"Undesirable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assigned to the new Western Department, it had not been determined to replace General Sherman in Kentucky; but of this I am not certain, because the idea that a command in Kentucky was very desirable, and one in the farther West undesirable, had never occurred to me. You constantly speak of being placed in command of only 3000. Now, tell me, is this not mere impatience? Have you not known all the while that you are to command four ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... grieves by undesirable and unfortunate events, or because it makes the subject feel unworthy of the object, and out of proportion with the dignity of the latter, or because a perfect sympathy does not exist, or for other reasons and obstacles that arise. ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... who may have introduced you," her companion remarked, "but I feel it my duty to tell you that he is a man whose acquaintance is very undesirable. It is true he belongs to a fine family, but he is their thorn in the flesh. He is a drunkard and a gambler, and his associates are among the most reprobate. Two or three times I have been called to bring him out of a state bordering ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... door after 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
... natural state, and produce, when heated with starches, a very indigestible mixture. Thus, theoretically, it is bad to use any great amount of lard, butter or other fat in the preparation of breads, and it is likewise undesirable to spread butter on heated breads, as is so often done just before eating biscuits, waffles and batter-cakes. The combination is certainly a seductive one, and pleasing to the taste of most persons, but this in no ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... Cheltenham demanded this as a regular practice. The rest of the Church feels strongly that the time for this has not arrived yet; that haphazard invitations by individual vicars to ministers of convictions widely different are undesirable. The time has come for conference, but not yet for any facile overpassing of the facts and reasons for historical separations. Nor do we want to run the risks of indiscipline and disorderliness resulting from such individual action. The Church of England can only be of help to the cause ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... activity which forces the mind to keen, alert, constructive attention during our waking hours, a guard who censors whatever enters the conscious mind and compares it with reality, forcing back all that is not of immediate use, or that is undesirable, or that contradicts established modes of life or thought. In sleep we might say that the censor, wearied by long vigilance, presses all the material—constantly surging from the unconscious into consciousness, there to meet and establish relations with matter—back ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... of 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 ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... that, in designing such a ship as the Flying Fish, every possible mishap should be foreseen and provided against; and while considering this matter it occurred to me that, either by means of treachery, or otherwise, undesirable persons might possibly succeed in gaining possession of the pilot-house, when the ship and all in her would be practically at the mercy of those persons. I therefore included in the design an arrangement, whereby the simple ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Considering it undesirable that so many Indians should be excluded from the treaty, as would be the case if I left the Duck Lake Indians to their own devices, I determined on sending a letter to them. I, therefore, prepared a message, inviting them to meet me at the Hon. Mr. McKay's encampment ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... very deplorable boy who presently arrived at No. 6, The Mall, Cluhir, and was practically lifted off the car by the Big Doctor. Francis Aloysius Mangan had many aspects of character of an undesirable kind, but they were linked with one virtue, the Irish gift, of a good-natured heart. With his enormous thick hands, that made Larry think of a tiger's paws, he undressed the boy as cleverly and gently as he had set the broken bones of his wrist. Mrs. Mangan and Hannah had not ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... manner of Ambrose plainly indicated that he was ignorant thus far of the quarrel which had taken place under my window. Silas might confess to having taken his brother's stick, and might mention whose head he had threatened with it. It was not only useless, but undesirable, that Ambrose should know of the quarrel. I retraced my steps to the stable-yard. Nobody was at the gate. I called alternately to Silas and to Ambrose. Nobody answered. The brothers had gone away to ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... Emmie,—I object to all bazaars on the general principle that they are very undesirable schools for young ladies, in which they learn to be "too fast" and forward, and are more exposed to undesirable acquaintances than in ordinary society. And I have, besides that, special objections to bazaars connected with charitable ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... noticeable and its portent dreaded. Following the blizzard, every moderation of the temperature brought more snow or sleet. Unless a general thaw came to the relief of the cattle, any change in the weather was undesirable. ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... a possibility of tramps or undesirable characters of any description, and do not wander from camp alone or unaccompanied by one of the directors. If your camp is in the forest it will be the part of wisdom to secure also a reliable guide who knows the ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... of the undesirable animals fortunately is true also of the harmless fur-bearers. Several causes make against the extermination of these in Canada. The range is so wide that, harassed in one quarter, the animal may get his family around him and make tracks for ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the labor that he has expended in developing the details of that plan and in devising the various exercises. In the statement of principles and in the working out of details great originality would have been as undesirable as it was impossible. Therefore, for these details the author has drawn from the great common stores of learning upon the subjects discussed. No doubt many traces of the books that he has used in study and in teaching may be found in this volume. He has, at times, consciously ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... million, but he could not stoop so low as to consider himself 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
... this magazine probably know anything about "Mystics;" know even what the term means: but as it is plainly connected with the adjective "mystical" they probably suppose it to denote some sort of vague, dreamy, sentimental, and therefore useless and undesirable personage. Nor can we blame them if they do so; for mysticism is a form of thought and feeling now all but extinct in England. There are probably not ten thorough mystics among all our millions; the mystic philosophers ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... so near the working places of the teachers and professional and business men who occupy them, were possible only because of the comparative cheapness of the land, which had been held undesirable for high-class single houses, not for sanitary reasons, but solely on account of social conditions. This cluster of forty houses makes its own atmosphere. This is the lesson to be learned. Let groups of like-minded families make their ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... or if that word be too shallow, as indeed it is, a new set of convictions. It is profoundly true that 'As a man thinketh, so is he.' Our characters are largely made by our estimates of what is good or bad, desirable or undesirable. And what the Apostle is thinking about here is, as I take it, principally how the body of Christian truth, if it effects a lodgment in, not merely the brain of a man, but his whole nature, will modify and alter it all. Why, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the loss of the game. In the Ruy Lopez the Bishop is nearly always needed on the diagonal QB1-KR6, to prevent a Knight from settling at White's KB5, which otherwise cannot be repelled except by P-KKt3, a most undesirable consummation. The proper continuation would have been P-Kt5, B-K3, Q-B2 and P-Q4, capturing the Queen's file. Compare note to move 13 ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... reached, and I looked forward to exchanging my undesirable companion for more interesting occupation in seeing over the town ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... others ran back into the mist, and as Harding stood listening with tingling nerves he clearly recognized the difficulty of his enterprise. In the first place, there was nothing to indicate which tent Clarke occupied, and it was highly undesirable that Harding should choose the wrong one and rouse an Indian from his slumbers. Then it was possible that the man shared a tepee with some of his hosts, in which case Harding would place himself at his mercy by entering it. Clarke was a dangerous man, and his Stony ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... had become of her; to the younger generation her very existence was only a vague tradition. But it was whispered here and muttered there among the Doyles and the Donohoes and their friends and relations, that old Billy the Bully, on one of his visits to the interior, had been married to this undesirable lady by a duly accredited parson, in the presence of responsible witnesses; and that, when everyone had their own, Carrotty Peg, if alive, would be the lady of Kuryong. However, she had never come back to prove ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... two officers. He regarded Mohr as a very harmful element in the service. The 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 ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... 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, ask him if he wished to refute it; ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... Margery. We don't know who they are yet. They may be very nice people—there's no way of telling to-night. But if they turn out to be undesirable, we can move quite easily, I think. There are plenty of other beaches nearby where we'll be just as ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... to the conclusion that all Sulphites are agreeable company. This is no classification as of desirable and undesirable people. The Sulphite, from his very nature, must continually surprise you by an unexpected course of action. He must explode. You never know what he will say or do. He is always sulphitic, but as often impossible. He will not bore you, but he may shock you. ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... have met him!" he exclaimed quickly, with a strange look of apprehension. "He is an undesirable person, signore." ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... we heard a great noise of men quarrelling in an adjoining court; and, altogether, it seemed a squalid and ugly place to live in, and a most undesirable one to die in. At the conclusion of our labors, the young woman asked us if we would not go into another chamber, and look at the corpse, and appeared to think that we should be rather glad than otherwise of the privilege. But, never having seen ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... American ground forces to Iraq at current levels is adversely affecting Army readiness, with less than a third of the Army units currently at high readiness levels. The Army is unlikely to be able to meet the next rotation of troops in Iraq without undesirable changes in its deployment practices. The Army is now considering breaking its compact with the National Guard and Reserves that limits the number of years that these citizen-soldiers can be deployed. Behind this short-term strain is the longer-term ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... is little privacy in the houses of St. Kitts and Nevis. Either the upper part of almost every room is built of ornamental lattice-work, or the walls are set with numerous jalousies, that can be closed when a draught is undesirable but conduct the slightest sound. Rachael's room adjoined her mother's. She knew that the older woman was as uneasily awake as herself, though from vastly different manifestations of the same cause. At four o'clock, when the guinea fowl were screeching like demons, and had awakened the roosters ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Scotland I arranged that my friend, Mrs. Graham of the strenuous life and 30 pounds a year, should undertake the care of my aunts, to their mutual satisfaction. My last days in England were spent in either a thick London fog or an equally undesirable Scotch mist, which shrouded everything in obscurity, and made me long for the sunny skies and the clear atmosphere of Australia. I told my friends that in my country it either rained or let it alone. Indeed, the latest news from all Australia was that it had ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... less fame 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
... which time all the other commandos would have been out of touch with the chief Boer military strategists and commanders, and would not have known what had become of their military leaders or of their Government. This would have been a very undesirable state of affairs, and would very likely have borne the most serious consequences to us. The British, moreover, could have occupied Pietersburg without much trouble by cutting off our progress in the low veldt, and barring our way across the Sabini and at Agatha. This coup could ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... over the affairs of others. During Guildea's week at the sea, however, the Father thought about him a great deal, with much wonder and some dismay. The dismay was soon banished, for the mild-eyed priest was quick to discern weakness in himself, quicker still to drive it forth as a most undesirable inmate of the soul. But the wonder remained. It was destined to a crescendo. Guildea had left London on a Thursday. On a Thursday he returned, having previously sent a note to Father Murchison to mention that he was leaving Westgate at a certain time. When his train ran in to Victoria Station, ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... fed these leaves with various articles, found that they could dissolve matter out of pollen, seeds, grass, etc.; yet without a human caterer, how could a leaf turn vegetarian? When a bit of any undesirable substance, such as chalk or wood, was placed on the hairs and excited them, they might embrace it temporarily; but as soon as the mistake was discovered, it would be dropped! He also poisoned the plants by administering acids, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... start with us on the morrow, if you please! And, jesting apart, every one was anxious to know the hour of our departure. Now, when you are going to crawl into your canoe from a bad launch, a crowd, however friendly, is undesirable; and so we told them not before twelve, and mentally determined to be off by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was stocky, short, 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 noisy ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... given piece of improvement. But it is no reason at all why those who are anxious for the improvement, should speak and act just as they would do if they thought the change perfectly needless and undesirable. It is no reason why those who allow the provisional utility of a belief or an institution or a custom of living, should think solely of the utility and forget the equally important element of its provisionalness. For the fact of its being provisional is the very ground ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... ever accepted us. It was borne in upon the Smiths that undesirable in-laws are outlaws. This despite the fact that my mother's pink-and-white English face was a gentler copy of what her uncle's had been in his youth; and that when I came along, some years after the dear old man's death, I was named Sophronisba at ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... made by heating iron until all the undesirable elements are burned out by air blasts which furnish the necessary oxygen. The iron is placed in a large retort called a converter, being poured, while at a melting heat, directly from the blast furnace into the converter. While the iron in the converter ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... however, that it is as impossible as it is undesirable to keep the boy ignorant. His own natural curiosity, together with his school and street experience, are fatal to such a Fool's Paradise. Moreover, the general attitude of suppression and secrecy rather stimulates curiosity, and ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... immediately south of this undesirable district, contains the towns of Tornea and Uleaborg. We will pass on to the provinces of Central Finland, viz., Tavastland, Savolax, and Karelia. The Finns say that this is the heart of their country, while Helsingfors and Tammerfors ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... for he warned my mother and myself against making her acquaintance," said the girl. "He said she was a most undesirable person." ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... engaged a long time ago just after he left West Point—and we've always been in hopes that he would be removed to some post where he could meet other ladies and become interested in some one else. But he never has, and so the affair remains. It's most undesirable they should marry, and in the meantime she won't break it off, and it's spoiling her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... lectures appear desirable, but second thought will show that they may be dispensed with, not only without loss, but with much gain. The most obvious objection is that too much time would be consumed in transcribing short-hand notes. Another is that much of the material in a lecture is undesirable for permanent possession. The instructor repeats much for the sake of emphasis; he multiplies illustrations, not important in themselves, but important for the sake of stressing his point. You do not need these illustrations ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... purchased a bottle. Upon this, others of the company began a little to wake up as it were; the scales of indifference or prejudice fell from their eyes; now, at last, they seemed to have an inkling that here was something not undesirable which might be had for ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... towards the east or towards the west, for then the shadows on either side of the north-and-south line would be unequal. And though a slope towards north or south would not affect the equality of such shadows, and would therefore be admissible, yet it would clearly be altogether undesirable; since the avoidance of a slope towards east or west would be made much more difficult if the surface were tilted, however slightly, towards north or south. Apart from this, several other circumstances make it extremely desirable that ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... chile good cook when de tings are gibben him to cook, but when dere's no taters, no fresh meat, no chicken, no fruit, den it's mighty hard to set up fine meals. Dat's de truf!" and Jim nodded his woolly head emphatically at the frequent undesirable state of his larder. ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... all is said, is quite enough. A wolf that can break the back of a full-grown collie at one snap of his jaws, and gallop off with the carcass as if it were a chipmunk, is about as undesirable a neighbor, in the night woods, as any loup-garou ever devised by the ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... ways in which it is possible to get rid of anger, worry, fear, despair, or other undesirable affections. One is that an opposite affection should overpoweringly break over us, and the other is by getting so exhausted with the struggle that we have to stop—so we drop down, give up, and DON'T CARE any longer. Our emotional brain-centres strike work, and we lapse ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Those who think that is the atmosphere of America have never got any farther than New York. We might almost say that they have never entered America, any more than if they had been detained like undesirable aliens at Ellis Island. And indeed there are a good many undesirable aliens detained in Manhattan Island too. But of that I will not speak, being myself an alien with no particular pretensions to be desirable. Anyhow, such is New York; but such is not the ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... so much to be wondered at? Even we who are of the world might consider—you must pardon me, Mr. Greatson, if I speak frankly—the girl's present position an undesirable one. How do you suppose, then, that the principal of a convent boarding-school, whose sister, I believe, is a nun, would be likely to regard the ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to be abandoned for stronger places of refuge. On entering the town they found that the greatest confusion and excitement prevailed. The church had been set apart as an asylum for the women and children, who had to put up, however, with the undesirable accompaniments of fire-arms and gunpowder. Public meetings were being held; picquets of armed citizens were being despatched to watch the main roads. All the houses were thronged to suffocation with ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the two reasons commonly adduced to prove that Russia is an undesirable ally. I trust I have said enough to show that the idea of her being the great modern stronghold of barbarism, ignorance, and tyrannical government is very far from the truth. Now I come to the second reason—that she has ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... less frequented streets, and breaking into a trot wherever such a course was possible, we gradually drew ahead of our undesirable escort, and at length turned into the famous avenue. Throughout the journey I had anxiously scanned the faces of the multitude, hoping to see Raoul, or D'Arcy, or my English friend, John Humphreys. But I had not recognised a single acquaintance, ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... they won't," said Calhoun. "The one undesirable thing, here, would be human footprints on top of cattle tracks. If your friends are a meat-getting party from Dara, as I believe, they should cover up their tracks, get off-planet as fast as possible, and pray that no signs of their former ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... conclusively even on the physical plane that a "a Man thinketh in his heart so is he." The great thing to avoid is Fear and Worry thoughts. These and all other undesirable thoughts are due to bad health partially but it is even a greater truth that physical degeneration is due to bad thinking. Fear affects the heart. During epidemics such as plague, cholera, etc., you generally first project the deadly germs of Fear-Thoughts ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... 