"Unambitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made was that goodnatured unambitious men are cowards when they have no religion. They are dominated and exploited not only by greedy and often half-witted and half-alive weaklings who will do anything for cigars, champagne, motor cars, and the more childish and selfish uses of money, but ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... clay underlying the land all around them, and thenceforward maintained themselves from the products of the soil, then, as now, proverbial for its fruitfulness. It descended to their children, most of whom were equally plodding and unambitious with themselves. All continued the old occupation of looking to the soil for subsistence; and so long as the forty acres were kept together, they lived well. But as descendants multiplied, and one generation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... am, having all but reached the limits of my appointed space, without apparently having gone one step nearer to the fulfilment of the task on which I set out. I can only ask you to take the will for the deed in the meantime. And after all, if this unambitious actor had only been what I imagined him to be, I could not have produced an apter example. But he had the impertinence to live his life in his own way, and that did not happen to accord with the theories I had been led to form about it. Shall I never be able to come to the point? I have not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... perhaps I was; but if I was, it had been a hardhearted world, and hard times that had made me so. I had learned to think much and bitterly before my time; all my young mounting dreams of glory had left me; and at that early age, I was as unambitious as ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... or the hope of it, to which they would expose us.' The paper then gives directions, how the war ought to be conducted as a war of partizans, and shews the peculiar fitness of the country for it. Yet, though relying solely on this unambitious mode of warfare, the framers of the paper, which is in every part of it distinguished by wisdom, speak with confident thoughts of success. To this mode of warfare, then, after experience of calamity from not having trusted in it; to this, and to the people in ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Those of us who were associated with him politically, had learned to love and respect him. His opponents admired his unflinching devotion to his country, and his manly frankness and candor. He was the type of a true American, able, unselfish, prudent, unambitious, and good. Other pens will do justice to his memory, but I thought as I heard the last account of him alive, as he lay within the rebel lines, his face wearing that calm serenity which grew more beautiful the nearer death approached, after having given so abundantly of his goods, ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... conscientious and vigilant supervision of the whole matter here brought together—prefaces, texts, and notes—and the correction of errors on the part of his predecessors, occasioned by a variety of causes. In carrying out even this unambitious programme, there was a fair share of labour and difficulty, and, of course, it has involved the addition of a new crop of notes scattered up and down the series, as well as the occasional displacement of certain illustrative remarks founded ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... "you saw it for yourself; you are not a mole like Petullo the husband. By God! I would be that brute's death if he were thirty years younger, and made of anything else than sawdust. It's a tragedy in there, and look at this burgh!—like the grave but for the lights of it; rural, plodding, unambitious, ignorant—and the last place on earth you might seek in for a story so peetiful as that in there. My heart's wae, wae for that woman; I saw her face was like a corp when we went in first, though she put a fair front on to us. A woman in a hundred; a brave woman, few like ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Germany, Asia Minor, and Turkey) I renewed my youth, and became "a suitor for love." I am to be married (sequitur) on Thursday week.... The lady who is to take me, as the Irish say, "in a present," is some six years younger than myself, gentle, religious, relying, and unambitious. She has never been whirled through the gay society of London, so is not giddy or vain. She has never swum in a gondola, or written a sonnet, so has a proper respect for those who have. She is called pretty, but is more than ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... to my rural solitudes, and taste once more, as always, those pure delights of Nature which the Poets celebrate—walks in the unambitious meadows, and the ever-satisfying companionship of vegetables and flowers—I am nevertheless haunted now and then (but tell it not to Shelley's Skylark, nor whisper to Wordsworth's Daffodils, the disconcerting secret)—I am incongruously ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... judges of the Court of Session, and 'landed gentlemen'; learned a ready address, had a flow of interesting conversation, and when he was referred to as 'a highly respectable bourgeois,' resented the description. My grandmother remained to the end devout and unambitious, occupied with her Bible, her children, and her house; easily shocked, and associating largely with a clique of godly parasites. I do not know if she called in the midwife already referred to; but the principle on which that lady was recommended, she accepted fully. The cook was a godly woman, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... officer. He saw much service in various parts of the world. Wherever work was to be done he was foremost in doing it. Had he been younger, he would probably have been placed on the quarterdeck: but he was unambitious, and contented with his lot, though he, at last, was made a warrant officer, and ultimately became boatswain of a dashing frigate, under as gallant a captain as ever took a ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... we apprehend to have been this. Alexander Pope, the elder, was a man of philosophical desires and unambitious character. Quiet and seclusion and innocence of life,—these were what he affected for himself; and that which had been found available for his own happiness, he might reasonably wish for his son. The two hinges upon which his plans may be supposed to have turned, were, first, the political ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... or three long, silver notes of peace and rest, ending in some subdued trills and quavers, constitute each separate song. Often, you will