"Uninterested" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have no prejudices, you desire nothing but to be just, and especially you have that very rare quality—a right curiosity. I was pleased, and a little amused by the contrast, when I compared you with the strangely uninterested English whom I have seen in and out of France. I recollect staying with a friend in England, a few years ago, and I noticed that he did not ask me one single question about France. He simply talked of his own locality, and did not appear ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Christina was too sad to even pretend to be interested. She could not rejoice over a new gasoline engine that was to do all the work, when Sandy and Neil were to be made part of the cruel engine of war. And for the first time Wallace found her uninterested and consequently uninteresting. ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... new level of high prices for crude, rumors of an alarming shortage of supply, the success of independent producers, large and small—all these, and other reasons, too, caused many people hitherto uninterested to turn their serious attention to petroleum. The country was prosperous, banks were bulging with money, pockets were stuffed with profits; poor men had the means with which to gamble and rich men were ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... do really, really wish to have you. I should like to keep you with me always, if I could. You suit me so much better than any of my sisters; they are the most provoking girls in the world, I think, for being uninterested in my pursuits. And your Italian is something wonderful. I have not opened my dictionary since we have been reading together. And beyond all that, I have a very particular reason for wishing you to ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... this half ward of theirs, was an unruly member. He talked and laughed, rode and walked, with Claire Lessing with the same free abandon, the same show of uninterested good comradeship, that he had used towards her when they were boy and girl together. There was not a shade more of warmth or self-consciousness in his manner towards her than there had been fifteen years before. In fact, there was less, for there had been a time, when he was six and Claire three, ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... flushed and indignant, and did not relish the situation from any stand point. The sing-song testimony of the fly was still ringing in my ears, and I knew how very undignified and ridiculous it must have sounded to an uninterested stranger coming in suddenly upon ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... from his fellows. The Duke was religious. Not in any of the ordinary senses of the word; he took small heed of High Church or Evangelical standpoints, he stood outside of all the movements and missions and cults and crusades of the day, uncaring and uninterested. Yet in a mystical-practical way of his own, which had served him unscathed and unshaken through the fickle years of boyhood, he was intensely and intensively religious. His family were naturally, though unobtrusively, distressed about it. "I ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... snow gleamed lividly. However, I thought little about the cold, for with careless stupidity I had allowed a swindler to rob my partner, and a succession of blizzards would not have stopped me then. Heysham, though uninterested, seemed equally determined, and rode well, so the long miles of grass rolled behind us. Now a copse of birches flitted past, now a clump of willows, or the tall reeds of a sloo went down with a great crackling before us, then there were more swelling levels, for our course was straight as the ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... This concentration is immensely fatiguing at first, but is necessary in order to derive full benefit from them. Just as in practising musical exercises for execution, a short time well spent is more valuable than a longer time with a wandering and uninterested mind, so in dumbell exercise it is above all the quality and not the quantity of the exercise ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... something was not done to arouse her from her infatuation. He wished Philip was in Washington. He knew Laura, and she had a great respect for his character, his opinions, his judgment. Perhaps he, as an uninterested person whom she would have some confidence, and as one of the public, could say some thing to her that would show her where ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... His thoughts leaped the desolate, frozen miles to where a lonely girl watched hour by hour beside the wretched bed of her father, only relieved now and then by a perfunctory and uninterested doctor. He had not allowed himself to think of her often; it was a dangerous and poignant subject for him. He had kept his mind upon the plans that he had set in operation. If those failed, he might entertain the sickening thought of never seeing her again. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... of all occasions when church-going strikes even an uninterested spectator, generally lacking in religious zeal, with feelings of unwonted emotion, commend me to Christmas day. Then, to paraphrase the well-known lines of the poet, those in the habit of being regularly present at worship "went the more;" while those go now ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... And the creation proceeding from it is only an illusion. There is only one absolute Unity really existing, and existing without plurality. But he is like one asleep. Krishna, in the Gita, says: 'These works (the universe) confine not me, for I am like one who sitteth aloof uninterested in them all.' The universe is therefore all illusion, holding a position between something and nothing. It is real as an illusion, but unreal as being. It is not true, because it has no essence; but not false, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... is watching by the bed of sickness, and it is blessed to have such a watcher! anticipating every want; relieving, not in a cold, uninterested way, but with the quick perceptions, the tenderness, the ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... plot, Morgan was quite uninterested. In fact, he had long since lost all grasp of its movement and meaning, and, instead of taking in the dialogue, he contented himself with judging effects and their impression ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... the next morning, tramping through the chalky dust slowly now, for he did not want to get to his destination yet; and, as he walked, he noted the farms and cherry orchards he passed upon the road, but in a dull, uninterested manner, and, bending his head low, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... several years has enabled me to consider the transactions of this period under different views, to regard them with almost the coolness of an uninterested observer; and I see the possibility that a dispassionate reader may accuse me of taking too high a position, and using too warm a style—in rather giving way to the dictates of feeling than dwelling upon the proofs of my innocence; perhaps also, he may accuse me of vanity, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose. Besides, few like to be seen as they really are; and a degree of simplicity, and of undisguised confidence, which, to uninterested observers, would almost border on weakness, is the charm, nay the essence of love or friendship, all the bewitching graces of childhood again appearing. As objects merely to exercise my taste, I therefore ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... a dollar?" Eurie asked, suddenly turning to her. She had been utterly grave and silent during all this war of words, but, to judge from her face, by no means uninterested. She shook her head ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... this uninteresting, good, simple-hearted man, who argued with such wearisome good sense, at balls and evening parties kept near the more solid people, looking listless and superfluous, with a submissive, uninterested expression, as though he had been brought there for sale, who yet believed in his right to be happy, to have children by her; and I kept trying to understand why she had met him first and not me, and why such a terrible mistake in our lives ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the duchess's intention, notwithstanding the unquiet movements that were taking place in the capital, to journey through Paris, for the very purpose of proving, by her quiet and uninterested demeanor, that she had no share whatever ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... a young man who had been sitting by with his head resting on his hand, apparently uninterested in what was passing, at this point broke into the conversation rather suddenly. 'Have the Imperialists been one bit less cruel than the Swedes? Have they ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... stretched out well before, his body bent down from the rump in such a curve that almost his chest touched the sand, his stump of a tail waving signals of good nature while he uttered a sharp, inviting bark. And the man was uninterested, pulling stolidly away at his pipe, in the darkness following upon the ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... the names of some of the big waterfalls," she insisted, uninterested in the loving things that ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... an opponent in his own child burst all restraining bonds. Wounded to the quick, he who had never in his life spoken a harsh word to his child now poured forth such a storm of anger, and sarcasm, and bitter reproach, as might have made even an uninterested by-stander tremble. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... palette, and fixed his eyes on the daughter's pretty little face. If he had been acquainted with human nature, he might have read in it the dawning of a childish passion for balls, the dawning of sorrow and misery at the length of time before dinner and after dinner, the heavy traces of uninterested application to various arts, insisted upon by her mother for the elevation of her mind. But the artist saw only the tender little face, a seductive subject for his brush, the body almost as transparent as porcelain, the delicate white neck, and the aristocratically slender form. And he prepared beforehand ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... was deteriorating; I felt clearly how the unemployed and uninterested life which I led, nourished day after day new weeds in the waste field of my soul. Curiosity, a desire for gossip, an inclination to malice and scandal, and an increasing irritability of temper, began to get possession of a mind which nature had ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... of the previous day as Calhoun performed his mysterious work. He'd been off-duty and now was on duty again. He was bored. So long as Calhoun did not touch the control board, though, he was uninterested. He didn't even turn his head when Maril led the way into the other cabin ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... any master, and talk to Mary Alice about the painter and the conditions of his life and love and longing when he painted this picture, in a way that made Mary Alice feel as if she'd like to shake the people who walked by with only an uninterested glance; as if she'd like to bring them back and prod them into life, and cry, "Don't you see? How can you pass so carelessly what cost so much in ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... in this in-between-seasons time. Wise Miss Meredith marshalled her forces and took counsel with the Heads of Houses; the gymnasium staff put on extra dancing classes, and indoor basket-ball matches, but in spite of all their efforts many of the girls seemed languid and uninterested. ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... Friday, the 30th, we sighted Stark Point; and as the last speck of English land faded away in the distance, an intense feeling of misery crept over me, as I reflected that perchance I had left those most dear to return to them no more. But I forget; a description of private feelings is, to uninterested readers, only so much twaddle, besides being more egotistical than even an account of personal adventures could extenuate; so, with the exception of a few extracts from my "log," I shall jump at once from the English Channel to the ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... was not an uninterested listener to this conversation. Evidently another man had been taken prisoner; who I had no knowledge, but we had somehow been brought together. But it was not altogether the quiet confidence of the speaker which interested me, it was the sound of his voice. While it was not familiar to ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... do not need glasses or nourishment or operation for adenoids would find it cheaper to pay for European remedies than for the useless schooling of boys unable to get along in school because of removable defects. An unruly, uninterested boy sitting beside your boy in public school, a pampered, overfed, undisciplined child sitting beside yours at private school, is taxing you without your consent and doing your child injury that may ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... in their working life. Year after year are they found wanting, and yet young workers still come from the schools at fourteen with poor health, little available hand skill, unprepared to write business letters or to express themselves clearly either by tongue or pen, uninterested in the daily news except in personal or tragic events, unaware of municipal conditions affecting them, ignorant of the simple terms of business life, and with their arithmetic unavailable for use, even in the simple fundamental processes when ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... Then he walked around uninterested and forlorn until they were ready to go home again. The stairway seemed shorter as they descended, but the pillars were tall and thick as before. And on the way home his father found a little shop open and bought him a few ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... Standing there with his back against a pillar, surrounded by the other children of the community, was Ivan Ivanovitch. In the foreground, facing him, stood Augustus Adolphus, addressing the new-comer in firm accents, and emphasizing his remarks by waving a grimy forefinger before Ivan Ivanovitch's uninterested face. The high, positive tones of Augustus ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... wholly bent upon slaughter, filled the city with executions without number or limit, many wholly uninterested persons falling a sacrifice to private enmity, through his permission and indulgence to his friends. At last Caius Metellus, one of the younger men, made bold in the senate to ask him what end there was of these evils, and at what point he might be ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... roof, back and sides of the stand have been taken away so that people standing on 'Spion Kop,' the hill at the back ... will have an uninterested view of the whole length ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... three hands went to two or three eyes when Squeers said this, but the greater part of the young gentlemen having no particular parents to speak of, were wholly uninterested in the thing one ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... instinctive sense of appeal, Marguerite looked round from one face to the other: but each looked absolutely impassive and stolid, quite uninterested in this little scene, the exact counterpart of a dozen others, enacted on this very spot within ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... be correct in her interpretation of signals, and Audrey allowed herself to be led away from the now forlorn auditorium. As they filed along the gangways she had to listen to the indifferent remarks of utterly unprejudiced and uninterested persons about the performance of genius, and further she had to learn that a fair proportion of them were departing with no intention to return. In the thronged foyer they saw Mr. Gilman, alone, before ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... not make any great impression on him, for he only answered, "Of course," or "Of course I shan't," to every item that I put before him. I wonder how many fathers have recently inculcated these and similar high-toned principles on their little boys, only to meet with the same uninterested acquiescence. And even our parting was not so dejected as it might have been, for by that time another new boy had come upon the scene, and he and mine had been irresistibly drawn to one another, and were chatting gaily when it was time ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... mind, half-forgotten airs of music crossed his memory, the vision of young Gedge as he last saw him fleeted before his eyes. He tried in vain to collect his thoughts, but they were hopelessly astray, leaving him for the time barely conscious, and wholly uninterested in what was taking place ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... it seemed to me that since, in the name you have given to this great gathering of British pictures, you recognize them as Treasures—that is, I suppose, as part and parcel of the real wealth of the country—you might not be uninterested in tracing certain commercial questions connected with this particular form of wealth. Most persons express themselves as surprised at its quantity; not having known before to what an extent good art had been accumulated in England: and it will, therefore, I should ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... But I felt none and showed none. Other feelings had seized me. I had heard of this gracious woman from many sources, in my life among the suffering masses of New York, and now that I had seen her and found her to be not only my ideal of personal loveliness but seemingly approachable and not uninterested in myself, I allowed my fancy to soar and my heart to become touched. A fact which the clerk now confided to me naturally deepened the impression. Miss Challoner had seen my name in the guest-book and ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... from a pile of clothing produced one garment after another, each of which he held up a moment for inspection. All were torn, and stiff with blood. The jurors did not make a closer inspection. They seemed rather uninterested. They had, in truth, seen all this before; the only thing that was new ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... forgotten. All who were previously interested, and more beside, wept tears of silent sorrow. The blessing was asked, and the steward[1] began to help them, himself in tears; but no plate was touched, for even the uninterested gazed in silent wonder. Their teacher urged them to eat; but one, seizing her hand, said in a voice too low to be overheard, "You would not ask me to eat if you knew my heart." The reply was, "I feel just as sure that ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... herself about the table with nervous hands, astonished at her own agitation, which did not appear to have communicated itself to Liz, her demeanour being perfectly lifeless and uninterested. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... him, I talked to Louis a while of his studies, of the games the boys played at school, of the length of the holidays. But to all these openings and questionings he responded in a dull and uninterested fashion. I could not but feel that he resented bitterly the marriage which had come between his sister and himself. He had had, of course, a place to come to on Saturdays and Sunday afternoons, but I had seen little of him then. My work was generally absorbing, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... some Alethea shares at a handsome premium supplied them; she admitted that May had done her duty in persuading her husband to yield a limited obedience to his doctors' orders. But she looked disappointed, uninterested, dull; she awoke only for a sparkle of malice, when she remarked how happy they would be together in the country, with nothing to disturb them, nothing but just ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... were directed to file off at a particular spot. All who passed that spot were to be considered as having made their choice for France. Sarsfield and Wauchop on one side, Porter, Coningsby and Ginkell on the other, looked on with painful anxiety. D'Usson and his countrymen, though not uninterested in the spectacle, found it hard to preserve their gravity. The confusion, the clamour, the grotesque appearance of an army in which there could scarcely be seen a shirt or a pair of pantaloons, a shoe or a stocking, presented so ludicrous a contrast to the orderly ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... She had, moreover, quarrelled with her daughter, who had only come to Donnay twice during her mother's stay, and had there displayed only a very moderate appreciation of d'Ache's plans, and had seemed entirely uninterested in the annoyance caused to the Marquise, and ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... place with guides, we were submitted to rather careful scrutiny by men who came out of the shadows and said nothing, but peered into our faces. They did not speak to let us by, but signified admittance by turning uninterested backs and retiring to some dark corners to resume the vigil. I thought that the Sikh sentry, who stood with bayonet fixed outside the arch, looked at Grim with something more than curiosity, but no sign that I could ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... lunch at a trattoria near the Forum, as it were to change the subject, and they spent the usual first afternoon of visitors in Rome, who hasten to view the Forum with a guide to the most recent excavations in their hands. Mrs. Hilary felt completely uninterested to-day in recent or any other excavations. But, obsessed even now with the old instinctive desire (the fond hope, rather) not to seem unintelligent before her children, more especially when she was not on good terms with ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... been a little cooled already at the medical examination, where, to my horrible embarrassment, I was made to strip stark naked, and was inspected by an elderly gentleman in a pince-nez, with half a dozen uninterested people looking on, amongst them two or three louts in fustian who were awaiting their turn. I was put into a variety of postures, all of which I felt to be ridiculous and humiliating; and when this ordeal ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... itself on his lungs and threw them into dire confusion. He had to give up work and apply, to the letter, the sorry injunction to take care of himself. At first he slighted the task; it appeared to him it was not himself in the least he was taking care of, but an uninteresting and uninterested person with whom he had nothing in common. This person, however, improved on acquaintance, and Ralph grew at last to have a certain grudging tolerance, even an undemonstrative respect, for him. Misfortune makes strange bedfellows, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... the cathedral; Black Edward's helm, and Becket's bloody stone, Were pointed out as usual by the bedral, In the same quaint, uninterested tone:— There 's glory again for you, gentle reader! All Ends in a rusty casque and dubious bone, Half-solved into these sodas or magnesias; Which form that bitter draught, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Uncle John accepted his explanation unquestioningly. Nevertheless, in the embarrassing dilemma in which Jones would presently be involved, the story would be sure to bear the stamp of unreality to any uninterested hearer. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... from ROSE to the cousins and then to JEREMY, who remains impassive and uninterested, sucking a straw. ROSE clasps her hands round the forget-me-nots and sits gazing at them, desolately unhappy. ROBERT enters. He is very grandly dressed for the wedding, but as he comes into the room he sees ISABEL'S cotton bonnet on the floor. He ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... uninterested observer been standing by he might have seen with half an eye that Blake's coolness was put on, and that his indifference to the bargain was assumed. This offer of the loan was a second bid, when he found the first was likely to be rejected: it was made, too, at the time that he was ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... which had cost pounds of gold, and perhaps the lives of many slaves, and which was now destined to perform, in the sanded arena, the combats of the jungle. The crowd, which had let the African proconsul pass by with but a careless glance of uninterested scrutiny—for dignitaries were too common to excite much curiosity—pressed tumultuously and with frantic eagerness around the heavy cage, exulting in each half-stifled roar from within as though it were a strain of sweet music—and thus followed the van until it arrived at the amphitheatre ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... broken only by equally dreary stays at San Fiorenzo, that Nelson found time to brood over the neglect of which he thought himself the victim, in the omission of Lord Hood to notice more markedly his services in Corsica. It is usually disagreeable to the uninterested bystander to see an excessive desire for praise, even under the guise of just recognition of work done. Words of complaint, whether heard or read, strike a discord to one who himself at the moment is satisfied with his surroundings. We all have ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... with its whole story down to the time when the sacred narration leaves it. To do this well, will require patient and careful investigation. You cannot do it as you can read a chapter, carelessly and with an unconcerned and uninterested mind; you must, if you would succeed in such an investigation, engage in it in earnest. And that is the very advantage of such a method of study; it breaks up effectually that habit of listless, dull, inattentive reading of the ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... wandered on by the side of it, noting here and there the long, rippling shallows where the sun struck golden on the sand beneath, watching the oily swirls of the deep black-brown pools as if at any moment he expected to see a salmon leap into the air, and not even uninterested in the calm eddies on the other side, where the smooth water mirrored the yellow-green bank and the bushes and the overhanging birch-trees. He sat down for a while, listening absently to this continuous, soothing murmur, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... quantity. The Squire began with easy words of two syllables, from that page of Webster, so well known to all who ever thumbed it, as "baker," from the word that stands at the top of the page. She spelled these words in an absent and uninterested manner. As everybody knew that she would have to go down as soon as this preliminary skirmishing was over, everybody began to get ready to go home, and already there was the buzz of preparation. Young men were timidly asking girls if "they could see them safe home," which was the approved ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... these ideas, my colleagues talk of soft options, and of education without muscle or nerve. My retort is that the majority of boys educated on classical lines are models of intellectual debility as it is. They are uninterested, cynical, and they cannot even read or write the languages which they have ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... their English name, had come from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam. And now, toward the end of April, 1861, John Manning and Laurence Laughton stood on the Rialto, hesitating Fra Marco e Todaro, as the Venetians have it, in uninterested question whether they should go into the Ghetto, among the hideous homes of the chosen people, or out again to Murano for a second visit to the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... grows dull with neglect. Those who have started out with the firmest determination to avoid the rock on which their fathers have split, give up the struggle at last, and settle down to a humdrum, uninteresting, and uninterested performance of daily tasks. ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... can enjoy so refined a work, with so many learned allusions, and such exquisite humor, which appeals to a knowledge of the world in its higher aspects. It is one of the last books that an ignorant young lady brought up on the trash of ordinary fiction would relish or comprehend. Whoever turns uninterested from "Waverley" is probably unable to see its excellencies or enjoy its peculiar charms. It is not a book for a modern school-boy or school-girl, but for a man or woman in the highest maturity of mind, with a poetic or imaginative ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... mothers or sisters or wives. No man who is engaged in the serious work of the world, in the effort to purify public opinion and direct it aright, but is helped or hindered by the women of his household. Few men can stand the depressing and degrading influence of the uninterested and placid amiability of women incapable of the true public spirit, incapable of a generous or noble aim—whose whole sphere of ideas is petty and personal. It is not only that such women do nothing themselves—they slowly asphyxiate their ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... that is too bad, Gines!"—"How so?" replied a second voice; "he will but pine here upon the forest, and die by inches: it will be an act of charity to put him out of his pain."—It will be imagined that I was not uninterested in this sort of debate. I made an effort to speak; my voice failed me. I stretched out one hand with a gesture of entreaty. "You shall not strike, by God!" said one of the voices; "why should we be murderers?"—The ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Mr. Chorley is on the Continent wandering. I have seen nothing for myself, but I am a believer upon testimony; and a stream of Americans running through Florence, and generally making way to us, the testimony has been various and strong. Interested in the subject! Who can be uninterested in the subject? Even Robert is interested, who professes to be a sceptic, an infidel indeed (though I can swear to having seen him considerably shaken more than once), and who promises never to believe till he has experience ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Gwen appeared uninterested in the point of honour. "I wonder," she said, "whether he thought telling me of it this way would prevent my building too much on it, and being disappointed. That would be so exactly like ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... exertion. Coley was sufficiently forward to begin Greek on his first arrival at Ottery, and always held a fair place for his years, but throughout his school career his character was not that of an idle but of an uninterested boy, who preferred play to work, needed all his conscience to make him industrious, and then was easily satisfied with his performances; naturally comparing them with those of other boys, instead of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... demanded a great outlay of money with only scant guarantee that any of it would ever come back to the capitalists who advanced it. Moreover, the public in general was sceptical about railroads or else totally uninterested in them. And even had a railroad been built at this time it would not have been a steam road for it was proposed to propel the cars by horse power just as those ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... of those who were present and absent. Sir Frederick Langley was reserved, moody, and discontented. Ellieslaw himself made such forced efforts to raise the spirits of the company, as plainly marked the flagging of his own. Ratcliffe watched the scene with the composure of a vigilant but uninterested spectator. Mareschal alone, true to the thoughtless vivacity of his character, ate and drank, laughed and jested, and seemed even to find amusement in ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... sake, will I do. Perhaps," added Calderon, smiling, "a courtier may manage such an intrigue with even more dexterity than a soldier. I will bear her to the house we spoke of; there I know she can lie hid in safety, till the languid pursuit of uninterested officials shall cease, and thence I can easily find means to transport her, under safe and honourable escort, to any place it ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Ireland and Gounod, but all in vain. It was nearly 3 p.m. ere this morning concert came to an end, when a second lady, introduced by a noble lord, appeared on the scene, and detained him upon questions relative to the state of the soul after death, what St. Thomas had said, &c. Meanwhile sweepers, uninterested in this ill-timed discussion, were pursuing their avocation in the emptying hall, and stewards were set wondering as to when His ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... seemed strangely uninterested in such proposals. She had listened with patience, bowing her head in assent to each, beginning once or twice a word of criticism, and stopping herself before she had well begun. But she had looked at Robin with more than interest; and her mother ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... Clyde, Ohio, the town upon which Winesburg was partly modeled. Clyde looked, I suppose, not very different from most other American towns, and the few of its residents I tried to engage in talk about Anderson seemed quite uninterested. This indifference would not have surprised him; it certainly should not surprise anyone who ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... warm, fretillante, abandoned to the lavish energy of growing things; beyond the discoloured wall of the compound rose the tender cloud of a leafing tamarisk against the blue. A long time already the driver had slept immovably, and the horse, uncomplaining but uninterested, had dragged ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... despatching the telegrams to Strelsau. Rudolf and Sapt used the interval to explain to Rischenheim what they proposed to do with him. They asked no pledge, and he offered none. He heard what they said with a dulled uninterested air. When asked if he would go without resistance, he laughed a bitter laugh. "How can I resist?" he asked. "I should have a ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... a girl whether she could remain unmoved, uninterested, indifferent, if the man she cares for most ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... No change took place in it, and the blood did not rise to the surface of his skin. He listened with an uninterested air, blank and cold and polite. Let ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Skewton made their plans for every day, and executed them. Sometimes Edith sat in the carriage when they went to make purchases; sometimes, when it was absolutely necessary, she went into the shops. But Mrs Skewton conducted the whole business, whatever it happened to be; and Edith looked on as uninterested and with as much apparent indifference as if she had no concern in it. Florence might perhaps have thought she was haughty and listless, but that she was never so to her. So Florence quenched her wonder in her gratitude whenever it broke ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... know Miss Wembley very well. It seemed to him as if he had always known her, as, indeed, he had. He knew the things she would say before she said them. He knew which were the subjects she would expand on, and which would land her, puzzled and uninterested, in inward non-comprehension and verbal assent. She was a nice girl, a jolly girl, an efficient girl, and a very pretty girl. She liked Henry, whom she ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... I yielded to no one my share in these daily observations. Our frigate would have had fivescore good reasons for renaming itself the Argus, after that mythological beast with 100 eyes! The lone rebel among us was Conseil, who seemed utterly uninterested in the question exciting us and was out of step with ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... soon as the latter became satisfied that this was the man's intention, he rode out of the line and placed himself beside the captive Indian, who was riding on Loring's horse and was by no means an uninterested spectator of what passed before him. He too was keeping his gaze directed toward Mr. Wentworth, whom he ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... elderly gentleman with some severity, "if I were a director of it, which I grieve to say I am not, I should only be doing my simple duty to it and to you in thus urging it on your attention. But I am altogether uninterested in it, except as a philanthropist. I see and feel that it does good to myself and to my fellow-men, therefore I wish my fellow-men to appreciate it more highly than they do, for it not only insures against accident by railway, but against all kinds of accidents; ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... color, had the appearance of having been purchased and put on only an hour or two before,—a fact more directly established by the clothes-dealer's ticket which still adhered to his coat-collar, giving the number, size, and general dimensions of that garment somewhat obtrusively to an uninterested public. His trousers had a straight line down each leg, as if he had been born flat but had since developed; and there was another crease down his back, like those figures children cut out of folded paper. ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... in the undaunted and independent manner, hardy sentiment, and manly rude elocution of the old man, that had its effect upon the party, and particularly on the seconds, whose pride was uninterested in bringing the dispute to a bloody arbitrament, and who, on the contrary, eagerly watched for an opportunity to ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... exercise called into play is of the most healthy character; and those who interest themselves in the welfare of their less fortunate brethren may benefit them and society, by assisting to diffuse a better knowledge of its advantages for those at present uninterested in it. ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... two whole sheets, he gave no hint of deploring Darsie's own absence. It was in truth a dull, guide-booky epistle, all about stupid "places of interest" in the neighbourhood, in which Darsie was frankly uninterested. All the Roman remains in the world could not have counted at that moment against one little word of friendly regret, but that word was not forthcoming, and the effect of the missive was depressing, rather than the reverse. Mother's letters contained ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... not uninterested in his character, "I can understand an eccentricity founded on family respect. We were Virginians, and that is next to religion there. The negroes of our family share it with us. You ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... where Timmy was sitting. When the child, obviously "one of the gentry," had walked into the stable-yard, they had abruptly stopped talking; but now, seeing that he was reading intently, and apparently quite uninterested in what they were doing, they again began speaking to one another, or rather one of them, a hard-bitten, shrewd-looking man, much the older of the two, began talking in what was, though Timmy was not aware of it, ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... Unemployed and uninterested children are fallow ground for the seeds of mischief and crime. The half-day playgrounds do wonders toward solving the problem of the vacation child. Do not the interesting, wholesome, juvenile books made so accessible ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... from time to time he noted, in a daze which was as strange a confusion of the two consciousnesses as he had ever experienced. Whatever the convention was between Miss Hernshaw and Mrs. Rock with regard to the matter in hand, or lately in hand, it dropped, after a few uninterested inquiries from Mrs. Rock, who was satisfied, or seemed so, to know that Miss Hernshaw had got at the worst. She led the talk to other things, like the comparative comforts and discomforts of the line to Genoa and the line to Liverpool; and Hewson met her upon these polite topics with an apparent ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... resting up after the hard summer's work. They told him, with a certain insistence, that was half appeal for belief, half challenge for contradiction, how much they were going to enjoy their idleness. But the storekeeper was uninterested. He switched the conversation back to the strike on Klondike, and they could not keep him away from it. He could think of nothing else, talk of nothing else, till Hootchinoo Bill rose up ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... innkeepers have hobbies, and that an abstract or mystical hobby of this sort is amongst the best with which to pass an evening. But no matter, I am talking of then and not now. He kept me, therefore, uninterested ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... congenial with his friend's, and while the princes of France were treading the giddy mazes of the dance, or tilting at each other in the mimic war of the tournament, the Prince of Scotland, who excelled in all these exercises, left the field of gallantry undisputed, and moved an uninterested spectator in the splendid scene, talking with Wallace or with Helen on events which yet lay in fate, and whose theater would be the field of his native land. So accustomed had the friends now been to share their thoughts with Lady ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... so enthusiastic that Emily could not remain uninterested, though market-gardening did not sound ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... Jelly-bean with his legs crossed and his arms conservatively folded, trying to look casually at home and politely uninterested in the dancers. At heart he was torn between overwhelming self-consciousness and an intense curiosity as to all that went on around him. He saw the girls emerge one by one from the dressing-room, stretching ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... friends had waded through the deep snow to say, "God bless you!—Good-bye;" while a group of silent Indians stood together, gazing upon our proceedings with an earnestness which showed that they were not uninterested in the scene. As we passed out to the sleigh, they pressed forward, and silently held out their hands, while the squaws kissed me and the little ones with tearful eyes. They had been true friends to us in our dire necessity, and I returned their mute ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... repeated by the gipsy crew. We may here casually note, that the crew had been by no means uninterested or silent spectators of passing events, but had, on the contrary, indulged themselves in a variety of conjectures as to their probable issue. Several bets were pending as to whether it would be a match or not after all. Zoroaster took long odds that the match ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... unsuitably dressed in a grey alpaca suit and a shabby Panama hat. In his hand he held open a small book, in which he noted down all the turns of the game. Unlike his short, stout wife, this tall, thin man seemed quite uninterested in the people about him, and Sylvia could see his lips moving, his brows frowning, as if he were absorbed in ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of France. Who has forgotten, moreover, that olive-tree growing in the Athenian's back-garden, with its strange uxorious crop, for the general propagation of which, as of a new and precious variety, the philosopher Diogenes, hitherto uninterested in arboriculture, was so zealous? In the sylva of our own Southern States, the females of my family have called my attention to the china-tree. Not to multiply examples, I will barely add to my list the birch-tree, in the smaller branches of which has been implanted ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... <Disinterested, uninterested.> His course was entirely generous and disinterested. Most visitors to art galleries have ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... a particularly uninterested and uninteresting gentleman sitting on a bag," replied ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... dead. What have I to do at all with Mr. Trebell as a man? As a statesman I am in any case uninterested ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... division of Wesleys and an army of Rousseaus; for him there was one school and no other, one college and no other, one regiment, club, restaurant, music-hall, tailor, hairdresser and no other. Eric was always meeting John Gaymers and never penetrating below the sleek, well-bred and uninterested exterior; they were politely repellent, as though an intrusion from outside would disturb their serenity and the advantageous bargain which they had struck with life; it might cause them to think, and thought was a synonym of death. The Flying Corps, at first sight, was ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... her way upstairs late that evening. His usually grave, uninterested face wore an expression of absolute amazement, it ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... about training through pleasurable sensation and achievement in freedom rather than through uninterested work and pain inflicted by despotic government, is well illustrated by the recent improvements in the discipline of reformatories for boys and girls and young men and women. It has been demonstrated that the only useful reformatories are those ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... child, the lamb referred to, was concealed. Putney was to be kept in ignorance of the lure of the tampered coins that had brought Perky into alliance with his father, and Perky was to interest himself in wood-chopping during the son's visit. In the privacy of the bridge with only an uninterested river for auditor, there seemed to be no reason why these matters should not be discussed openly; but the Governor evidently enjoyed these veiled communications, though it was clear that Perky found difficulty in fashioning ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... Jane on the opposite side of the table, entirely uninterested in her food, looking at him in her calm, clear way. She was so wholesome, so sane, in her young yet mature English lower-class beauty. She had broad brows. Her mass of dark brown hair was rather too flawlessly arranged. He felt a second's irritation ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... met the type before, and was uninterested in going further. But Ilse Scharpe was something else entirely. She did not say a word to him, coming into the house that evening, a pace behind her mother, like an obedient slave. She was about seventeen, and her mind was as fresh and clean and pretty as her face and figure. Jonas ...
— Wizard • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... handsome face of the duke—instantly suppressed lest it might excite suspicion; and then with a friendly and very significant nod that intimated to Tadpole not to dwell on the subject at the present moment, the duke with a rather uninterested air recurred to the Jamaica debate, and soon after appealed on some domestic point to his son-in-law. This broke up the conversation between Lord de Mowbray and Lord Marney. Lord de Mowbray advancing was met accidentally on purpose ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... much more, which I shall omit. It forgot, however, to remark that this vaunted nonchalance may be the offspring of the most contemptible and the most odious of passions: and that while it may be exceedingly refined to appear uninterested when others are interested, to witness excellence without emotion, and to listen to genius without animation, the heart of the Insensible may as often be inflamed by Envy as ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... even without rent. The effect of transferring all rents to tenants, would be merely the turning them into gentlemen, and tempting them to cultivate their farms under the superintendence of careless and uninterested bailiffs, instead of the vigilant eye of a master, who is deterred from carelessness by the fear of ruin, and stimulated to exertion by the hope of a competence. The most numerous instances of successful industry, and well-directed knowledge, have been found among ...
— Nature and Progress of Rent • Thomas Malthus
... any other robe Suicide: a morsel that is to be swallowed without chewing Superstitiously to seek out in the stars the ancient causes Swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking Swim in troubled waters without fishing in them Take a pleasure in being uninterested in other men's affairs Take all things at the worst, and to resolve to bear that worst Take my last leave of every place I depart from Take two sorts of grist out of the same sack Taking things upon trust from vulgar opinion Taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance Taught ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... y cherchez pas."—Les Confessions, [P. I. liv. 4, Oeuvres, etc., 1837, i. 78].—In July [June 23-27], 1816, I made a voyage round the Lake of Geneva;[359] and, as far as my own observations have led me in a not uninterested nor inattentive survey of all the scenes most celebrated by Rousseau in his Heloise, I can safely say, that in this there is no exaggeration. It would be difficult to see Clarens (with the scenes around it, Vevay, Chillon, Boveret, St. Gingo, Meillerie, Evian,[360] and the entrances ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... himself nobly for the next round with fortune. And Dicky, in his attitude of enthusiastic but not uninterested spectator, cheered him on, secretly exultant. Dicky was now serenely sure of his odds. It was war-time; and Rickman could not hold out long after such an injury to ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair |
