"Undesirable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bricks; these weaken and dissolve after the rains and snows of winter, and a cemetery becomes a place of exposed remains and of pitfalls, where an unwary step on what appears solid ground may precipitate one into the undesirable company of a skeleton. By the time Semnoon is reached the day has grown warmer, and the sun favors the cold, dismal earth with a few genial rays, so that the blooming orchards of peach and pomegranate that brighten and enliven the environs ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... are you, as to what followed your amazing breach of hospitality? Ran away with a pretty girl, assisted in marrying her to an undesirable son-in-law, and now you want to know how the old folks take it! Oh, Archie, for sheer innocence you ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... disrespectful and offensive. Except in rare instances, and these, it is thought, only where they are largely subsidized by southern patronage, it is not so now. The desertions that are taking place from their ranks will, in a short time, render their position undesirable for any, who aspire to gain, or influence, or ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... inscrutable mystery. He is a worthy man; but he has very pronounced views about his own position, and some other undesirable qualities. Still, who knows? You must bless your stars that you have secured me. Now let us consider how to draw up our confession to him. I wish I had listened to you at first, and allowed you to take him into our confidence before his declaration arrived. He may possibly resent the concealment ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... reputation and social standing as his daughter's chaperon. She is, practically, the feminine head of the house, and in so far as possible, takes a mother's place with the girl. She sees to it that the girl has proper companionship and does not make undesirable acquaintances. She accompanies her on shopping expeditions, travels with her, attends theatres and parties with her, takes the head of the table if the girl gives a luncheon, and everywhere strives to make life pleasant for her young charge, giving up her own pleasure and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Alas! they haven't always done so. A large membership of ineffective persons may be only an incubus. Like sailors on my vessel, if they are incompetent they are a hindrance, and in every way expensive and undesirable. I never care to emphasize the large number that the crew of my hospital ship consists of. As long as I can do the work I take pride in the small number I can handle it with. It is far better for the individuals themselves to have more responsibility ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... Privatum factura timet velut ensibus ipse Imperet invito moturus milite bellum. [76] A strong depreciation of Lucan's genius has been for some time the rule of criticism. And in an age when little time is allowed for reading any but the best authors, it is perhaps undesirable that he should be rehabilitated. Yet throughout the Middle Ages and during more than one great epoch in French history, he was ranked among the highest epic poets. Even now there are many scholars who greatly admire him. The false metaphor ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... reflected, "I do not even know what Von Ragastein's mission over here is, but if in Berlin they decide that, for the more complete preservation of his incognito, association between you and him is undesirable—" ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... life of a people, as practically all biologists agree, then the American people certainly have a great opportunity to exercise selection on a large scale to determine who shall be the parents of the future Americans. While it is undesirable, perhaps, to discriminate among immigrants on the ground of race, it would certainly be desirable to select from all peoples those elements that we could most advantageously incorporate into our own life. The biological argument alone, therefore, seems to necessitate the admission of the importance ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... reason why he should not love her—should not woo and win her for his wife if she cared for him. She was good and sweet and true. Anything of doubt in her antecedents could not touch her. Probably the world would look upon Captain Anthony as a somewhat undesirable father-in-law for a minister, but that aspect of the question did not disturb Alan. As for the trouble of the letter, he felt sure he would easily be able to clear it away. Probably some malicious busybody had become aware ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and like primitive emotions. Pat, for instance, has been taught to regard strangers as interlopers. He therefore resents the presence of all strangers, and has no mental faculty for distinguishing between strangers, as such, and actual intruders whose presence is essentially undesirable." ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... such distracting occupation, in which every business interferes with every other, and none is satisfactorily accomplished. Where there is a tendency to insanity it is sure to be developed by such an undesirable state of things." This is fitly supplemented by a statement made in an American magazine: "We are told that the woman's wards in the New England insane asylums are filled with middle-aged wives—mothers—driven there ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... cannot be rapidly restored. When a rose is once established, its persistent roots may find means of boring through soil that in its first nonresistant state is impossible. While stiff, impervious clay is undesirable, a soil too loose with sand, that allows the bush to shift with the wind, instead of holding it firmly, ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... is not a wholly undesirable quality. He began to wonder how it would feel to own a few of these valuable fellow-creatures. He reached out and touched lightly a young mulatto woman who sat beside him with an infant in her arms. The peculiar dumb expression on her face was lost on Eliphalet. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Valley as a paradise, and would gladly have remained there for the rest of his natural life. Clover hated to take him away; but Dr. Hope had warned her privately that a week would be enough of it, and that with Phil's tendency to overdo, too long a stay would be undesirable. So she stood firm, though Clarence urged a delay, and Phil seconded the ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... conceivable that a sane person should intelligently choose evil, unless he had some inherited bias or tendency in that direction? For what does the choice of evil mean? It means sorrow, it means pain, it means death, it means everything horrible, everything undesirable, and means that a person deliberately and intelligently pits himself against an infinite and almighty power in what he knows must be an eternally losing battle. Can you conceive of a sane person making such a choice ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... Burton formed a friendship with the Algerine hero and exile Abd el Kadir, a dark, kingly-looking man who always appeared in snow white and carried superbly-jewelled arms; while Mrs. Burton, who had a genius for associating herself with undesirable persons, took to her bosom the notorious and polyandrous Jane Digby el Mezrab. [220] This lady had been the wife first of Lord Ellenborough, who divorced her, secondly of Prince Schwartzenberg, and afterwards of about six other gentlemen. Finally, having used up Europe, she made her way ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... other flesh the spirit (or at any rate some of the spiritual qualities) formerly animating it can be transferred to the eater. So a brave enemy is devoured in the hope of acquiring his bravery; and a pregnant woman is denied the flesh of hares and other animals whose qualities it is undesirable her children ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... story. I do not try to explain, I place the episode in my mind alongside other things incredible, things lovely and spiritual, and, to our viewpoint of five years ago, things mad. Many such have risen luminous, undesirable, unexplained, out of these last horrible years, and wait human thought, it may be human development, to be classified. I accept and treasure the silver stirrup as a pledge of beautiful human gratitude. I hold it as a visible sign ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... if extremely long and straight, indicates an extraordinary desire for glory, celebrity, publicity and the like; and although this might be an extremely good quality in the case of an actor, preacher, politician or public man, it may be most undesirable if such a person is to occupy the position of a private secretary, or the confidential ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... of perpetuating whatever evil purpose they might conceal. So it has remained impossible (if I may anticipate a little) to ascertain what was conveyed in this curious message or commission. Both Dunning and Harrington are firmly convinced that it had the effect of bringing its possessors into very undesirable company. That it must be returned to the source