catch only one or two of the bars, the breeze having blown the minor part away. Such unambitious, quiet, unconscious melody! It is one of the most characteristic sounds in nature. The grass, the stones, the stubble, the furrow, the quiet herds, and the warm twilight among the hills, are all subtly expressed in this song; this is what they ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... the house which had been built at the public expense for the son of King Antiochus, and to have died at Naples, where he was honoured with a public funeral, in the forty-sixth year of his age. His position, at once independent and unambitious (for he could not hold office in Rome), gave him the best possible chance of observing social and political life, and of this chance he made the fullest use. He lived behind the scenes: he saw the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Irish of the co. Longford and the squires and squirees, that it would not have occurred to me to give a literary form to my impressions about the classes parallel to them in Russia. My brother used, in pointing out the beauties of her unambitious works, to call attention to their extreme simplicity and to the distinction with which she treated the simple ones ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... author may hold among poets, just as we behold a "lily of the field" without comparing it with other flowers, but satisfied with its own pure and simple loveliness; or each separate poem may be likened, in its unostentatious—unambitious—unconscious beauty—to ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Mr. Casaubon had never yet employed and had a suspicious dread of. (Mr. Casaubon was nervously conscious that he was expected to manifest a powerful mind.) Providence, in its kindness, had supplied him with the wife he needed. A wife, a modest young lady, with the purely appreciative, unambitious abilities of her sex, is sure to think her husband's mind powerful. Whether Providence had taken equal care of Miss Brooke in presenting her with Mr. Casaubon was an idea which could hardly occur to him. Society never made the preposterous ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... greyhounds, his fishing rod and his gun, his ale and his tobacco, occupied almost all his thoughts. With his neighbours, in spite of his religion, he was generally on good terms. They knew him to be unambitious and inoffensive. He was almost always of a good old family. He was always a Cavalier. His peculiar notions were not obtruded, and caused no annoyance. He did not, like a Puritan, torment himself and others with scruples about everything ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... thoughtful, preoccupied aloofness. His crisp dark hair is graying at the temples. EDWARD BIGELOW is a large, handsome man of thirty-nine. His face shows culture and tolerance, a sense of humor, a lazy unambitious contentment. CURTIS is reading an article in some scientific periodical, seated by the table. MARTHA and BIGELOW are sitting ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... peaceably enough in such a position. And I—I should be in an estate-agent's office, earning a sufficient salary, and most likely married to some unambitious country girl. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... faults were no great matter; he was diffident, placable, passive, unambitious, unenterprising; life did not much attract him; he watched it like a curious and dull exhibition, not much amused, and not tempted in the least to take a part. He beheld his father ponderously grinding sand, his mother fierily ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... below Assistant-Secretary Wagstaff held forth; he was in charge of the Western Department, which comprised the states from Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee westward to the coast. Mr. Wagstaff was a competent, careful, unimaginative, unambitious man who did his work from day to day. He enters this story virtually not at all; be it enough to say that he had a red mustache and a bald, bright head and wore shoes with cloth tops. He took good care of his territory, and if he never made much money for the company, ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... fifth of aristocratic generations, of a good old colonial strain, elegant to a fault, and refined to uselessness, of tastes and pursuits that took him out of the ordinary atmosphere; languid more for the want of a spur, than from lack of nerve and ability; and unambitious for want of an object, rather than from want of power to climb, was really smothered by the softness and luxury of his surroundings, rather than reduced by the poverty and feebleness of his nature; had really the elements of manly strength and elevation, and had misfortune or poverty fallen upon ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... had been twice married. Minervina, the obscure but lawful object of his youthful attachment, had left him only one son, who was called Crispus. By Fausta, the daughter of Maximian, he had three daughters, and three sons known by the kindred names of Constantine, Constantius, and Constans. The unambitious brothers of the great Constantine, Julius Constantius, Dalmatius, and Hannibalianus, were permitted to enjoy the most honorable rank, and the most affluent fortune, that could be consistent with a private station. The youngest of the three lived without a name, and died without ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... to waste one's evenings and it takes a stout ambition and a firm resolution to separate oneself from a jolly, fun-loving, and congenial family circle, or happy-hearted youthful callers, in order to try to rise above the common herd of unambitious persons who are content to slide along, totally ignorant of everything but the requirements of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... CHRISTINE SILVER'S talent, and Miss EVADNE PRICE faithfully earned the laughter she was expected to make as Sua Se, the opium-den attendant. Leave your critical faculty at home and you will be able to derive considerable entertainment from this unambitious show. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... of clanship or vassalage, he was fortunate in the alliance and protection of Vich Ian Vohr and other bold and enterprising Chieftains, who protected him in the quiet unambitious life he loved. It is true, the youth born on his grounds were often enticed to leave him for the service of his more active friends; but a few old servants and tenants used to shake their grey locks when they heard their ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... further from town than Beaufort-row, and affords a grateful shade in the summer time. We resolved to walk quietly round, and then enter the chapel. How strange the changes of the world! The graves of a simple, peace-loving, unambitious people were lying around us, and yet it was the place which Erasmus describes as "Sir Thomas More's estate, purchased at Chelsey," and where "he built him a house, neither mean nor subject to envy, yet magnificent and commodious enough." How dearly he loved ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... was now about forty, had long been eminent for his piety, his justice, his moderation, and exemplary life. He was skilled in all the learning and philosophy of the Sab'ines, and lived at home at Cu'res,[2] contented with a private fortune; unambitious of higher honours. It was not, therefore, without reluctance, that he accepted the dignity; which, when he did so, produced such joy, that the people seemed not so much to receive ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the most retiring and unambitious of all living musicians, he would before this time have been celebrated as the inventor of a new style, or school, of pianoforte composition. During his short visit to the metropolis last season, but few had the high gratification of hearing his extemporaneous performance. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... time and trouble that fashionable dressing demands. No matter how much money this type has he will not be inclined to extremes in dress. Musculars are not really interested in clothes for clothes' sake. It is not that this type is unambitious. He is extremely so, but he is so concentrated on "getting things done" that he is likely to forget how he ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... who attempts even in the most unambitious way to give a complete account of the great writer's life, is confronted with many blank spaces. It is true that the absolutely mysterious disappearances of which his contemporaries speak curiously are now partially accounted ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... however, is not such as would tempt us to emulation. As a machine it works; as an ideal it lacks any presentation of the thing we call beauty. The apotheosis of intelligence in the concrete example leaves us unambitious in that direction. ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... affairs, will never want those who hint with Shylock, that ships are but boards, and that no man can properly be termed rich whose fortune is at the mercy of the winds. The beauty adorned only with the unambitious graces of innocence and modesty, provokes, whenever she appears, a thousand murmurs of detraction and whispers of suspicion. The genius, even when he endeavours only to entertain with pleasing; images of nature, or instruct ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... by rights have lain, in a ministerial office in Dublin, all would have been well. As it was, the deliberate and extreme seclusion of his life in Ireland weakened his influence. He was far too shrewd not to know this, and far too unambitious to care. Work he never shrank from. But the daily solicitations of people with personal grievances to lay before him, personal interests which they desired him to promote, made a form of trouble which in his periods of rest from work ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... retired way of living. I shall now shew thee the entire confidence which I place in thee. I have only two sons remaining, who are as yet but infants. It is my design that thou take them home with thee, and educate them as thy own. Train them up in the humble unambitious pursuits of knowledge. By this means shall the line of Caliphs be preserved, and my children succeed after me, without aspiring to my throne whilst I ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... virtuous disposition, and had a clear perception of moral propriety and good conduct. This family, though not in actual possession of excessive affluence and honours, was, nevertheless, in their district, conceded to be a clan of well-to-do standing. As this Chen Shih-yin was of a contented and unambitious frame of mind, and entertained no hankering after any official distinction, but day after day of his life took delight in gazing at flowers, planting bamboos, sipping his wine and conning poetical works, he was in fact, in the indulgence of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the clocks in Deephaven, and all the people with them, had stopped years ago, and the people had been doing over and over what they had been busy about during the last week of their unambitious progress. Their clothes had lasted wonderfully well, and they had no need to earn money when there was so little chance to spend it; indeed, there were several families who seemed to have no more visible means of support than ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... us should be running for office," said Uncle Timothy. "It seems gratuitous to subject an unambitious private family to the treatment expected by a candidate or a multi-millionaire. Yet I have seldom had occasion to complain of the press. In its own perhaps headlong manner, it pursues such matters as are of greatest public importance. A household, to avoid its attentions, ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... spot—so rural, so retired, so far from the public road, so removed from noise and dust. It had such a serene, religious aspect, the traveler looking up the long avenue of trees, with a gradually ascending glance, to the unambitious, gray-walled mansion, situated at its termination, thought it must be one of the sweetest havens of rest that God ever ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... every walk and alley, every {110} plot and border, would be covered with runners and roots, with boughs and suckers. We want no poets or logicians or metaphysicians to govern us: we want practical men, honest men, continent men, unambitious men, fearful to solicit a trust, slow to accept, and resolute never to betray one. Experimentalists may be the best philosophers; they are always the worst politicians. Teach people their duties, and they will know their ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... neither alarming nor unfamiliar. The master at once recognized it as Ben Dabney, otherwise known as "Uncle Ben," a good-humored but not over-bright miner, who occupied a small cabin on an unambitious claim in the outskirts of Indian Spring. His avuncular title was evidently only an ironical tribute to his amiable incompetency and heavy good-nature, for he was still a young man with no family ties, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... flight, nor with unhallow'd lays Touch the fair fame of Albion's golden days: The thoughts of gods let Granville's verse recite, And bring the scenes of opening fate to light. My humble Muse, in unambitious strains, Paints the green forests and the flowery plains, Where Peace descending bids her olives spring, And scatters blessings from her dove-like wing. Ev'n I more sweetly pass my careless days, Pleased ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... it was the type for which he himself might have stood as the representative was not without its effect upon him. His ideal man is but a variation of himself. As Dean Church puts it: 'The ideal man with Wordsworth is the hard-headed, frugal, unambitious dalesman of his own hills, with his strong affections, his simple tastes, and his quiet and beautiful home; and this dalesman, built up by communion with nature and by meditation into the poet-philosopher, with his serious ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... citizen whose views were unambitious, who preferred the shade and tranquillity of private life to the splendor and solicitude of elevated stations, and whom the voice of duty and his country could alone have drawn from his chosen retreat, no reward for his public services can be so grateful as public approbation, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... moment; for he felt as if it might be irreverent to introduce the hallowed shade of Washington into a history, where an ancient elbow chair occupied the most prominent place. However, he determined to proceed with his narrative, and speak of the hero when it was needful, but with an unambitious simplicity. ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was sadder. No exile ever turned towards foreign parts with heavier sorrow. Her diadem was a crown of thorns. Her mother's grief augmented her own. Without her children, Josephine, naturally unambitious, found no consolation in the thought that her son was a Viceroy, her daughter a Queen. Before she left Paris Hortense, in terror before the thought that the Emperor would no longer be near to defend her, told her all her domestic unhappiness, and ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... inferior material. The result will be a sham that will deceive no one, and you will soon tire of it, and the sooner the better. Be honest. If you have only cheap material to work with, be satisfied with unambitious undertakings. Let them be in keeping with what you have to work with—simple, unpretentious, and without any attempt in the way of deception. The humblest home can be made attractive by holding ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... their performances and not upon their discontent. And this is the secret and golden meaning of the command to be content in whatever sphere we are placed. It is not to be the content of indifference, of indolence, of unambitious stupidity, but the content of industrious fidelity. When men are building the foundations of vast structures they must needs labor far below the surface, and in disagreeable conditions. But every course ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Adieu! Sir. I am unambitious, I am uninterested, but I am vain. You have, by your notice, uncanvassed, unexpected, and at a period when you certainly could have the least temptation to stoop down to me, flattered me in the most ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... impossible among a large number of otherwise independent communities, and, moreover, hinders any of them from being absorbed into a foreign state, and becoming a source of additional aggressive strength to some rival power, either more despotic or closer at hand, which might not always be so unambitious or so pacific as Great Britain. It at least keeps the markets of the different countries open to one another, and prevents that mutual exclusion by hostile tariffs which none of the great communities ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... is unambitious, but neat, terse, and very tempting to the imagination. More complicated is a lady "floating on the sea of the persecution of her Prince, who would fain give her up to the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... born to serve afore the mast—or how'd we git sailors?" observed the old fellow, with all the philosophy of the unambitious man. "Others get into the afterguard with one, two, three, and a jump!" His trembling fingers knotted the twine ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... taking the immortal essence home Where it would be. Yet is there left behind A transcript that we cherish, and a chasm We have no power to fill. Almost it seems That we beheld him still, with quiet step Moving among us, saintly and serene, Clear-sighted, upright, held in high regard, Yet meekly unambitious, seeking nought Of windy honor from the mouth of men But with the Gospel's perfect code content, Breathing good-will to all. Freely his wealth Wrought blessed channels mid the sons of need, Lending Philanthropy and Piety A stronger impulse in their ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... man of pleasure; but he had seen men and cities, and his remarks were shrewd, and selfish, and worldly-wise enough. It was rarely that his talk ever strayed to matters of business, so that Solomon was perforce a listener; but that unambitious part he played ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... by this method we succeeded in working up such a feeling of rivalry that the Kikuyus, the unambitious, weak and despised Kikuyus, led ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... made to involve him in a charge of treason as one of the friends of C. Calpurnius Piso, an illustrious nobleman whose wealth and ability made him an object of jealousy and suspicion, though he was naturally unambitious and devoid of energy. The attempt failed at the time, and Seneca was able triumphantly to refute the charge of any treasonable design. But the fact of such a charge being made showed how insecure was the position of any man of eminence ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... conservatory as with a clear mellow liquor, and the rich leaves, and blossoms stood breathless with delight. The painfully rigid contraction of Balder's features was softening away; he was coming into harmony with the sensuous beauty of the scene, or its refined voluptuousness—serene, unambitious, content with time and careless ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... he had married an adoring and sympathetic wife, he might almost have grown exacting—perhaps even selfish, because he is the sort of man that requires to have the best part of him evoked. He is unambitious and in a way indolent; and if everything had been done for him—his wishes anticipated, sympathy lavished upon him—he would have had no region in which to exercise that self-restraint which is now a necessity of the case. We are very liable to try and arrange the lives of others for ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... origin and the occult meaning of the folklore of Poictesme this book at least is in no wise concerned: its unambitious aim has been merely to familiarize English readers with the Jurgen epos for the tale's sake. And this tale of old years is one which, by rare fortune, can be given to English readers almost unabridged, in view of the singular delicacy and pure-mindedness of the Jurgen mythos: in ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Edward, his doings, his sayings, and his prospects. The only thing that seemed to worry Mr Waller was the problem of how to employ his son's almost superhuman talents to the best advantage. Most of the goals towards which the average man strives struck him as too unambitious for ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... Munich. It is worthy of remark that while official fabrications and exaggerated details of facts were published respecting Marengo and the short campaign of Italy, by a feigned modesty the victorious army of Marengo received the unambitious title of 'Army of Reserve'. By this artifice the honour of the Constitution was saved. The First Consul had not violated it. If he had marched to the field, and staked everything on a chance it was merely accidentally, for he commanded only ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... He sat distraught, fingering his bread between the courses which he scarcely tasted, and giving answers at random, after pauses, to the Bishop's small-talk. He was wounded. He had lived for years a life as happy as any that can fall to the lot of an indolent, unambitious man, who loves his fellows and takes a delight in their gratitude. St. Hospital exactly suited him. He knew its history. His affection, like an ivy, clung about its old walls and incorporated itself in the very mortar that bound them. He loved to spy one of its Brethren ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... their haunts they do not appear so much frightened as offended. "Why do you intrude?" they seem to say; "these are our woods;" and they bow you out with all ceremony. Their songs are in keeping with this character; leisurely, unambitious, and brief, but in beauty of voice and in high musical quality excelling all other music of the woods. However, I would not exaggerate, and I have not found even these thrushes perfect. The hermit, who is my favorite of the four, has a habit of slowly raising ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... messenger in Edinburgh; and after his partner's death, carried on the business on his own account. He died at Edinburgh on the 7th January 1843. Of highly sociable dispositions, and with talents of a superior order, Conolly was much beloved among a wide circle of friends. Unambitious of fame as a poet, though he frequently wrote verses, he never ventured on a publication. His popular song of "Mary Macneil," appeared in the Edinburgh Intelligencer of the 23d December 1840; it is much to be remarked for ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to make a sumptuous facade possible. Throughout the whole course of English Gothic architecture, the treatment of the west end is curiously hesitating and arbitrary. Sometimes it is altogether unambitious, as at Winchester and Norwich; sometimes boldly illogical, as at Lincoln or Peterborough; and at Salisbury, where everything else is beautiful, it is altogether unsatisfactory. In all these cases circumstances were against the architect, but at York there was every opportunity ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... were exemplary members of the church, and brought up their children with a great deal of care. They were in every respect dissimilar. He was tall, thin, and dark-complexioned; she was almost short, very fair, and portly in appearance. Mr. Meeker was a kind-hearted, generous, unambitious man, who loved his home and his children, and rejoiced when he could see every body happy around him. He was neither close nor calculating. With a full share of natural ability, he did not turn his talents to accumulation, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... within a bow-shot of Paris I found tools in use, which would be laughed at in the free states of America? The true reason for this, is to be found in the condition of the French agricultural laborer. He is ignorant and unambitious. Where the laborer is intelligent, he will have light and excellent tools to work with. This is a universal fact. The slaves of the southern states are in a state of brutal ignorance, and their agricultural implements ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... deaf to vanity; and yet I have no ambition. The desire to rise seems to me wholly unalluring: I scorn and contemn it as a weakness. But what matters it? so much the happier for me if, as you predict, my life be short. But how, if so unambitious and so quiet of habit, how can I imagine that my death will be violent as well ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... circumstances, it is not the least of the debts which I owe to the encouraging kindness of my readers, that they have not forgotten "Rambles Beyond Railways," and that the continued demand for the book is such as to justify the appearance of the present edition. I have, as I believe, to thank the unambitious purpose with which I originally wrote, for thus keeping me in remembrance. All that my book attempts is frankly to record a series of personal impressions; and, as a necessary consequence—though my title is obsolete, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... love the wife which diplomacy chooses for him, then he must be permitted the chosen one of his heart to console him for the forced marriage. At the same time this person was passable, and without the usual fault of such creatures, a desire to rule and mingle in politics. She seems to be unambitious and unpretentious. These Rosicrucians would banish her by increasing the number of favorites, that they may rule him, and make the future King of Prussia a complete tool in their hands. They excite his mind, which is not too well balanced, and rob ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... old head against the carved back of his chair and looked at the other in his kindly, unambitious optimism. He had lost most that the world accounts of worth, but life had dealt gently by him, on the whole, since it had never infringed upon ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... take the form of raising another company of bowmen," said Ling, with a sigh, "but, indeed, if this person can obtain any weight by means of his past service, they will tend towards a pleasant and unambitious civil appointment." ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... when they are tinged with gold. There was nothing which Lizzie had done, or would be likely to do, which could materially affect her income. It might indeed be possible that the Eustaces should make her pay for the necklace; but even in that case, there would be quite enough left for that modest, unambitious comfort which Mr. Emilius desired. It was by preaching, and not by wealth, that he must make himself known in the world!—but for a preacher to have a pretty wife with a title and a good income,—and a castle in Scotland,—what ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... president of the company thought out within his own mind a beautiful town. He had power with which to build this town, but he did not appeal to nor obtain the consent of the men who were living in it. The most unambitious reform, recognizing the necessity for this consent, makes for slow but sane and strenuous progress, while the most ambitious of social plans and experiments, ignoring this, ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... designated by a Legislative Caucus or meeting of Representatives in the Assembly, simply because no fairer and fuller expression of the party's preference would be tolerated. And if, passing over the mob of Generals and of Politicians by trade, the choice should fall on some modest and unambitious citizen, who has earned a character by quiet probity and his bread by honest labor, I shall hope to see his name at the head of the poll in spite of the unconstitutional overthrow of Universal Suffrage. After this, though the plurality should fall short of a majority and the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... domain, That far beneath him on the plain, Waves its wide harvests and its olive groves; More dear to him his hut, with plantain thatch'd, Where long his unambitious heart attach'd, Finds all he wishes, all ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... begin our travels in Sussex with the best, then Midhurst is the starting point, for no other spot has so much to offer: a quiet country town, gabled and venerable, unmodernised and unambitious, with a river, a Tudor ruin, a park of deer, heather commons, immense woods, and the Downs only three miles distant. Moreover, Midhurst is also the centre of a very useful little railway system, which, having only a single line in each direction, while serving the traveller, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... good condition. The story is not one of brilliant success, but to me it is much more hopeful for the country than the other tales I heard of sudden wealth or lucky speculation. It is the founding in an unambitious way of a comfortable home. The boys of the family will branch out, get fields, orchards, vineyards of their own, and add to the solid producing industry of the country. This orderly, contented industry, increasing ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... could recollect, when she read better at three years old than her sister at five, and ever after, through the days of education, had enjoyed, and excelled in, the studies that were a toil to Grace. Subsequently, while Grace had contented herself with the ordinary course of unambitious feminine life, Rachel had thrown herself into the process of self-education with all her natural energy, and carried on her favourite studies by every means within her reach, until she considerably surpassed ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... alderman is so much beneath the rank of a distinguished member of the bar, that a successful queen's counsel, who should make an offer to the daughter of a City magistrate, would be regarded as bent upon a decidedly unambitious match; and if in a significant tone he spoke of the lady as 'an alderman's daughter' his words might be reasonably construed as a hint that her fortune atoned for her want of rank. But it never occurred to Bacon's contemporaries to ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... maturity, or if a flame should be kindled without extending to us, what security can we have that our tranquillity will long remain undisturbed from some other cause or from some other quarter? Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others. Who could have imagined at the conclusion of the last war that France and Britain, wearied and exhausted as they both were, would so soon have looked with so hostile an aspect upon ...
— The Federalist Papers
... senses, and the degrading injustice of our anxious everyday life, and, appealing to the imagination, which dwells apart, reveals Nature in some degree as she really is, and as she represents herself to the eye of the child, whose every-day life, fearless and unambitious, meets the true import of the wonder-teeming world around him, and rejoices therein without questioning? That skeleton, now—I almost fear it, standing there so still, with eyes only for the unseen, like a watch-tower looking across all the waste of this busy world into ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... unambitious life was drawing to a close. Let us describe its last scene in the words of our ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... life. The great and rich are welcomed, smiling, up the grand staircase of the world; the poor but aspiring must clamber up the wall, or push and struggle up the back stair, or, PARDI, crawl through any of the conduits of the house, never mind how foul and narrow, that lead to the top. The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward. What is life good for but for honour? and that is so indispensable, that we should ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of men upon whose decision hung such momentous issues, the Council which met that evening at Westminster seemed alike unambitious in tone and uninspired in appearance. Some short time was spent in one of the anterooms, where Julian was introduced to many of the delegates. The disclosure of his identity, although it aroused immense interest, was scarcely an unmixed joy to ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... personality of Cosimo and his masterful manipulation of commercial and political affairs, perhaps the unambitious rule of his son Piero was a necessary and healthful corollary. Piero de' Medici maintained the ground his father had made his own, and gave away nothing of the predominance of his family, and he made way, after a brief exercise of authority, ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... mountains have little effect upon the mind, or that the streets have a helpful one. The men who are formed by the schools, and polished by the society of the capital, may yet in many ways have their powers shortened by the absence of natural scenery; and the mountaineer, neglected, ignorant, and unambitious, may have been taught things by the clouds and streams which he could not have learned in a college, or ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... stamped; flagging inevitably over characterless books, however clever and meritorious: perceiving well that, as far as my own mind was concerned, God had limited its powers and, its action—thankful, I trust, for the gift bestowed, but unambitious of higher endowments, not restlessly ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... knew how to tell you! Give me your love; you shall never repent it. I will make home heaven for you. Men say that I have beauty and talent. Ah, me! I would use every gift I have for you; help you to win high honors that cold, unambitious natures never dream of. Ah, love me; love me, cousin! You will find no one ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... the main object of parliament had once been to make the king live of his own. A king content with parsimony might lawfully dispense with parliament; and the eleven years had shown the precarious basis of parliamentary institutions, given a thrifty king and an unambitious country. Events were demonstrating the truth of Hobbes's maxim that sovereignty is indivisible; peace could not be kept between a sovereign legislature and a sovereign executive; parliament must control the crown, or some ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... Waterloo with Cannae's carnage vies, Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand; They were true Glory's stainless victories, Won by the unambitious heart and hand Of a proud, brotherly, and civic band, All unbought champions in no princely cause Of vice-entailed Corruption; they no land Doomed to bewail the blasphemy of laws Making king's rights divine, by ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... and, being fully satisfied with this specimen of his conversation, and unambitious of any further counsel from him, she arose ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... the simple and unambitious Territorial soldiers, whose life and work are described in these pages, lies more in their spirit than in any actual achievements. All of them came from the industrial North, where the business of life is fiercely competitive, ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... the great natural elements which minister to his comfort and happiness—which cause the seed to germinate, the flower to bloom, and the fruit to ripen, regardless of all his passions, and in spite of his ingratitude. The unambitious pursuits of the husbandman may have in them nothing of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war; but they are at least in harmony with the beneficence of God and the permanent interests of man; while they are also of the highest importance ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the rude and uncomfortable appearance of every thing about this people,—the rudeness of their habitations, the carelessness of their agriculture, the unsightly coarseness of all their implements and furniture, the unambitious homeliness of all their goods and chattels, except the axe, the rifle, and the horse—these being invariably the best and handsomest which their means enable them to procure. But he is mistaken in supposing them indolent or improvident; ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... proprietor of several acres of scorched, discredited property near Hickleybrow, at a price of nearly 90 an acre, and at times he was disposed to think this as serious a consequence of speculative chemistry as any unambitious man, could wish. Of course he was Famous—terribly Famous. More than satisfying, altogether more than satisfying, was the Fame ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... grand Touches of Nature: Some that do not appear superficially such; but in which he seems the most deeply instructed; and to which, no doubt, he has so much ow'd that happy Preservation of his Characters, for which he is justly celebrated. Great Genius's, like his, naturally unambitious, are satisfy'd to conceal their Art in these Points. 'Tis the Foible of your worser Poets to make a Parade and Ostentation of that little Science they have; and to throw it out in the most ambitious Colours. And whenever a Writer of this Class shall ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the whole population are drawn from a really quite small group of families, and, except for those who are called "gentleman rankers," to enlist is the very last way in the world to become a British officer. As a very natural corollary only broken men and unambitious men of the lowest class will consent to become ordinary private soldiers, except during periods of extreme patriotic excitement. The men who enter the Civil Service also, know perfectly well that though they may possess the most ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... who were still under the paternal roof were contrasts. Caroline was a constant invalid, gentle, sincere, unambitious, devoted to her mother, whose death nearly killed her. Amelia affected popularity, and assumed the esprit fort—was fond of meddling in politics, and after the death of her mother, joined the Bedford faction, in opposition to her father. But both these princesses were ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... neither father nor mother living, it appeared both a discreet and seemly arrangement that the marriage should take place from her uncle's house. There was no reason either why the engagement should be prolonged. They were past their first youth; they had means sufficient for their unambitious wants; the living of Hartshead is rated in the Clergy List at 202l. per annum, and she was in the receipt of a small annuity (50l. I have been told) by the will of her father. So, at the end of September, the lovers began to talk ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... neighbouring tree Tugs o'er his pail, and chants with equal glee; Whose hat with tatter'd brim, of nap so bare, From the cow's side purloins a coat of hair, A mottled ensign of his harmless trade, An unambitious, peaceable cockade. As unambitious too that cheerful aid The mistress yields beside her ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... how unambitious Lord Byron was as a child, and with what facility he allowed his comrades to surpass him in intellectual exercises, reserving for his sole ambition the wish of excelling them in boyish ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... in some of those homes there reigned such beauty of spirit, such contentment with the condition in life, such kindliness and sympathy, such cheerfulness and patience, that it was a joy to cross the threshold and commune with the members of the plain and unambitious families. The memories of those visits are among the most delightful ...
— The Wedding Day - The Service—The Marriage Certificate—Words of Counsel • John Fletcher Hurst
... take Life from the young Republic; that new foes Would only follow, in the path of shame, 15 Their brethren, and her triumphs be in the end Great, universal, irresistible. This intuition led me to confound One victory with another, higher far,— Triumphs of unambitious peace at home, 20 And noiseless fortitude. Beholding still Resistance strong as heretofore, I thought That what was in degree the same was likewise The same in quality,—that, as the worse Of the two spirits then at strife remained 25 Untired, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... the convent bell) On the wild margin of the Rhine, and wooed Thy sympathies, "a-weary of the world," And I have found with thee sad fellowship, Yet always sweet, whene'er my languid hand 10 Passed carelessly o'er the responsive wires, While unambitious of the laurelled meed That crowns the gifted bard, I only asked Some stealing melodies, the heart might love, And a brief sonnet to beguile my tears! But I had hope that one day I might wake Thy strings to loftier utterance; and now, Bidding adieu ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... works. By hard, honest toil and economy, they had laid up a competence which was regularly invested each year, and of which the children were not allowed to know anything, lest it might make them lazy and unambitious. ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... enshrouded in mystery, the restless ghost groaning for the vindication of rights, the historical background, the archaic spelling of the challenge, are all ineffective fumblings towards the romantic. The Old English Baron is an unambitious work, but it has a certain hold upon our attention because of its limpidity of style. It can be read without discomfort and even with a mild degree of interest simply as a story, while The Castle of Otranto is only tolerable as a literary curiosity. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... whatever pleased from an unknown hand was ascribed to him; but by these means he was reputed the writer of many things unworthy of him. In poetry he was not the author of any long piece, for he was quite unambitious of reputation of that kind. They are generally Odes, Satires, and Epigrams, and are certainly not the best part of his works. His Translations in Prose are many, and of various kinds. His stile is strong and masculine; and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... only of Mecaenas, but of Augustus, with whom he, as well as Virgil, lived on a footing of the greatest intimacy. Satisfied with the luxury which he enjoyed at the first tables in (174) Rome, he was so unambitious of any public employment, that when the emperor offered him the place of his secretary, he declined it. But as he lived in an elegant manner, having, besides his house in town, a cottage on his Sabine farm, and a villa at Tibur, near the falls of the Anio, he enjoyed, beyond all ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... however, insisted on waiting till the carriage could be repaired, although in the eyes of every one but himself the delay was obvious ruin. Harper, seeing him obstinate, stole away a second time to gain favour for himself by carrying news to the court. Ponet, unambitious of martyrdom, told him he would pray God for his success, and, advising Brett to shift for himself, made away with others towards the sea and Germany.[243] It was nine o'clock before Wyatt brought the draggled ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... Lord Elcho in England, Kelly at the French court. Lord Semple confused all by false hopes; Charles was much in the hands of Irishmen—Sheridan, Sullivan, O'Brien, and O'Neil; already a "forward," or Prince's party was growing, as opposed to the waiting policy and party of the disheartened and unambitious James. To what extent English Jacobites were pledged is uncertain. There was much discontent with the Hanoverian dynasty in England, but the dread of popery was strong among the middle classes. The butchers were advised that Catholics ate no meat on Sundays, the official clergy preached Protestant ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... the foreign policy of Austria-Hungary has been peaceful and unambitious; the close connexion with Germany has so far been maintained, though during the last few years it has been increasingly difficult to prevent the violent passions engendered by national enmity at home from reacting ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... there is the ambitious farmer and the unambitious farmer; the farmer who rides hard, that is, ostensibly hard, and the farmer who is simply content to know where the hounds are, and to follow them at a distance which shall maintain him in that knowledge. The ambitious farmer is not the hunting farmer ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... their unboastful exercise of some enviable and unattainable attribute. Even the friendly pig, who (did but parents permit) should eat of his bread and drink of his cup, and be unto him as a brother, — which among all these unhappy bifurcations, so cheery, so unambitious, so purely contented, so apt to be the guide, philosopher, and friend of boyhood as he? What wonder that at times, when the neophyte in life begins to realise that all these desirable accomplishments have had to be surrendered one by ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... greatest song-writer—as surely as Shakespeare is the greatest dramatist—ever born of English race. The apparent or external variety of his versification is, I should suppose, incomparable; but by some happy tact or instinct he was too naturally unambitious to attempt, like Jonson, a flight in the wake of Pindar. He knew what he could not do: a rare and invaluable gift. Born a blackbird or a thrush, he did not take himself (or try) ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... those gunners who, like the writer, are both unskilful and unambitious, the shooting obtained on the Cotswold Hills is very enjoyable. In September from ten to twenty brace of partridges are to be picked up, together with what hares a man cares to shoot, and a few rabbits. ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs |
