"Inopportune" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Kenmuir like its evil genius. His sallow face was perpetually turning up at inopportune moments. When Kenmuir Queen, the prize short-horn heifer, calved unexpectedly and unattended in the dip by the lane, Tammas and the Master, summoned hurriedly by Owd Bob, came running up to find the little man leaning against the stile, and shaking with silent merriment. ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Liszt and Karl Ritter at my house. Ritter's looks alone, and still more, a certain abrupt contradictoriness in his way of speaking, seemed to put Liszt into a state in which he was easily irritated. One evening Liszt was speaking in an impressive tone of the merits of the Jesuits, and Ritter's inopportune smiles appeared to offend him. At table the conversation turned on the Emperor of the French, Louis Napoleon, whose merits Liszt rather summarily insisted that we should acknowledge, whereas we were, on the whole, anything ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... affected and stirred by the official atrocities in the Punjab and the manifestly dishonest breach of official declarations on the Khilafat. With the knowledge that India was bleeding at heart, the Government of India should have told His Majesty's ministers that the moment was inopportune for sending the Prince. I venture to submit that it is adding insult to injury to bring the Prince and through his visit to steal honours and further prestige for a Government that deserves to be dismissed with disgrace. I claim that I prove ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... said smoothly, "that our visit is not inopportune. Sir Richard Dyson, I believe?" he continued, bowing—"my friend, Mr. Masters here, has consulted me as to the loss of a betting book, and we ventured to call to ask you, sir, if by any chance on his recent visit ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were Johnson, Goldsmith, Davies (the actor and bookseller who had conferred on Boswell the invaluable favour of an introduction to Johnson), Mr. Eccles, and the Rev. Mr. Ogilvie, a Scotch poet who deserves our gratitude because it was his inopportune patriotism that provoked, on this very evening, the memorable epigram about the high-road leading to England. "Goldsmith," says Boswell, who had not got over his envy at Goldsmith's being allowed to visit the blind old pensioner in Bolt-court, "as usual, endeavoured with too much ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... with two or three feathers of the capercailzie and a plume of the royal eagle. Old Hansel was one of the gamekeepers on a large imperial preserve close by, with whom some years previously I had on more than one occasion shared a hard couch under the stunted pines when inopportune night overtook us near the glaciers while in hot ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... son's mistake, the four daughters rush in, having been liberated by their lovers and their unknown brother, whom they greet with a fondness very shocking to the old Marchioness. The elderly suitors withdraw, swearing to take vengeance on the inopportune brother. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... listen to you, although your visit is most inopportune, for I have eighty guests or more in my drawing-room. ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... the fact that your manuscript score arrived at a time most inopportune, I having recently renounced all but my most pressing lessons to plunge myself entirely into an atmosphere of profound creation, I have conscientiously performed the task you imposed upon me. That this task proved very little worth while, I write with double ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... mishap occurred in the inopportune arrival of the Rev. Lisle Lindsay, whose rather sedate and solemn appearance cast a slight gloom upon everybody's spirits, which deepened when Queenie whispered to Mildred that he looked upon dancing as a frivolous and worldly amusement ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... mistake in the interpretation of the gesture, he invariably accompanies it by the phrase: "What a fool I am!" All will admit that if a man really believed himself the author of his discovery, he takes a very inopportune time to declare his impotence and his stupidity so distinctly. But taking none too kindly his avowal which, moreover, is but the proclamation of an indisputable truth, let us rather say that this act of humility is forced from him by ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... Aristocratic government proceeds with the dexterity of art; it understands how to make the collective force of all its laws converge at the same time to a given point. Such is not the case with democracies, whose laws are almost always ineffective, or inopportune. The means of democracy are therefore more imperfect than those of aristocracy, and the measures which it unwittingly adopts are frequently opposed to its own cause; but the object it has in ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... I would know the little cub again but I don't." Mr. Johnson said further, that Mr. Young observed that life was a sad, sad thing —"because the joy of every new marriage a man contracted was so apt to be blighted by the inopportune funeral of a less recent bride." And Mr. Johnson said that while he and Mr. Young were pleasantly conversing in private, one of the Mrs. Youngs came in and demanded a breast-pin, remarking that she had found out that he had been giving a breast-pin ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... His tongue was decidedly Hanoverian, with its repetitions, its catchwords—"That's quite another thing! That's quite another thing!"—its rattling indomitability, its loud indiscreetness. His speeches, made repeatedly at the most inopportune junctures, and filled pell-mell with all the fancies and furies that happened at the moment to be whisking about in his head, were the consternation of Ministers. He was one part blackguard, people said, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... whole has been peaceful. From 5 a.m. we have been very busy among the Australian wounded, these being the principal sufferers in yesterday's fight, owing, it is said, to their charging with the bayonet at an inopportune moment. Many of their senior officers passed through our hands, and their men, fine, big fellows, in ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... now be necessary to relate how the deputy happened to appear at such an inopportune moment for Simon. The planter, after awaiting the return of Simon for over two hours, was informed by the saloon keeper to whom he appealed, that he had entrusted his money to Simon Suggs, and that his chances of ever seeing it again were poor indeed. On discovering ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... mater!" said Arthur kindly. "It's very tiresome of Peggy to disappear at such an inopportune moment, but no harm can have happened to her, you know. It's impossible! As I said before, she has probably some wild prank in her head of which this is a part. I'll give her a lecture when I catch her for spoiling dinner like ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... organisation of the municipality, and delivered a splendid series of orations on various abuses, such as plural voting, iniquitous monopolies, etc. Yet he proved his studious moderation by strenuously declaiming against the famous "Declaration of the Rights of Man," pronouncing it inopportune and perilous. His heroic harangues provoked disorder in his audience dangerous to himself. But his courage was dauntless, for even when the king and his chief minister abandoned the royal prerogative, Mirabeau ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... HARALD). How are you, Rejn?—Oho! I understand. I have come at an inopportune moment with my complaints of John? You have all got something more ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... all expectation, "Lohengrin" should turn out a success, and its publication a good speculation, they would think of me in a generous manner—in case of all this these gentlemen will not consider it unfair or inopportune if I look upon the circumstances as changed to such an extent that I may now think of some profit for myself. In the first instance it is a fact confirmed to me by repeated observations and experiences that ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... nor play with her, it served her as a temporary refuge—as would a shelter until the rain was over—and Felix delighted in it because it kept Kling out of the way, the good-natured Dutchman having often spoiled a sale by what Felix called "inopportune remarks at opportune moments." ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... certain rash greatness of idea; traces of veritable conviction, just resolution; veritable and just, though rash. That of admiration for King Friedrich was not intrinsically foolish, in the solitary thoughts of the poor young fellow; nay it was the reverse; though it was highly inopportune in the place where he stood. Nor was the Holstein notion bad; it was generous rather, noble and natural, though, again, somewhat impracticable in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... house of Mrs. Loring, his mind was in a state of painful excitement. The inopportune appearance of Dexter had so annoyed him, that he had found it impossible to assume the easy, cheerful air of a visitor. He was conscious, therefore, of having shown himself in the eyes of Miss Loring to very poor advantage. Her manner at parting had, however, reassured him. As they stood for ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... him. Eric felt the meeting inopportune; he was ashamed to meet his friend, ashamed to speak to him, envious of him, and jealous of his better reputation. He wanted to pass him by without notice, but Russell would not suffer this. He came up to him and took his arm affectionately. The slightest ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... we were interrupted by a knock at the Master's door. It was most inopportune, for he was on the point of the great disclosure, but common politeness compelled him to answer it, and as the step which we had heard was that of one of the softer-footed sex, he chose to rise from his ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... make a heated reply, when two tall figures appeared in the doorway, and waved an eager greeting. The older of the two was none other than Hector Darcy himself—(Tiresome creature! to put in an appearance at such an inopportune moment!)—and Arthur was his companion, looking well, what Arthur always did look in his sister's eyes—the handsomest and most distinguished man in the room. Peggy had seen him earlier in the evening, but through ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... entreated, as they were parting, "be more than ordinarily prudent. Do not take any risks, even the most trivial, unless you feel you must. Perhaps I'm weak and foolish, but I'm possessed with a strange, nervous dread. This sudden call of duty—for so I suppose I must look upon it—seems so inopportune;" and she hid ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... to Miss West, another tumultuous, inopportune return to the experience of half a score years back, to find that she could no more dictate to Bill Nairne on this small matter than she could have done it as Mad ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Combray and M. Acquet de Ferolles. The latter's denunciations had borne fruit; the Marquise was represented as having tried "to get rid of her son-in-law by poisoning his drink." And the old story of the bottles of wine sent to Abbe Clarisse and of his inopportune death were revived; all the unpleasant rumours that had formerly circulated around Donnay were amplified, made grosser, and elevated to the position of accomplished facts. It was decided that poison "was a weapon familiar to the Marquise ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... his seat. He was much agitated too, though doing all that was possible to conceal it. My inopportune arrival was evidently a great and unlooked-for vexation to him. He gave me the only look of passionate displeasure I have ever had from him, as he sat down again; but ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... Mr. Brace concluded to enter. Mr. Wynn and the wounded man, who occupied an arm-chair by the window, were the only occupants of the room. But in spite of the former's ostentatious greeting, Brace could see that his visit was inopportune and unwelcome. The sheriff nodded a quick, impatient recognition, which, had it not been accompanied by an anathema on the heat, might have been taken as a personal insult. Neither spoke of Miss Nellie, although it was patent to Brace that they were momentarily expecting ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Congress in January 1866—the very first demand ever made for Congressional action on woman suffrage. Senator Sumner, for whom women had rolled up 400,000 signatures for the Thirteenth Amendment, now presented under protest "as most inopportune" a petition headed by Lydia Maria Child, who for years had been his valiant aid in antislavery work; and Thaddeus Stevens, heretofore friendly to woman suffrage and ever zealous for the Negro, ignored a petition from New York headed ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... hetus but are really not so. Nyaya sutras enumerate five fallacies (hetvabhasas) of the middle (hetu): savyabhicara (erratic), viruddha (contradictory), prakara@nasama (tautology), saddhyasama (unproved reason) and kalatita (inopportune). Savyabhicara is that where the same reason may prove opposite conclusions (e.g. sound is eternal because it is intangible like the atoms which are eternal, and sound is non-eternal because it is intangible like cognitions which ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... best and truest of them are only fragments of the perfect friendship. They bring us only little cupfuls of blessing. Their gentleness is marred by human infirmity, and sometimes turns to harshness. Their helpfulness at best is impulsive and uncertain, and ofttimes is inopportune and ill-timed. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... really sometimes said things which were quite inopportune, and you managed now and then to let out an exalted: I love you! on such singular occasions, that I was obliged to restrain a strong desire to laugh. There are times when the words: I love you! are so out of place, that they become indecorous; ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... honors as an act of indifference towards themselves. It might be possible, therefore—but you will be the best judge—that the honor now proposed for me might lead to an aggravation of this feeling of dissatisfaction, which arises at the very inopportune moment of the birth of ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... question, a matter of mental states. Feats of legal subtlety are inopportune, arithmetical exploits still more so. To emerge with the sum of 4s. 6-1/2d. as a minimum, by calculating on the basis of the mine's present earnings, from a conference which the miners and everybody ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... other, the Duke was driven to the extremity of his exiguous Royal wits; until finally, in sheer desperation, he decided to make the plunge—to break the news to the King. Had he but known how inopportune the time was he would surely have taken the first boat back to Calais rather than face his brother's anger. George was distracted by trouble at home and abroad. His mother was dying; across the Atlantic the clouds of war were massing; the political atmosphere was charged with ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... the position of Lord Canning's government in India at the time of the Mutiny. It marks the progress of public opinion that, whereas the Indian Government only ventured to take power to prevent inopportune publication with many apologies, and as a temporary measure, the Parliament assumed it as self-evident that "forged, scandalous, seditious, libellous, and unlicensed papers, pamphlets, and books" had no right to ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... agriculturalist. He may, as he says, have forgotten in the trenches all the old tricks of the orator's trade, but he has learned some useful new ones, and while delighting the House with his sporting metaphors struck some shrewd blows at a measure which he regards as unfair and inopportune. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... Porthos, I conjure you, let me act. No false generosity! No inopportune devotedness! You knew nothing of my projects. You have done nothing of yourself. With me it is different. I alone am the author of this plot. I stood in need of my inseparable companion; I called upon you, and you came to me in remembrance of our ancient device, 'All for one, one for all.' ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... works of letters. But as there has been, and I hope will be, no ignoring of individuals here, and as this whole book endeavours to be a history of a kind, remarks on subdivisions of that kind as such can hardly be regarded as inopportune or inconsistent. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... thus thrust into the foreground of discussion at a most inopportune time. The Florida treaty had not yet been ratified, for reasons best known to His Majesty the King of Spain, and the new Spanish Minister, General Vives, had just arrived in the United States to ask for certain explanations. ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... acknowledge the receipt of your letter of February 12th, dealing with certain very important points connected with the problem of National Defence. Though it would be inopportune for me to pass any detailed judgment upon the scheme which you have laid before me in outline, and though it is evident that difficulties of a serious kind must attend any effort to carry out so important a change in our traditional methods of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... fine talent! Think better of yourself. I hope, at least, that I have not been so unlucky as to surprise you in one of those inopportune moments." ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... considered it inopportune to give Mr. Gerard the Emperor's memorandum, as I assumed that he would read into it merely a confirmation of his view, and would discuss it in that light. If, however, the idea spread abroad that we were about to begin the unrestricted submarine campaign ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... head to glance sharply at Captain Clubbe, at Colville, at Turner, who listened with that half-contemptuous silence which Englishmen oppose to unnecessary or inopportune speech. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... Helen," said the other, "but it is certainly inopportune for you. Of course the company ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... interrupted this inopportune conversation, the violence increasing with the noise till the whole atmosphere seemed ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... flesh and blood: God forbid that I should join the imploring procession, even at a respectful distance! My pen is at your service. I prefer to be your historian, your literary maid—half slave, half confidant; for then you will always welcome me. If I were a lover, I might some day be inopportune. That would ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... movement, which found the principal cause of social progress in the tendency of humanity to attain supreme development and perfection. Then there were the "narodnikis" who considered the "proletariazation" of the Russian peasant impossible and inopportune. There were also the various groups of Socialists who applauded the criticism that Bernstein made on the Marxian orthodoxy. So several deviations were made from the original theory; there were grave dissensions and interminable and bitter ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... could not help thinking what a good thing it would be to draw out the present writer upon his favorite borderland between the spiritual and the material." The communication came to me, as the writer reminds me in a recent letter, at a "painfully inopportune time," and though it was courteously answered, was not made the ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... contributed on this occasion, by the defeat of the troops under him, a greater benefit to the cause than often falls to the lot of a commander of an equal force to render by means of a victory" (Grant's "Memoirs"). A tactical success may be not only useless, but actually inopportune, if it is out of accord with the plans of the higher command. On the morning of June 18, 1815, Marshal Grouchy was in {8} pursuit of the Prussians whom Napoleon had defeated on June 16 at Ligny. Although urged "to march to the sound of the cannon" (at Waterloo), Grouchy pushed on eastwards, where ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... even apostolic," said the doctor, with one or two contented and discontented grunts. Eleanor understood them; the content was his own, the discontent referred to the speaker whose words were so inopportune. The doctor rose and left the ground. Mr. Rhys had gone even before him; and Eleanor wondered anew whether this man were indeed shy or not. He was so little seen and heard; yet spoke, when he spoke, with such clearness and self-possession. He was gone now, and Mr. Carlisle ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the master of the puppet-show, and put a speedy and final end to that grave and solemn harangue, of which we have given the reader a sufficient taste already. Nothing indeed could have happened so very inopportune as this accident; the most wanton malice of fortune could not have contrived such another stratagem to confound the poor fellow, while he was so triumphantly descanting on the good morals inculcated by his exhibitions. His mouth was now as effectually stopt, as that of quack must be, if, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... said, with an expressively apologetic gesture,— "Have I come at an inopportune moment? I saw your uncle arrive, and I was extremely anxious to see him on a little confidential matter— I ventured to persuade your servant to ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... authority by abusing the kiss with untimely kisses. When they feel that their husband or their lover is a little tired, at those times when the heart as well as the body needs rest, instead of understanding what is going on within him, they persist in giving inopportune caresses, tire him by the obstinacy of begging lips and give caresses lavished with neither ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... up the rivers. There were several other craft lying off the town, into which the inhabitants were crowding, with all their effects of any value, no doubt intending to go a little way up into the country also, to avoid the inconvenience of inopportune calls. The signal was made for our little squadron to get out their boats, chase, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... letter-box in his door and found a bundle of papers relating to a law case which he was asked to take up. The interruption was too much. He flung the papers on the table with remarks more forcible than complimentary concerning the person who had distracted his attention at such an inopportune moment. In 1863 he was made a professor at Cambridge, where, no longer troubled with the intricacies of land tenure, he published one investigation after another with ceaseless activity, to the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... Duchess continued, "look upon your husband's arrival as inopportune and unfortunate. We are all agreed that you must be kept apart. Certain obligations have been laid upon you. You could not possibly fulfil them with a husband at your elbow. The matter will be put plainly before your husband, as I am ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... when we left Crowland, and before we had replaced a tire casing that, as usual, collapsed at an inopportune moment, the long English twilight had come to an end. The road to Peterborough, however, is level and straight as an arrow. The right of way was clear and all conditions gave our car opportunity to do its utmost. It was about ten o'clock when ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... practice and arrangements go, varies in almost every parish of England more or less; and, I repeat, it is almost impossible to deal with it successfully. We ought not to enter into the subject of the poor laws hastily, or at an inopportune period like the present. It will be better to wait till the country is restored to a state of complete prosperity, and then investigate the subject with a proper ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... where she was; if the tears came, she yielded to them as if they were something she had long desired in vain. Few could weep like her, and "weep like Aasa Kvaerk," was soon also added to the stock of parish proverbs. And then her laugh! Tears may be inopportune enough, when they come out of time, but laughter is far worse; and when poor Aasa once burst out into a ringing laughter in church, and that while the minister was pronouncing the benediction, it was only with the greatest difficulty ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... while Mother, Mary, and Betty were turning the House upside down; and in this her Care, she so well succeeded, that, to her Dismay, he bade her take Pen and Ink, and commenced dictating to her as composedly as if they were in Bunhill Fields. This was somewhat inopportune, for every Thing was to seek and to set in Order; and, indeed, Mother soon came in, all of a Heat, and sayd, "I wonder, my Dear, you can keep Nan here, at such idling, when she has her Bed to make, and her Box to unpack." Father ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... Mrs. Hancock was also in the city, and some fine preparations were made. There was a heated discussion. Some of the more sedate people, who never took part in gayeties, represented that this would be a most inopportune time for such a revel when the country was in the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... cardinals and archbishops, entreated his Holiness not to submit the dogma of infallibility for consideration, "because the Church has to sustain at present a struggle unknown in former times, against men who oppose religion itself as an institution baneful to human nature, and that it is inopportune to impose upon Catholic nations, led into temptation by so many machinations, more dogmas than the Council of Trent proclaimed." It added that "the definition demanded would furnish fresh arms to the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... know where the switch is?" he asked, wondering whether she was going to be such an idiot as to faint at this inopportune moment. ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... that this inopportune flirting with fate must stop; that I must give over dallying with sensations, or it would soon be all over with me. I was falling a prey to the native Lorelei—for all these spots in Japan have their familiar devils—subjectively, as ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... driven the pink car, in this serious young professional clad in the Mercury's racing gray and bearing the Mercury's silver insignia on his shoulder. The bend of his mouth was firmer, his dark-blue eyes had acquired the steady, all-embracing keenness of Gerard's—the gaze of all those men with whom the inopportune flicker of an eyelid may mean destruction. He was clothed with his virile youth as with a radiant garment, as he smiled ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... without making any noise whatever. It was one of his amiable peculiarities that he never made any noise, but appeared and disappeared without giving any warning, making himself very agreeable thereby at inopportune moments. He slipped in without a sound, deftly left the door in its previous position, and at once slipped into a chair, or rather took possession of one, by balancing himself on the extreme edge of it, arranging his legs on the lower bar ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to me—as indeed to anyone. For ten minutes, perhaps, a wire must be carried from the overhead line to the chestnut-tree. Creake has everything in his favour, but it is just within possibility that the driver of an inopportune train might notice the appendage. What of that? Why, for more than a week he has seen a derelict kite with its yards of trailing string hanging in the tree. A very calculating mind, Mr. Hollyer. It would be interesting ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... of Pichegru; and those who were plotting the overthrow of the Consular Government knew that that measure could not be attempted with any chance of success without the assistance of Moreau. The moment was inopportune; but, being initiated in some secrets of the British Cabinet, they knew that the peace was but a truce, and they determined to profit by that truce to effect a reconciliation which might afterwards secure a community of interests. Moreau and Pichegru had not been friends since Moreau sent ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of the religious zealots, in spite of the most urgent appeals from the other members, persisted in holding in the reception room of the Capitol directly after a morning session of the convention. The affair itself was most inopportune but, to make it still worse, the cranks and bores who always are watching for an opportunity, gained control and turned ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... generation, we are asking the question, "What is the Negro Teacher doing in the matter of uplifting his race?" In so brief a period of years it would seem to savor of arrogance to ask a question so seemingly fraught with significance, so inopportune and, too, about a people so recently freed from bondage that they have not yet had the time to grow a generation of teachers. It took England more than a generation to grow an Arnold at Rugby. It took France more than several generations ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... the proprietors of the Company's stock from the sudden alteration. It cannot be said that any constitutional principle was involved in what was merely a commercial regulation, or relaxation of such regulations. Yet it may not be thought inopportune to mention the transaction thus briefly, as one important step toward the establishment of free-trade, which, at the end of fifty years from the time when Pitt first laid the foundation of it, was gradually forcing itself on all our statesmen, as the only ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... passing touch to show me my secret grief was understood, and my inconsistency was pardoned. I needed the generous smile to prove to me that my greed for kindness, even when perhaps inopportune, was met in an ungrudging spirit. I needed now and then—I needed this sometimes terribly, more, perhaps, than any other thing—a sacrifice of some very small, very personal desire of yours, because it was not mine or because it ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... physical condition, but the fact that there is a most favorable time and condition for such thought and work should continually be borne in mind. Without this a man with natural endowment may try his wings at flight at an inopportune time, and if he fails he may be firmly convinced that he was never made ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... PRIME MINISTER managed to get the House out of its hostile mood and to satisfy the majority, at any rate, that the measure was neither provocative nor inopportune, but a necessary precaution against the possibility that "direct action" on the part of extra-Parliamentary bodies might confront the country with the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... Aristocratic government proceeds with the dexterity of art; it understands how to make the collective force of all its laws converge at the same time to a given point. Such is not the case with democracies, whose laws are almost always ineffective or inopportune. The means of democracy are therefore more imperfect than those of aristocracy, and the measures which it unwittingly adopts are frequently opposed to its own cause; but the object it has in view is ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... cleansing the shores of the land, and carrying off the filth that was constantly poured into the sea there-from; which, Peterkin suggested, was remarkably tidy of it to do. Poor Peterkin could never let slip an opportunity to joke, however inopportune it might be: which at first we found rather a disagreeable propensity, as it often interrupted the flow of very agreeable conversation; and, indeed, I cannot too strongly record my disapprobation of this tendency in general: but we became so ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Further, Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiv, 16) that "the movement of the genital members is sometimes inopportune and not desired; sometimes when sought it fails, and whereas the heart is warm with desire, the body remains cold." Therefore the movements of the members are not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... with scarcely any good results. For every Hezekiah or Josiah, how many kings of the type of Ahaz or Manasseh had there been! The Jews were nevertheless still so sincerely attached to the house of David, that the prophet judged it inopportune to exclude it from his plan for their future government. He resolved to tolerate a king, but a king of greater piety and with less liberty than the compiler of the Book of Deuteronomy had pictured to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... scrutiny fixed upon himself from behind those dark glasses; "it had escaped my mind, but now I recall that Mr. Mainwaring is to celebrate his birthday by making his young English cousin and namesake his heir. I certainly would not intrude at a time so inopportune." ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... over to a window and looked out, to hide the tears with which his eyes were filling. In the courtyard below a coach had stopped at one of the doors. Cyrene was entering it. Why was she brought before him just at that moment. This inopportune glimpse of her cancelled all reasoning. With fevered sight he watched her till the coach disappeared, and turning, said eagerly to ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... excitement over the President's proposed step when she discussed the matter with me as I arrived at the White House. She said she had argued with the President and had tried to persuade him that if he intended to do so unusual a thing that now was the inopportune moment for it for the reason that it would create a party crisis and probably a split, the result of which we could not foresee. When I went into the President's study, he read me the announcement he had prepared for the papers. The full ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... undesirable; unadvisable, inadvisable; objectionable; inapt, ineligible, inadmissible, inconvenient; incommodious, discommodious[obs3]; disadvantageous; inappropriate, unfit &c. (inconsonant) 24. ill-contrived, ill-advised; unsatisfactory; unprofitable &c., unsubservient &c. (useless) 645; inopportune &c. (unseasonable) 135; out of place, in the wrong place; improper, unseemly. clumsy, awkward; cumbrous, cumbersome; lumbering, unwieldy, hulky[obs3]; unmanageable &c. (impracticable) 704; impedient &c. (in the way) 706[obs3]. unnecessary &c. (redundant) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... however, as Lyveden's health of mind was concerned, itself grievously inopportune, the catastrophe could not have happened at a more opportune moment. Trading upon the heels of his encounter with Valerie, it made a terrific counter-irritant to the violent inflammation which that meeting had set up. Yet if the back of the sickness was broken, disorder and corrective, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... from saying that Mr Aiken's poetry is merely a chemical compound of the 'nineties, Freud and introspective Imperialism; but we do think it is liable to resolve at the most inopportune moments into those elements, and that such moments occur with distressing frequency in the poem called 'The Charnel Rose.' 'Senlin' resists disruption longer. But the same elements are there. They are ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... Vienna, I felt the plot breaking out on me, very much as the measles do, at a most inopportune time for everybody concerned, and my secretary, more wide-awake than you'd imagine by looking at him, urged me to coddle the muse while she was willing and not to put her off till an evil day, as frequently I am ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... to time her appearance at a rather inopportune moment, and when daddy rose up from behind the stove to confront the two women, in a voluminous apron and with a smutch across his cheek, Janice could not entirely smother ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... that a great many persons are coming to your midnight service," said Solonet, perceiving that his presence was inopportune, ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... of a servant prevented the happy lover from proceeding to extremities upon her lips, "according to the statute in such case made and provided;" and a very excellent statute it is too. Whether the "quashing of proceedings" by the inopportune appearance of the servant was agreeable to either party, I leave to wiser heads than ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... 1775, Lord North had, indeed, offered resolutions of conciliation. The measure amazed his own followers and was greeted by the Whigs with Homeric laughter. Offers of conciliation could scarcely have arrived in America at a more inopportune time,—the very moment almost when the battle of Lexington came like an alarm-bell in the night to waken men from the dream of peace. And the resolutions themselves had all the appearance of being a clever ruse designed to separate the Middle colonies from New England and Virginia, in order to destroy ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... Rosalind at Umballa. His brain and nervous system were in a state that involved a climax and reaction; and, unhappily, this climax, during which his identification of his present self with his memory of its past was intensified to the point of absolute hallucination, came at an inopportune moment. If he could only have kept the phantoms of his imagination at bay until he met Sally! But, really, speculation on so strange a frame of mind is useless; we can only accept the facts ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... early; the ladies had not long left the dining-room. They were agitated when his name was announced; even Apollonia's heart beat; but then that might be accounted for by the inopportune recollection of an ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... declaring that Monti's first twelve lines in the 'Mascheroniana' were the finest Italian lines written for a century. Monti recited them. I observed Byron. He was in raptures. That kind of haughty look which a man often puts on when he has to get rid of an inopportune question, and which rather took away from the beauty of his magnificent countenance, suddenly disappeared to make way for an expression of happiness. The whole of the first canto to the 'Mascheroniana,' which Conti was made to recite, enchanted all ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... then, that I am doubly inopportune," I said, "for I have been following you to ask a small favour—not for myself, but for a certain Major Dignum, at the Grand Pump Hotel; nothing more than the attesting of a signature—a ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as unavailing then as now," he replied. "I bid you good evening, Miss Haye. I ask nothing from you. I beg pardon for my unfortunate and inopportune intrusion just now. I shall annoy ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... the Kings of Scanderoon, A royal jester Had in his train, a gross buffoon, Who used to pester The court with tricks inopportune, Venting on the highest folks his Scurvy ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... this letter very useless, and even inopportune; but I was desirous of having a pretty, long conversation with you upon the present circumstances, to explain you what I think of this matter. As a proper opportunity for it did not occur, I took the liberty of laying down some of my ideas in this letter, ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... nodded. Her eyes and her heart were too full for speech. Buel frowned at the approaching boat, and cursed its inopportune arrival. He was astonished to hear some one ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... came in. She was surprised at seeing the miserable looking object who had intruded himself upon them at a time that seemed so inopportune. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... controversy? Why, when the vital need of our time is to induce men and women to collect their thoughts occasionally, and be men and women—nay, to remember that they are really gods that hold the destinies of humanity on their knees—why should we think that this kaleidoscopic play of phrases is inopportune? The ballets of the Alhambra, and the fireworks of the Crystal Palace, and Mr. Chesterton's Daily News articles, have their place in life. But how a serious social student can think of curing the thoughtlessness ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... hurtful influences were to be concentrated against the President, it became necessary just at this inopportune time to make good the terrible waste in the armies caused by expiration of terms of service and by the bloody campaigns of Grant and Sherman. Volunteering was substantially at an end, and a call for troops would have to be ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... Don Quixote very deliberately and phlegmatically replied, "Fair damsel, at the present moment your request is inopportune, for I am debarred from involving myself in any adventure until I have brought to a happy conclusion one to which my word has pledged me; but that which I can do for you is what I will now mention: run and tell ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... spirit, nameless and formless fears seemed to surround and haunt her. Once when she arose in the morning she felt an uncontrollable desire to cry, and frequently thereafter this feeling would seize upon her at the most inopportune times. Mrs. Gerhardt began to note her moods, and one afternoon she resolved to question ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of those celebrated works. But that perversity, which all children have more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now, at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good Mr. Wilson's question, the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... late in life, after a blameless career, depravity has so suddenly broken out in a man as it has with SYDNEY GEDGE. It is true, that upon occasion GEDGE has not given entire satisfaction to our friends opposite. They hold the opinion that his incursions in debate have been inopportune, and, in short, unnecessary; but that is their affair. We have had no ground for complaint. GEDGE has always voted straight, has appropriately filled up a dull half-hour when we had to keep a Debate going, and at all times he has invested our side of the House with a certain je ne sais ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... little preaching after his particular vein, either upon the vice or the danger of opium-eating. Possibly, as he peruses these various records, he may do much preaching for himself, but he will not find a great deal furnished to his hand, always excepting the rather inopportune reflections of Mr. Joseph Cottle over the case of his unhappy friend Coleridge. The book has been compiled for opium-eaters, and to their notice it is urgently commended. Sufferers from protracted and apparently hopeless disorders profit little by scientific information as to the nature of their ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... National Celebration, and he stood beside Christine in all the splendid picturesque pomp of the McFarlane tartans. He was holding Christine's hand, and she stood as a white lily in the glow and color of his dark beauty. Perhaps both of them felt James' entrance inopportune. At any rate they received him coldly, Donald drew Christine a little apart, said a few whispered words to her, and lifting his bonnet slightly to James, he ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... advocate of peace, had come into power in England (Jan. 23, 1806); and Prussia discovered that Napoleon, who was friendly to him, was negotiating for the surrender of Hanover to that country. This crowning indignity moved Prussia, at this inopportune moment, to take up arms against him. Prussia had no ally but Russia. The Prussian army was full of pride and hope; but its organization and method of warfare were after the old, traditional fashion which had come down from the days of Frederick ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... great requisite of the touring automobile, and, for that matter, should be of any other. Efficiency and reliability cover ninety-nine per cent. of the requirements of the automobilist. Chance will step in at the most inopportune moments and upset all calculations, but, with due regard given to these two great and fundamental principles, the rest does not ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... complaints; and, notwithstanding the energy of the tribunes, notwithstanding the eloquence of the Gracchi, the violence of Marius, and the triumph of Caesar, this execrable policy succeeded only too well. The Senate always temporized; the measures proposed by the tribunes might be good, but they were inopportune. It admitted that something should be done; but first it was necessary that the people should resume the performance of their duties, because the Senate could not yield to violence, and force must be employed only by the law. If the people—out of respect ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... protrusion of the membranes from the vulva several weeks before confinement. Davies relates an instance in which there was a copious watery discharge during pregnancy not followed by labor. There is a case mentioned in which an accident and an inopportune dose of ergot at the fifth month of pregnancy were followed by rupture of the amniotic sac, and subsequently a constant flow of watery fluid continued for the remaining three months of pregnancy. The fetus died at the time, and was born in ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... point it may not be inopportune to make a break in the record of Cardan's life and work, and to treat in retrospect of that portion of his time which he spent in the composition of his treatises on Arithmetic and Algebra. Ever since 1535 he had been working intermittently at one or other of these, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... such a story would probably sell. He was conscious of powers in this way that the social world petted and admired. "What would Jesus do?" He felt that Jesus would never write such a book. The question obtruded on him at the most inopportune times. He became irascible over it. The standard of Jesus for an author was too ideal. Of course, Jesus would use His powers to produce something useful or helpful, or with a purpose. What was he, Jasper Chase, ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... kings of Scanderoon, A royal jester, Had in his train, a gross buffoon, Who used to pester The Court with tricks inopportune, Venting on the highest of folks his Scurvy pleasantries and hoaxes. It needs some sense to play the fool, Which wholesome rule Occurred not to our jackanapes, Who consequently found his freaks Lead to innumerable scrapes, And quite ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... his private car in response to the cheers of the crowd. I feel sure he intended to make a short speech, as the multitude seemed to demand it. The President was bowing his acknowledgments to the large gathering, when someone, with that bad taste that always crops out at the most inopportune moment, yelled 'Hurrah for Cleveland.' A great many others, with bad taste, laughed. Harrison flushed to his temples, bowed and backed into ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... myself safe and my own master for the rest of the day! Then with easier pace I went in search of some wild and desert spot in the forest, where there was nothing to show the hand of man, or to speak of servitude and domination; some refuge where I could fancy myself its discoverer, and where no inopportune third person came to interfere between nature and me. She seemed to spread out before my eyes a magnificence that was always new. The gold of the broom and the purple of the heather struck my eyes with a glorious splendour that went to my very heart; the majesty of the trees that ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... conscious that his lack of response seemed both sullen and awkward, but he was for the moment tongue-tied. His habit of inopportune self-analysis had once more asserted itself. He could not understand the curious nature of his mistrust of this woman, nor could he understand the pleasure which her suggestion gave him. He wanted to refuse, and yet he was glad to be able to tell himself that he was, after all, ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is surly, from getting up early (And tempers are short in the morning), An inopportune joke is enough to provoke Him to give you, at once, a month's warning. Then if you refrain, he is at you again, For he likes to get value for money: He'll ask then and there, with an insolent stare, "If you know that you're paid to be funny?" ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... of the platform and the House of Lords. At the great meeting in St. James's Hall in the summer of 1868 to protest against the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, some Orange enthusiast, in the hope of disturbing the Bishop, kept interrupting his honeyed eloquence with inopportune shouts of "Speak up, my lord." "I am already speaking up," replied the Bishop in his most dulcet tone; "I always speak up; and I decline to speak down to the level of the ill-mannered person in the gallery." ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... feeling was excited as to the relations of Austria with the Balkan States. Now if a comedy so remote from political passion as Arms and The Man can, merely because it refers to political facts, become so inconvenient and inopportune that Foreign Offices take the trouble to have its production postponed, what may not be the effect of what is called a patriotic drama produced at a moment when the balance is quivering between peace and war? Is there not something to be said ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... suggestion seemed very inopportune to Lyon. He rose and walked a step or two, and stood by the fire facing her. He confessed, looking down, that he had not been in Alaska, and he had no desire to go there. "In fact, Miss Debree," he said, with effort at speaking lightly, "I fear I am not in a geographical mood today. I came ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... whispers; and they feel that profanity, unless it be vociferous, is almost worthless. Horrible phrases were caught by early rising children and carried to older people for definition, sometimes at inopportune moments; while less investigative children would often merely repeat the phrases in some subsequent flurry of agitation, and yet bring about consequences so emphatic as to be recalled with ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... protested Ramblethorne. "Corpses have a nasty way of turning up at inopportune moments. These youngsters are worth more ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... the object of his presence; but, beyond that, there is something deep and desperate in the appearance of the man, rendering his familiarity exceedingly disagreeable. That he should present himself at such an untimely hour was strange, beyond Marston's comprehension. It was, indeed, most inopportune; but knowing him, he feared him. He could not treat him with indifference,—there was his connection with Graspum, his power over the poor servile whites; he must be courteous-so, summoning his suavity, he orders Dandy to wait ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams |
