"Unconventional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the garments, but utterly refuse to subsist on water, and begin at once to droop. Is it the vitality in the air which forces even the plants to eccentricities? Or can it be that they have not yet been subdued into uniformity like ours? Are they unconventional—nearer to wild Nature? So queries an unscientific lover ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... natural to reflect that a writer in this unconventional manner has mainly to thank himself for any want of success which he, and we, may regret; and that reflection, again, suggests the case of BROWZER, the Man who would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... Mormons at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, was a great success. His humour was so entirely fresh, new, and unconventional, it took his hearers by surprise, and charmed them. His failing health compelled him to abandon the lecture after about eight or ten weeks. Indeed, during that brief period he was once or twice ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... conversation away from the personal. "And one really doesn't notice their passing. One lies on the shelf and gets dusty as the world goes on. Are you going this way? May I walk with you? This is an unconventional meeting. Will you count it sufficient introduction that I knew your aunt many years ago? My name is Isabella Vernon, but that probably conveys ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... I wrote a letter which so disturbed the Governor that he immediately set about an informal investigation of some of my charges. Despite its prolixity, its unconventional form and what, under other circumstances, would be characterized as almost diabolic impudence and familiarity, my letter, as he said months later when I talked with him, "rang true." The writing of it was an easy matter; in fact, so easy, because of the pressure of truth ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... After prolonging this unconventional performance, Angela gives the mulatto a noisy kiss under his ear, takes his head between her two hands, mischievously rumples up his black locks, gives him a little blow on the cheek, and says, "That is how I love you, ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... been content to ignore,—she might have written it in a fit of pique—but the second had made him thoughtful. Her very persistence was characteristic. Perhaps after all she was in the right—he had arrived too hastily at an ignoble conclusion. Her attitude towards him was curiously unconventional; it was an attitude such as none of the few women with whom he had ever been brought into contact would have dreamed of assuming. But none the less it had for him a fascination which he could not measure or define,—it had awakened a new sensation, ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... becomes master and remains master.... Every one knows this, but nevertheless things remain as before. What has become of the last trace of decent feeling, of self-respect, when our statesmen, otherwise an unconventional class of men and thoroughly anti-Christian in their acts, now call themselves Christians and go to the communion-table?... A prince at the head of his armies, magnificent as the expression of the egoism and arrogance of his people—and yet acknowledging, without ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... known it was a screw he had lost, and she would have known just what comfort he would have needed; whereas a Fraulein would know nothing about a screw, beyond the German for it, and the gender, of course. And of what use is that to a child? It may sound very unconventional, and I suppose it was so, to go to a strange house and ask for Thomas, and my only excuse a small screw. ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... possible future Brighton, Lymington is never likely to become crowded with visitors again, but artists find many good studies on the river and in the town and even on the "soppy" flats themselves, and there are salt baths at high tide for those unconventional holiday-makers ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... his sensitiveness to impression, Carry was, on her part, quite as vaguely ill at ease. She saw before her one of those men whom the sex would vaguely generalize as "nice," that is to say, correct in all the superficial appointments of style, dress, manners, and feature. Yet there was a decidedly unconventional quality about him: he was totally unlike anything or anybody that she could remember; and as the attributes of originality are often as apt to alarm as to attract people, she was not entirely prepossessed ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... the speech conventions of the adult. But even though the crassness of the form of expression of the wish disappears with age, there is no reason to suppose that the human organism ever gets to the point where wishes just as unconventional as the above do not rise to trouble it. Such wishes, though, are immediately repressed; we never harbor them nor do we express them clearly to ourselves in our ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... appeared to me to be extremely unconventional, with a decided tendency for mischief. Is ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... have tried to tell me the truth about yourself, but our situation is so peculiar, so different from what I have been taught was proper." She smiled sadly, her eyes misting. "I am afraid you will not understand. You can scarcely appreciate how strictly I have been brought up, or what such an unconventional meeting as this means to me. I ought to be ashamed ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... bolt right across and nab him. The sister sitting next stopped her. Judging from the glimpses I had as the party spoke together and leaned to look, it was quite a sensation. But apparently by common consent they left whatever move was to be made to the bride; and to my surprise this move was most unconventional. She got up with an abrupt gesture and started over to our table—alone. This, for a girl of her sort, was going some. I glanced doubtfully at Worth. He shrugged ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... became totally absorbed in the issue. He was too unconventional a thinker ever to find himself in harmony with all the declarations of any party, and yet it was a necessity of his nature to be in the melee. He had his own array of facts, his own peculiar deductions; ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... This unconventional Son lived obscurely; he never carried weapons, he could not bear to have so much as a human ear cut off in his presence. But see how he figures in the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... own English translation of the Golden Legend, a mediaeval Latin collection of lives of the saints, is scarcely less in importance. Among many other titles the following may serve to show how unusual and unconventional were his selections: ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... and unconventional, and all these things appeal to men. You can attract all the admirers you want, and more than you need, to enlarge your ideas of life, and extend your ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to be on her best behavior while she was the guest of Cousin Louisa. But since propriety was not Madge Morton's strong point she had succeeded only in being perfectly miserable and in offending her wealthy cousin by her unconventional ways. ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... add, with regard to the diagrams of this book, that they are purposely somewhat unconventional, not being drawn to scale nor conforming to the canons of professional draughtsmanship. Where advisable, a part of a machine has been exaggerated to show its details. As a rule solid black has been preferred ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... after-years when immersed in Plato, Lucretius, and the Epicurean writers. But my attention was riveted to it at the age of 20, when I spent a holiday with A., a companion with whom I was, and still am, on terms of great friendship. We enjoyed many things in common, studied together and discussed most unconventional matters, but not this. Previously we had always occupied separate sleeping apartments; on this occasion we were abroad in a country place, and were compelled to put up with what we could get. We not only had to share a room, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... from those old writings might be presented to make a graphic picture of that era of horror and bloodshed. No one, no matter what his family, his manner of living, his standing in the community, was safe. Women feared to do the least thing unconventional; for it was an easy task to obtain witnesses, and the most paltry evidence might cause most unfounded charges. And the only way to escape death, be it remembered, was through confession. Otherwise the witch or wizard was still in the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... At Caen all the merchants knew her. She had restored and furnished her house in proper style. This house was noted as early as 1690. In one of its halls were white cases full of books. His aunt had wished to put them in order. She had found frivolous books in them, ornamented with engravings so unconventional that ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... not lost zeal for the unconventional, and fortune favoured us. A man passing in a skiff told us that a road leading to the Weyanoke houses could be reached by rowing up a tiny bayou that joined the creek a short distance ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... perched on a chair. Something rolled slowly along, half the length of the beam, and dropped to the floor and rolled towards her. Laughing now, Margaret stooped and picked up a great ball, a leather ball, striped red and black. On one of the red stripes was written, in large, unconventional letters, "Roger." It was her father's ball! Margaret held the toy very tenderly in her hands, and tried to see the worn, thoughtful face she remembered so well, a rosy boy's face, full of light and laughter. ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... touching upon her friend's amazing environment and unconventional experiences, Miss Pringle was discretion itself. But if her paragraphs had bristled with exclamation points, they could not, to one who understood her mental processes, have more clearly betrayed her utter disapproval and amazement that English people, and descendants ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... improper! Well, that's news and I'm glad to hear it. I've always wanted to do something unconventional, as you call it, but I ain't never had no chance. I always had to do what was expected of me. I had to live a life just about as broad as a needle, just because I had to make my livin' and couldn't afford to do nothin' that'd be different from what other folks ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... scoundrel!" Cappy murmured to himself. "He has a sense of humor, thank God! Ah, poor old narrow-gauge Skinner! If that fellow ever gets a new or unconventional thought in his stodgy head, it'll kill him overnight. He's hopping mad right now, because he can't say a word in his own defense, but if he doesn't make hell look like a summer holiday for Mr. Bill Peck, ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... strongly enlisted in this contest on the side of the new school. His free, unconventional nature found in its teachings a musical atmosphere true to the artistic and political proclivities of his native Poland; for Chopin breathed the spirit and tendencies of his people in every fibre of his ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... though he adhered to the sonata form of the classic school, introduced into his compositions such daringly original methods that he must be regarded as the first of the great romantic composers. Some of his latest compositions notably, were so very unconventional that they found no appreciation, even among musicians, until years after his death. Technically, his art of orchestration reached such a perfection of general unity and elaboration of detail that he must stand as the ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... strange condition of alarm and distrust to have had such an effect produced upon it by a drama which has no great literary worth, and which appears commonplace and harmless to an outsider. The story is simply that of a young orphan girl, who, according to Spanish ideas, is extremely unconventional, though nothing worse. There is nothing of the emancipated young woman about her as the type is known in England; in fact, she has a perfect genius for those domestic virtues which "advanced" English women regard with disdain. The villain of the piece, is a certain Don Salvador, who, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... laughed. There was something decidedly attractive and breezy about the newcomer. Her dark eyes danced and twinkled as she spoke, and there was an unconventional jollity in the very high-pitched tone of her voice, and an infectious merriment ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... jolly he was, that Mr. Malcolm MacPherson! Such songs as he sang, such stories as he told, such a breezy, unconventional atmosphere as he brought into that prim little house, where stagnant dullness had reigned for years! He worshipped Aunt Olivia, and his worship took the concrete form of presents galore. He brought her a present almost every ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... own popularity; and Christina's slow liking grew into a real and warm affection as the passing days gave her more and more occasion. In the matter of "style," it appears, Dolly had enough to satisfy her; thanks to her mother; for Dolly herself was as unconventional in spirit and manner as a child should be. In school work proper, on the other hand, she was a pattern of diligence and faithfulness; gave her teachers no trouble; of course had the good word and good will of every one of them. Was it the ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... out to write a book we know we are in for something unconventional, but this time he has excelled himself in unconventionality, and has essayed a task that no author has attempted for the last sixty years,—to tell the story of the soil in the form of a chronicle. The result is remarkable; a clear account is given of the soil in relation to the crop, ...
— The Farm That Won't Wear Out • Cyril G. Hopkins
... startlingly. There is the tart, querulous old Mrs. Venables, and there are her three daughters—Nellie who is married and whose life has slipped away from her in the provinces; Liz who is divorced and whose life has been brilliant and unconventional on the Continent; and Evie who is a widow and whose life has been spent being happy through others—her husband, her children, her friends. Evie's young daughter Alex is the fifth woman in the family, and the drama of The Distaff ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... Naturally, Wedekind is the poet speaking his own lines, acting his own creations, and there is, for that reason, an intimate note in his interpretations, an indescribable sympathy, and an underscoring of his meanings that even a much superior actor might miss. He is so absolutely unconventional in his bearing and speech as to seem amateurish, yet he secures with his naturalism some poignant effects. I shan't soon forget his Karl ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... most surprised eyes. Dr. Mitchell's family was the most decidedly unconventional and free and easy of any represented there. Flossy had supposed that they, of all others, would make cards a ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... and joins them, with Cecil by the hand. Floyd looks her over. He has allowed himself an uneasy misgiving for the last half-hour, for Violet's dress is usually so unconventional. But she is in one of her new toilets, a soft, clinging material, with the least touch of tulle at the throat and wrist, and a cluster of white roses at her belt; simple, yet refined, with a delicate grace ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... ample consolation for the loss of Helen Blantock, and in the end lose interest in her and her titled grocery man, will not surprise the reader. The manner in which it is effected, however, involves some rather unconventional details, worked out, of course, through the agency of a delightful American girl. Anyone who has read "The Heavenly Twins" will doubtless find something to stir reminiscence in the intercourse between Lord Lane and ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... the radical, the innovator of the family. She often brought her conservative mother to the verge of horror. Hers was the hardy, daring, and unconventional strain of the pioneer. She liked the edge; if the edge was a little ragged, so much ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... to side. Amory was in a trance. He felt that every moment was precious. He had never met a girl like this before—she would never seem quite the same again. He didn't at all feel like a character in a play, the appropriate feeling in an unconventional situation—instead, he had a sense ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Bradley uses a very individual style of the Roman capital, often marked by a peculiar exaggeration in the width of the round letters, contrasted with narrow tall forms in such letters as E, F and L. Mr. Bradley has become more free and unconventional in his later work, but his specimens have always been noteworthy for beauty of line and spacing; see 111. Figure 109 shows his employment of a brush-made variant of the Roman form; [107] and 110 shows both capitals and small letters drawn in his ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... industry in holding that prohibitions against editorializing by public radio networks were an impermissible restriction, even though the Government enacted the restriction to control the use of public funds. The First Amendment forbade the Government from using the forum in an unconventional way to suppress speech inherent in the ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... which was used in conversation throughout the Empire with the innumerable variations which time and place gave it, which in its most highly refined form, as spoken in literary circles at Rome in the classical period, approached indefinitely near its ideal, literary Latin, which in its most unconventional phase was the rude speech of the rabble, or the "sermo inconditus" of the ancients. The facts which have just been mentioned may be ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... no one who has caught the inconsequent, yet perfectly sincere spirit of the Village better than John Reed. In reckless, scholarly rhyme he has imprisoned something of the reckless idealism of the Artists' Quarter—that haven for unconventional souls. ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... down the barriers even in these unconventional surroundings. You can adjust the matter to suit yourself, but I ab-so-lute-ly refuse to sit cheek by jowl with the ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... proportion of the community reside in flats, which can be rented at sums that rise in accordance with the accommodation but are in all cases moderate. Housekeeping in a flat, should the owner so will it, is ever conducive to economy, and life in a French provincial town is simple and unconventional. ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... would approve, of course. But really, Winthrop, I'm way past the short petticoat stage—though the way they're making them now nobody would guess it. I know it's improper and unconventional and that it isn't done east of the Mississippi nor west of the Rocky Mountains. But when in Rome do as the roamers do, as someone has said. And as for Mr. Purdy," she paused and looked Endicott squarely in the eyes. "Do you know why he didn't shoot that disgusting ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... two women are conversing politely, they are attended by their real, unconventional selves, who interrupt to say what the women actually think and mean. Compare Ninah Wilcox Putnam's Orthodoxy (Forum, June, 1914, 51:801), in which everyone in church says what he is thinking instead of what is ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... of his brother friars were strolling back and forth under the fretted colonnades of the greater court of the Servi one evening before vespers, a glow of relish on their genial, cowled faces, rehearsing the tale of Fra Paolo's unconventional slippers; for it was the hour of small gossip, and ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... De Loutherbourg became a contributor to the exhibition of the Royal Academy. In 1780 he was elected an Associate; in the following year he obtained the full honours of academicianship. His easel-pictures were for the most part landscapes, effective and forcible after an unconventional fashion, and wholly at variance with the "classically-composed" landscapes then in vogue. Turner, when, in 1808, he was appointed Professor of Perspective to the Royal Academy, is said to have taken up his abode at Hammersmith, in order ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... on the popular theme, "Make Germany Pay!" was initiated by Col. CLAUDE LOWTHER, who not long ago produced a specific scheme for extracting twenty-five thousand millions from the enemy—a scheme which by its unconventional handling of the rules of arithmetic excited the amazed admiration of professional financiers. Possibly Mr. BONAR LAW, as ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, was jealous because he had not thought of it first. At any rate he subjected the plan to so much caustic criticism that Col. LOWTHER, having ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... the fact that of all times daughters most need their strongest warnings and their most devoted care during the season of Summer silliness, of vacations and excursions, of unconventional meetings with young men under the easy familiarity of fun and frolic and a general "good time." And to the girl who has no mother at hand thus to warn her; take it from us that as your own chaperone you must recognize the silly season as your period of special peril, as the time when it is ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... husband should come to Fernborough Hall and make a visit before their departure for the United States. Owing to Harry's presence at the Hall it became necessary, when they arrived, to divulge the well-kept secret of Maude's unconventional marriage. ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... grandmother, besides her dowry, at the time of the marriage, was her family. Her father was so original that he kept a tutor for his daughters—sons he had none—and allowed them to be instructed in the rudiments of three or four languages and the elements of arithmetic. Even more unconventional was her sister Hode. She had married a fiddler, who travelled constantly, playing at hotels and inns, all through "far Russia." Having no children, she ought to have spent her days in fasting and ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... 1715-1778, was a continual protest against the formalism, affectation, pedantry and despotism of the age of the Bourbons. His ideal of man was the unconventional, unconstrained, solitary, but harmless and easy-going savage. Hobbes was the growth of a sterner and more serious age. The only reality to him in heaven and on earth was force: his one idea in philosophy was coercion. Human nature to him was an embodiment of brute violence ever ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... contrast of fresh tones with the faces marked by vice and poverty; Lautrec's two great influences have been the Japanese and Degas. Of the former he retained the love for decorative arabesques and the unconventional grouping; of the other the learned draughtsmanship, expressive in its broad simplification, and one might say that the pupil has often been worthy of the masters. One can only regret that Lautrec should have confined his vision ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... where the violins thrilled with sweet passion, and the horns complained with a lazy richness, that they might chatter in gangways and nod to their friends. It was all so elaborate, so hollow! and yet in the minds of these buzzing, voluble persons one could generally discern a trickle of unconventional feeling, which could have made glad the ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... outrage upon gentility in Mrs. Ramrod's very presence possessed that red republican Sissy. She giggled within herself, Madigan's attitude, his streaked and gilded face, his confident voice, showed such delightful indifference to the effect his unconventional attire must have upon this ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... This unconventional but truly religious marriage ceremony was in perfect harmony with the loyal, noble natures of Theodore Weld and Angelina Grimke, exemplifying the simplicity of their lives and the strength of their ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... modestly refers to it as a sketch, which it undoubtedly is, but a sketch that gives a just and discriminating analysis of George Sand's life, tastes, occupations, and of the motives and impulses which prompted her unconventional actions, that were misunderstood by a narrow public. The difficulties encountered by the writer in describing this remarkable character are shown in the first line of the opening chapter, which says, 'In naming George Sand we name something ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... bestowed upon it, but that the praise has been to some extent undiscriminating. It has now become almost a tradition to hold up to our admiration Coleridge's chapter on poetic diction, and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, in a preface that is as unconventional in manner as it is stimulating in most of its substance, maintains the tradition. As a matter of fact, what Coleridge has to say on poetic diction is prolix and perilously near commonplace. Instead of making to Wordsworth the wholly sufficient answer that ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... attached, and admiring or disapproving of the different combinations without gratitude or sentiment; she knew that self-interest prompted all of the offerings that were not merely sent just because it was the right thing to do. There was one unconventional bunch, however, that caught her eye. It was a mere handful of scarlet flowers tied loosely together with ribbons of their own colour and the same tint of green as their leaves. It was from a young subaltern in the regiment, a boy whom she had noticed ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... then she made for town—a swift, direct ride, her heart beating high as if she were upon a most daring and fateful adventure. And, as a matter of fact, never in her life had she done anything that so intensely interested her. She felt that she was for the first time slackening rein upon those unconventional instincts, of unknown strength and purpose, which had been making her restless with ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... used to the delicious thrills of surprise which every turn and every corner and every vista and every night and every morning hold for the beauty-lover. Nothing could be more heterodox, more bizarre, more unconventional than Constantinople scenes. Nothing could be more orthodox than the views of Naples. To be sure, poets have written reams of poetry about it, travellers have sent home pages of rhapsodies about it, tourists ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... merrily. To her the miner was a new character, unlike any she had ever met, and though rough and unconventional, she was ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... she said, leaning back, "it is a little unconventional my coming here alone; but Mama was not well enough, and I—Victor," she said, with a sudden indrawn breath, "I felt I must come and see you. I told her I felt I should die there if they ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... she accepted the protection of some admirer. Who he may have been at first, how many more there were than one, how long the various amours endured, it is idle to speculate. She was for her period as thoroughly unconventional as many another woman of letters has been since in relation to later times and manners, as unhampered and free as her witty successor, Mrs. de la Riviere Manley, who lived for so long as Alderman Barber's kept mistress ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life," has been well acted up to. Indeed, the whole theology of the Dukhobortsy may be summed up as a bold attempt to depart from the empty Greek formalism and arrive at a spiritual and unconventional worship, an enlargement of the outline given in the shortest and ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... be quite unconventional," Sir Claude went on—"I mean the little household we three should make together; but things have got beyond that, don't you see? They got beyond that long ago. We shall stay abroad at any rate—it's ever so much easier ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... was saturated with simple religious feeling, and for this deep but unconventional religiosity he found at Harvard the most sympathetic possible environment. In the fifty years that have sped since he arrived here our knowledge of Nature has penetrated into joints and recesses which his vision never pierced. The causal ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... begin like this," reflected Gideon; "but then it's quite out of the question for me to tackle a full score, and Jimson was so unconventional. A dedication would be found convincing, I believe. 'Dedicated to' (let me see) 'to William Ewart Gladstone, by his obedient servant the composer.' And now some music: I had better avoid the overture; it seems to present difficulties. Let's give an air for the tenor: key—O, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... think that a great and reverently-minded man, conscious of the limits of human reason—a man like Butler— would find his true and proper task now in presenting Christian teaching in an unconventional form, stripped of much error that the terms which we all employ when speaking doctrine seem unavoidably ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said will never be known, for at that moment the general's servant announced Mme. Sans Gene, his former laundress, and that celebrated woman, unconventional as ever, stalked into the room. ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... variety of functions. A knight-errant to the core, the atmosphere of Williams under Hopkins gave him his consecration. His comrades recognized him as an intellectual leader, essentially religious but often startlingly unconventional, "under great terrestrial headway," "the most strenuous man I ever saw." He said of himself: ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... be after the easy, natural, unconventional life of San Remo, one delight of which is the absence of all thought about dress! Whatever may be and are the delights of Paris—and I fully intend that we should all three enjoy them—that burden is heavier there than in all the world beside—and why? oh, why? What ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... exists than the fact that much that was new and original when first propounded by him has passed into the texture of the national ideas. His style is perhaps the most remarkable and individual in our literature, intensely strong, vivid, and picturesque, but utterly unconventional, and often whimsical or explosive. He had in a high degree the poetic and imaginative faculty, and also irresistible humour, pungent sarcasm, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... appearing in different magazines and reviews. Particularly well known are Stewart Edward White, '95, Katharine Holland Brown, '98, Franklin P. Adams, '03, and Harry A. Franck, '03, no less well known as an unconventional traveler. Michigan has also left her mark in journalism, from Liberty E. Holden, '58, editor and publisher of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and William E. Quinby, of the same class, of the old Detroit Free Press, to Edward ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... conscious imitation, and Lamb was not long in finding his feet and indicating his peculiar individuality. He had learned much from the free expressions of the old dramatic poets, and in such pieces as "The Old Familiar Faces"—a poignant cry from a suffering soul—or in his unconventional sonnet, "The Gipsy's Malison," written more than thirty years later, we have some of the most markedly individual of his poems. He was not a poet, he declared—running counter to the judgement of some of his later critics—but essentially a prosaic writer. All that he wrote in verse, ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... properly introduced and could only throw myself upon her indulgence. Perhaps the other lady, the one I had had the honor of seeing the day before, would have explained to her about the garden. That was literally what had given me courage to take a step so unconventional. I had fallen in love at sight with the whole place (she herself probably was so used to it that she did not know the impression it was capable of making on a stranger), and I had felt it was really a case to risk something. Was ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... Those who are successful gamblers, pugilists, pickpockets, saloon-keepers, book-makers, jockeys and the like are so by reason of their intelligence, their innate mental acumen and perception. It is a fact that in the sporting world and among the unconventional men-about-town you will often find as good if not better judges of human nature than elsewhere. Contact with a rough and ready and all-too-revealing world teaches them much. The world's customary pretensions and delusions ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... might tap and request that she be allowed to clear the table. He believed that in the next half-hour his dream of the last five years was to be shattered; otherwise, if it had not been to spare him, why should Terry have paid him so unconventional a visit, at such an unconventional hour, when by every law of usage she should have been waiting for him to ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... she went on, holding her head very straight and looking away to the wooded hills, "I don't want to do anything unconventional." ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... as unpromising as it was unconventional, but more than half the congregation obeyed, and when the rustling of leaves had subsided, he began to read the Sermon on ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... one, perhaps) in Mme. Sophie Gay, and it has not been sufficiently remarked that she even transmitted a shade of all this to her daughter, in other respects one of the most sagacious spirits and one of the most essentially unconventional of our own day. A certain something that was not in harmony with the tone of contemporary writers here and there surprised you in Delphine de Girardin's productions, and, as Jules Janin once said, "One would think the variegated plumes of Murat's fantastic hat[2] were sweeping through her brains!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... floor of the reception-room, was a picture of abject, horrid soul-torture. At last, through the subtlety of this unconventional sleuth, along methods which were never dreamed of in the ordinary police category, he had been broken on the wheel which he had himself so ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... "It's beautifully unconventional," she said, as he assisted her into the surrey. "No bridesmaids, no wedding presents, and no dreary round of entertainments. I ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... squatting, plump and ungainly on the ground, or spreading huge knotted arms far overhead, as if reaching out for things they never visibly attain—I always emerge into the ordinary English atmosphere outside, feeling altogether unconventional. As I walk across the well-kept lawns, I find it almost difficult to behave with decorum. It takes me quite a long time to become really common-place and conventional ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... mechanical piano. Between five and six, this student, led by a yell-leader, applauds football practice. The growing tendency of American university students to spend their evenings in extravagant relaxation, at the moving pictures, or in unconventional dancing, is said to be willful and an indication of an important moral sag of recent years. It would be interesting also to know if Arkwright, Hargreaves, Watt, or Darwin, Edison, Henry Ford, or the Wrights, or other persons of desirable ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... A rather unconventional and eccentric preacher in Newbury awoke one sleeper in a most novel manner. The first name of the sleeping man was Mark, and the preacher in his sermon made use of these Biblical words: "I say unto you, mark the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... she bid me, for she was as fresh as an almond blossom touched by the sun, and looking down into two swimming blue lakes where shyness and passion were contending—books easy enough, in truth, to be read, I saw that she loved me, with the unconventional ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Farrow had never known anyone who could do hair as Pegler could—the woman was in some ways very unconventional, very unlike an ordinary ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... things natural have their own point of view, individual, unconventional, whimsical, if you please,—very different, at all events, from that of clearer-witted and more serious-minded men; and the inhabitants of Sanford will doubtless take it as a compliment, and be amused rather than annoyed, when I confess that I found their city a discouragement, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... And a fluttering, chirping host of men, little men and unseeing men, have heaped him over with the uncut leaves of Kim, wrapped him in Stalky & Co., for winding sheet, and for headstone reared his unconventional lines, The Lesson. It was very easy. The simplest thing in the world. And the fluttering, chirping gentlemen are rubbing their hands in amaze and wondering why they did not do it long ago, it was so very, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... saw anything more eccentric or inexplicable in Smith's chimney-pot picnics or crimson sunflowers than she had in the chemicals of Inglewood or the sardonic speeches of Moon. Courtesy, on the other hand, is a thing that anybody can understand, and Smith's manners were as courteous as they were unconventional. She said he was "a real gentleman," by which she simply meant a kind-hearted man, which is a very different thing. She would sit at the head of the table with fat, folded hands and a fat, folded smile for hours and hours, while every one else was talking ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... didn't keep me from coming. Whenever any one of us does anything improper we always say to each other, 'It's Georgiana's fault. She ought not to have taught us to be so simple and unconventional.'" ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... What do we ordinarily do? We trample on natural disposition, level it down to the uniformity which for the crowd is synonymous with good form. To think with one's own mind, feel with one's own heart, express one's own personality—how unconventional, how rustic!—Oh! the atrocity of an education which consists in the perpetual muzzling of the only thing that gives any of us his reason for being! Of how many soul-murders do we become guilty! Some are struck down with bludgeons, ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... What the rabbits mean is a more difficult problem. I jest; but as a matter of fact I should be the first to admit that Miss HINE has written a story that, despite a certain crudity of colouring, is both unconventional and alive. The attitude of the characters towards their parents, for example, is at least original. Deirdre, the heroine, frankly despised her mother, to whom she owed a marriage with the man whom she hated. The gift of a country cottage enabled her to escape from him to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... for people soon grow familiar and unconventional at sea. Blair shouted, "Lennard's a born hospital nurse, but he'll overfeed your patient." Then amid falling shades and hollow moaning of winds the yacht drove slowly away with her foresail still aweather, and the fleet hung around awaiting the admiral's final decision. ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... wild and barbarous life. I leave it with regret. The solemn fir-trees, whose "slender tops are close against the sky" here, the watching hills, and the calmly beautiful river, seem to gaze sorrowfully at me as I stand in the moonlighted midnight to bid them farewell. Beloved, unconventional wood-life; divine Nature, into whose benign eyes I never looked, whose many voices, gay and glad, I never heard, in the artificial heart of the busy world,—I quit your serene teachings for a restless and troubled future. Yes, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... whom the unconventional ways of "the Golden Shoemaker" gave great offence; and that was Mr. Bounder, the coachman. As a coachman, Bounder was faultless. His native genius had been developed and matured by a long course of first-class experience. In matters of etiquette, within his province, Bounder ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... beat fast. Tom began to wish he had adopted some less unconventional means of attaining his object, and tried in vain to drive from his mind the punishments awarded to such offences as he meditated, by the ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... So utterly unconventional had their proceedings been, so thoroughly had the spirit of the remote little island possessed them, and so all-sufficient had they been to one another, that the thought of an engagement ring had troubled his mind as little as the lack of it had troubled ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... doubt guessing at the various nationalities indicated by physique and complexion—Prussian, Pole, Rhinelander, Swiss, and what not. If the company, in English eyes, might have looked Bohemian—that is to say, unconventional in manner and costume—the Bohemianism, at all events, was of a well-to-do, cheerful, good-humored character. There was a good deal of talking ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... to Kapus Elsa had been a very severe blow. She had really reckoned on Bela. He was educated and unconventional, and though he professed the usual anti-Semitic views peculiar to his kind, Klara did not believe that these were very genuine. At any rate, she had reckoned that her fine eyes and provocative ways would tilt successfully against ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... they will call me unmannerly. If I don't they will call me stiff. You may have noticed that those pseudo-intellectuals who like to think themselves Bohemian are always terrified when they are brought up against anything that really is unconventional. On the other hand, your true Bohemian is disgusted if anybody describes him by that word; if there is one word that he detests more than Belgravia, it is Bohemia. No, I shall ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... men now exiled and windows now broken. Among other things she photographed Fielding's grave, and let loose a small bird which some ruffian had trapped, "because one hates to think of anything in a cage where English people lie buried," the diary stated. Their tour was thoroughly unconventional, and followed no meditated plan. The foreign correspondents of the Times decided their route as much as anything else. Mr. Dalloway wished to look at certain guns, and was of opinion that the African coast is far more unsettled ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... myself, and quickly started after the others, risking my neck in my desire to imitate the new mode of motion I had just witnessed. The water was delightfully cool and refreshing, and the company very agreeable, ladies and gentlemen all swimming and diving about together with the unconventional freedom and grace of ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... a bit of a fix. The firm he was trading for on Motukoe didn't do business in the same free-and-easy way as did Bobby Towns' captains and the unconventional Bully Hayes. They made him sign papers, and every time the ship came the rufous-headed Scotch supercargo took stock, and a violent altercation would result over the price of the trade; but as the trader generally had a big lot of produce for the ship, matters always ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... on the slightest pretext. In this case the pretext was anything but slight, for both girls had health as well as youth, had that freedom from harassing responsibility which is the chief charm of every form of unconventional life. And Susan was still in the first flush of the joy of escape from the noisome prison whose poisons had been corroding her, soul and body. No, poison is not a just comparison; what poison in civilization parallels, or even approaches, in squalor, in vileness ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... was glad his choice of words permitted me to make emphatic reply. Not anger but "divinest melancholy" was responsible, I knew, for my unconventional behavior. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... by Flack's. The house itself was more pleasing to the eye than most of the houses in those parts, owing to the black and white paint which decorated it and an unconventional flattening and rounding of the roof. Nature, too, had made so many improvements that the general effect ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... to prepare for the seven-o'clock dinner, while her unconventional loved one turned with a hope of meeting Storri. The fierce truth was, Richard, who, as you have been told, was at bottom full as savage as the Russian, had gone hungering for hostilities with that nobleman. Storri's comments on Dorothy had exploded ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the absence of superfluities; and somehow after many a triumph over the bewilderment of a sulky yet dazzled decorator, Bertha had contrived, in baffling him, to make the house look distinguished without being unconventional; dainty without being artificial; she had made it suit her perfectly and, what was more, the atmosphere was reposeful. Her husband always besought her to do anything on earth she wished in her own home, rather in the same way that one would give an intelligent canary ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... have indicated the astonishment she sought to conceal, for Mrs. Holbury laughed and again her eyes had that unmasked frankness which made surprisingly unconventional assertions ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... its old-time footing owed its longevity more to the enterprising solicitude of Miss McQuade than to any conscious sentimental effort on the part of Youghal himself. Molly McQuade was known to her neighbours in a minor hunting shire as a hard-riding conventionally unconventional type of young woman, who came naturally into the classification, "a good sort." She was just sufficiently good-looking, sufficiently reticent about her own illnesses, when she had any, and sufficiently appreciative of her neighbours' gardens, children ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... in his eyes and the glow on his face as she would have admired an impressionist sketch for a portrait by Sargent. "Only this man ought to be a fresco," she told herself as she followed out the picture-simile. "He's too big and spirited and unconventional to be put ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... no elusions and inferences about Philip Norris when he wanted to be direct. He had fairly taken her breath away. Melissy's instinct told her there was something humiliating about such a wooing. But picturesque and unconventional conduct excuse themselves in a picturesque personality. And this man ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... attentions from Breck—theater every night, luncheons, dinners and even breakfasts occasionally squeezed in between. All this, I supposed, was carried on without Mrs. Sewall's knowledge. I ought to have known better than to have excused it. It was my fault. I blame myself. Such an unconventional affair deserved to end in catastrophe. But to Edith it ended not in spilled milk, but in a spilled pint ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... be so unconventional," said Mrs. Wentworth. "I must beg you not to repeat such a thing as your performance this evening. I don't ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... professional and official ground. Who had brought Michaelis there one afternoon the Assistant Commissioner did not remember very well. He had a notion it must have been a certain Member of Parliament of illustrious parentage and unconventional sympathies, which were the standing joke of the comic papers. The notabilities and even the simple notorieties of the day brought each other freely to that temple of an old woman's not ignoble curiosity. You never could guess whom you were likely to come upon being received ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... which is not so far short of comedy, follows between the lout and the lady, the fun being, among other things, caused by Jean's unconventional strolling about the room, looking at engravings, etc., and showing, by his remarks on things—"The Death of Tasso," "The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis," and the like—that he is ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of any woman I ever met, that she was some one of importance, and though she seemed almost too good looking to be respectable, I determined that she was some grande dame who was so assured of her position that she could afford to be unconventional. At first she read her novel, and then she made some comment on the scenery, and finally we began to discuss the current politics of the Continent. She talked of all the cities in Europe, and seemed to know every one worth knowing. But ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... had a character of very marked and lofty type, the most suggestive study or sketch of the future American man that has yet appeared in our history. How broad, unconventional, and humane! How democratic! how adhesive! No fine arabesque carvings, but strong, unhewn, native traits, and deep lines of care, toil, and human sympathy. Lincoln's Gettysburg speech is one of the most genuine and characteristic utterances in our annals. It has the true antique ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... by Lord Cowper's Commission, expressed his opinion that the National League had been the tenants' best, if not their only, friend. "You have got," he said, "a very ignorant, poor people, and the law should look after them, instead of which it has only looked after the rich." To hold opinions so unconventional in the service of a Unionist Viceroy was impossible, and in a year other fields for Sir Redvers' activities were found. Sir West Ridgeway, who succeeded him, served as Mr. Balfour's lieutenant during the latter's efforts to "kill Home Rule with kindness," and it is significant to find him ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... An unconventional English woman and an inscrutable stranger meet and love in an oasis of the Sahara. Staged this season with ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
