"Unprepossessing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boat alongside. The captain and his officers were collected at the gangway to bid us farewell, but we could with difficulty restrain our feelings of abhorrence in spite of the politeness with which they treated us. Notwithstanding the unprepossessing appearance of the shore, we thankfully hurried into the boat. Timbo and Jack followed us. Ramaon stood on the deck. His master called to him. He replied ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... had been kind to him, and he would protect her from all harm, but not for all the gilt-edged securities in Wall Street would he have the story of his knight-errantry get abroad, nor the unprepossessing heroine of ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... the race is not unprepossessing. The crinal hair is hard and wiry, growing, like that of a half-caste West Indian, in stiff ringlets which sprout in tufts from the scalp, and, attaining a moderate length, which they rarely surpass, bang ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... the misfortune never to appear before you, Celeste, except in a very unprepossessing state. When you first saw me I was wounded; at our next meeting I was in woman's clothes; the last time we met I was covered with dirt and gunpowder; and now I return to you wounded and in rags. I wonder whether I shall ever appear before you as ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Whatever the planter's vices, and he was reputed to possess a fair working knowledge of good and evil, no one had ever charged him with hypocrisy. His emotions lay close to the surface and wrote themselves on his unprepossessing exterior with an impartial touch. He had felt no pleasure when Murrell rode into the yard, and he had welcomed him according to the dictates of his mood, which was one of ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... minutes. The place seemed to be a sort of private hotel, unostentatious and unprepossessing. A hall porter, whose uniform had seen better days and whose linen had seen cleaner ones, conducted me to the first floor. Mr. Parker himself ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... now been brought up to five—the shikari, Ahmed Bot, having procured a satellite, known as the chota shikari, a youth of not unprepossessing appearance, but whose necessity in our scheme of existence I had not quite determined. Ahmed Bot, however, was of opinion that all sahibs who wanted sport required two shikaris, so I imagined that while I was to be engaged with one in pursuit of bara singh, the other would employ ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... introduced to the second mate, and Miss Arminster thought she had seldom seen a more unprepossessing individual. He was surly and shifty-eyed, and she confided to the Bishop, when they were alone, that she was glad they were not going far from land under that man's charge, for he looked ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... his gifts, and ask a blessing. Meddle not with minor cares. Trust me, your unprepossessing Dam soon settles those affairs! Then will I, with honeyed suasion, Pinch some thriftless man of bills Of a mark of the occasion For my ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... daresay—it might have been nearly as bad," Rendel said; "though if we were canaries we should be nicer to look at perhaps," and his eye fell on an unprepossessing elderly couple who were descending the stairs with none of the winsomeness of singing birds. "Have you read Maeterlinck's 'Life of ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... narrative, was not so serious as it at first seemed, for it fortunately chanced that John Saunders had had it copied; but the theft remained none the less mysterious. What could be the motive of the thief with whom—quite unreasonably and doubtless unjustly—my fancy persisted in connecting that unprepossessing face so keenly attentive in John Saunders's outer office, and again so plainly eavesdropping at his ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... said, reaching down into her collar and drawing up a loop of worn ribbon. "Straight front corset," she observed, flushing, "makes a nice pocket for almost everything." She drew up a chamois-skin bag, of an unprepossessing mouse colour, and emptied out a roll of bills. "Two hundred and twelve dollars," she said, proudly, "and eighty-three cents and four postage stamps ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... is ordered to swing the cradle in which reposes a Baba Yaga's infant son, whom she is ordered to address in terms of respect when she sings him lullabies; in others she is told to wash a Baba Yaga's many children, whose appearance is usually unprepossessing. One girl, for instance, is ordered by a Baba Yaga to heat the bath, but the fuel given her for the purpose turns out to be dead men's bones. Having got over this difficulty, thanks to the advice of a sparrow which tells her where to look for wood, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... sometimes a little at a loss what to do with my evenings. The table d'hote was at five o'clock; I did not wish to go to the expense of a private sitting-room, disliked the dinnery atmosphere of the salle a manger, could not play either at pool or billiards, and the aspect of my fellow guests was unprepossessing enough to make me unwilling to enter into any tete-a-tete gamblings with them. So I usually rose from table early, and tried to make the most of the remaining light of the August evenings in walking briskly off to explore the ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... shaking his head vigorously. He was a thin, pale man with a singularly scholastic face. Quite an unprepossessing, unsanguinary ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... only one distraction all day,—the arrival of another guest, a distant cousin of their hostess, who has been lauding her for a week or so. On inspection she proves to be a girl of nineteen, decidedly unprepossessing in appearance,—in fact, as Mr. Murphy, the butler, says to Mrs. Collins, the housekeeper, "as ugly as if she ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... roughest of frontier costume, the same they had put on at St. Jo—dusty, grimy, slouchy, and weather-beaten with long days of sun and storm and alkali desert dust. It is not likely there were two more unprepossessing officials on the Pacific coast at that moment than the newly arrived Territorial secretary and his brother: Somebody identified them, and the committee melted away; the half-formed plan of a banquet faded out and was not heard of again. Soap and water and fresh garments worked ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... how it was, but from the moment, I believe, I first cast eyes on his singularly unprepossessing face, Moses Reeks had ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... beings. They retired and dreamed of the next best means of ridding themselves of Rosette if the chariot race failed. Orangine and Roussette slept but little so that in the morning they were still uglier and more unprepossessing than they had appeared ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... is an unprepossessing child," murmured Miss Maria, "but don't you think, under the circumstances, that we ought to ask her to pay us ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... Unprepossessing as most of the colliers' homes were, Lowrie's cottage was a trifle less inviting than the majority. It stood upon the roadside, an ugly little bare place, with a look of stubborn desolation, its only redeeming feature a certain rough cleanliness. The same ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... he had arrived at a decision, Spike had groped his way across the icy street and pressed the bell-button on the front door of the least unprepossessing house ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... wishing to stay, she colored at this. Among his other unprepossessing characteristics, Jim had a trick of saying things he ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... from an overhanging forehead, under which two small eyes seemed always to be furtively watching each other over the bridge of his flat snub nose. His lips met with difficulty across large, irregular teeth. Such was Ricks Wilson, the most unprepossessing soul on ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... knowledge of London had enabled him to locate No. 236 South Lambeth Road without recourse to a guide, and now, walking on past the big gas works and the railway station, he turned under the dark arches and pressed on to where a row of unprepossessing dwellings extended in uniform ugliness from a partly demolished building to ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... smallpox; he wore neither beard or mustache, and his hair was combed smoothly back, like a peasant's. His disposition was melancholy and taciturn; but he seemed constantly striving to atone, by the amiability of his manners, for an unprepossessing exterior. ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... the Emir had been struck by the appearance of the clerk, a small, deformed man, with a dark, Jewish face, one arm longer than the other, misshapen fingers, wearing the tonsure and clerical habit; and thinking there must be superior intelligence to counterbalance so unprepossessing an aspect, he sent for him in private, and asked him on oath respecting the morals and character of his master. He was obliged to confess the whole truth; and Mahomet asked, in surprise, "How can the English allow this cowardly tyrant to misuse them? ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... watch-tower, and with pretty much the same object; his skin was of that peculiar colour and texture, to which, not all "the water in great Neptune's ocean" could impart a look of cleanliness, while his very voice, hard, harsh, and inflexible, was unprepossessing and unpleasant. And yet, strange as it may seem, he, too, was a correct type of his order; the only difference being, that Father Malachi was an older coinage, with the impress of Donay or St. Omers, whereas Mister Donovan was the shining ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... played so-called 'chaperone's parts.' This lady won my sympathy by telling me she had been friendly ever since her youth with Laube, in whose destiny she continued to take a heartfelt and cordial interest. She was clever, but far from happy, and an unprepossessing exterior, which with the lapse of years grew more uninviting, did not tend to make her any happier. She lived in meagre circumstances, with one child, and appeared to remember her better days with a bitter grief. My first visit to her was paid merely to inquire after Laube's fate, but I soon ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... It was not an unprepossessing one, albeit a trifle too thin and lank and bilious to be altogether pleasant. The cheek-bones were prominent, and the black eyes sunken in their orbits. Straight black hair fell slantwise off a high but narrow forehead, and swept part of a hollow cheek. A long ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... pressure of astonishment and indignation. It was bad enough to be pictured thus unprepossessing, but to be suddenly made aware of her husband in a man whom she feared, was desperate. She stared with frank and horrified ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... knew how to take the sting from the rebuke, which he was aware his mission could not but convey; and he was no less aware, that unless the dose had a little sugar in it, at any rate to hide its unprepossessing appearance even if it did not render it palatable, his patient would never ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... pig—and a pig of peculiarly diabolical ugliness, at that—his ordinary associate; but Dean Prior had come long ago to accept the grisly brute as a concomitant of Dr. Herrick's presence almost as inevitable as his shadow. It was no crime to be fond of dumb animals, not even of one so inordinately unprepossessing; and you allowed for eccentricities, in any event, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... strongly built man, a little past middle life and grey-haired, with rough-hewn face—unprepossessing one would have pronounced him until the intelligent, kindly expression of the eyes was seen and the agreeable voice was heard. As our talk progressed and we found how much in sympathy we were on the subject, I was reminded of that ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... the man I needed, notwithstanding his unkempt hair, his general ungainliness, the hat he wore on the back of his head, and the pink carnation in his buttonhole, which, by its very incongruity, added the final accent to his unprepossessing appearance. Together we worked over the child, making it as comfortable as we could. It was hardly necessary to tell my aide what I wanted done; he seemed to know and even to ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... gave them pain like a blow." Everything they made was beautiful. Beauty they placed next to holiness; indeed, they almost or quite made beauty and right the same thing. They are said to have thought it strange that Socrates was good, seeing he was so unprepossessing in appearance. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... happened to vex him,' said Margaret, apologetically. 'You would not have thought him unprepossessing if you had seen ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... which permeated the atmosphere of the establishment with the taint of stealth and terror?—the famous "research work" that kept Victor closeted with Sturm in his study daily for hours at a time, often in confabulation with others of like ilk, men of furtive and unprepossessing cast who came and went by appointment at all hours, but as ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... bask to your heart's content," retorted Frances, laughing, "but you must know that it does not please the sun to be stopped by an unprepossessing stranger." ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... but somewhat more convenient for a congregation of persons; and as it was in a manner fortified by art, in addition to what nature had done, they never found the Turks anxious to attempt the no easy task of dispossessing them. Although the exterior of the island was so rugged and unprepossessing, and so destitute of verdure and cultivation, there were spots in the interior where the orange, the citron, the pear, the apple, and the vine flourished in rich luxuriance; the sides of the hills were clothed with olive-trees, and the more even portions with fields of waving corn, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... such evening their discussion was interrupted by an unprepossessing and travel-stained stranger, who, when his wants, none too amiably expressed, had been attended to, exhibited a marked curiosity concerning the people of the locality. As the stranger paid for his welcome with a liberal hand, Peter became more ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... a tall, grim, angular spinster who looked like the last person in the world to whom a love affair might be confided. But never were appearances more deceptive than in this case. Behind her unprepossessing exterior Miss Susan had a warm, sympathetic heart filled to the brim with kindly affection for her pretty niece. She had seen Burton Ellis going moodily across the fields homeward and guessed that something had ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... found his garage in charge of an unwashed, unkempt, unprepossessing young ruffian whom he stared at for a full minute before he accepted him as the man he had left there. The ragged trousers, the spotted "reefer" buttoned high around the neck, the dirty cap pulled over the eyes, and the wholly disreputable broken shoes Burke had brought with him completed the transformation ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... garb of his forefathers; he alone has not discarded "the napless vesture of humility," to follow the always expensive, and often absurd fashions of his superiors. All ungalled of him is each courtier's heel or great man's kibe. Yet, is not even his every-day clothing unseemly, or his aspect unprepossessing. He casts as broad and proper a shadow in the sun as any other man. Black he is, indeed, but comely, like the daughters of Jerusalem.—To begin with the hat which he has honoured with a preference—what are your operas or your fire-shovels beside it? they must instantly (on a fair comparison) ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... necessary in banking. Nor were they very fortunate in their manager. Mr. Pearson, although he might have been taken as a model of honesty, truthfulness, and straightforwardness, was a phlegmatic, heavy man, and his manners were, to say the least, unprepossessing. The bank was not a success. Negotiations were, a few years after, entered into, and arrangements resulted, by which the Birmingham Banking Company took over the business, on the basis of giving every shareholder in the Bank of Birmingham ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... time by many in which he had been in a similar plight—but his resource in such case had been to tell the truth gallantly to his friend Mrs. Davis; and some sort of viands, not at all unprepossessing to him in his hunger, would always be forthcoming for him at the 'Cat and Whistle.' This supply was now closed to him. Were he, under his present circumstances, to seek for his dinner from the fair hands of Norah Geraghty, it would be tantamount ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... been destroyed in one of the dramatic political reverses frequent in Eastern annals. Since then they had remained a degraded and abject class. Certainly, they were externally a very peculiar and unprepossessing people. The physiognomy commonly associated with the name Jew was very evident, though the cast of feature had been brutalized by ages of oppression and servility. A singular distinctive mark was the wearing on both sides of the forehead long curls ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... any such design, and vehemently besought the officer to release him, telling him as a reason for his urgency and an explanation of his unprepossessing aspect—that he was an oculist from Amsterdam, John Hermansen by name, that he had just committed a homicide in that place, and was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... felt in some of Sophie Arnould's more distinguished art contemporaries. Among these, the highest place must be given to Mme. Antoinette Cecile Saint Huberty, nee Gavel. Born in Germany of French descent, she made her first appearance in Paris in a small part in Gluck's "Armide." Small, thin, and unprepossessing in person, her power of expression and artistic vocal-ism won more and more on the public, till the retirement of Sophie Arnould and Mile. Levasseur, and the death of Laguerre, left her in undisputed possession of the stage. ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... room, who leaned carelessly against the mantelshelf, was taller and older; though he, too, was handsome, but with the somewhat cynical and unprepossessing handsomeness of a man of the world. His forehead was high; his lips were thin; his nose inclined toward the Roman pattern; his black moustache was carefully curled and twisted at the extremities. Moreover, he was musical; for he ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... protegee, had a sort of latent interest in Nelly, from her association with her pleasant visit to Ashleigh, accompanied her cousin in her long walk to look for the house. On reaching it at last, tired and hot, the door was opened, not by Nelly, as Lucy had hoped, but by an unprepossessing-looking woman, whose hard face grew more rigid when informed what was ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... you are taken unawares," said Linda. "I have had four long years to work up to this hour. Hasn't it even dawned on you that this worm was ever going to turn? You know exquisite moths and butterflies evolve in the canyons from very unprepossessing and lowly living worms. You are spending your life on the butterfly stunt. Have I been such a weak worm that it hasn't ever occurred to you that I might want to try a plain, everyday pair ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... was a sailor, evidently,—a tall, stout, and muscular-looking person, with a certain dare-devil expression of countenance, not altogether unprepossessing. His face, greatly sunburnt, was more than half hidden by whisker and mustachio. He had with him a huge oaken cudgel, but appeared to be otherwise unarmed. He bowed awkwardly, and bade us "good evening," in French accents, which, although somewhat Neufchatelish, were still ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... tall, slight, animated, talking very easily about everything. He told me who a great many of the people were, with a little commentary on their profession and career which was very useful to me, as I knew so few of them. Renan was short, stout, with a very large head, almost unprepossessing-looking, but with a great charm of manner and the most delightful smile and voice imaginable. He often dined with us in our own house, en petit comite, and was always charming. He was one of those happy mortals (there are not many) who made every ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... old lady than she might otherwise have been. Kate was not constitutionally a lover of old women, and not herself old enough to be aware that no truly charitable person should ever be inattentive to seventy thousand pounds, no matter to how unprepossessing a human being the money might be attached. Her manner, therefore, was tolerant and patronizing rather than flattering; and honest Lady Malmaison, though she liked Kate very much, and would have been delighted to see her inherit ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... autumn of 1849 that I went into residence at the little college and was assigned a very unprepossessing room in a very ugly barrack. Entering my new quarters I soon discovered about me various cabalistic signs, some of them evidently made by heating large iron keys, and pressing them against the woodwork. On inquiring ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... crooked legged card table on which a man's cap was lying beside an unfinished glass of kvass. Kuzma Vassilyevitch was followed into the room by the old woman in the red dress, whom he had noticed at the gate, and who turned out to be a very unprepossessing Jewess with sullen pig-like eyes and a grey moustache over her puffy upper lip. Emilie indicated her to Kuzma Vassilyevitch ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of the two met, and Joan saw a worn, kindly face, endowed with a quiet charm of expression and delicacy of contour that offered a marked contrast to the man's unprepossessing features. Both women were too well bred to stare, and Joan instantly brought her wits to bear on Poluski's quip; but that fleeting glimpse had thrilled her with subtle recognition of something grasped yet elusive, of a knowledge that trembled on ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... way they had of looking from one to the other, and nudging each other. Rich. Johnson seemed to be the speaker for the class. He spoke now in a gruff, unprepossessing voice; ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... craft lay the Gem of the Ocean. She was not a comely craft; her sides were weather-beaten, and her general appearance homely and unprepossessing; but the same waters that bore the others bore her. In her homeliness she presented a strange contrast to her surroundings. In the composition of those who were her occupants there was still greater difference. The men who trod ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... (short) 201; curtailed of its fair proportions; ill-made, ill- shaped, ill-proportioned; crooked &c (distorted) 243; hard featured, hard visaged; ill-favored, hard-favored, evil-favored; ill-looking; unprepossessing, unattractive, uninviting, unpleasing. graceless, inelegant; ungraceful, ungainly, uncouth, stiff; rugged, rough, gross, rude, awkward, clumsy, slouching, rickety; gawky; lumping, lumpish^; lumbering; hulky^, hulking; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... I soon found out that Siva is one of the gods of Hinduism—one of a great trilogy: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Siva the destroyer. He had also spoken of the attributes of Kali, and, after a little further search, I discovered that Kali was Siva's wife—a most unprepossessing and fiendish female. ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... towns occupied by our Army are monotonously lacking in distinction. To tell the truth they wear an impoverished look, and are singularly unprepossessing. I prefer the villages, the small chateaux built on grassy mounds surrounded by moats, and the timbered farm-houses with their red-tiled roofs and barns big enough to billet a whole company at a pinch. The country is ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... idolatry out of the storehouse of their imaginations. They presently translate their favourites to the skies, where they figure with Berenice's locks and Ariadne's crown. This predilection for the unprepossessing and insignificant, I take to arise not merely from a desire in poets to have some subject to exercise their inventive talents upon, but from their jealousy of any pretensions (even those of beauty in the other sex) that might interfere ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... and the adventurous Bedwin, who had published his quarto and passed some months under the tents in the desert, was a personage of no small importance. In his volume there were several pictures of Sands in various oriental costumes; and he travelled about with a black attendant of most unprepossessing appearance, just like another Brian de Bois Guilbert. Bedwin, his costumes, and black man, were hailed at Gaunt House ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mrs. Fyne. It would have been so easy to have done nothing and to have thought no more about it. My liking for her began while she was trying to tell me of the night she spent by the girl's bedside, the night before her departure with her unprepossessing relative. That Mrs. Fyne found means to comfort the child I doubt very much. She had not the genius for the task of undoing that which the hate of an infuriated ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... your pardon, sir," began the gardener rather angrily, as he looked at Mozart's unprepossessing clothing, "I do not know whom ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... lozenge-shaped Tartar face, with great cheekbones and massive jaws; a low forehead surmounted by a dense brush of up-standing grayish-brown hair; beetling brows and eyes deep-set, fierce and furtive; combined to make a sufficiently unprepossessing countenance. Nor was his manner more pleasing. He scowled forbiddingly at me, he scrutinized the other customer, craning sideways to survey him in the mirror, he looked about the shop and he stared inquisitively at the parlor door. Every movement was ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... changed the subject of conversation, which was rather a sore one to him. He could never resign himself to his small stature, nor indeed to the whole of his unprepossessing figure. He felt it all the more because he was passionately fond of women and would have given anything to be attractive to them. The consciousness of his pitiful appearance was a much sorer point with him than his low origin and unenviable ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... certain peer was remarkable alike for his extreme parsimony and his unusual plainness of face. His wife shared these characteristics, both facial and temperamental, to the full, and yet this childless, unprepossessing and eminently economical couple were absolutely wrapped up in one another; after his death she only lingered on for three months. Some one commenting on this, said, "They were certainly the stingiest ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... forgotten now what first led us to feel that beneath that unprepossessing exterior were concealed the pulses of a warm, generous heart, and the powers of a strong and cultivated mind, but we remember well the morning that she set her ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... swept over her, but superior to them all was the feminine feeling that she could not endure to have Harry see her in her present unprepossessing plight. ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... at Jim and Sorry, and those two unprepossessing ones looked at each other and at Swan and at the doctor and at each other again, and headed for the door. But Swan was leaning against it, and his eyes were on them. "I would like it if you say somebody rides to get the doctor," ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... short of stature and thin, with a sad drawn face and manners that even his staunch friend, Silas Watson, admitted were awkward and unprepossessing. What he might have been under different conditions or with different treatment, could only be imagined. Slowly climbing the stairs to the little room Kenneth inhabited, Mr. Watson was forced to conclude, with a sigh of regret, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... and statesman, was born at Dublin, and graduated from Trinity College, in his native city. By his admiration of Mr. Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham, he was led to turn his attention to oratory. In personal appearance, he was unprepossessing; but his private character was without a ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... excommunication. The nominee is Hidolph, who is attached to his own chapel, a man of no merit whatever, but devoted to the emperor; and whose principal endeavor it has been to remedy by art the unprepossessing exterior ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... leafy season Oak Knoll may have its charms, but it was distinctly sinister that December morning. We rang, and after a long pause the front door opened slightly, and a very unprepossessing dog emerged, and shut the door (if I may say so) behind him. We were face to face with this animal, which presented none of the features identified in one's mind with the idea of Mr. Whittier. It sniffed unpleasantly, but we spoke to it most blandly and it became assured ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... of these men. They were Neal Taggart; a tall, lanky, unprepossessing man with a truculent eye rimmed by lashless lids, and with a drooping mustache which almost concealed the cruel curve of his lips, whom he knew as Denver Ed—having met him several times in the Durango country; and a medium-sized ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... more unprepossessing than the approach to Gwalior; the hills being naked, black, and ugly, with rounded tops devoid of grass or shrubs, and the soil of the valleys a poor red dust without any appearance of verdure or vegetation, since the few autumn crops that lately stood upon them have been removed.[3] ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... revolting horror at him, that increased as he came near. He was evidently, though short, of gigantic strength. His round, bullet head, large, light-gray eyes, with their shaggy, sandy eyebrows, and stiff, wiry, sun-burned hair, were rather unprepossessing items, it is to be confessed; his large, coarse mouth was distended with tobacco, the juice of which, from time to time, he ejected from him with great decision and explosive force; his hands were immensely large, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... furniture in our spacious garrets. Ere long it had all been reclaimed except two articles, which had somehow or other remained behind. The first was a handsomely mounted crayon drawing, representing a remarkably ugly young man with heavy features and a most unprepossessing expression of countenance. Below this drawing, maternal pride and affection had caused to be inscribed in clear, bold letters, these two words: 'My Son.' The second piece of property remaining behind ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... deep creases ran from the corners of his mouth adown his heavy chin; his eyes were dull and lack-lustre, with great pouches under them. In the main, the air of this son of the great Parliamentarian general was stupid, dull, unprepossessing. ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... foot of a gentle eminence she entered the narrow, winding street of the town, a crooked little town physically both in the matter of this meandering alley-like thoroughfare and in the matter of the hastily builded, unprepossessing houses; a crooked town in its innermost character, it was easy to believe. On either hand as she rode forward were low, squat, ugly shacks jammed tight together or with narrow passageways between their unlovely walls, these spaces more often than ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... peaceful,) the martial propensity to double the thumb tightly over the four fingers, and make what is called "a fist of it." Dangerous symptoms of these mingled and aggressive sentiments were visible in Lenny Fairfield at the words and the look of the unprepossessing stranger. And the stranger seemed aware of them; for his pale face grew more pale, and his sullen eye ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... by his voice, so Colman picked out by his voice one of a number of soldiers destined for a religious life (VSH, i, 261). With the incident of the consecration, as successor, of an unprepossessing intruder, compare the tale of Findian consecrating for the same purpose a raider whom he caught hiding in the furnace-chamber of his kiln (LL, 2628 ff.; CS, 198). The version in LB conveys the impression that Oenna's learning was imparted ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... age of ornamentation nothing can be more untidy or more unprepossessing than the appearance of the Oraon. The ornaments are nearly all discarded, hair utterly neglected, and for raiment any rags are used. This applies both to males and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... ten minutes he was brought downstairs. His appearance was most unprepossessing. He was very short, with a huge head and a remarkable shock of coal-black hair. Having hastily risen from bed, he had retained his pyjamas, but a long frock-coat hung nearly to his slippers, and in one hand he carried a pair of gloves, and in the ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... finding it. It had one door in the thoroughfare of Holborn, but it ran back some way, and its other doors opened into a narrow alley turning off from the main street under a low archway. As Cuthbert pushed open the door of the public room, he saw several men with faces of decidedly unprepossessing type sitting together at a table engrossed in talk, and these all looked quickly up as he entered, and gazed at him ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... charge of the affairs of the Church of the Nativity with a high hand which abashed and disquieted the devout rector. She liked Mr. Candish, although she did not hesitate to jest at his unpolished manners and rather unprepossessing person, and it was inevitable that she should be unable to appreciate his self-denying devotion. On one or two occasions she had found him to have a will not inferior to her own; and although she resented whatever balked her pleasure, she ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... pliant metal which, with the exception of their faces, shielded them from head to foot. On their heads they wore close-fitting helmets, apparently equipped with visors which could be drawn down to cover their unprepossessing features. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... all his mother's jewels to pay his losses at Bridge—and Lady Elizabeth Messing, who is such an abandoned old creature that her own married daughters won't know her! Oh, dear! And I believe the Knighted Bone- Boiler thinks they are quite good style! That literary man, Longford, was a most unprepossessing looking object,—a friend of Roxmouth's too, which makes him all the more unpleasant. And of course he will at once write off and say he has seen me. And then— and then-dear me! I wonder where Sir Morton picks these people up! He doesn't like the parson here evidently—'a pretentious ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... one shoulder. In such a climate as that of Terra del Fuego, their being able to go without clothes shows that they must be of a very hardy nature. We were soon surrounded by some thirty or more of these very unprepossessing gentlemen, all talking most furiously to us or at us, some patting us on the back, and others examining our handkerchiefs, and caps, and buttons, or any article of our dress they could get hold of. We patted them on the back in return, but as they had no clothes, we took hold of their ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... the explorers saw the gang of labourers come filing in among the ruins, armed with rude wooden mattocks and spades, and provided with large baskets in which to convey away the soil as it was dug out. They were as unprepossessing a lot of specimens of female humanity as could well be imagined. Naked, save for a filthy ragged skin petticoat round their waists and reaching to the knee, their faces wore, without exception, an expression of sullen stupidity, and they looked ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... a half dozen guests were seated, just concluding a late breakfast. Tantaine at once recognized four of the several guests as servants whom he knew from their having applied for situations at the office, and there were two men of a very unprepossessing exterior. ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... remained unmarried; but whether it was from a very unprepossessing squint which deterred suitors, or from the same dislike to matrimony as her brother had imbibed, it is not in our power to say. Mr. Witherington was three years younger than his sister; and although he had for some time ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... who subsist on it when travelling, mix it with a little flour and water, and then boil it; in which state it is known throughout the country by the elegant name of robbiboo. Pemmican is good wholesome food, will keep fresh for a great length of time, and were it not for its unprepossessing appearance, and a good many buffalo hairs mixed with it, through the carelessness of the hunters, would be very palatable. After a time, however, one becomes ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Had she left no friends, no relations behind her? What had her infancy been? What had been her life? Whence had she come thither alone, a wanderer, lost like a dog driven from home? What secrets of sufferings and of despair were sealed up in that unprepossessing body, in that poor body whose outward appearance had driven from her ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... life was on the whole unprepossessing, inward succulence was not lacking. We had the Manns, to begin with, and the first real acquaintance between the two sets of children opened here. Mary Peabody, my mother's elder sister, had married Horace Mann, whose name is honorably identified with the development ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... thus agreeably employed, could do no otherwise than discover that the countenance of his entertainer, which he had at first found so unprepossessing, mended when it was seen under the influence of the Vin de Beaulne, and there was kindness in the tone with which he reproached Maitre Pierre, that he amused himself with laughing at his appetite, without ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... professional London man. He turned out to be a gambler, and ran through my money, and I returned to my parents. I have left them this morning again, and, like you, I am now on my way to London to start in life, and if possible make my own living. You see my appearance is not altogether unprepossessing" (she was tall, singularly handsome, a refined woman of style) ... I bowed ... "Well, I am also fortunate in having a good voice, it is well-trained, and I am going to London to sing as a paid professional in the houses in which I have formerly been ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... the wall. This blotchy smudge portrayed an exceedingly ugly, dissipated-looking young man, afflicted with a terrible squint, and whose repulsive mouth was partially concealed by a faint mustache. This rake of the barrieres was Polyte Chupin. And yet despite his unprepossessing aspect there was no mistaking the fact that this unfortunate woman loved him—had always loved him; ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... those of gipsies, but rather larger, they seemed to invite us to them. We accordingly accompanied them. In front of the tents sat a number of women. They differed somewhat from the men, by having more ample robes of skin, and their hair bound by fillets round their heads. They were, however, very unprepossessing-looking ladies. They all seemed to regard Ellen with looks of astonishment now gazing at her, now at her black attendant, and were evidently discussing among themselves how it was that they were of such different colours. We saw a number of horses scattered about the plain, and ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... aback was he, that he had not acknowledged it. He, therefore, to make amends, had had himself photographed in an attitude of perpetual salutation. Other letters rained in on my sister from the eccentric individual, and he sent her almost weekly fresh presentments of his unprepossessing exterior, but always in a bowing attitude. We made, naturally, inquiries about this person, and found that he was an elderly widower, a hatter by trade, who had retired from business after making a considerable fortune, and was living in Rathmines, a South Dublin suburb. The hatter was ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... wide, bloomer-like garment on the nether limbs. They also wore their hair in a knot at the back of the head, with a long, straight wisp hanging out of the coil, and in most instances were much less attractive than the men, being quite as unprepossessing in appearance, and lacking the redeeming strength and symmetry which gave beauty to ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... perpendicular. No less astonishing is the contour of their mouths; ragged holes in their ugly faces are these for the most part, shapeless and uncouth as anything well could be. They are the most unprepossessing humans I have seen the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... looked into the singularly unprepossessing face of a swarthy foreigner, a powerfully-built, ungainly person of about his ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... costume. The man himself was of middle size, athletic yet slender, with straight and regular features, sunburnt, but not swarthy; and an expression of countenance which, though reckless and bold, had in it frankness rather than ferocity, and, if defying, was not altogether unprepossessing. ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... miserably clad, wretchedly provided, and unprepossessing military host, probably never entered a civilized city. In all, except our order, deportment, and arms, we might have been mistaken for a procession of tatterdemalions, or a tribe of Nomades from Tartary. There were not many of us so fortunate as to have in our possession an ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... the very unprepossessing appearance of the new emigrants, the Plymouthers had shown more kindness and hospitality than they had prudence and caution: and had received their countrymen into their own settlement on their arrival ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... returned, and with him a man of an exterior singularly unprepossessing. I need not describe him to you, for—do not look round—he rides ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... joyless a joy in life as their lives were dull and joyless; to their minds the mightiest events shrank into insignificance and grew as insipid as they were themselves. Couple by couple they went, carrying in their arms or holding by the hand or letting them run on in front children as unprepossessing as their parents and promising to grow up no whit happier, who in due course would give birth to children of their own as poor in spirit and looks as they. Yet now and again a young girl would pass, tall and fair and desirable, rousing in ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France |