whence it came they were agreed, and further, that the only safe and certain way was that of personal service; and here contrivance would be necessary, for Dunning was known by sight to Karswell. He must, for one thing, alter his appearance by shaving ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... to notice her, but looked round the room with evident displeasure. The table, with its remains of supper; the stained cloth; above all, the undesirable odour of food and stale tobacco; all seemed to fill him with disgust. Gently, but firmly, he ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... malt. There is also a ferment which renders a part of the nitrogenous matter soluble. This again is affected by temperature in much the same way as diastase. Low heats tend to produce much non-coagulable [v.04 p.0510] nitrogenous matter, which is undesirable in a stock beer, as it tends to produce fret and side fermentations. With regard to the kind of malt and other materials employed in producing various types of beer, pale ales are made either from pale malt (generally a mixture of English and fine foreign, such as Smyrna, California) ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... shortness as his or her ideal. The very fact that no man in these initial announcements ventures to set himself down as short (although a considerable proportion describe themselves as tall) indicates a consciousness that shortness is undesirable, as also does the fact that the women very frequently describe themselves ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... The infant science of eugenics will have much to say on this subject hereafter; at present we are only discovering how complex and obscure the laws of heredity are. The State of the future will have to step in to prevent the propagation of undesirable variations, whether physical or mental, and will doubtless find means to encourage the increase of families that are ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... the sale of War Bonds by every possible means. Yet the CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER threw cold water on the efforts of certain firms to increase the sale by the offer of cash prizes, and thought it undesirable that this inducement should be imitated. The advocates of Premium Bonds were a little depressed by this announcement, but cheered up somewhat on observing that the conscientious CHANCELLOR has no intention of refusing the millions already ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... resolution suspending the payment over into the reserve fund of the twenty parts of the profits set aside to be so paid, and ordering these twenty parts also to be paid over to the members semi-annually. The reserve fund had already reached proportions which made it unnecessary and even undesirable ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... We are here concerned with it only as it is an attack on purity. From the Christian point of view the marriage relation has for its end the procreation of children for the upbuilding of the Kingdom of God. If circumstances are such, through reasons of health or economy, that children seem undesirable, the remedy is plain, self control. The theory that human beings have no more control over their appetites than beasts, while it has much to support it in contemporary life, cannot be admitted from ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... generally arrived before the whizz. "A6" and "A7" suffered most, and on the 1st July Captain T.C.P. Beasley, commanding "C" Company, and Lieut. A.P. Marsh, of "B" Company, were both wounded, and had to be sent away to Hospital some hours later. The same night we gave up these undesirable trenches, together with "A5" and "A8" to the 4th Battalion, and took instead "49," "50" and the Support "51" from the Cheshires of the 5th Division. These trenches were about 200 yards from the enemy except at the junction of "49" and "50," where a small salient in his line brought him to within ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... angry with you, Captain," said the Count, slyly, "for bringing such an undesirable auditor. I had better go alone and occupy some obscure seat. I do not wish you to forfeit Mlle. d' ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... officers. When, however, the officers of the Forest Service took the case in hand, the situation changed and things moved quickly. The disreputable saloon was promptly removed from the fraudulent land claim by means of which the keeper of it had held on, and this thoroughly undesirable citizen either went out of business or removed his abominable trade to some locality outside the ...
— The Training of a Forester • Gifford Pinchot
... against the silence with the impact of a blow. Nothing more undesirable could have happened. Again Mack bayed, and the echoing bell tones of his voice took on a strange similarity to a tocsin of warning. Rustling and crackling across the men's fancies the influences of the North moved ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... was thought to ensure his safe return.[200] Apparently the notion was that if the wife did not lose blood in one way or another, her husband would be bled in war to make up for her deficiency; so by way of guarding against this undesirable event, he took care to relieve her of a little superfluous blood before he repaired to the field of honour. Further, the Baganda would not suffer a menstruous woman to visit a well; if she did so, they feared that the water ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... nothing, at least, very little! One man had seen the object of Steele's solicitude and to this person, a weazened little "undesirable," the red-headed giant had confided that London was pretty hot and he thought ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... be an unpleasant memory—the most beautiful woman in London wedded to a cowpuncher! Angela, are you going to waste your life tied to an undesirable? Here is love and devotion waiting.... I haven't all the gold in the universe, ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... effectual bars to any of the ambitious pretensions ascribed to me, there is another: of all possible positions that of master of a school, or leader of a sect, or chief of a party, appears to me to be the most undesirable; in fact, the average British matron cannot look upon followers with a more evil eye than I do. Such acquaintance with the history of thought as I possess, has taught me to regard schools, parties, and sects, as arrangements, the usual effect of which is to perpetuate all that is ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... the one pastime which could be practiced without making a noise of any sort to attract undesirable attentions, the boy took to it in self-defence. But before long it had become his passion. He read, by stealth, everything that fell into his hands, a weird melange of newspapers, illustrated Parisian weeklies, magazines, novels: cullings from the ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... weight, and when the machine came to be run at high speeds it was found that owing to its lightness the contact thus obtained was not reliable, the flutes or ribs of the roller slipping upon those of the detaching roller, which for good work is undesirable. This is remedied by placing a heavier top roller in the horse tails, which is made with a broader bearing so as to give greater solidity to the top roller. Another good idea we noticed in this machine was in the application ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... Vao's greatest charm. The old men were sulky and sad, and spoke of leaving Vao for good and settling somewhere far inland. It is not surprising that the whole race has lost the will to live, and that children are considered an undesirable gift, of which one would rather be rid. What hopelessness lies in the words I once heard a woman of Vao say: "Why should we have any more children? Since the white man came they all die." And die they certainly do. Regions that once swarmed with people ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... knelt. For by this time the patrol-boat with the carbineers had reached the steamer's side and a boarding-ladder had been thrown across her quarter. And Blake began to comprehend that he was in the most undesirable of situations. He could hear the repeated clang of the engine-room telegraph and Tankred's frenzied and ineffectual bellow of "Full steam ahead! For the love o' Christ, full ahead ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... of the vulgar to be rude and gruff in order to repel an undesired acquaintance. In reality, nothing freezes out a bore more effectually than the icy calm of dignified courtesy. There are exquisitely polite ways of sending every undesirable person to limbo. The perfect self-command of the well-bred man enables him to do this to perfection, but without giving offense. Moreover, as most people worth seeking are men and women of earnest lives and ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... ill-health in the plant that was too ready to bloom into beauty and perfection. She would have liked to be able to assert that Jacqueline's health would not permit her to sit up late at night, that fashionable hours would be injurious to her, that it would be undesirable to let her go into society as long as she could be kept from doing so. But Jacqueline persisted in never being ill, and was calculating with impatience how many years it would be before she could go to her first ball—three or four possibly. Was Madame de Nailles in three or ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... down; but those seeking a companion for life would do well to bear this caution in mind, at the same time remembering that too great similarity of character, especially when there are prominent defects, is equally undesirable. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... decidedly that I dared not urge it. "Henceforth, Anna," said he, "you will move in a different sphere of life; and though it is possible that you may have the power of showing favour to your relations from time to time, yet much or familiar intercourse will be undesirable, and is what I cannot allow." I felt almost afraid, after this formal speech, of asking my father and Fritz to come and see me; but, when the agony of bidding them farewell overcame all my prudence, I did beg them to pay me a visit ere long. But they shook their heads, and spoke ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... strongly to Riley Sinclair that Cartwright had not yet fully ascertained whether or not his companion came from that very town. And, although the day before, he had decided that Sour Creek was most undesirable and all that pertained to it, this unasked confirmation of his own opinion ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... marching on field rations the wet added a severe test of physical endurance. The troops were in enemy country where they scrupulously avoided every native village, and no wall or roof stood to shelter them from wind or water. The heat of the first two weeks of November changed with a most undesirable suddenness, and though the days continued agreeably warm on the plain into December, the nights became chilly and then desperately cold. The single blanket carried in the pack—most of the infantry on the march had no blanket at all—did not give sufficient ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... than war times. Because a food is good is no reason for unlimited quantities; an ounce of sugar a day is wholesome—a pound is likely to result in both indigestion and a badly balanced diet. A quarter of a pound of meat a day is not undesirable for an adult, but a pound a day may result in general overeating or in the special ills which are related directly to a large quantity of meat. One of these is an upsetting of a proper balance of food elements in the diet. Diets high in meat are apt ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... more, for it so happens that Colonel Fitz-James is known to be an epicure, to be fussy and finical about all things pertaining to the table, and what is worse takes no pains to disguise it, and in consequence is considered an undesirable dinner guest by the most experienced housekeepers in the regiment. All this I had often heard, and recalled every word during the long hours of that night as I was making plans for the coming day. The combination in its entirety could not have been more ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... and long armed. In the old fighting days Michigan railroads chose their train officials with an eye to their superior deltoids. A conductor who could not throw an undesirable fare through a car window lived a short official life. The two men loomed on ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... sure that she does not," said Sylvia, who instinctively felt that the conversation was following an undesirable course. ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... to dry up the torrents of his speech. The girl regarded him with the face of a Sphinx. Only in her eyes there seemed to be some apprehension of the fact that the young man's clothes and manners were alike undesirable things. ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with a faint smile. "You had better advertise for the kind of man you want," she said, dryly, "and state that 'none others need apply,' as a warning to applicants whom you might consider undesirable." ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... that a great man is impossible and, even more, undesirable, and that a saintly man is both possible and desirable. It is proved also that a so-called great man meant a great danger for mankind; a saintly man never could be dangerous. We do not need great men at all, we ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... doctor's instructions everyone set to work with a will; a shot or two was fired to scare away any undesirable lurking beasts, with the result that the reports went echoing away amongst the rocks with many a strange reverberation, and then the ponies and bullocks were driven into the undergrowth to browse, while the men set to hacking and chopping with axe and billhook, Dan proving ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... respectful, and quite a favorite with everybody. Nancy had treated herself to an expensive luxury in the shape of a husband,—an idle, worthless mulatto man, who was owned as a slave in Boston. Nancy bought him, by intense labors in spinning flax, but found him an undesirable acquisition, and was often heard to declare, in the bitterness of her soul, when her husband returned from his drinking bouts, that she should never buy another nigger, she knew. Prominent there was the stately form of old Boston Foodah, an African Prince, who had been stolen ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... It is plainly undesirable to insert in a narrative of this character any account of the political questions which led to the separation of the United States from the British Empire. It has already been remarked that the separation followed ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... every imperfect or undesirable plant should be rooted out and destroyed, so that none but the best can fertilize each other. In early spring the litter must be either removed from the plants and the ground between the rows given a cultivation to loosen the surface, or it may be raked ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... Major as the latter conducted the party quietly around the trench corner and into a sap leading directly out into No Man's Land. Twice the trench passed under broad belts of barbed wire, which we were cautioned to avoid with our helmets, because any sound was undesirable for ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... lucky in that he never acquired any of those mouth-filling nicknames such as Paper Collar Joe wore, and Grand Central Pete and Appetite Willie and the Mitt-and-a-Half Kid and the late Soapy Smith—picturesque enough, all of them, but giving to the wearers thereof an undesirable prominence in newspapers and to that added extent curtailing their usefulness in their own special ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... circumstances the blood stagnates: life, from excess and plethora of sweets, becomes insipid: the spirit of action droops: and it is oftentimes found at such seasons that slight annoyances and molestations, or even misfortunes in a lower key, are not wholly undesirable, as means of stimulating the lazy energies, and disturbing a slumber which is, or soon will be, morbid in its character. I have known myself cases not a few, where, by the very nicest gradations, and by steps too silent and insensible for daily notice, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... bright circles all along the floor, and under arches of raised and joined hands the girls came down, two and two, to the end, forming their long line face to face against the opposing line of their partners. The German may be, in many respects, an undesirable dance; it may be, as I have sometimes thought, at least a selfish dance, affording pleasure chiefly to the initiated few, and excluding gradually, almost from society itself, those who do not participate in it. I speak of it here neither to uphold nor to condemn,—simply ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... third (or 'Golden-Age') phase of human evolution is the obstinate and obdurate pre-judgment that the passing of Humanity out of the Second stage can only mean the entire ABANDONMENT OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS; and this people say—and quite rightly—is both impossible and undesirable. Throughout the preceding chapters I have striven, wherever feasible, to counter this misunderstanding—but I have little hope of success. The DETERMINATION of the world to misunderstand or misinterpret anything a little new ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... testimony from a stone, and interest from a gold-mine; and his office was besieged in consequence by all that numerous class of persons who have still some reputation to lose, and find themselves upon the point of losing it; by those who have made undesirable acquaintances, who have mislaid a compromising correspondence, or who are blackmailed by their own butlers. In private life Michael was a man of pleasure; but it was thought his dire experience at the office had gone far to sober him, ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... captain, through some outside influence—a very influential relative of high position, it was said—had managed so far to retain his post; but he, as colonel of the regiment, would see to it that the undesirable officer should receive his dismissal in the spring at latest. And meanwhile Guentz must be transferred from the fifth battery. It fell out conveniently that Wegstetten should be ordered away just then to the Austrian man[oe]uvres. Guentz was put in charge of ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... with business interests, for the Government to undertake by crude and ill-considered legislation to do what may turn out to be bad, would be to incur the risk of such far-reaching national disaster that it would be preferable to undertake nothing at all. The men who demand the impossible or the undesirable serve as the allies of the forces with which they are nominally at war, for they hamper those who would endeavor to find out in rational fashion what the wrongs really are and to what extent and in what manner it is ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... and practicable, and that I now regard all such modifications of our creed as hopeless. In the mean time an increased knowledge of the spirit, methods, and literature of the Missouri Synod has convinced me that such alterations are undesirable, that the elements of true Pietism, that a sense of the necessity of personal religion, and the importance of personal assurance of salvation, can be maintained in connection with a Lutheranism modified ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... France with an iron hand. The military traitors and grafters are in jail. The weaklings in the official line have been cashiered. The politically undesirable have been given ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... help fancying that he must have been concerned in the assassination of the late Czar, which you will remember took place in that year early in March. It is terrible to think of the poor Morleys entering blindfold on such an undesirable connection; but, at the same time, I really do not feel that I can say anything about it. Excuse this hurried note, dear Charlotte, and with love to yourself and kindest remembrances ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... added, as he did, that there was no middle course possible; that we must either treat or make war. It was undoubtedly to our discredit, and to our temporary harm, that we refused to follow either course; it showed the existence of very undesirable national qualities, for it showed that we were loud in claiming rights which we lacked the resolution and foresight to enforce. Nevertheless, as these undesirable qualities existed, it was the part of a ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... same time; but the object generally for which he lives is the natural one of getting his bread for himself and his family; and, as the great moralist says, 'It is better to be bad for something than for nothing.' Badness generally is undesirable; but badness in its essence, which may be called ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of his origin had an undesirable reputation, for its inhabitants were loose-livers, and the scandal of the surrounding countryside. But even in this environment the monk's family had made themselves conspicuous by their low and ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... next to impossible. To guard against the chances of this, a rigid and suspicious system of restraint has been developed in cases of consanguinity; and relations must do all they can to avoid meeting. To sit in the same room, to meet on the same road, is undesirable. To converse is but just allowable, and then all who choose must hear what is said. So thorough, however, has been the isolation in many cases, that persons of different sexes have lived as near neighbours for many years without having conversed with each other; and such communication ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... direction, let us examine the statements of Hester Dyett. Now, it is immediately comprehensible to me that the evidence of this woman at the public examinations was looked at askance. There can be no doubt that she is a poor specimen of humanity, an undesirable servant, a peering, hysterical caricature of a woman. Her statements, if formally recorded, were not believed; or if believed, were believed with only half the mind. No attempt was made to deduce anything from them. But for my part, if ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... plain that as a poor young man with a family I could rent no houses at all in this most undesirable region, I next looked for rooms, unfurnished rooms, in which I could store my wife and babies and chattels. There were not many, but I found them, usually in the singular, for one appears to be considered sufficient for a poor man's family in which to cook and eat and sleep. When ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... fifty life peerages, to be conferred upon men of attainment in law, diplomacy, and administrative service, and the other (popularly known as the "Black Sheep Bill") providing for the discontinuance of writs of summons to undesirable members of the peerage. The bills, however, were withdrawn after their second reading and an attempt on the part of Lord Carnarvon, in 1889, to revive the ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... sporting circles. Whether true or not I know not. Here it is. The committee of one of the most important bookmakers' clubs in Australia had occasion to adjudicate on a charge laid against him for conduct which it was stated rendered him an undesirable member of the club, to the honorary membership of which he had been admitted. The committee, after inquiry, decided to request him to see them, inform him of the charge that had been made against him, ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... stated by certain medical men that egg-food in any form is an undesirable diet for birds, owing to its being peculiarly adapted to the multiplication of the bacillus of septicaemia, a disease which is responsible for the death of many newly imported birds. It is a significant fact, however, that insectivorous species, which are those principally fed upon ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... preached in Vermont for several years as an itinerant Methodist minister before settling down to farming in Edgewood, only giving up his profession because his quiver was so full of little Grants that a wandering life was difficult and undesirable. When Uncle Bart Cole had remarked that Mis' Grant had a little of everything in the way of baby-stock now,—black, red, an' yaller-haired, dark and light complected, fat an' lean, tall an' short, twins an' singles,—Jed Morrill ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Henderson, in whom so amply dwelt the spirit of originality, must be considered, on the whole, as a misfortune, and as tending to subtract from the permanency of his reputation; he wisely considered posthumous fame as a vain and undesirable bubble, unless founded on utility, but when it is considered that no man was better qualified than himself to confound vice and ennoble virtue; to unravel the mazes of error, or vindicate the pretensions of truth, it must generally excite a poignant regret, that abilities like his should have been ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... seemingly cared little for these confidences: and again, although he learned to shoot and was a fair horseman, he put no heart into his sports. His religion debarred him from a public school; or, rather—in Mrs. a Cleeve's view—it made all the public schools undesirable. When she first suggested Dinan (and in a way which convinced the Squire that she and Father Halloran had made up their minds months before), for a moment he feared indignantly that they meant to make a priest of his boy. But Mrs. a Cleeve resigned that prospect with a sigh. Walter must marry ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the use of a long-continued preceding diet of constant composition, it is impossible to rely upon any regular time for defecation or for any definite separation of feces. For many experiments it is impracticable and highly undesirable to have the subject attempt to defecate inside the chamber, and for experiments of short duration the desire to defecate is avoided by emptying the lower bowel with a warm-water enema just before the subject enters the chamber. Emphasis should be laid upon the ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... measure was desirable and would come, but there might well be a question as to the time at which it should be made to come. The old Duke knew that the measure would come,—but believing it to be wholly undesirable, thought that he was doing good work in postponing it from year to year. But Mr. Monk had become urgent, and the old Duke had admitted the necessity. There must surely have been a shade of melancholy on that old man's mind as, year after year, he ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... a road as the N. C. O. had warned him of the danger of lending official aid and comfort to a passel of professional promoters and fly-by-nights; that after all, the N. C. O. might merely be the stalking-horse to a real-estate boom planned to unload the undesirable timber holdings of the Trinidad Redwood Lumber Company, in which event it might be well for the council to proceed with caution. It was Mr. Yates' opinion that for the present a temporary franchise ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... kind arrived. He found an inconvenience in traversing the distance between their two houses, particularly in damp weather, the years he had spent in trying climates abroad having sown the seeds of rheumatism, which made a journey undesirable on inclement days, even in a carriage. He told her of this new difficulty, as he did ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... difference that he saw between the sisters was sufficiently accounted for to him by the ten year's difference in their ages. He never could be persuaded, that, in any undesirable sense, Rose was more like the modern young lady than her sister. Graeme was perfect, in his wife's eyes, and Rose was not quite perfect. That was all. However, he did not wish to discuss the question ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... by the influx of free Negroes and fugitives running away from persecution in the South, there had been enough trouble with white vagrants to lead to drastic laws for the protection of certain communities. Michigan, which did not until 1827 pass a measure dealing especially with undesirable Negroes, had prior to this time a law providing for selling idle and dissolute persons at auction. At one of the sales in 1821 a Negro bought a white man and ordered him to follow his master, and the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... here interrupt you for your own sake. One word of betraying what you may have seen, or what you may have suspected, and your seclusion is like to have either a very distant or a very brief termination; in either case a most undesirable one. At present, you are sure of being at liberty in a very few ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... a phase of tottering thrones it is very undesirable that the British habit of asylum should be abused. We have already in England the dethroned monarch of a friendly republic; he is no doubt duly looked after. In the future there may be a shaking of the autumnal boughs and a shower of emperors and ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... fantastic and even ugly shape, and which is their real excuse for the flirting with, "geniuses," casting themselves at the feet of directors; which had tempted her to coquette with Elsley, and was now bringing her into "undesirable" intimacy with the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... some things may be both unattainable and undesirable. That's the case with the little thieving god MERCURY, and that big red-skinned Prize-Fighter, MARS. I can't understand, however, why these disreputable deities should he worshipped in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... the wealthy burghers in the Transvaal put together would not subscribe a thousand pounds towards retaining it. Indeed, at this time the members of the deputation themselves seem to have looked upon their undertaking as being both doubtful and undesirable, since they informed Sir T. Shepstone that they were going to Europe to discharge an obligation which had been imposed upon them, and if the mission failed, they would have done their duty. Mr. Kruger said that if they did fail, he would be found to be as faithful a ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... were plainly too much for him, and he had to acknowledge his defeat. The experience was good for him; he did not realize this at the time, nor did he enjoy the sensation of not getting what he wanted. Nevertheless, a reverse or two was due. Not that his success was having any undesirable effect upon him; his Dutch common sense saved him from any such calamity. But at thirty years of age it is not good for any one, no matter how well balanced, to have things come his way too fast and too consistently. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... the northern nations which are thus afflicted England has achieved an undesirable supremacy, having herself smoothed the path of her eminence by a school system which withdraws her youth from female influences during the years when the tendency to reserve may be combated with a certain hope of success. It would ill become one who has never recovered from the effects ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... which dashed up over us, while the schooner heeled over to the blast. Sometimes I thought that our voyage would end in our being carried to the bottom to become the food of alligators. Before, however, so undesirable a catastrophe happened, our skipper bore up and ran for a creek on the western shore, with the navigation of which he was fortunately acquainted. After tearing along for a few minutes before the wind, we saw by the fast waning light an opening in the trees, towards which ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... conditions of human instinct, and that is in the value that it brings to women. Without it, a woman may be the essence of fascination; she may be the completeness of attraction, but for the need of the race she is undesirable. Without chastity, a woman may be most things to a man, but she cannot be ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... a member of her family, and to recognize this or that relative. Count Rhedern thought of some plan by which he could frustrate this scheme of his father-in-law in regard to the wedding festivities, which would bring him into such undesirable and disagreeable association with persons beneath his rank, as he desired to avoid as far as possible all eclat in this misalliance. With a smiling countenance he entered one morning into the magnificent parlor of his affianced, ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Browning's proof of his optimistic faith is his appeal from the intelligence to the moral consciousness. To show theoretically that evil is merely phenomenal is, in his view, both impossible and undesirable. It is impossible, because the human intellect is incapable of knowing anything as it really is, or of pronouncing upon the ultimate nature of any phenomenon. It is undesirable, because a theoretical proof of the evanescence of evil would itself give rise ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... gratuitous university instruction to all students alike is that it stands in the way of this most important consummation; that it not only does not accomplish the end which is desirable, but that it does accomplish another which is exceedingly undesirable. For the real problem to be solved is this: How shall the higher education in different fields be brought within reach of the young men and women best fitted to acquire it, to profit by it, and to use it to best advantage? Any one acquainted with American schools and universities ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... of the Faubourg, and mothers in general, may not take Dumas exactly at his word. There is a passage, for example, in the story of Miladi ("Les Trois Mousquetaires") which a parent or guardian may well think undesirable reading for youth. But compare it with the original passage in the "Memoires" of D'Artagnan! It has passed through a medium, as Dumas himself declared, of natural delicacy and good taste. His enormous popularity, the widest in the world of letters, owes absolutely nothing to prurience or curiosity. ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... said it was "a lonesome, fearsome bit o'country," and, whether because of the ugly memories that hung about it, or in view of extremely modern stories of disagreements between Chase guardians and poachers, considered it an undesirable short cut after dark ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... into indignation and boiled over. Clark had not moved and indeed only smiled in an absolutely friendly way, but now there were shouts that Manson sit down. He was putting the town in an unfortunate and undesirable position. Finally, Belding and Worden dragged him expostulating into his chair, whereupon Dibbott and Bowers very earnestly, and with much applause, expressed what the meeting really felt. After which ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... not encourage these people, dearest. They are so extremely undesirable, and there is so much unrest in the State just now that I cannot but regard ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... world she had worshipped so long. She had hated all things, and wished herself out of sight of all things. That she who had been so young, so beautiful, so delightful to men, should become old, ugly, and undesirable. That she should one day be like Lady Castlerich! That such things should happen to others were well enough; that they should happen to her seemed an unspeakable and revolting cruelty. And it was at that moment that her husband had sent for her. He had told her she must give ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... people abroad (courier, lady's-maid, valet); and have come home so in love with their wild untrammelled life, that the possession of their estate at Ardoch, and their prospect of an income of many thousands a year, seem equally to oppress them as undesirable incumbrances, requiring them to sacrifice all their freedom, and submit to all sorts of civilized conventional constraints from which they have lived in blessed exemption abroad, and to adopt a style of existence utterly repugnant ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... own punishment, two days later Bones renewed an undesirable acquaintance. In the early days of Schemes, Ltd., Mr. Augustus Tibbetts had purchased a small weekly newspaper called the Flame. Apart from the losses he incurred during its short career, the experience ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... great advantage of easy access, or the boarding-house acquaintance who can profit by those vacant hours when the least interesting of visitors is better than absolute loneliness,—the less likely are these undesirable personages to be endured, pitied, and, if not embraced, accepted, for want of something better. Euthymia found so much pleasure in the intellectual companionship of Lurida, and felt her own prudence and reserve so necessary to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... scenes in novels and plays in which undesirable suitors were tackled by champions of convention—scenes in which they were even bought off and started in new lands. Would not Yossel go to a new land, and how much would he want over and above his fare? ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... treacherous tree could blot it out. Next, he gathered dry grasses and tiny twigs from the high-water flotsam. He could not bring his fingers together to pull them out, but he was able to gather them by the handful. In this way he got many rotten twigs and bits of green moss that were undesirable, but it was the best he could do. He worked methodically, even collecting an armful of the larger branches to be used later when the fire gathered strength. And all the while the dog sat and watched him, a certain yearning wistfulness in its eyes, for it looked upon him as the fire-provider, ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... seems so strange, but-well-you see-he often told me that he loved me. Yes, my name is Arletta, but I did not love him, nor even like him. My father and mother hated him, and we all had to secretly leave home and travel abroad in order for me to avoid his undesirable attentions. But notwithstanding that, my heart now bleeds for him in his terrible plight, and I want to do something for him. My conscience would not allow me to pass along without trying to aid him. You say that in his ravings he claims ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... turning over Amendment; at length interposed. "The Hon. and learned Gentleman opposite," he observed, "asks for an explanation of this Amendment; I frankly tell him I cannot give it. I don't understand it myself, and as it would be undesirable to include in the Act a provision that might lead to controversy, we ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... between two particular countries some such arrangement is possible along limited lines and relating to a particular area or areas. I doubt even this possibility; but certainly no general agreement in accord with such theories is possible and in my judgment it would be highly undesirable if ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... the editor of the Warsaw Gazette, she returned to her lodgings, wondering what would happen next. She was soon to discover, for the angry Colonel and a squad of police arrived with a warrant for her arrest as an "undesirable." When, however, they announced their purpose, she flourished a pistol in their faces and declared that she would put a bullet through the first of them who came near her. Realising that she meant what she said, and not anxious to qualify for cheap martyrdom, Colonel Abrahamowicz was ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... mechanical way of looking at the affair if we suppose that a habit which has been formed by a certain number of repetitions can be broken by an equal number of denials. We can never renounce a habit utterly except through a clearness of judgment which decides it to be undesirable, and through firmness ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... add, I was sorely tempted to accede to his proposal, for nothing would be gained by any one if the slipper remained for ever at the museum, whereas by conniving at its recovery by those who, after all, were its rightful owners I should be ridding England of a weird and undesirable visitant. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... removed he will assume the characteristics of a woman. Many changes will take place. His mind is no longer clear, he tires easily, cannot concentrate upon any subject, and has marked loss of memory and of physical well being. The things that once appealed to him are now undesirable. The opposite sex are repulsive and he shuns their society. A man or woman who suffers the premature loss of their glands of regeneration will become more or less defective mentally and their ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... difference of opinion is not only possible but profitable. The critics who would unite in condemning a thirteen-line sonnet or a ten-act tragedy could not be expected to agree on the relative merits of Milton's and Wordsworth's sonnets. Unanimity of opinion is as impossible and undesirable concerning the poetic achievement of Browning and Whitman as it is concerning the music of Brahms and Wagner, or the painting of Turner and Whistler. Great artists who have taken liberties with traditions and precedents have done much to prevent the critics from falling ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... Revolution denationalized the refugee Huguenot population of Prussia, that the unification of Italy disfranchised the Italian Swiss, or that the Irish Home Rule Bill will transform the populace of Boston into undesirable citizens. On the contrary, the Zionists are convinced that the re-establishment of a Jewish nation will strengthen, for example, the claim of the German Jew that he is a German by distinctly separating the national from the universal Jew—the sheep from the goats, if you will—and ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... avoid the worst heat of the day for the patient. Also, you will take a small tabloid to make you 'buck up,' if you know what that means, Norah!" Norah grinned. "Ah, well, Mr. Stephenson here will make you forget all that undesirable knowledge before long—lost in a maze of Euclid, and Latin, and Greek, and trigonometry, ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... is avoidable or even undesirable; but it is so common that it has a very important effect ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... door, we show ourselves timidly, we offer ourselves like undesirable goods. A voice arises among us, "You haven't a bit of a corner, madame, for some ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... Keats in 1816, was confronted with a very difficult state of things. The high prices which had ruled from 1812 to 1815 had attracted emigrants in large and undesirable numbers. The commercial reaction and foreign competition, aided by the bounties, hit the merchants hard, and in 1815 bankruptcy trod fast on the heels of bankruptcy. In the following winter actual starvation menaced the residents, and many owed ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... than fortune—"by every exertion to attain sufficient to make us both independent for the rest of our lives." Not for many years did he come to perceive that a life of leisure was not only impossible, but undesirable for him, and to express it as his fondest wish that he might "die in harness." The profits of the "Tales of a Traveler" went the way of most of his earnings—this time to help ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... about them, I know," he said. "I dare say she has been definite enough to explain that I consider Osborn altogether undesirable. Under the veneer of his knowledge of decent customs he is a cad. I am obliged to behave civilly to the man, but I dislike him. If he had been born in a low class of life, he would have ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a quarrel in all her life, not even with a schoolmate, and there does not live a soul upon the earth who has met her who has the slightest cause to complain of neglect. Not that she does not welcome the best and gently avoid the undesirable—none is more fastidious than she—but neither rank, wealth, nor social position affects her one iota. She is incapable of acting or speaking rudely; all is in perfect good taste. Still, she never lowers the standard. Her intimates are only of the best. She is ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... it did not occur to her to seek council with the Most High, found adequate means of disposing of the undesirable gift. It was a matter of considerable satisfaction to her that Nathalie had not been made cognizant of the little affair. Yet the watchful mother would have been not a little amazed could she have read the depths of her demure daughter's mind, and found there a vague but unquestionable disappointment ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... have tried to show you, had been a period of very slow progress. The people who were in power believed that "progress" was a very undesirable invention of the Evil One and ought to be discouraged, and as they hap-pened to occupy the seats of the mighty, it was easy to enforce their will upon the patient serfs and the illiterate knights. Here and there a few brave souls sometimes ventured forth into the forbidden region of science, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... courage was strong. Moreover, she prayed as she walked, and she felt now the presence of her Guide and was not afraid. As she walked she faced a number of possibilities in the immediate future which were startling, and to say the least, undesirable. There were wild animals in this land, not so much in the daylight, but what of the night? She had heard that a woman was always safe in that wild Western land; but what of the prowling Indians? What of a possible exception to the Western rule of chivalry toward a decent woman? One ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... have gone by. I have been a leader in the race and I have secured a prize. But at what cost? I am old—a bundle of undesirable habits; my health is impaired; my wife has become a frivolous and extravagant woman; I have no real friends: my children are strangers to me, and I have no home. I have no interest in my family, my social acquaintances, or in the affairs of the city or nation. I take no sincere ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... the idea of a land full of mere citizens all with some minimum of manners and minimum of wealth, the vision of the eighteenth century, the reality of the twentieth. So I think it will generally be with the creator of social things, desirable or undesirable. All his schemes will fail, all his tools break in his hands. His compromises will collapse, his concessions will be useless. He must brace himself to bear his fate; he shall have nothing but his ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... returned to Germany. One of them committed a crime and disappeared; the other two went to the extreme eastern frontier of Prussia and settled there. Again and again the Prussian Government notified us that under the right exercised by every nation, and especially by our own, these "undesirable intruders" must leave Prussian territory or be expelled. Finally we discovered at the embassy that a secret arrangement had been made between Germany and Russia which obliged each to return the undesirable emigrants of the other. This seemed to put the two families in great danger ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... expostulation which was already written, and waiting in his pocket. To intrude upon her at such a time was unseemly; and to despatch a letter by a messenger before evidence of its necessity had been received was most undesirable. The whole proceeding at best was clumsy; yet earnestness is mostly clumsy; and how could he let the event pass without a protest? Before daylight on that autumn morning he had risen, told Faith of his intention, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... smiled. It did his heart good to hear the familiar slang phrases again. "Whether it matters a damn—as you say—depends on whether he is the undesirable I have in mind. Quite young; but much influence, and a bad record. Mixed up with German agents, before the War, and the Ghadr party in California; arrested for seditious activity and deported: but of course, on appeal, allowed to return. Always the same tale. Always the same ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... of other congenial companions he sought Percy's society. Neither Mr. James, the Vicar, nor Mrs. Woodward realized how much the two young fellows were together, or they certainly would not have encouraged the intimacy. Winona, who was just old enough to recognize certain undesirable features, tackled ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... of politics into the school-room and the whole tense life of the capital was extremely undesirable, and, if continued, could not fail to have an injurious influence upon immature lads; so my mother hastily decided that, instead of waiting until the next year, we should ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... last, after some weeks, during which he remained unapproached, and at the end of which he came to a belated perception of the insuperable barrier between the elect and the undesirable, and of his own identity with the latter class, he decided he must fall back upon his friends for what they might be worth. He had undergone many snubs in his efforts to thrust himself upon fine gentlemen in taverns, coffee-houses, and gaming-places. ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... masculine society of the place and time). Sylvia snubbed the masculine jays of college partly because it was a breath of life to her battered vanity to be able to snub some one, and partly because they seemed to her, in comparison with the smart set, seen from afar, quite and utterly undesirable. She would rather have no masculine attentions at all than such poor provender for her feminine ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... in undesirable places is found to be greater in Northern than in Southern cities. Every large city has its white wards and its black wards, which the politician knows as well as the seaman knows the depths and ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... historic dome, seemed amid the real life of the street not less laughable than a show of monkeys. 'I declare one would like to throw some nuts to see if they would go after them on all fours,' said Freydet's undesirable companion. But Freydet did not catch the impertinent remark. He slipped away, mixed with the procession, and entered the church between two files of soldiers with arms reversed. He was in his heart profoundly glad that Loisillon was dead. He had never seen or known him; he could not love him ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... possibly be indiscriminate and machine- like, but must be adapted to the causes, and to the man as affected by those causes. Common sense and logic alike require, inevitably, that the moment we predicate a specific cause for an undesirable effect, the remedial treatment must be ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... court poet called them, when her having a birthday compelled him to official raptures; and because everybody felt sure they were not really anything of the kind the poet's utterance was received with acclamations. Indeed, a princess who should possess such pools would be most undesirable—in Lothen-Kunitz nothing short of a calamity; for had they not had one already? It was what had been the matter with the deceased Grand Duchess; she would think, and no one could stop her, and her life in consequence was a burden to herself and to everybody else at her court. Priscilla, ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... than a man. A man as soon as he is converted goes to work, and during the day remains under some sort of discipline and restraint; whereas the very privileges of a married woman's position often become hindrances in the way of her Salvation. No one can compel her to work, and undesirable neighbours may visit her and tempt her to sin. Adjutant Lee never relaxed hope or effort because success was difficult of realization. There are bright stars in her crown of jewels whom she discovered in the depths; but after ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... Mrs. Simpson did, as always, her poor best. The children managed to satisfy their appetites by sitting modestly outside their neighbors' kitchen doors when meals were about to be served. They were not exactly popular favorites, but they did receive certain undesirable morsels ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... himself to be dead in Christ and raised to newness of life. Expecting the world to misunderstand him and even to hate him, he must "wisely walk before them who are without." He is called upon to "use this world but not to abuse it;" and that which is of itself pure and good may become undesirable to him at times, because its use would ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... by a Mr. Glascock in the House of Commons, December 16, 1601, two equally undesirable justices are described— first, the one "who from base stock and lineage by his wealth is gotten to be within the commission"; the other "a gentleman born, virtuous, discreet, and wise, yet poor and needy. And so only for his virtues and qualities put into ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... discreet and easy. If you were a young man writing 'to Father of Girl he wishes to Marry' or 'thanking Fiance'e for Present' or 'reproaching Fiance'e for being a Flirt,' or if you were a mother 'asking Governess her Qualifications' or 'replying to Undesirable Invitation for her Child,' or indeed if you were in any other one of the crises which this book is designed to alleviate, you might copy out and post the specially-provided letter without making yourself ridiculous in the eyes of its receiver—unless, of course, he or she also possessed ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... investigation into the Diurnal Variation in the Butting Frequency of the Young Bull Calf, an investigation that was yielding curves of an abnormal and very perplexing sort, and the presence of glass globes of tadpoles was extremely undesirable while this particular research ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... assigned as accounting for this anomaly. The explanation is inadequate, however; seeing that the same contrast holds among other classes. Of a score of townspeople, few, if any, would prove ignorant of the fact that it is undesirable to work a horse soon after it has eaten; and yet, of this same score, supposing them all to be fathers, probably not one would be found who had considered whether the time elapsing between his children's dinner and their resumption of ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... symbolism. Nobody had overstepped the verge. Mrs. Tailleur had not once been mentioned. She might have disappeared behind the shelter provided by the merciful, silent decencies. Colonel Hankin had shown his unwillingness to pursue her into the dim and undesirable regions whence she came. ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... unimportant because a clean ancestry, decency in the family and neighborhood, and noble needs in friendship, love, and marriage must, in any case, be the main roots of healthy direction and ideal restraint of the sex-instinct. Or they fear enlightenment as a possible stimulus to undesirable imagination and experimentation. Or they dislike, even abhor, it as esthetically repulsive—shocking to an unreasoned but cherished craving for silence about these things—a craving which the customs of our land and time have made ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... voice was slightly ironical, almost concealing a slight harshness. "Did Duncan mention that he was a friend of mine?" he asked. "No?" His smile grew mocking. "Just merely mentioned that I was uncommonly clever in the art of getting people—undesirable people—out of the way. Don't get the idea, though, because Duncan told you, that I make a business of shooting folks. I put Blanca out of the way because it was a question of him or me—I shot him to save my own hide. Shooting Doubler would be quite another proposition. ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... early-aroused sense of the social injustice and privations imposed upon the poorer classes both in town and country, which he carefully observed during his experience as a land-surveyor, might easily have had an undesirable effect upon his general character had not his intense love and reverence for nature provided a stimulus to his moral and spiritual development. But the "directive Mind and Purpose" was preparing him silently and unconsciously until his ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... marriage-cards, Sir Edwin has attempted no communication with Dr. and Mrs. Grey. Nor do they wish it. The difference between themselves and him, in wealth, rank, habits, tastes, would always make such association undesirable, even had they expected it renewed. But they did not. In their complete and contented life they had—until the marriage-cards came—almost ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... by monsters rimming the western Atlantic appeared a better fate than languishing in a cruel Spanish prison, for the first men who enlisted were from this class. A more unfortunate method of recruiting a crew could hardly be imagined. Such men were undesirable, not only because of their lawless character, but also because they had never before sailed on a ship; and the more this class rallied to the front, the more the respectable sailors of Palos, Moguer, Huelva, and other adjacent towns hung back. To go forth ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... farewells of Grandpapa and the Magister, whom we were to meet again a week or two later, we hurried on board, and found to our joy that the unsteady Finlanders were not allowed to follow us. With a puff and a whistle the steamer left such undesirable passengers behind, and the last we saw of them was fighting and struggling with one another, each man apparently imagining, in his muddled imbecility, that his own companion had kept him from going on board, whereas in reality the ticket-collector, now safely journeying ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... savings that country life makes possible is elimination of private school tuition. Theoretically city public schools are good enough for anybody's children. Actually most good neighborhoods have an undesirable slum just around the corner and the public school is for the children of both. So, many city-dwelling families, not from snobbishness but because they do not want their young hopefuls to acquire slum manners and traits, dig deep into their ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... field, like many a one in hilly country, had places where the hard pan of underlying rock had only a thin skin of earth over it. Its very thinness helped quick germination, for the rock was near enough to the surface to get heated by the sun. So, with undesirable rapidity, growth began, and shoots appeared above ground before there was root enough made below to nourish them. There was only one possible end for such premature growth—namely, withering in the heat. No moisture was ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... knowledge of the circumstances, but now, knowing the facts, he advised that the whole matter be allowed to simmer down quietly. He still took issue with his respected friend the squire on the illegality of the means used to rid the community of a most undesirable member. The squire replied with heat, referring to the case of The Commonwealth versus Hodgins, and the subsequent action of Hodgins versus The Commonwealth for damages. It was very evident that he would be relieved in mind if the case of The Commonwealth versus Blight did ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... between cleaning his pipe and giving useless advice—an admitted privilege of the off-duty man. He had been very quiet all the afternoon, engaged in re-caulking the canoe, strengthening the tent ropes, and fishing for driftwood while I slept. No more talk about undesirable things had passed between us, and I think his only remarks had to do with the gradual destruction of the island, which he declared was not fully a third smaller than when we ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... made lightly. I am not advocating such a course as being in itself desirable or undesirable. I am attempting merely to estimate the drift and tendency of the times, considering those forces which for long have been in action and, as I think, must continue to act with even greater urgency in the difficult ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... noted from the "undistinguishable many," Lionel had formed to himself a certain ideal standard, above the ordinary level of what the world is contented to call honest, or esteem clever. He admitted into his estimate of life the heroic element, not undesirable even in the most practical point of view, for the world is so in the habit of decrying; of disbelieving in high motives and pure emotions; of daguerreotyping itself with all its ugliest wrinkles, stripped of the true bloom that brightens, of the true expression ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be changed every year. In my hives, they might, if it were desirable, be easily changed several times in a year: but once in five or six years is often enough; oftener than this requires a needless consumption of honey to replace them, besides being for other reasons undesirable, as the bees are always in winter, colder in new comb than in old. Inventors of hives have too often been, most emphatically "men of one idea:" and that one, instead of being a well established and important ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... mainstay of each of their meals was a mass of palmitas; but on this day they had no time to cut down palms. We finally decided to run these rapids with the empty canoes, and they came down in safety. On such a trip it is highly undesirable to take any save necessary risks, for the consequences of disaster are too serious; and yet if no risks are taken the progress is so slow that disaster comes anyhow; and it is necessary perpetually to vary the terms of the perpetual working compromise between rashness and over-caution. ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... mere expulsion (q.v.) from a country, though the term "deportation" is now used in that sense in English law under the Aliens Act 1905 (see ALIEN). Strictly, the deportation or transportation system has ceased to exist in England, though the removal or exclusion of undesirable persons from British territory, under various Orders in Council, is possible in places subject to the Foreign Jurisdiction Acts, and in the case of criminals under the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... gaily? He had merely consulted the doctor on a simple, straightforward need for a nervous tonic—that was what he had needed—a tonic. Instead he had engaged himself for—he scarcely knew what—an indiscreet, indelicate, and altogether undesirable experiment in confidences. ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... any acknowledgments have been overlooked, I trust the injured person will forgive me when I have had already to quote so many authorities for so small a book. The popular character of the work renders it undesirable to load the pages with footnotes of reference; and scholars will generally see for themselves the source of the information given in ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... Empire transportation was a very valuable punishment, but there ought to be natural limits to it. Transportation was very well in the infancy of a Colony, but as it became more peopled and civilized, it was undesirable to deluge it with a convict population. The subject of abolishing the penalty of transportation was one of ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth |