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 to increase it. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... but that was all. Since that time I have waited. Nothing has come. I sent for word, and I learned that Jack Landis had betrayed his trust, fallen in love with some undesirable woman of the mining camp, denied my claim to any of the gold to which I had sent him. Unpleasant news? Yes. Ungrateful boy? Yes. But my ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... Anthony was out of the wood. Very well. Considering the nature of the peril with which the wood had been quick, the less the fugitive saw of strange doctors, the better for him. To insist upon the gravity of his late disorder was most undesirable. Besides, if at this juncture a specialist's visit to Bell Hammer could serve any useful purpose, Heron was the man to pay it. It was he who had walked and talked with Lyveden when the latter's brain had been sick. So he alone ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... came out, some from the community at Leyden, in the Fortune, the Anne, the Charity, and the Handmaid, and the numbers steadily increased. The settlers were in the main a homogeneous body, both as to social class and to religious views and purpose. Among them were undesirable members—some were sent out by the English merchants and others came out of their own accord—who played stool-ball on Sunday, committed theft, or set the community by the ears, as did one notorious offender named Lyford. But their number was not great, for most of them remained but a ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... world began has been called a crank. I admit that there are many undesirable persons allied with the socialists, but because of that the great principles of the party cannot be condemned. The theory of socialism is founded on ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... be placed on its stand on a table, or it may rest on a black velvet cushion, but in either case it should be partially surrounded by a black silk or similar wrap or screen, so adjusted as to cut off any undesirable reflection. Before beginning to experiment, remember that most frequently nothing will be seen on the first occasion, and possibly not for several sittings; though some sitters, if strongly gifted with psychic ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... house and property for the rebuilding of the mill. Firm rode with him to escort him back, and so did Martin, the foreman; for although the times were not so bad as they used to be some ten years back, in the height of the gold fever, it still was a highly undesirable thing for a man who was known to have money about him to ride forth alone from San Francisco, or even Sacramento town. And having mentioned the foreman Martin, in justice to him I ought to say that although his entire loss ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... hand—as it was not turkey season—and he made himself quite useful. Having had some experience in working under surveyors, he gave the boys a good deal of valuable advice, and, what was of quite as much service, he proved very efficient in quieting the zeal of some ambitious, but undesirable, volunteer assistants. ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... his 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 "fabric of thought" was ready ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... 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 ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... century ago, and the feelings and passions engendered thereby, as between the people of the Nation and those of the late Confederate States, have well-nigh wholly subsided, which is right. But nevertheless I will set it down here that in my opinion the most "undesirable citizens" that ever have afflicted our country were the traitorous, malignant breed that infested some portions of the loyal States during the war, and were known as "Copperheads." The rattlesnake gives warning before it strikes, but the copperhead snake, of equally deadly venom, gives none, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... the glass we systematically ignored the most individual features—(cries of dissent)—and that was why we never, or very seldom, agreed that a photograph resembled or rendered justice to us. The explanation was to be found in the fact that we thought it undesirable to have too individual features, just as we thought it undesirable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... to reach some Union forces in that quarter. Finding after a while a boat, for which we gave a colored man our only ten dollar gold piece, we endeavored to use it, but a hole in the bottom of it seemed, in the presence of hostile bullets, to make it undesirable, so we proceeded along the bank to a more secure position, where we made a raft of fence rails bound together with our sword belts. It was successfully launched, but before we could use it we were dismayed to see it slowly disappear to rest on the bottom ...
— Ball's Bluff - An Episode and its Consequences to some of us • Charles Lawrence Peirson
... I was just a mite hasty, but I've been feeling bad about this money question. I wanted to offer a big reward for news of Jane some days ago, but your crusted institution of Scotland Yard advised me against it. Said it was undesirable." ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... woman who does not love me to save her from such a fate as you represent; but still, sir, I cannot perceive how that I, till lately unknown to you, can have such an influence over you and yours. Is not your own power sufficient to prevent such undesirable results?' ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... which, while not so generally popular, led often to the introduction of legislative measures. Conspicuous among these were those seeking to remove the political disabilities of former secessionists, those praying that undesirable laws or privileges be abrogated, those advocating the passage of bills, those praying an investigation of the political methods used in certain States, those directing attention to conditions which merited legislative enactment, those praying an appropriation by Congress for the construction of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... to their sisters Nature has given them for no purpose whatever—unless it be for the vexation of schoolmistresses? Perhaps, however, we mistake the aim of those who train the gentler sex. We have a vague suspicion that to produce a robust physique is thought undesirable; that rude health and abundant vigour are considered somewhat plebeian; that a certain delicacy, a strength not competent to more than a mile or two's walk, an appetite fastidious and easily satisfied, joined with ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... eighteen feet square. Of the books, a great portion was in vellum bindings, in wretched condition. Here was Jay's Polyglot, and the matrimonial Sanctius again! There was a very respectable sprinkling of Spanish and French Dictionaries; some few not wholly undesirable Alduses; and the rare Louvain edition of Sir Thomas More's Works, printed in 1566, folio.[146] I saw too, with horror-mingled regret, a frightfully imperfect copy of the Service of Bayeux Cathedral, printed in the Gothic letter, UPON VELLUM. But the great curiosity ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... professional. He especially was 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 ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... delayed. The German Minister for Foreign Affairs then gave Sir Edward Goschen to understand that he rather doubted whether they could answer at all, as any reply they might give could not fail, in the event of war, to have the undesirable effect of disclosing, to a certain extent, part of their plan of campaign. I telegraphed at the same time to Brussels to the Belgian Government, and I got the following reply from Sir ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... parts of chlorate of potash (dry) are separately ground in a mortar, and repeatedly sifted through another wire gauze sieve, having 1,000 meshes to the square inch, in order that the oxygen mixture shall not be ground to an impalpable powder, as this is very undesirable. It absorbs moisture rapidly, and interferes with the regularity of the combustion when very fine. 330 grains of the powder are weighed out (after drying), and intimately incorporated with 30 grains of coal—better with a spatula than by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... the chief source of disaster had been the location of the settlement upon the Jamestown peninsula. The small area which this place afforded for the planting of corn, and the unhealthfulness of the climate rendered it most undesirable as the site for a colony. Former Governors had refused to desert the peninsula because of the ease with which it could be defended against the Indians. But Dale at once began a search for a spot which would ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... upon sweet orange stock gives a spongy fruit of little value, we may assume that similar changes in character of fruit will follow nut grafting. Perhaps the astringent feature of the pecan nut will be found to disappear when the pecan has been grafted upon certain other hickories. Sometimes undesirable results are obtained from such grafting; for instance, the pecan grafted upon water hickory stock has been found to grow freely for four or five years, and then to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... at all of Charlie Mershone's history and permitted him to call when he eagerly requested the favor; but on the way home from the Delmars Arthur, who had glowered at the usurper all the evening, took pains to hint to Louise that Mershone was an undesirable acquaintance and had a bad record. Of course she laughed at him and teased him, thinking he was jealous and rejoicing that in Mershone she had a tool to "keep Arthur toeing the mark." As a matter of truth she had really missed her lover's companionship that evening, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... violet eyes of the girl from Texas were the last words of this letter, read in her room that Sunday morning. But the lines predicting England's early entrance into the war recalled to her mind a most undesirable contingency. On the previous night, when the war extras came out confirming the forecast of his favorite bootblack, her usually calm father had shown signs of panic. He was not a man slow to act. And she knew that, putty though he was in her hands in matters which ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... sound struck 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 invisible, ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... succeed in getting passes out of camp, the prospect was dreary enough, dreary or undesirable. Going into town in a crowded tram is an amusement which quickly palls. Various ill-defined portions of the town, when you got there, were out of bounds, and a man had need to walk warily if he did not want trouble with ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... only his own assistance could avail. He tried to reassure himself, to believe that his torments were a proof of his vocation, that the facility of the novelist who stood six years deep in contracts to produce romances was a thing wholly undesirable, but all the while he longed for but a drop of that inexhaustible fluency which he ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... There is a way into Sweeny's house through a back-yard which is reached by climbing a wall. Sweeny's front door was always shut on Sundays and his shutters were put up during those hours when the law regards the consumption of alcohol as undesirable. But the sergeant had good reason to suppose that many thirsty people found their way to the refreshment they craved through the back-yard. Sweeny was an object of suspicion and dislike to the sergeant. Therefore he stirred the gravel on the quay again and again looked at the gravel ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... joined with a singular verb; as, 'The pains they had taken was very great.' Clarendon. 'No pains is taken.' Pope. 'Great pains is taken.' Priestley. 'Much pains.' Bolingbroke."—Univ. and Crit. Dict. The multiplication of anomalies of this kind is so undesirable, that nothing short of a very clear decision of Custom, against the use of the regular concord, can well justify the exception. Many such examples may be cited, but are they not examples of false syntax? I incline to think "the best usage" would ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the first questions which General Grant had to decide was that of the continuance of the three separate departments of the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee. It was very undesirable to concentrate the ordinary administrative work of these departments at his own headquarters. It would overburden him with business routine which need not go beyond a department commander. He needed to be free to give his strength to ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... paused for a moment, a fluctuating smile upon her lips,—"however much I may have regretted its manifestations. I am not clever, and to me cleverness has always seemed to be an infinite incapacity for hard work; its results are usually a few sonnets, an undesirable wife, and a warning for one's acquaintances. In your case it is, of course, different; you have your ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... lie as long as possible while we quietly oust them, little by little, by developing the good qualities. Surely the less we use deterrents the better, since they are often the child's first introduction to what is undesirable or wrong. I am quite sure they have something of that effect on grown people. The telling us not to do, and that we cannot, must not, do a certain thing surrounds it with a momentary fascination. If your enemy suggests ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... The Club, before the Home Rule organisation superseded it in Liverpool, generally supported the Liberals in Parliamentary elections, but on one occasion there was, from a Catholic point of view, a very undesirable Liberal candidate, whom it was determined not to support. Pressure had, therefore, to be put upon the Liberals to withdraw this man. They were obstinate, though they had not the ghost of a chance without the Irish and Catholic vote, which formed fully half the strength they could ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... degree, cosmically aware. In the physical field western civilization handsomely rewards initiative. In the social field it has been far less generous. Imagination and cosmic consciousness have been quite generally listed among the undesirable endowments ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... armored,—both in type and in numbers, does not require great interest of the public; much of the duties of this class, also, can be discharged fairly well by purchased vessels, although such will never have the proportion of fighting power which every type of ship of war should possess. As a rule, it is undesirable that a military force, land or sea, should have to retreat before one of equal size, as auxiliary cruisers ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... Haven, to be a voter, a man must first be a member of a church of approved standing.[b] In more liberal Plymouth and Connecticut, the franchise, at first, was made to depend only upon conduct, though it was early found necessary to add a property qualification in order to cut off undesirable voters.[23] In the Connecticut colony, it was expressly enacted that church censure should not debar from civil privilege. When advocating this amount of separation between church and civil power, Thomas Hooker was not moved by any such religious principle as influenced the ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... covering, being greenish in contrast to the chair frame, is also in contrast to the side-wall. Here we have, then, the color relations of side-wall, wainscoting, furniture-frames and covering; but it is undesirable that these tones should be in the same scale. (See 62 and 92, also tables pages ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... on which argument is alike useless and undesirable. We must observe and be guided by ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... rapidly I had dropped all hope of interesting the frigid British bear. He, on his side, was plainly on thorns at my insistence; I judged he was suffering torments of alarm lest I should prove an undesirable acquaintance; diagnosed him for a shy, dull, vain, unamiable animal, without adequate defence—a sort of dishoused snail; and concluded, rightly enough, that he would consent to anything to bring our interview to a conclusion. A moment later, he had fled, leaving ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... 