"Unpleasing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little cares and details which the well-being of a house really requires, nor that I have memory for these things; more especially is the daily caring for dinner irksome to me. I myself have but little appetite; and it is so unpleasing to me to go to sleep at night, and to get up in the morning with my head full of schemes for cooking. By this means, it happens that sometimes my husband's domestic comforts are not such as he has a right to demand. ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... hindered me from acknowledging my past reserves. Ludloe, from the nature of our intercourse, would certainly account my reserve, in this respect, unjustifiable, and to excite his indignation or contempt was an unpleasing undertaking. Now, if I should resolve to persist in my new path, this reserve must be dismissed: I must make him master of a secret which was precious to me beyond all others; by acquainting him with past concealments, I must risk incurring his suspicion and his anger. These reflections ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... old times had been used to bear himself in that place with the utmost confidence and dignity, surrounded by the warmest affection of the people, amidst universal favour—how humble, how cast down he was then! How ill-content with himself, to say nothing of how unpleasing to his audience! Oh, what a spectacle! No one could have liked it but Crassus—no one else in the world! Not I, for considering his headlong descent from the stars, he seemed to me to have lost his footing rather than to have been deliberately ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... held in his hand a smoking lump of flesh from some favored portion of the mammoth and each rent away an occasional mouthful with much content. Suddenly Ab ceased mastication and stood silent, gazing intently at a not unpleasing object ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... vaguely, looking up into the dim white face that with its plumes filled nearly the whole carriage window, 'was his face very unpleasing?' ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... scorn possible into her forced smile, and then, dropping full-length into the heather, she began to sing at the top of a shrill, unpleasing voice, mainly, of course, for the sake of harrying anyone in her neighbourhood who ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... has been mismanaged by our opponents. Add to this, that they are all quarrelling amongst themselves, and that we were never so united as at this moment. With all these reflections you will own that the prospect before us is not an unpleasing one. The opinion of Willis continues ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... new and unpleasing thing to Billiken, to find cold eyes upon her, level, unloving, hostile eyes, but she had an antidote. Gazing blithely back at him with the wide little grin which had earned her the name of "the God of Things as They Ought to Be," she held out her arms with a gurgling cry and ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... reviews and public ceremonials, and to our diplomatic officials upon the termination of their missions, or upon occasions of rejoicing, jubilees of sovereigns, etc. While the practice of exchanging such graceful souvenirs is not unpleasing among the nations which recognize and reciprocate the courtesy, it is entirely inappropriate that officials of this Government should accept, or desire to accept, ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... her rather by the tone of her voice than by her face, said with a feeble voice, like one in pain, "Say on, senor, what you please, for I am not so far gone but that I can listen to you; nor is that voice of yours so harsh and unpleasing that I should dislike to ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... not so good: the measure and solemnity of his sentences, in all the limited variety of their structure, are indeed imitated with singular skill; but the diction is caricatured in a vulgar and unpleasing degree. To make Johnson call a doer 'a ligneous barricado,' and its knocker and bell its 'frappant and tintinnabulant appendages,' is neither just nor humorous; and we are surprised that a writer who has given such extraordinary proofs of his talent for finer ridicule and ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... deeply and soundly with open mouth. A thick mass of hair escaped from beneath her cap, upon her brow; the moonlight fell, through the window-pane in the roof, upon her face. Otto bowed himself over her and examined the coarse, unpleasing features. The thick, black eyebrows appeared ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... need to be a man above the common measure, both studious, learned, and judicious; there may be else no mean mistakes in the censure of what is passable or not; which is also no mean injury. If he be of such worth as behooves him, there cannot be a more tedious and unpleasing journey-work, a greater loss of time levied upon his head, than to be made the perpetual reader of unchosen books and pamphlets, ofttimes huge volumes. There is no book that is acceptable unless at certain seasons; but to be enjoined the reading ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... comparison with Vence and Grasse, of small architectural interest. The facade, and the double archway which connects the church and the tower, are of the unfortunate XVIII century, the older exterior is monotonous, and the interior, an unpleasing confusion of forms. ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... of these delicate branches, high above his head, and so interlaced that he could make headway only by slowly and patiently disentangling them, as one would disentangle a skein of silk. It was a fantastic sort of dilemma, and not unpleasing. Except that the Father was in haste to reach his journey's end, he would have enjoyed threading his way through the golden meshes. Suddenly he heard faint notes of singing. He paused,—listened. It was the voice of a woman. It was slowly drawing nearer, apparently ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... regarded her, with a curious yet not unpleasing smile. "I am the more unfortunate," he said, at last. "Nay, 'twas to Lady Allonby ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... name the blush upon Zuleika's cheek deepened. She trembled slightly, but said nothing; her heart fluttered painfully, but the pain was not altogether disagreeable. The young Viscount was evidently not unpleasing to her. ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... to say it sings most part of the night; its notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative of several birds; as the sparrow, swallow, skylark. When it happens to be silent in the night, by throwing a stone or clod into the bushes where it sits you immediately set it a-singing; or, in other words, though it slumbers sometimes, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... serious, and hurried to the door. She saw a man in shabby clothing and with unkempt beard and hair, yet with a not unpleasing expression. ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... was an old person of Bromley, Whose ways were not cheerful or comely; He sate in the dust, eating spiders and crust, That unpleasing old person of Bromley. ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... vessels under the American flag. Every authentic information of that kind will be strictly attended to, and every means be taken to punish the offenders and make reparation to the sufferers. The chief consolation we find in this unpleasing business is, that the most experienced States have not been able to restrain the vices and irregularities of individuals altogether. Congress has published a proclamation for the more effectually suppressing and punishing ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... the young prince appeared at some of the court festivities, and I had many opportunities to observe him. He seemed sprightly, with a certain exuberance of manner in meeting his friends which was not unpleasing; but it was noticeable that his hearty salutations were by no means confined to men and women of his own age; he was respectful to old men, and that is always a good sign; it could be easily seen, too, that while ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... Not very dashing, but extremely winning, With the most regulated charms of feature, Which painters cannot catch like faces sinning Against proportion—the wild strokes of nature Which they hit off at once in the beginning, Full of expression, right or wrong, that strike, And pleasing or unpleasing, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... we out again to the Rose taverne, and there I did give them a tankard of cool drink, the weather being very hot, and then into the playhouse again, and there saw "The Country Captain," a very dull play, that did give us no content, and besides, little company there, which made it very unpleasing. Thence to the waterside, at Strand bridge, and so up by water and to Fox-hall, where we walked a great while, and pleased mightily with the pleasure thereof, and the company there, and then in, and eat and drank, and then out ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the fallen empire or bewailing the low state of France under the restored dynasty. They were received with enthusiasm and sung from one end of the country to the other. His later songs exhibit a not unpleasing change from the audacious and too often licentious tone of his earlier days. In the hands of Lamartine the language, softened and harmonized, loses that clear epigrammatic expression which, before him, had appeared inseparable from French poetry. His works are pervaded by an earnest religious ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... experience the most kindly of emotions and most generous of impulses, which he put into practice. But he also had a normal person's impulse to less admirable behavior, and he simply could not understand that there was any difference between impulses. He put the unpleasing ones into practice too. He'd been on the moon to avoid extradition because of past impulses which society called murderous. On this ship it was yet to be discovered what he would do—but because he was ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... object, say red, and then transferring the gaze to a white or gray expanse. The image of the object appears thereon in the complementary green. Per contra, the most complete lack of contrast makes the most unpleasing combination, because instead of a refreshing alternation of processes in the retina, a fatiguing repetition results. Red and orange (red-yellow), or red and purple (red-blue), successively stimulate the red- process ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... an unpleasing smile; and Father Brown blinked repeatedly at him, and seemed suddenly to be listening with great attention. The brigand captain took the large paper from the attendant brigand and, glancing over ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... guilty of it. But when Sir Rufus went away, Dr. West attended him to the door, and they parted cordially, Sir Rufus saying something to the effect that he was glad his visit had dispelled the doubt arising from these unpleasing rumours, and he would recommend Dr. West to inquire into their source, with a view of bringing their authors to punishment. Dr. West replied that he should make it his business to do so. Dr. West, however, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... girl of about fifteen years of age, fashionably dressed, with crinoline, mantle, and gloves, and a straw hat trimmed with gaudy feathers, but all old and terribly worn out, who, in a loud and cracked though not altogether unpleasing voice, was singing before a shop in expectation of a couple of kopecks. Raskolnikoff stopped and joined one or two listeners, took out a five-kopeck piece, and gave it to the girl. The latter at once stopped on a very high note which she had just reached, ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... subjects, became more and more annoying, and we daily strengthened ourselves in our aversion from him. He could never have done with degrading religion and the sacred books for the sake of injuring priestcraft, as he called it; and thus produced in me many an unpleasing sensation. But when I now learned, that to weaken the tradition of a Deluge, he had denied all petrified shells, and only admitted them as lusus naturae, he entirely lost my confidence; for my own eyes had on the Baschberg plainly enough shown ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... person of the unfair sex addicted to clewless conduct and views that madden to crime. The genus has a wide geographical distribution, being found wherever sought and deplored wherever found. The maiden is not altogether unpleasing to the eye, nor (without her piano and her views) insupportable to the ear, though in respect to comeliness distinctly inferior to the rainbow, and, with regard to the part of her that is audible, bleating out of the field by the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... manners comes from the Latin manus, the hand, and literally means the mode in which a thing is handled—behavior, deportment. Manners may be defined as the pleasing or unpleasing expression of our thoughts and intentions, whether in word or action. We may say or do a thing in an agreeable or a disagreeable way. According as we choose the one or the other, our manners may be said to ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... shook his head, though the subject was by no means an unpleasing one, at least judging from his animated countenance, and the rapt attention which he paid ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... taken out of men's mindes Vaine Opinions, Blattering Hopes, False Valuations, Imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the Mindes of a Number of Men poore shrunken Things, full of Melancholy and Indisposition and unpleasing to ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... fallen that they began to sing. Then those of them who were not working gathered together with a stringed instrument forward and sang of pity and of death. One of them said to me, "Knight, can your grace sing?" I told him that I could sing, certainly, but that my singing was unpleasing, and that I only knew foreign songs. He said that singing was a great solace, and desired to hear a song of my own country. So I sang them a song out of Sussex, to which they listened in deep silence, and when it was concluded their leader snapped and twanged at the strings again ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... having personally known and frequently talked with Mercablis, just as many have similarly envied me my encounters with Felix Bulla. For myself I have never plumed myself on such features of my adventures, though they are not unpleasing to recall. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... day he had been secretly dreading to-night, shrinking like a coward from a situation which must arouse in his son memories better forgotten. He was not a man given to shirking unpleasing experiences to save his own heart a pang, but he was a veritable child in the way that he studied to preserve his eldest son ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... his captivity. He was perpetually reminded of the change that had befallen him. He found the climate of England cold and "prejudicial to the human frame"; he had a great contempt for English fruit and English beer; even the coal fires were unpleasing in his eyes.[29] He was rooted up from among his friends and customs and the places that had known him. And so in this strange land he began to learn the love of his own. Sad people all the world over are like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sixty of these were performing on a variety of wind and string instruments more or less remotely suggestive of those known to civilised nations, while the remainder chanted to their accompaniment a quaint but by no means unpleasing melody, the air of which was quite distinctly suggestive of rejoicing. The words of the song—or hymn, rather—were Quichua, and Escombe was therefore unable to gather the sense of them. In the midst of the priests walked a band of ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... which he killed Alexander Hamilton, and now framing wild schemes for an empire in Mexico. Unscrupulous, restlessly active and cynical, he was a singular contrast to the placid philosopher, upon whom his confidences seem to have made an impression of not unpleasing horror. Burr's conversation suggested to Bentham a singular scheme for emigrating to Mexico. He applied seriously for introductions to Lord Holland, who had passed some time in Spain, and to Holland's friend, Jovellanos (1749-1812), a member of the Spanish Junta, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... slowly phlegmatic, too lightly sanguine, nor too rashly choleric; but in all so composed and ordered, as it is clear Nature went about some full work, she did more than make a man when she made him. His discourse is like his behaviour, uncommon, but not unpleasing; he is prodigal of neither. He strives rather to be that which men call judicious, than to be thought so; and is so truly learned, that he affects not to show it. He will think and speak his thought both freely; ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... switch lightly to the Brownie's heels, enough to annoy without hurting him. The Brownie showed signs of uneasiness, quitted his quiet pace, and took to little starts and springs and whiskey motions, most unpleasing to his rider. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... for anything he wanted without referring to Euphra. Now and then he would glance at her, as if afraid of offending her; but the cords which bound him to her were evidently relaxing; and she saw it plainly enough, though she made no reference to the unpleasing fact. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... time that an incident took place, which, although it rests only on tradition in families of the name of Bruce, is rendered probable by the manners of the times. After receiving the last unpleasing intelligence from Scotland, Bruce was lying one morning on his wretched bed, and deliberating with himself whether he had not better resign all thoughts of again attempting to make good his right to the Scottish crown, and, dismissing his followers, transport himself ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... stared about with a sharp look of inquiry in his dark eyes and tiny thin face, so ridiculously like his grandfather, Mr. Moss, that his mother could not help being diverted with the resemblance, except when she tormented herself with the fear that the likeness was unpleasing to Arthur, if perchance he remarked it; but he looked so little at the child, that she often feared he did not care for him personally, though he had a certain pride in ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... alexandrines without scruple. In his preface to Solomon he proposes some improvements, by extending the sense from one couplet to another, with variety of pauses. This he has attempted, but without success; his interrupted lines are unpleasing, and his sense, as ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... that, a fortiori, this method of reading the Hours should be valid; for, in the reading the priest acts principally in the name of the Church, as her minister, and offers up prayers to God in her name, and they say that the irreverence of the servant does not render the prayer of the Church unpleasing to Him, ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... sir. Indeed, I am sure you would respect our poor friend's wishes, even if they were to take a form unpleasing to yourself, which is far from likely. But still it may be as well for Mr. Whitelaw and myself to be alone. In cases of this kind the patient is apt to be nervous, and the business is done more expeditiously ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... this sally is not very favourable to the country I am going to, recollect, that all I object to them is their quitting their own agreeable style, to take up the worst of ours. Heaven knows, we are unpleasing enough; but, in the first place, they don't understand us; and in the next, if they did, so much the worse for them. What have they gained by leaving Moli'ere, Boileau, Corneille, Racine, La Rochefucault, Crebillon, Marivaux, Voltaire, etc.? No nation can be another ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... his seat timidly at the bar of justice beside Mr. Tutt, who smiled down at him affectionately and put his arm about the threadbare shoulders as if to protect him from the evils of the world. They made a quaint and far from unpleasing picture, thought Bently Gibson, the ideal juror, and he wondered what the poor old devil could be ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... paintings were worthy of admiration, as they were skillful and well executed; she could play with brilliancy on various instruments. She had also been taught to sing, but her voice was metallic and unpleasing. But she could discuss scientific and philosophical subjects with the sages of her father's kingdom ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... which the good of the community does not require them to destroy. And though their notion of compensation to a tortured insect or a cankered flower may seem to some of us a very wild crotchet, yet, at least, is not a mischievous one; and it may furnish matter for no unpleasing reflection to think that within the abysses of earth, never lit by a ray from the material heavens, there should have penetrated so luminous a conviction of the ineffable goodness of the Creator—so fixed an idea that the general laws by which He acts cannot ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... written. You will easily understand my meaning, when I refer to his versification of Palamon and Arcite, as contrasted with the language of Chaucer. Dryden had neither a tender heart nor a lofty sense of moral dignity. Whenever his language is poetically impassioned, it is mostly upon unpleasing subjects, such as the follies, vices, and crimes of classes of men or of individuals, That his cannot be the language of imagination, must have necessarily followed from this,—that there is not a single image from nature in the whole body ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... of the Venus and Adonis is unpleasing; but the poem itself is for that very reason the more illustrative of Shakespeare. There are men who can write passages of deepest pathos and even sublimity on circumstances personal to themselves and stimulative of their own passions; but they are not, therefore, on this account poets. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not-unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... austere and Puritanic farmers, and accustomed to wring their subsistence from an unwilling soil, possess the sterling virtues of human nature along with a stiff-jointed awkwardness of manner, and a sharp angularity of thought, which renders them unpleasing even to those who respect them most. A Yankee seldom ceases ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... defects fatal for its popularity; the theme was not happily chosen; the quatrain has been discovered by capricious ears to be unpleasing, though its solemnity was felt by Dryden.[323] The style is sometimes harsh and abrupt, though often exquisite; and the fable is deficient in that rapid interest which the story-loving readers of all ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Missy, during the seventeen years of her life, had never found her homely environment dull or unpleasing. But, this summer, she found herself longing, with a strange, secret but burning desire, ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... wondered how I could have thought them beautiful; the pebbles seemed crushed upon the beach, the stream but added to their lifelessness by heaping on them its dull green slime; the lark, indeed, was singing—Juliet was right—its notes were nothing but "harsh discords and unpleasing sharps"—a rainbow threw its varied arch across the heavens—sadness had robbed it of its charm—it seemed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... said to belong to deformity. A figure lean or corpulent, tall or short, though deviating from beauty, may still have a certain union of the various parts, which may contribute to make them, on the whole, not unpleasing. When the artist has by diligent attention acquired a clear and distinct idea of beauty and symmetry; when he has reduced the variety of nature to the abstract idea; his next task will be to become acquainted with the genuine habits of nature, as distinguished ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... set of little rooms running off on a tangent, one after the other, and ending in a windowless closet and an open cistern. But the Agency gloried in its irregularities, and defied criticism. The original idea of its architect—if there was any—had vanished; but his work remained a not unpleasing variety to summer visitors accustomed to city houses, all built with a definite purpose, and one ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... ter keep up appearances on, so yew won't have no call ter feel ashamed of me when I come a-visitin' ter the hum." Involuntarily, as she spoke, Angy lifted her knotted old hand and smoothed back the hair from her brow; for through all the struggling years she had kept a certain, not unpleasing, girlish pride in her ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... Abbotts, our ship friends, who left us yesterday. Roderick Abbott and I had had a charming time on board ship (more charming than aunt Celia knows, because she was very ill, and her natural powers of chaperoning were severely impaired), and the prospect of seeing London sights together was not unpleasing; but Roderick Abbott is not in aunt Celia's itinerary, which reads: "Winchester, Salisbury, Wells, Bath, Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford, London, Ely, ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... man can find perfect satisfaction in the versification of the 'Essay on Man,' we can understand his saying of 'Lycidas,' that 'the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing.' In one of the 'Ramblers' we are informed that the accent in blank verse ought properly to rest upon every second syllable throughout the whole line. A little variety must, he admits, be allowed to avoid satiety; but all lines which do not go in the steady jog-trot of alternate beats as regularly ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... he not about to find countrymen at Coquimbo? And if their society should be unpleasing?—if their habits, their mode of life, their persons, should become objects of antipathy to the misanthropic Selkirk, as it is but natural to fear? Well! after all, no engagement binds him to them; he will be always free to enter, in the capacity of a sailor, the first vessel ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... completed her toilet she entered the sitting-room. Mrs. Warren, in her morning deshabille, looked a more unpleasing object than ever. Her hair was in tight curl-papers, and she wore a very loose and very dirty dressing-gown, which was made of a sort of pattern chintz, and gave her the effect of being a huge pyramid of ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... the winter winds are not to blame: the soft, gentle breezes of the perpetual summer have wrought the havoc, leaving, however, a not unpleasing picture of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the entire night and succeeding day the voices of the singers and heavy notes of the drum reached us, and at night again the same dull sound lulled me to sleep. Before daylight our lodge was filled with careless dancers, and the drum and voices, so unpleasing to our wearied ears, were giving us the full benefit of their compass. Smith, whose policy it was not to be offended, bore the infliction as best he could, and I looked on much amused. The lodge was so full that they ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... accurately will be very tiresome. Let me simply say that piety or holiness is learning how to please the gods in word and deed, by prayers and sacrifices. Such piety is the salvation of families and states, just as the impious, which is unpleasing to the gods, is ...
— Euthyphro • Plato
... never spoke of it. This accounted for its being quite unknown to the artistic world. He called attention to the fact that it was really a facsimile, rather than a copy, and he seemed pleased at the perfect reproduction of the injured points, which were few, and of the stains, which were faint and not unpleasing. But he never showed it to an artist or ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... knight and a gentleman, reverend lady," said the Constable, "I had not then the slightest thought that I should be called upon to take a step no less distressing to me, than, as I see with pain, it is unpleasing to you." ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... in to a close view of Blinker, introducing him in a very unpleasing humor, evidently sour ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... architecture may be said, in Walter Pater's famous phrase, to "aspire towards the condition of music." The trained eye, and not an arithmetical formula, determines what is, and what is not, beautiful proportion. Nevertheless the fact that the eye instinctively rejects certain proportions as unpleasing, and accepts others as satisfactory, is an indication of the existence of laws of space, based upon number, not unlike those which govern musical harmony. The secret of the deep reasonableness of such selection by the senses lies hidden in the very nature of number itself, ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... make in the aspect of the country if these green hedgerows were in general use! It would take from the savage barrenness given to it by these crooked wooden lines, that cross and recross the country in all directions: no object can be less picturesque or more unpleasing to the eye. A new clearing reminds one of a large turnip field, divided by hurdles into different compartments for the feeding of sheep and cattle. Often, for miles on a stretch, there is scarcely a tree or bush to relieve the ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... irregular white blaze covering one side of his face and patching an eye. On chest and belly the mother sorrel came out rather sharply, but on the rest of him was that peculiar blending which gives the blue roan shade, a color unpleasing to the critical eye, and one that ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... displeasure. She was accustomed to have her remarks treated with respect, and the tone of superiority was a new and unpleasing experience. ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... to codify, their rules I mean to modify, Or Mrs. Grundy, p'r'aps, may have a word or two to say: For they hadn't macintoshes or umbrellas or goloshes - And a shower with their dresses must have played the very deuce, And it must have been unpleasing when they caught a fit of sneezing, For, it seems, of pocket-handkerchiefs they didn't know the use. They wore little underclothing - scarcely anything - or no-thing - And their dress of Coan silk was quite transparent in design - Well, in fact, in summer ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... melody of the hymn, the sweet notes of the younger ones carried high on the stronger tones of the elder Sisters, while the three old nuns droned on in a sort of patient, nasal, half-mannish counter-tenor, scarcely pronouncing the words they sang, but making an accompaniment that was not wholly unpleasing. ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... his. The hint was taken from Mr. Dryden's Mac Flecknoe, but as it is more general, so it is more pleasing. The Dunciad is so universally read, that we reckon it superfluous to give any further account of it here; and it would be an unpleasing task to trace all the provocations and resentments, which were mutually discovered upon this occasion. Mr. Pope was of opinion, that next to praising good writers, there was a merit in exposing bad ones, though it does not hold infallibly true, that each person ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... these not unpleasing studies, I caught a momentary glimpse of something, ten yards away to the left, which seemed to be moving slowly against the wind. The volume of flying dust was, of course, far from uniform in density; and presently I caught sight of the object again. It was a man, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... marched straight to Tarentum, where Cineas, being informed of his arrival, led out the troops to meet him. Entering the town, he did nothing unpleasing to the Tarentines, nor put any force upon them, till his ships were all in harbor, and the greatest part of the army got together; but then perceiving that the people, unless some strong compulsion was used to them, were not capable either of saving others ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... keen observer and a calm critic of both home and foreign folk. That he was stirred to strong words by unpleasing comments on his country appears in his "Notions of Americans: Picked up by a Traveling Bachelor." This book of facts, showing wide and accurate knowledge, was intended to enlighten and clear away mistakes. Instead of this, it drew upon its writer critical ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... corpulency and unskilfully powdered face and arms made an unpleasing contrast with a badly fitting robe of black and yellow. She ran up to Frau Clara and squeezed her hand in her wobbly fingers, expressing joy at the invitation. To the gentlemen who sidled up to her one after the other she extended that same chubby hand with a fatuous ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... black and curly; he had thick lips and beautiful white teeth, which he was fond of showing. His eyes were large and black but deeply sunken; now bright and sparkling, again dull and glassy. His features, to me at least, were harsh and unpleasing; but he was evidently a man of great energy, to whom action was as ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... light, exhibited a number of small, but very vivid reflections; and having made use of my Microscope, I could perceive the whole surface of that cavity to be all beset with a multitude of little Crystaline or Adamantine bodies, so curiously shap'd, that it afforded a not unpleasing object. ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... of a pistol would certainly have startled King James more, but could (setting apart the fright) hardly have been more unpleasing ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... wrong, though, to rejoice That his unpleasing capers Are ended. Silent is his voice ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... waters that surround this globe, though there be no great mountain that overlooks the little lake on which you float, not the less does he behold you, and care for you, and watch over you. Will you do that which is unpleasing, distressful to him? Will you be irreverent, cruel, coarse? Will you say evil things, lie, and delight in vile stories and reports, with his eye on you, watching your ship on its watery ways, ever ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... conquest of Corsica, and the impressions he had received in childhood respecting the misfortunes of his country and his family, led him to seek retirement, and rendered his general demeanour, though in appearance only, somewhat unpleasing. Our equality of age brought us together in the classes of the mathematics and 'belles lettres'. His ardent wish to acquire knowledge was remarkable from the very commencement of his studies. When he first came to the college ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... lightly to the Brownie's heels, enough to annoy, without hurting him. The Brownie showed signs of uneasiness, quitted his quiet pace, and look to little starts and springs, and whisking motions, most unpleasing to ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... fun with him. One evening a tea-drinking was given in the hall in honour of us. The Mota boys sung in twilight the story of the first arrival of the Mission vessel and of their wonder at it. The air, with a monotonous, not unpleasing refrain, reminded us of some old French Canadian ditties. I remember well the excitement when the Bishop sent up a fire balloon. It sailed slowly towards the sea, and down rushed the whole Melanesian party, shrieking with delight after it. Our dear friend's own quarters were very tiny, and a ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... {realms of} air, that he might try the shades below as well, he dared to descend to Styx by the Taenarian gate, and amid the phantom inhabitants and ghosts that had enjoyed the tomb, he went to Persephone, and him that held these unpleasing realms, the Ruler of the shades; and touching his strings in concert with his words, he thus said, "O ye Deities of the world that lies beneath the earth, to which we {all} come {at last}, each that is born to mortality; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... was persuaded to make one step farther, and that, I confess, was unpleasing to us all; and some of his best and most faithful servants took the freedom to speak plainly to him of it; and that was bringing some regiments of the Irish themselves over. This cast, as we thought, an odium upon our whole nation, being some of those very wretches ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... Eve have been less successfully repainted than the rest of the figures, and have suffered somewhat in consequence, but the reader will note the freedom from any approach to barocco maintained throughout the work. The serpent is exceedingly fine, and the animals are by no means unpleasing. Speaking for myself, I have found the work continually grow upon me during the many years I ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... melancholy to read in his private register, 'My mind is unsettled and my memory confused. I have of late turned my thoughts with a very useless earnestness upon past incidents. I have yet got no command over my thoughts; an unpleasing incident is almost certain to hinder my rest.' What philosophick heroism was it in him to appear with such manly fortitude to the world while he was inwardly so distressed! We may surely believe that the mysterious principle of being 'made perfect through suffering' was to be strongly exemplified ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... men and women who knelt before it, checked all expressions of incredulity. We abandoned ourselves to the genius of the place; forgot even to ask what Santa Chiara was sleeping here; and withdrew, toned to a not unpleasing melancholy. The world-famous S. Clair, the spiritual sister of S. Francis, lies in Assisi. I have often asked myself, Who, then, was this nun? What history had she? And I think now of this girl as of a damsel of romance, a Sleeping Beauty ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... "Aye,—death is an unpleasing suggestion!" suddenly said Zabastes, who had gradually moved up nearer and nearer till he made one of the group immediately round Sah-luma—"'Tis a word that should never be mentioned in the presence of Kings! Yet, . . notwithstanding the incivility of the statement, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... which should have been the lightest; while the middle part, where the hand holds the door, wants strength and consistence. It may be added too, that the four heads, in the form of a diamond, make an unpleasing shape. All regular figures should be studiously avoided.—The light had been well distributed, if the bailiff holding the arrest, and the chairman, had been a little lighter, and the woman darker. The glare of the ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... atmosphere of a home was lacking. She was languid, irritable, and unsmiling, accepting his occasional caresses as if they made little difference to her, though sometimes she showed a sort of fierce, passionate remorse and longing. Either mood was unpleasing to him: it contained tacit reproach for his separateness. Then, there were still occasionally evenings when he came home to find her windows darkened and everything in the household upset and forlorn; ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... would? Had not Marian known her to take five times the trouble for her own gratification? Marian gained a first glimpse of the selfishness of refined exclusiveness, and doubted whether it had not been getting a hold of herself, when she had learnt of Selina to despise and neglect all that was unpleasing. ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... if the face of Shelley's father, plump and methodic-oracular, could have been joined to the wild, shining ecstasy of Shelley's countenance itself—you would have had Mackworth's face before its time. I never beheld such spirituality in a fat man. His stoutness was not unpleasing. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... kind. I could not deny that the event was miraculous, and yet I was invincibly averse to that method of solution. My wonder was excited by the inscrutableness of the cause, but my wonder was unmixed with sorrow or fear. It begat in me a thrilling, and not unpleasing solemnity. Similar to these were the sensations produced ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... lines in our original scribble, and at C we have introduced a mass to cover this up, and also the angles made by line 3-4 as it crosses the radiating lines above 1-2. With a small mass at 11 to make the balance right, you have a basis for a composition, Diagram C, not at all unpleasing in arrangement, although based on a group of discordant lines drawn at random, but brought into harmony by means ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... celebrity, predicted the fortunes of Tasmania. The picture he drew, is no unpleasing ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... superstition is based on unpleasing associations connected with the days proscribed. Who can wonder if, in times less enlightened than our own, undue importance were attached to the strange coincidence which marked the deaths of Henry VIII. and his posterity. They all died on a Tuesday; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various
... greatly exceeded his genius, which was cold and enervate; though he yielded to none in the character of an essayist, either for style or matter—Swift, whose muse seems to have been mere misanthropy; he was a cynic rather than a poet, and his natural dryness and sarcastic severity would have been unpleasing, had not he qualified them, by adopting the extravagant humour of Lueian and Rabelais—Prior, lively, familiar, and amusing—Rowe, solemn, florid, and declamatory—Pope, the prince of lyric poetry; unrivalled in satire, ethics, and polished ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... so intimate a connexion with the marquis of San Severino? Even the character of him with which you have favoured me, represents him to my wary sight as too agreeable not to be dangerous. But I have heard of him from others, a much more unpleasing account. ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... knock at the outer door, heralded by a great barking of dogs without, caused one of the men to start to his feet; whilst Joan turned red and pale, as she had had a trick of doing of late; and the farmer looked a trifle uneasy, as a man may do who is half afraid of some domestic visitation of an unpleasing kind. ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a hundred vibrating tongues and a hundred bellowing mouths, their one grand blended and harmonized uproar sets all my fibres tingling with a not unpleasing tremor." ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Johnson lies; what human can deny Old Honest Tom the tribute of a sigh? Deaf is that ear which caught the opening sound; Dumb that tongue which cheer'd the hills around. Unpleasing truth: Death hunts us from our birth In view, and men, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were affected at this juncture, especially Captain Bildad. For loath to depart, yet; very loath to leave, for good, a ship bound on so long and perilous a voyage—beyond both stormy Capes; a ship in which ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Bridge. Nevertheless, that little Stream of a River which they boast of, they improve as much as possible; since down the Sides, as far as you can see, there are Coops, or little Places hooped in, for People to wash their Linen (for they very rarely wash in their own Houses) nor is it really an unpleasing Sight, to view the regular Rows of them ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... their methods. It is we who will, by a cautious eclecticism, choose out for you such of their conclusions as are safe for you; and them we will advise you to believe. To the scientific man, on the other hand, as often as anything is discovered unpleasing to them, they will say, imperiously and e cathedra—Your new theory contradicts the established facts of science. For they will know well that whatever the men of science think of their assertion, the masses will believe it; totally unaware that the speakers are by their very ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... a consciousness that he is dreaming, being aware of the unreliability of the images which present themselves before his mind. He may even make a voluntary and successful effort to prolong them if agreeable, or to dissipate them if unpleasing; thus evincing a certain degree of that directing power, the entire want of which is characteristic of ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... 'adorning' such a venerable ruin; but it is so very near to the house that of necessity the pleasure-grounds must have extended beyond it, and perhaps the neatness of a shaven lawn and the complete desolation natural to a ruin might have made an unpleasing contrast; and besides, being within the precincts of the pleasure-grounds, and so very near to the modern mansion of a noble family, it has forfeited in some degree its independent majesty, and becomes a tributary to the mansion; its solitude being interrupted, it has no longer the ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... tightly over face, after covering eyes with iron goggles and protecting mouth with respirator. Wind woollen muffler round neck and case hands in thick dogskin gloves with gauntlets. Look like Nansen going to discover North Pole. Or Tweedledum about to join battle with Tweedledee. Effect on the whole unpleasing. ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... he himself repeat to me as we walked home, speaking with deep ire and in tones of wrath; and what else Dame Henneleinlein had poured into his ear was to me not so much unpleasing as a cause of well-grounded fears, inasmuch as the old body had told him that the man who was fain to pay his court to Mistress Giovanna was none other than the coppersmith, Ulman Pernhart, the father of the fair maid for whose sake Aunt Jacoba had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... consisted of three pieces of cloth of the colour called kasava. This was probably dull orange, selected as being unornamental. It would appear that in mediaeval India the colour in use was reddish: at present a rather bright and not unpleasing yellow is worn in Burma, Ceylon, Siam and Camboja. Originally the robes were made of rags collected and sewed together but it soon became the practice for pious laymen to supply the Order ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot |
