the willow-tree ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... such a quiet, inoffensive little party. She don't come in all scented with Peau d'Espagne, nor she don't stare at you bored, or pat her hair or polish her nails while you're waitin' to think of the right word. She don't ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... of the east little thought, I'll warrant it, while they were harassing the inoffensive province of Nieuw Nederlandts, and driving its unhappy governor to his wits' end, that an historian would ever arise, and give them their own with interest. Since, then, I am but performing my bounden duty as ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... robber, had been an inoffensive, small ranchero, kidnapped with circumstances of peculiar atrocity from his home during one of the civil wars, and forced to serve in the army. There his conduct as soldier was exemplary, till, watching his ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... forger, an escaped convict in hiding, or, by the more charitable, a maniac as yet not dangerous. North Aston held him in deeper horror than it had held even Pepita, and his true personality exercised its wits more keenly than had even the true personality of madame. In point of fact, he was a quiet, inoffensive, amiable man, who gave his mind to Sanskrit for work and to entomology for play, and did not trouble himself about his own portrait as drawn in the local vernacular. Nevertheless, for all his reserved habits and quiet ways, he had learnt the whole history of the place and people before he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... west her silent course advance With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps On her soft axle, while she faces even And bears thee soft with ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... editor—that grave and learned scribe is in the enjoyment—of all the sense originally vouchsafed to him. We know the stories that are in the most unfeeling manner told to the disadvantage of the learned and inoffensive gentleman; we know them, and shall not shrink from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... young, of which they have generally two at a time. As they are very slow in their movements, to afford themselves time to escape they have sentinels posted while they are feeding, whose duty is to give notice of approaching danger. They are very good tempered and inoffensive, though the mothers will attack those who molest their young. Mr Kilby told us of a man who had his leg bitten off by a female, while he was attempting to carry away her cub. We now once more took to the boat. We had not been long under weigh ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... was abuzz with excitement. There were two usually inoffensive persons "on the dissecting table," as Walky Dexter called it—Nelson and Hopewell Drugg. Much had already been said about the missing coin collection and Nelson Haley's connection with it; so the second topic of conversation rather overshadowed the schoolmaster's trouble. It was being repeated ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... but there is nothing in it to warrant the belief that it will be selected by a remote posterity to be bound up among the lives of truly great and good men. Catharine II. extended the privileges of the nobility, made wars upon inoffensive nations, corrupted the morals of her people, and manifested her regard for the serfs by giving large numbers of them away to her paramours. The Emperor Alexander I. was ambitious of distinction, as the most cultivated and enlightened sovereign of his time. He issued liberal edicts, but seldom observed ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... he regarded a Fenian attack upon Canada fully as justifiable as an assault of the same character upon England, or any other portion of her majesty's dominions. The empire, he contended, was a unit and no part of it could be assailed, that did not possess, in relation to Ireland, just as inoffensive people as the Canadians were. Fenianism, he presumed, did not pretend to make war upon individuals, but upon a government, in any or all of its ramifications, that was alleged to be oppressive and an enemy to civil and religious freedom; and so long as any people chose to endorse ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... thought of it before? Ever since he had turned on the lights, he had been subjectively busy trying to invest her presence there with some plausible excuse. But somnambulism had never once entered his mind. And in his stupidity, at pains though he had been to render his words inoffensive, he had been guilty ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... to be reaped from these studies, beyond the gratification of an innocent curiosity, yet ought not even this to be despised; as being one accession to those few safe and harmless pleasures, which are bestowed on human race. The sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads through the avenues of science and learning; and whoever can either remove any obstructions in this way, or open up any new prospect, ought so far to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind. And though these researches may appear painful and fatiguing, it is with some minds ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... in this present clash of emotions, Iris little understood what her advice really meant. She was appealing to heaven rather than to the force of arms. To one of her temperament, it seemed incredible that a number of inoffensive strangers should be slaughtered because a South American republic could not agree in choosing a president. Such a thing was unheard of in her previous experience, built on no more solid foundation than the humdrum existence of Brussels and ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... look to the police intelligence, and I can discover that I may bite off a human living nose cheaply, but if I take off the dead nose of a pig or a calf from a shop- window, it will cost me exceedingly dear. I also find that if I allow myself to be betrayed into the folly of killing an inoffensive tradesman on his own door-step, that little incident will not affect the testimonials to my character, but that I shall be described as a most amiable young man, and as, above all things, remarkable for the singular ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... Good Spirit, (whom they call in the Seneca language Nau-wan-e-u,) as the Creator of the world, and of every good thing—that he made men, and all inoffensive animals; that he supplies men with all the comforts of life; and that he is particularly partial to the Indians, whom they say are his peculiar people. They also believe that he is pleased in giving them (the Indians) good gifts; and ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... fiendish a fashion. I was ready to be sorry for them when I was crushing their boat. But this makes me feel as if one ought to lose no opportunity for sweeping the venomous wretches off the face of the earth. They have no excuse, you see. It is our lives or theirs. We are inoffensive enough surely; and they would have gained by our presence if they had been friendly. But ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... of England, the fleet under my orders has given you a signal chastisement, by the total destruction of your navy storehouses and arsenal, with half your batteries. As England does not make war for the destruction of cities, I am unwilling to visit your personal cruelties upon the inoffensive inhabitants of the country, and I therefore offer you the same terms of peace which I conveyed to you yesterday in my Sovereign's name. Without the acceptance of these terms you can ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... and as it did so I stepped forward, remarking to the taciturn black boy, "Clear cut, Paddy!" The words were on my lips when a "waddy," torn from the vindictive tree and flung, high and straight into the inoffensive sky, descended flat on the red stump with a gunlike report. The swish of the waddy down-tilted the frayed brim of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... "bottom," and the Rattle Snake Fork of Paint, the driver discovered poor old Jake laid out, stiff and cold as a wedge! Alas, poor old Jake! Gone! Quite a gloom hung over the "grocery;" Jake was an inoffensive, good old fellow, nobody denied that, and certain young "fellers" who had shaved the tail of Jake's mare the night previous, and set her loose, now felt sort of sorry for the deed. The editor of the "Argus of Freedom" came down to the "grocery," to get his morning "nip," heard the news, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... amused him at first—her too, a little—to keep up this farce of indifference. But every now and then he turned and stared at some inoffensive visitor who was taking interest in them, with such fierce and genuine contempt that Gyp took alarm; whereon he laughed. When she had drunk a little wine and he had drunk a good deal, the farce of indifference came to its end. He talked at a great rate now, slying nicknaming the waiters ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... assumes quite a different colour; and it would rather appear, that, instead of assisting to put down piracy in the Bornean waters, the first act of the philanthropic Englishman was to assist the Malay Sultan in enslaving several tribes of inoffensive Dyaks, and forcing them to work without pay in the mines of antimony! This appears to have been the nature of the services that purchased Sarawak. It was, in fact, aiding the pirates, instead of putting them down: since the Bornean ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... not overharsh in passing judgment upon him. I verily believe that he had no more desire to be irreverent than you or I have. The fault lay rather in the religious coldness and carelessness of those days than in him. He was liked and respected by every one as a harmless, inoffensive, good-hearted old fellow, and I cannot better close this brief account of some of his peculiarities than by saying—as I do with all ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... after this, of how little my peaceful and inoffensive disposition would avail me, was with an evening club which I joined. For some time I got on very well with the persons who composed this association, and seemed—at least I thought so—to be rather ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... general Sally, and attack all that are so unfortunate as to walk the Streets through which they patrole. Some are knock'd down, others stabb'd, others cut and carbonado'd. To put the Watch to a total Rout, and mortify some of those inoffensive Militia, is reckon'd a Coup d'eclat. The particular Talents by which these Misanthropes are distinguished from one another, consist in the various kinds of Barbarities which they execute upon their Prisoners. Some are celebrated for a happy Dexterity in ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... approve of the expedition. There was no evidence that the Indian encampment consisted of anything more than half a dozen wigwams, where a few inoffensive savages, with their wives and children, were eking out a half-starved existence by hunting, fishing, and digging up roots from the forest. It did not seem wise to send an army of two hundred and sixteen men ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... the air of a conquered country. His moustache was less fierce, his stride less proprietary. Indeed he might easily have been mistaken, by those to whom his name and dignities were unknown, for the pear-shaped but inoffensive keeper of a delicatessen shop. Prince Adalbert of Lippe-Schweidnitz was also changed. He no longer roamed afield; he kept within six feet of his protective equerry. He slouched less; and he had ceased to scowl ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... avoided all engagements with that youth; for besides that Tommy Jones was an inoffensive lad amidst all his roguery, and really loved Blifil, Mr Thwackum being always the second of the latter, would have been ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Knights Templars. In 1118 Hugues de Payens, Geoffrey de St. Aldemar, and seven other French noblemen, whose hearts were touched by the sufferings which the pilgrims underwent in their journey to Jerusalem, formed themselves into a society with the object of the protection of these inoffensive persons on their transit from the coast inland. Hugues de Payens, received in audience by Pope Honore II., was sent by the Pontiff to the Peers of the Council, then assembled at Troyes in Champagne; the Council approving of so charitable an enterprise, the Order was formed, ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... since, but are relatively diminishing before the emigration from other states of the Union. Their descendants show many of the peculiar and distinctive traits of that people in all countries. They possess mild vivacity, and gaiety, and are distinguished for their quiet, inoffensive, domestic, frugal, and unenterprising spirit and manners. The poorer class of French are rather peculiar and unique. Their ancestors were isolated from the rest of the world, had no object of excitement ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... uttered, would have alarmed many a one of less courage than our young hunter, and Basil was at first, as he afterwards confessed, "slightly flurried;" but a moment's reflection told him what the animal was—one of the most innocent and inoffensive of God's creatures—the Canada porcupine. It was this, then, that had barked the scrub pines—for they are its favourite food; and it was its track—which in reality very much resembles that of a child—that Basil had ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... that in all this a great injustice is, or would be, done to her; that she was a plain, inoffensive creature, and by no means desirous of drawing upon herself the observation of the crowd. As a matter of fact, she was but following the bent of her natural disposition. From her earliest childhood she had yearned to go forth into ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... the shiftless one, as a rifle was fired from the northern shore, and a bullet plashed in the water just ahead of them. Then came a second shot from the same source which struck the inoffensive river behind them. They were now being attacked from both banks while the great ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I felt as if I never wanted to see it again from any place. To think of me, a decent God-fearing, seafaring man, at my time of life, turning soldier!" It is not in the power of written language to express the peculiar intonation of contempt which the old man laid upon that inoffensive word, "soldier." No one venturing to interrupt him, after staring at his particular aversion for a few moments, he went on more mildly, and ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... suspected of her that she wrote under a nom de guerre. She had come with a gentleman by the name of Gouvernail, connected with one of the daily papers, of whom nothing special could be said, except that he was observant and seemed quiet and inoffensive. Edna herself made the tenth, and at half-past eight they seated themselves at table, Arobin and Monsieur Ratignolle on either side of ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... think that item of evidence so satisfactory as Isel did. But he had not come with any intention of ferreting out doubtful characters or suspicious facts. He was no ardent heretic-hunter, but a quiet, peaceable man, as inoffensive ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... Jackson County, being their center; but from the first, they were unpopular among the Missourians. Their system of equal rights with their marked disapproval of every species of aristocratic separation and self-aggrandizement was declared to be a species of communism, dangerous to the state. An inoffensive journalistic organ, The Star, published for the purpose of properly presenting the religious tenets of the people, was made the particular object of the mob's rage; the house of its publisher was razed to the ground, the press and type were confiscated, and the editor and his ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... giant. He was laughed at and abused for it, and rough coachmen even lashed at the giant with their whips. But was that just? What may not be done by habit? Habit had brought Stepan Trofimovitch almost to the same position, but in a more innocent and inoffensive form, if one may use such expressions, for he was a most ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... profit by trial, wherever held. Mock respect of the miners for the Squire. Elect a president at the trial. The Squire allowed to play at judge. Lay counsel for prosecution and defense. Ingenious defense of the accused. Verdict of guilty. Light sentence, on account of previous popularity and inoffensive conduct. Thirty-nine lashes, and to leave the river. Owner of gold-dust indemnified by transfer of thief's interest in a mine. A visit to Smith's Bar. Crossing the river on log bridges Missouri Bar. Smith's a sunny camp, unlike Indian. Frenchman's ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... Use.—Though entirely inoffensive, no part of the plant is used for food. The pods resemble some species of snails in a remarkable degree, and are placed on dishes of salad for the purpose of exciting curiosity, or for pleasantly surprising the guests ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... do, I should think that even a cynic like yourself might give two defenseless, inoffensive ladies the benefit of ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... habitually of poor old Jovial; unless we recognize as a token of remembrance on his part, his irresistible propensity to bite all the white horses he has met with, ever since the death of his venerable companion, though before, he was the most inoffensive of dogs with regard to horses of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... was my friend the chief. He spoke in a slow and dignified manner, but the rest worked themselves up into a furious rage, and twanged their bowstrings, and jumped about and fitted arrows to their bows, and pointed them at inoffensive "papaya" trees, whilst two little boys shot small arrows into the green and yellow fruit, seeming to catch the fever from their elders. One man actually danced a kind of war-dance on his own account, strutting ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... certainly pure caricature is the villain of art, and the popular draughtsman, like the popular actor, should, to remain popular in his work, always play the virtuous hero. If the leading actor must play the villain, he takes care to make up inoffensive and tame. So the villain caricaturist need not be "ugly"—but then he cannot be strong. Nor is it left to an actor—unless he be the star or actor-manager—to remain popular by being tame and pretty in every part. So is ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... founded, it can be easily imagined its effect upon the inventive genius of the Americans. War-engines took colossal proportions, and projectiles launched beyond permitted distances cut inoffensive pedestrians to pieces. All these inventions left the timid instruments of European artillery far behind them. This may be estimated by ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... squalid, unhealthy people, typical of the region they frequent; but who are, in reality, more robust than the Europeans in India, and whose disagreeably sallow complexion is deceptive as indicating a sickly constitution. They are a mild, inoffensive people, industrious for Orientals, living by annually burning the Terai jungle and cultivating the cleared spots; and, though so sequestered and isolated, they rather court than avoid intercourse with those whites whom they know to ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker |