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. And here were ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... it struck me that Turnbull was a terror to certain shady characters in the past, and that he had come down to identify and denounce one of them. The chances at the start pointed to the host—that is, Jenkins. I'm morally certain now that Jenkins was the undesirable alien Turnbull wanted to convict in another shooting-affair, but you see the shooting gentleman had another ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... in my very stupidest manner, "is one of the difficulties which has occurred to me. A man who has been engaged as a Brother finds himself saddled with an undesirable acquaintance ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... into. If these are irregular—but one doesn't care to contemplate it. If regular, there are still a few counter-checks. As the sergeant at the railway station said when he helped us out of an impasse: "You will realize that it is the most undesirable persons whose papers are of the most regular. It is their business you see. The Commissary of Police is at the Hotel de Ville, if you will come along for the little formality. Myself, I used to keep a shop in Paris. My God, these provincial towns ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... without further success. One must have patience, much patience, in birdland. It may take years to secure what will prove satisfactory views of some species. Many snaps, when taken, prove undesirable after development, and each week adds to the uncertainty of finding anything "at home" when next you come. While the percentage of successful incubation is fairly large, yet the numerous enemies of the feathered tribe make the uncertainty of life in ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... 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 Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... heart, the mercifulness and peace-seeking which Christ inculcated were essentially powers of self-restraint, not negative but positive attitudes to life. The motive was not apathy but love. These qualities were based not on the idea that life was so poor and undesirable that it was not worthy of consideration, but upon the conviction that it was so grand and noble, something so far beyond either pleasure or pain, as to demand the devotion of the entire self—the mastery and consecration of all a man's powers ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... in First Street that had been so clean and genteel, a word used very much at that time, was fast changing. The lower part on the south side was rilling up with undesirable people, some foreigners who crowded three families into a house. Houston Street was growing gaudy and common with Jew stores. And oh, the children! There was a large bakery where they sold cheap bread, and in ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... faded complexion, the tired lines in her face, the white threads in her dark hair, and my heart contracted suddenly. I knew how I looked—vastly more tired, more faded than Jessica, for I had started from a point nearer to these undesirable goals. We three were about the same age. There were six months at the most between us. Who would believe it to look ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... from the dictum that physical inheritance provides the mechanism of intellect, education and training of any kind prove to be effective as agents for developing hereditary qualities or for suppressing undesirable tendencies. Just as wind-strewn grains of wheat may fall upon rock and stony soil and loam, to grow well or poorly or not at all according to their environmental situations, so children with similar ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... away, and only the floors of our treatment and waiting-rooms were available for their reception. For all could not possibly go into the wards, where children, and often very sick patients, were being cared for. The people around always stretched their hospitality to the limit, but this was a very undesirable method of housing sick persons temporarily. Owing to the generosity of a lady in New Bedford and other friends, we were enabled to meet the problem by the erection of a rest house, with first and second ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... would have persuaded him to stand to be tribune of the people, he thought it undesirable; for that the power of so great an office ought to be reserved, as the strongest medicines, for occasions of the last necessity. But afterwards in a vacation time, as he was going, accompanied with his books and philosophers, to Lucania, where he had lands with ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... recognition, and probably any other Christian country would have done likewise. Nevertheless, I do not think this prohibition was wise. Polygamy is legally permitted in many parts of the world, but is not much practised except by chiefs and potentates. If, as Europeans generally believe, it is an undesirable custom, it is probable that the Mormons would have soon abandoned it, except perhaps for a few men of exceptional position. If, on the other hand, it had proved a successful experiment, the world would have acquired a piece of knowledge which it is now unable to possess. I think in all ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell |
