"Unpretentious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unpretentious little vessel, it certainly served to emphasise the importance of the Torres idea. It was pitted against the "Colonel Renard," the finest ship at that time in the French aerial service, which had ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... visited Paris for the first time, and made the personal acquaintance of Kreutzer, Viotti, Habeneck, Cherubini, and other eminent musicians, who received him with the greatest cordiality. But the public did not seem to appreciate his merits, for his quiet, unpretentious style was not quite in keeping with the taste of ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... another. The road never heeded. A stream ran right across it, still it straggled on. Suddenly it gave up the minimum property that a road should possess, and, renouncing its connection with High Streets, its lineage of Piccadilly, shrank to one side and became an unpretentious footpath. Then it led me to the old bridge over the stream, and thus I came to Wrellisford, and found after travelling in many lands a village with no wheel tracks in its street. On the other side of ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... attendance. The vicarage was an old-fashioned house too large for the living, its long front, dotted with rosebushes, rising up honey-coloured against the clear green of a beech grove. There are grand houses that one sees at once will never be comfortable, and there are unpretentious houses that promise to be cool in summer and warm in winter and restful all the year round: of such was Chilmark vicarage, sunning itself in the afternoon clearness, while faded green sunblinds filled ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... The unpretentious house of Lenard et Morellet of Paris now and then effects deals so enormous that financial circles are staggered, and the world stands amazed. The true facts of who is actually behind that apparently unimportant firm are, however, still ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... other, and very little standing room between these and the wall. By paying nearly double fare a passenger might secure a room for himself, but the room given him did not compare well even with that of small and unpretentious modern steamers. ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... simple unpretentious toy, just like the next one. Sometimes I think it must be exceptional, but anon I hear other telephoners talking, and I realise that theirs too have the same repertory ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... surveyed the edifice and then examined Desnoyers with evident astonishment as though he thought his appearance too unpretentious for a proprietor. He had taken him for a simple employee, and his respect for social rank ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... what it was that she looked upon as she turned back toward that spot—it was one more low mound, simple, unpretentious, added to the many which had been placed there this last century and a half; one more little gray sandstone head-mark, cut simply with the name and dates of him who rested there, last in a long roll of our others. The slight figure ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... a library, and could he ever have imagined that there were so many books in the world! A cloud of dust rose under his feet as he went up to the cases and tried to read the tarnished titles of the volumes on the shelves. Again Chance led him aright, and his eye brightened as he discovered an unpretentious volume that proclaimed itself: The Official Visitors' Guide to the City of New York for the Year 1905. He pulled out the book and opened it. Of course it contained what he wanted, a large folding map, and spreading the latter out upon a table Constans set himself to ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... satisfactorily, but declared that everything was "on a higher plane" in his present state of being, and that all life was "continuous and progressive." Mrs. Horner spoke of herself as a "psychic"; but otherwise she seemed oddly unpretentious and matter-of-fact; and Eugene had no doubt at all of her sincerity. He was sure that she was not an intentional fraud, and though he departed in a state of annoyance with himself, he came to the conclusion that if any credulity were played upon by Mrs. Horner's exhibitions, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... I could spare, he wrote or read in the noiseless rooms we had taken entre cour et jardin. Of course the rent of the lodgings was an additional expense. Altogether, when we summed up the accounts after the first year, we were dismayed to see what was the cost of such an unpretentious existence; but with youthful hope we counted upon the income that art could not ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... lamp-posts for two or three hundred yards. He stood overcome by this discovery, retraced his steps almost to the shop-door, in spite of his fear of being recalled, and then raced on his original way, laying a hand on each lamp-post as he passed it In this fashion he arrived at the gate of an unpretentious little house which had many reasons for looking glorious and palatial in his eyes. For one thing, it was a private house. No business of any sort was done there, and its inhabitants lived on their own money. Then it stood back from the road, behind iron railings, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... well explain here that Olaf Jansen, a man who quite recently celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday, has for the last half-dozen years been living alone in an unpretentious bungalow out Glendale way, a short distance from the business district ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... fruit, it was razed to the ground and made way for a newer, brighter growth. I believe it would set every tooth on edge should I go by there now,—now that I have heard the story,—and see the old site covered by the "Shoo-fly Coffee-house." Pleasanter far to close my eyes and call to view the unpretentious portals of the old cafe, with her children—for such those exiles seem to me—dragging their rocking-chairs out, and sitting in their wonted group under the long, out-reaching eaves which shaded the banquette of the ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... in which he lived was not in the fashionable quarter of the town; but that did not matter. Nor did it vary externally from any of its unpretentious neighbors. Inside, however, there were treasures priceless and unique. There was no woman in the household; he might smoke in any room he pleased. A cook, a butler, and a valet were the sum-total of his retinue. In appearance he ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... simple and unpretentious, but excellent, almost perfect in its way. A clear soup, a sole, an entree or two, a bit of venison, a sweet—with good wines, but ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... these only children were beloved by all the subjects of the realm; and although they ran a great danger of being spoiled, they never were, but remained all through their lives as simple, gentle, and unpretentious as though born ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... flattery of our senses by means of form and sound and colour, the wizards of "the new art" claim to express the most profound and subtle emotions. We prefer "1830" to The Miracle, because it is unpretentious and sincere. We prefer OEdipus to the pantomime because it is prettier and shorter. As works of art they all seem to us ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... Morgan's home was unpretentious but comfortable. The hand of a careful and thoughtful housekeeper was in evidence everywhere. In the big living room, at the front, were several lounging chairs, and along one wall, between the front windows and the entrance door, stood two roomy bookcases. A glance ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... Cowperwood could tell from looking at him that he must have a fund of information concerning every current Chicagoan of importance, and this fact alone was certain to be of value. Then the old man was direct, plain-spoken, simple-appearing, and wholly unpretentious—qualities which ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... It was an unpretentious sort of pleasure that Teeny-bits and his friend shared that Sunday afternoon. When the meal was over they walked lazily through the village to look at some of the old buildings that were standing in Revolutionary days and then they came lazily back and Dad Holbrook harnessed the sorrel horse and ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... Hyndsville, unlike the newer one in which folks take a sort of ghastly pride, one lot differing from another lot in glory, is an unpretentious place, enclosed by crumbling walls, the iron gates of which have rusted ajar. It is a grassy, bird-haunted, tree-shaded spot, with some dozen or so old family vaults, some modest monuments that bear stately names, some raised marble slabs supported on carved and slender ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... frequently. They all liked him, from Lady Lapith downwards. True, he was not very romantic or poetical; but he was such a pleasant, unpretentious, kind-hearted young man, that one couldn't help liking him. For his part, he thought them wonderful, wonderful, especially Georgiana. He enveloped them all in a warm, protective affection. For they needed protection; they were altogether too frail, too spiritual for this world. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... has, moreover, springs of humor which bubble up continually. (You cannot imagine an archangel with a sense of humor.) But it is this very mixture in the man that holds the character student. Lloyd George is quite unpretentious, loves children, will join heartily in the chorus of a popular song, and yet there is concealed behind these softer traits a stark and desperate courage which leads him always to the policy of make or break. He is flamingly sincere, and ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... entreated her to write—not for the public, but for them—the anecdotes which she related so well. Finally, she acquiesced, and committed to paper certain incidents, certain portraits. What a treasure are these Souvenirs—so fluently written, so unpretentious, with neither dates nor chronological order, but upon which, for more than a century, all historians have drawn! How much is contained in this little book which teaches more in a few lines than interminable works do in many volumes! How ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... it is true that the ladies, "one and all," had spoken with entire enthusiasm of their afternoon at the unpretentious home of my neighbor, I, nevertheless, deemed it vital to hold plain speech with that impulsive woman immediately. I saw, indeed, that I should have acted after the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... willingly bestowed. Bongrand was then forty-five years old, stout, and with a very expressive face and long grey hair. He had recently become a member of the Institute, and wore the rosette of an officer of the Legion of Honour in the top button-hole of his unpretentious alpaca jacket. He was fond of young people; he liked nothing so much as to drop in from time to time and smoke a pipe among these beginners, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Tedworth Square to the Embankment, being cut almost in half by Queen's Road West. It is named after Sir W. Tite, M.P. The houses are modern, built in the Queen Anne style, and are mostly of red brick. To this the white house built for Mr. Whistler is an exception; it is a square, unpretentious ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... takes its name from Brooke Market, established here by Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, but demolished a hundred years ago. It was in Brooke Street, in a house on the west side, that poor Chatterton committed suicide. St. Alban's Church is an unpretentious building at the north end. An inscription over the north door tells us that it was erected to be free for ever to the poor by one of the humble stewards of God's mercies, with date 1860. Within we learn that this benefactor was the first ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... to be proceeded against according to law, in the same manner as French captures. A subsequent warrant was granted to the syndicate, who figure in it as the Earl of Bellamont, Edmund Harrison, William Rowley, George Watson, Thomas Reynolds, and Samuel Newton. Under these unpretentious names were hidden Lords Orford and Somers, and other Whig nobles. They were to account for all goods and valuables captured in the rovers' possession: one-tenth was to be reserved for the Crown, the rest being assigned to ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... the approximate location of her room. In the higher part of the city, in the sixteenth district, there were many unpretentious buildings. She had hunted board there and she knew. It was far from the Stadt, far from the fashionable part of town, a neighborhood of small shops, of frank indigence. There surely she could find a room, and perhaps in one of the small stores what she failed to secure ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the woodwork is plain and unpretentious, that the lighting-fixtures are logically placed, and of simple construction. (Is there anything more dreadful than those colored glass domes, with fringes of beads, that landlords so proudly hang over ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... inappropriately named. But we considered this an excellent chance "to wax sarcastic," and we let ourselves go, although I do not think that our task-masters, being by nature dense, grasped the purport of our humour. Our residence rejoiced in the unpretentious designation of ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... once into a room, half library, half smoking-room, that opened out of the low-ceilinged hall. The Manor House gave the impression of a rambling and glorified farmhouse, solid, ancient, comfortable, and wholly unpretentious. And so it was. Only the heat of the place struck me as unnatural. This room with the blazing fire may have seemed uncomfortably warm after the long drive through the night air; yet it seemed to me that the hall itself, and the whole atmosphere of the house, breathed a warmth that hardly belonged ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... of devotion to others, is needed as an uplift," he went on earnestly, "but why dwell upon one remote—obscured by claims of a God-jugglery which belittle it if they be true—when all about you are countless plain, unpretentious men and women dying deaths and—what is still greater,—living lives of cool, relentless devotion ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... lumber, rudely put up and whitewashed, would be a cheap mode of construction, which might be tolerated on a merely commercial place, but would illy correspond with neatly-kept private grounds, however humble and unpretentious they might be. The plan selected may be devoid of mere ornament, which would increase the cost, without adding to the capacity or usefulness, but the proportions should be satisfactory, the arrangement convenient, the materials the very best of their kind, ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... reception of the machinery for the cooperative laundry. Not far from the creamery, and also across the road, stood the blacksmith and wheelwright shop. Still farther down the stream were the barn, poultry house, pens, hutches and yards of the little farm—small, economically made, and unpretentious, as were all the buildings save the schoolhouse itself, which was builded for ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... is endowed with keen perception and wonderful magnetism. Their combined influence has brought to their support the most contumacious of the delegates. On the issue of the following day the hopes of each are centered. Nevins has asked his young champion to visit him at his rooms in an unpretentious hotel on Clark street; there are details for the work of the morrow that have to be ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... pretty little park, with its fountain still playing, outside the railroad station. The paths are guarded by picked grenadiers, not Landsturm men this time, while an officer of the guard makes his ceaseless rounds. Opposite the railroad station, on the other side of the little park, is an unpretentious villa of red brick and terra cotta trimmings, but two guard houses painted with red-white-black stripes flank the front door and give it a look of importance. The street at either end is barred by red, white and black striped poles and ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... June 1557 that he printed his 'Miscellany,' an unpretentious quarto, with the title: Songes and Sonnettes, written by the Ryght Honorable Lorde Henry Hawarde, late Earl of Surrey and other. Before the 31st July a second edition became necessary, and several new poems were added. The third edition appeared ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... being somewhere else—run in somewhat the same way all from one unpretentious building they put up called a ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... last, "wherever his horse's hoofs struck the ground, grass and flowers sprang up, and great trees with leafy branches rose on every side.... As they rode on beneath the leafy trees from every tree the birds sang out, for the spell of silence over the lonely moor was broken for ever." This unpretentious story, a child's story, is as engaging as a gem. And so, I think, are most of the others. One more example to illustrate the quality of Leamy's style—say, the description of the contest of the bards before the High ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... been transformed! No one would have recognized it, covered as it was with a wealth of pure white blossoms and dark-green leaves, for it looked more like the throne of a fairy than like anything so ordinary and unpretentious. Mrs. Seabrook, who possessed exquisite taste, had so massed the blossoms around her and daintily perched an inverted one on her head that the effect was exceedingly beautiful and picturesque. Katherine, who had chosen to be "Lady Poppea," made a brilliant foil, on one side, with her garlands ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Until his providential discovery of Sen, the distinguished Provider had been immersed in a most unenviable condition of despair, for his enlightened but exceedingly perverse-minded master had, of late, declined to be in any way amused, or even interested, by the simple and unpretentious entertainment which could be obtained in so inaccessible a region. The well-intentioned efforts of the followers of the Court, who engagingly endeavoured to divert the Imperial mind by performing certain feats which they remembered to have witnessed on previous ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... happened rather curiously. While on my round I came across an unpretentious-looking young man who, I discovered, was also working on the same side. We had chatted together for some time when I happened to make some reference to the candidate. "Oh," he said, with a laugh, "I am the candidate." It was Mr. Lloyd-George. We worked together with all the ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... the death of a violet, and stretched out their arms and threw kisses to the moon and stars. In the second place they are distinguished in the manner of their expression: "Empfindsamkeit" is "secret, unpretentious, laconic and serious;" the latter attracts attention, is theatrical, voluble, whining, vain. Thirdly, they are known by their fruits, in the one case by deeds, in the other by shallow pretension. In the latter part of his volume, Campe treats the problem of ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... "Acquire for thyself a companion," said the ancient Rabbi. There is no friendship equal to that which is made over the common study of books. At the Talmud meetings held at the house of Arthur Davis were founded lifelong intimacies. Unpretentious in their aim, there was in these gatherings a harmony of charm and earnestness; pervading them was the true "joy of service." Above all he loved the liturgy. Here the self-taught man ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... memory, like a book with several leaves torn out Inoffensive tree which never had harmed anybody It was all delightfully terrible! Mild, unpretentious men who let everybody run over them Now his grief was his wife, and lived with him Tediousness seems to ooze out through their bindings Tired smile of those who have not long to live Trees are like men; there are some that have no luck Voice of the heart which alone has power to reach the ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... to; the men famous for enormous charitable gifts have never let themselves be interested in any of the work of Russell Conwell. It would be unkind and gratuitous to suggest that it has been because their names could not be personally attached, or because the work is of an unpretentious kind among unpretentious people; it need merely be said that neither they nor their agents have cared to aid, except that one of the very richest, whose name is the most distinguished in the entire world as a giver, did once, in response to a strong personal ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... and of wants at that forceful period. It is this very variety of the ideas, feelings, interests, motives, and motive tendencies involved in that incident which accounts for the fact that the battle of the Thirty has remained so vividly remembered, and that in 1811 a monument, unpretentious but national, replaced the simple stone at first erected on the field of battle, on the edge of the road from P1o6rmel to Josselin, with this inscription: "To the immortal memory of the battle of the Thirty, gained by Marshal Beaumanoir, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... little re-telling of The Merchant of Venice, "Soga um Kaupmannen i Venetia"[32] which appeared in the same year, nothing need be said. It is a simple, unpretentious summary of the story with a certain charm which simplicity and naivete always give. No name appears on the title-page, but we are probably safe in attributing it to Madhus, for in the note to Kaupmannen i Venetia we read: "I Soga um Kaupmannen ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... when he called. He could see by the weak-flamed, unpretentious parlor-lamp that she was dressed for him, and that the occasion had called out the best she had. A pale lavender gingham, starched and ironed, until it was a model of laundering, set off her pretty figure to perfection. There were little ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... from Natchez leads past Colonel Armstrong's gate. A traveller, going in the opposite direction—that is towards the city—on clearing the skirts of the plantation, would see, near the road side, a dwelling of very different kind; of humble unpretentious aspect, compared with the grand mansion of the planter. It would be called a cottage, were this name known in the State of Mississippi—which it is not. Still it is not a log-cabin; but a "frame-house," its walls ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... never permitting them expression when they conflicted with his own philosophic calm. She had been used all her life to living in European fashion. Very well. Ah Chun gave her a European mansion. Later, as his sons and daughters grew able to advise, he built a bungalow, a spacious, rambling affair, as unpretentious as it was magnificent. Also, as time went by, there arose a mountain house on Tantalus, to which the family could flee when the "sick wind" blew from the south. And at Waikiki he built a beach residence on an extensive site so well chosen that later ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... friends, and found, alas! several in a sorry plight. All seemed to be as well as the tenderest care and the most lavish expenditure of money could make them. All told much the same tale—the pluck and spirit of the troops, the stubborn unpretentious valour of the Boer, the searching musketry. Everyone predicted a ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... yards away. It was a disappointing house to find in that great enclosure, for though it was certainly neither small nor trivial, it was as certainly far from possessing anything like grandeur. It had been in its day a respectable, unpretentious square structure of three stories, entirely without architectural beauty, but also entirely without the ornate hideousness of the modern villas along the route de Clamart. Now, however, the stucco was gone in great patches from its stone walls, giving them an unpleasantly ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... in holding reviews, in inspecting the fleet. May 2 there was launched a ship of eighty guns, the largest ship that had ever been built on the stocks of this port. It was blessed by the Archbishop of Mechlin. According to the Baron de Mneval, "the Empress was affable, simple, and unpretentious. Possibly the memory of Josephine's charm and earnest desire to please was a misfortune to Marie Louise. Her reserve might have been attributed to German family pride, but that would have been a mistake; no one was ever ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... be written. They came principally, as he informs us, from the New York Ledger, and partially from the Independent; were consequently written very much for the many, and very little for the student of elaborate literature. They are unstudied, unpretentious—true nugae venales, 'representing the impressions of happy homes, or the moods and musings of the movement * * fragmentary and careless as even a newspaper style will permit.' But, beyond this, we may assure the reader that these 'scintillant trifles' are knocked off from no second-rate ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... they like those who wade through a stream in winter; irresolute like those who are afraid of all around them; grave like a guest (in awe of his host); evanescent like ice that is melting away; unpretentious like wood that has not been fashioned into anything; vacant like a valley, ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... to-night," he said to me. And from that day on, I often dined with him informally with M. and Mme. Lockrou, Meurice, Vacquerie and other close friends. The fare was delightful and unpretentious, and the conversation was the same. The master sat at the head of the table, with his grandson and granddaughter on either side, saying little but always something apropos. Thanks to his vigor, his strong sonorous voice, and his quiet good humor, he did not seem like ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... good by stealth and blush to find it fame [Pope], hide one's light under a bushel, cast a sheep's eye. Adj. modest, diffident; humble &c 879; timid, timorous, bashful; shy, nervous, skittish, coy, sheepish, shamefaced, blushing, overmodest. unpretending^, unpretentious; unobtrusive, unassuming, unostentatious, unboastful^, unaspiring; poor in spirit. out of countenance &c (humbled) 879. reserved, constrained, demure. Adv. humbly &c adj.; quietly, privately; without ceremony, without beat of drum; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of an unpretentious man came out in broken sections as the special sped along the smooth track, while the General Manager talked with the resident director and the General Superintendent talked with his assistant, who, not long ago, was the conductor ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... work soon revealed a new, fresh, vigorous force in journalism. An examination of her editorial contributions to the Sunday Times from March to December, 1861, suggests her mental vivacity, vigor, breadth of view, and uniform clearness and power of expression. The title of the whole series is unpretentious enough: "Parlor and Sidewalk Gossip." All through her journalistic career similar qualities of originality characterized her pen. She was editor of Demorest's magazine for twenty-seven years, and was both editor and owner of Godey's magazine and The Home-Maker. The ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... with its unpretentious exterior a classical dwelling indoors had a most attractive appearance. We cannot exactly determine just what were the arrangements of a Greek interior. But the better class of Roman houses, such as some of those excavated at Pompeii, [11] followed Greek designs in many respects. The Pompeian ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... colored balls that are thrown about, singing games that are played to the regular accompaniment of clapping palms, songs about ducks and parrakeets, dances full of shuffling and leaping. Even the movements of the sumptuous "Persian Dances" in "Khovanchtchina" are singularly naive and simple and unpretentious. Sometimes, however, the full gorgeousness of Byzantine art shines through this music, and the gold-dusty modes, the metallic flatness of the pentatonic scale, the mystic twilit chants and brazen trumpet-calls make us see the mosaics of Ravenna, the black and gold ikons of Russian churches, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... done that required her personal attention, Kate went to a nearby hotel recommended by one of the employees of the stockyard. It was third-rate and shabby, unpretentious even in its prime, but it looked imposing to Kate, who never had seen anything better than ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... ear. These men were not only grateful to Von Barwig for his kindness, but they loved him, and recognising in him the real artist had unbounded respect for him. As for Von Barwig, he found them simple fellows, sentimental, unpretentious and good-hearted, and he liked them and felt at ease with them because they did not seek to probe into that part of his life which he preferred should remain unknown to them. They merely accepted him as they found him and for this Von Barwig was grateful. As ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... reverential, a keenly alert, love for God. He will be beautiful in person and, in sharp contrast with earth's kings, while marked personally with that fine dignity and majesty unconscious of itself, will be gentle and unpretentious in His bearing. His relations with God are direct and very intimate, being personally trained and taught by Him. Backed by all of His omnipotence, He will be charged with the carrying out of His great plans for the chosen people and ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... broad-shouldered, mild-eyed man, with a blot of whisker under each ear, and the cleanest of clerical collars encompassing his throat. It was a kindly face that pored over the unpretentious periods, as they grew by degrees upon the blue-lined paper, in the peculiar but not uncommon hand which is the hall-mark of a certain sort of education upon a certain order of mind. The present specimen was perhaps more methodical than most; therein ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... While unable to sail as close to the wind as a yacht, their chief point is in running, when with huge sails set on either side they will tear along at a pace perfectly astounding for craft of their unpretentious build and rig. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... is so unpretentious, in its style and furnishings, that we are more than surprised at its comfort. Miss Cassandra says that she has never in her life seen floors scrubbed to such immaculate whiteness, and we know that Quakers know all about cleanliness. The service which the ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... lively with squirrels, wood-chucks, and the like; where the leading sportsmen snare patridges, as they are called, and "hunt" foxes with guns; where rabbits are entrapped in "figgery fours," and trout captured with the unpretentious earth-worm, instead of the gorgeous fly; where they bet prizes for butter and cheese, and rag-carpets executed by ladies more than seventy years of age; where whey wear dress-coats before dinner, and cock their hats on one side when they feel conspicuous ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... wide range, at the same time thorough and unpretentious, is a rarity; a philologist who is neither perversely wrongheaded nor the victim of a preconceived theory is a still greater one; yet we find both characters pleasantly united in the author of these Lectures. Decided in his opinions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... very distinctly. Still I did not enjoy hearing as well as I did reading it this morning—for I lost some of the best things in a really fine address. It was a brilliant scene, the very elite of intellectual society gathered around one modest, unpretentious little man. Dr. and Mrs. Crosby were in the box with us, and she, fortunately, had an opera glass with her, so that we had a chance to study his really good face. The only book I expect to write this winter is to you; I am dreadfully ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... to charm and fascinate was not difficult, for, according to Mrs. Piozzi, "a woman in Italy is sure of applause, so she takes little pains to secure it." Accordingly, the women of Venice seem to have been quite unpretentious in their manners and dress. They wore little or no rouge, though they were much addicted to the use of powder, and their dresses were very plain and presented little variety. "The hair was dressed in a simple way, flat on top, all of one length, hanging ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... one, commanding a view of valley and hill and the narrow winding river. The house, an unpretentious square of red brick, with sloping roof and dormer windows, wore its hundred years with dignity, and amid its fine trees was an object of interest to strangers, ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... with the vicinage grew as we observed our surroundings. Facing us, at the extremity of the park, was the unpretentious palace of the king, in the small square across the Rue Royale at our right was the statue of General Beliard, and we knew that just behind it we should find the Rue Fossette and Charlotte Bronte's pensionnat, for Crimsworth, "The Professor," standing by the statue, had "looked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... Sir Gervaise Yeovil, deeply interested in the unpretentious account of so heroic a deed. ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... year after her experience with the train robbers, Clyde Burnaby received a dinner invitation from the Wades. Kitty Wade was an old friend; her husband, Harrison Wade, was a lawyer just coming into prominence. They had an unpretentious home on the North Side, and such entertaining as they did was on a modest scale. Nevertheless, one met there people worth while, coming people, most of them, seldom those who had "arrived" in the French signification of the word—young ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... of becoming familiar with history, is to delve into the origin and development of periods in furniture. The story of Napoleon is recorded in the unpretentious Directoire, the ornate Empire of Fontainebleau, while the conversion of round columns into obelisk-like pilasters surmounted by heads, the bronze and gilded-wood ornaments in the form of the Sphynx, are ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... red courtyard, which has a curious foreign aspect in its quiet simplicity, as if the Brunswick princes had brought a bit of Germany along with them when they came to reign here; and there are other red courtyards, equally unpretentious, with more or less old-fashioned doors and windows. Within, the building has sustained many alterations. Since it ceased to be a seat of the Court, the palace has furnished residences for various members of the royal family, and for different officials. Accordingly, the interior ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... chooses for him, then he must be permitted the chosen one of his heart to console him for the forced marriage. At the same time this person was passable, and without the usual fault of such creatures, a desire to rule and mingle in politics. She seems to be unambitious and unpretentious. These Rosicrucians would banish her by increasing the number of favorites, that they may rule him, and make the future King of Prussia a complete tool in their hands. They excite his mind, which is not too well balanced, and rob him by their witchcraft of the intellect that he has. ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... humorist. He was the author of many epigrams and curt aphorisms which have become stock phrases in conversation, quoted in all classes of society wherever the English language is spoken. His phrasing is unpretentious, even homely, wearing none of the polished brilliancy of La Rochefoucauld or Bernard Shaw; but Mark Twain's sayings "stick" because they are rooted in shrewdness ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... something with our consciousness That could not well be said, nor was to be. [Pause.] It hurts me when I see thee thus, benumbed By all these overladen moments, that Scarce walk upright beneath their heavy burden. But let me say, all good things enter in Our souls in quiet unpretentious ways, And not with show and noise. One keeps expecting To see Life suddenly appear somewhere On the horizon, like a new domain, A country yet untrodden. Yet the distance Remains unpeopled; slowly then our ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... been called to Calgary on business. It sounds simple enough, in these Unpretentious Annals of an Unloved Worm, but I can't help feeling that it marks a trivially significant divide in the trend of things. It depresses me more than I can explain. My depression, I imagine, comes mostly ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... world of science. Surgery was bare of his exploits. Medical annals knew him not. All he had thought to do was undone by him; and yet here he was, contented, happy and healthy in a realm of little duties. In so unpretentious a life as this he had found satisfaction; and for the first time it came upon him that thus simply and calmly satisfaction comes to the great mass of men who have nothing to do with glory ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... have come here with three nieces to give them sea air and change. They are all perfectly quiet, sensible, and unpretentious girls; so as, if you will come over here any day or days, we will find you board and bed too, for a week longer at any rate. There is a good room below, which we now only use for meals, but which you and I can be quite at our sole ease ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... excessive heat, dust, or rather fine blown sand,—dirt, flies, bad food, and general discomfort; and finding the aspect of the place not only untempting, but positively depressing, Alwyn left his surplus luggage at a small and unpretentious hostelry kept by a Frenchman, who catered specially for archaeological tourists and explorers, and after an hour's rest, set out alone and on foot for the "eastern quarter" of the ruins,—namely those which ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... window, in an unpretentious part of the Rue St. Honore—known just then as the Rue Honore, for the saints had been abolished, together with the terrestrial aristocracy—a young woman was sitting one late July afternoon employed in sewing. She was pale, thin, and poorly clad. Her fingers were very nervous as she hurried ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... Songs and Sonnets. After reading this with ever-growing surprise and delight, Rose never had another doubt about the writer's being a poet, for though she was no critic, she had read the best authors and knew what was good. Unpretentious as it was, this had the true ring, and its very simplicity showed conscious power for, unlike so many first attempts, the book was not full of "My Lady," neither did it indulge in Swinburnian ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... faster now on a broad paved avenue bound with steel tracks. A central business section was left for a more unpretentious region—small open fruit and fish stands, dingy lodging places, drab corner saloons, with, at the intervals of the cross streets, fleet glimpses of an elevated boardwalk and the luminous space of the sea. Though the day was ending there was no thinning of the ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... The unpretentious chapel was small and nearly dark, for the usual dimness was increased by the lowering clouds outside. The deep, narrow window openings, fitted with stained glass, ran almost to the rough-hewn rafters supporting the steep-pitched roof, upon which the heavy rain beat again ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... new. The little parish church is of the very far past, having lost its Cathedral rank over six hundred years ago to Sainte-Marie in Grasse, a town scarcely younger than its own. It is the type of the church of this coast, with its unpretentious smallness, its strength, and its disfiguring restorations; and it is, especially in comparison with Vence and Grasse, of small architectural interest. The facade, and the double archway which connects the church and ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... opponent, Mr. Gladstone. There is no knocker in existence, we may fairly state, that has been handled by so many distinguished people as this one. If only the friends of Mr. Gladstone were enumerated, they would make up a long list of illustrious names, and many Prime Ministers have resided at the unpretentious, old-fashioned mansion so conveniently situated ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... used by the class of thief about to be spoken of, a short description of it will not be amiss. To all outward appearance it is a very unpretentious traveling-bag. It looks honest, and does not differ, apparently, from any other bag of its kind. A careful scrutiny hardly discloses any variation from the ordinary valise; but, nevertheless, it has a false side, so ingeniously arranged as to open and close noiselessly, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... the unpretentious cottage across the road the actual author of a printed book that lay on a table in the drawing-room; and when this actual author was discovered on near view to be a rather stout man with a shockingly bad hat and creases all over his ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... exist among them, and it would be unfair to say that it is all of the pompous public sort. Much of it, indeed, is private, and when incomes, as in a few individual cases, reach enormous figures, the unpretentious donations are of no slight weight. But charity is a virtue that counts for nothing unless meekness, philanthropy, altruism, is each its acolyte. How can we expect that beings who busy themselves with affairs of such poignant ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... This unpretentious little book is the outcome of my own experiences and adventures in Alaska. Two trips, covering a period of eighteen months and a distance of over twelve thousand miles ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... two girls; but they had never ventured to urge its withdrawal, and after his wife's death Sir Thomas never alluded to the subject. Popham Villa it was, therefore, and there the words remained. The house was unpretentious, containing only two sitting-rooms besides a small side closet,—for it could hardly be called more,—which the girls even in their mother's lifetime had claimed as their own. But the drawing-room was as pretty as room could be, opening on ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... though it had been broad dawn when he had entered his home. He lived not far from the house of the Agnus Dei, on the opposite side of the same canal but beyond the Baker's Bridge. His house was small and unpretentious, a little wooden building in two stories, with a small door opening to the water and another at the back, giving access to a patch of dilapidated and overgrown garden, whence a second door opened upon a dismal and unsavoury alley. ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... unpretentious people were! thought Thomas. A multimillionaire as amiable as a clerk; a daughter who would have graced any court in Europe with her charm and elfin beauty. Up to a month ago he had held all Americans ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... very quiet, unpretentious funeral; for John McPherson, who knew the expense of it would fall on himself, would have no unnecessary display, and the third day after his death Hugh McPherson was laid to rest by the side of the Dora he had often ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... Archbishop had mentioned "the average voter in tramcar or railway train," and the words had called up a haunting vision of disgust. He often said that he had no objection to the working classes as such. He rather liked them. He found them intelligent and unpretentious. He could converse with them without effort, and they always had the interest of sport in common. He felt no depression in passing through the working quarters of the city, and at Stennynge he was well acquainted with all the cottagers and farmers alike. In one family he had put out ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... river, deponent was convinced of the vast military importance of her paper, and advised her to lose no time in laying the same before the War Department, which she did on or about November 30, 1861. The accompanying map, rapidly prepared by Miss Carroll, was made on ordinary writing paper. An unpretentious map, but fraught with immense importance to the ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... on horses covered with silken, jeweled nets, the modest appearance of the jestress and her companion was not calculated to attract especial attention from the yokels and honest peasantry; although their steeds, notwithstanding their unpretentious housings, might still excite the cupidity of highway rogues. As it minimized their risk from this latter class, the young girl was content to wear the cap of the jestress, piquantly perched upon her dark curls, thereby suggesting an indefinable ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... is the most intelligible to the common understanding, because it has to do with common things, which are familiar to us all. It should aim at no more than every reflecting man knows or can easily verify for himself. When simple and unpretentious, it is least obscured by words, least liable to fall under the influence of Physiology or Metaphysic. It should argue, not from exceptional, but from ordinary phenomena. It should be careful to distinguish the higher and the lower elements of human nature, and not allow one to ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... the whole journey, did we gather such a store of concise and well-arranged military information. It was surprising to find in the desolate wilds of our country a man so thoroughly acquainted with everything useful to know in his line of life, and yet of such inferior rank and unpretentious bearing. For as much as three hours we listened to him with unabated interest. Finally he got upon the subject of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of Herbert. There is a very agreeable sketch of Bemerton and its neighborhood, as it now is, and the neat illustrations are of the kind that really illustrate. The Brothers Duyckinck are well known for their unpretentious and valuable labors in the cause of good letters and American literary history, and this is precisely such a book as we should expect from the taste, scholarship, and purity of mind which distinguish both of them. It is much the best account ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... House (Lord Hillingdon), an unpretentious building in a courtyard, once the property of the Pitts, Earls of Camelford. George Grenville occupied it in 1805, and subsequently H.R.H. Princess Charlotte and her husband, afterwards Leopold I. of Belgium. Adjoining ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... falling in our midst, particularly in the neighbourhood of the Commander-in-Chief's tent, the exact position of which must have somehow been made known to the rebels, otherwise they could not have distinguished it from the rest of the camp, as it was an unpretentious hill tent, such as was then used by ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... a small boy I spent my summers at the quaint old fishing-village of Mattapoisett, on Buzzard's Bay. Next door to the house we occupied stood a low-roofed, unpretentious dwelling, white as an old-time clipper ship, with bright green blinds. I can still catch the fragrance of the lilacs by the gate. The fine old doorway, brass-knockered, arched by a spray of crimson rambler, was flanked on one hand by a ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... grim excitement. Across the street from the small, poorly lighted railway station there was an eating-house. Leaving the car in the shelter of a freight shed, we sloshed through the shiny rivulet that raced between the curbs and entered the clean, unpretentious ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... unpretentious inns where men with an unnatural craving for Bouillabaisse go and eat it, and return with a strong aroma of saffron and garlic accompanying them, saying that they have partaken of the real dish, such as the fishermen cook for themselves, ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... The translation is unpretentious. The translators are content to exhibit such a work to the American military public without changing its poignancy and originality. They hope that readers will enjoy it as much as ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... make acquaintances; as these cafes are frequented by male street prostitutes (Pupenjunge) the invert risks being blackmailed or robbed if he goes home or to a hotel with a cafe acquaintance. There are also a considerable number of homosexual Kneipen, small and unpretentious bar-rooms, which are really male brothels, the inmates being sexually normal working men and boys, out of employment or in quest of a few marks as pocket money; these places are regarded by inverts as very safe, as the proprietors insist on good ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... acknowledged; but when at a distance, as their size seemeth insignificant, so their worth and importance are not duly estimated." There is a weak point in this simile, however; so, to cover it with a better and more unpretentious argument, I will quote a few lines from an old poem of Sir Richard Fanshawe on the subject of one of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... happening at Vivey, the person whose name excited the curiosity and the conversational powers of the villagers—Marie- Julien de Buxieres—ensconced in his unpretentious apartment in the Rue Stanislaus, Nancy, still pondered over the astonishing news contained in the Auberive notary's first letter. The announcement of his inheritance, dropping from the skies, as it were, had found him quite unprepared, and, at first, somewhat sceptical. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... separated from the main village by a number of wretched lanes, lay the Jewish quarter. A decided improvement in the general condition of the houses which formed this suburb was plainly visible to the casual observer. The houses were, if possible, more unpretentious than those of the serfs, yet there was an air of home-like comfort about them, an impression of neatness and cleanliness prevailed, which one would seek for in vain among the semi-barbarous peasants of ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... a valuable addition to this literature. He gives a detailed account of the way in which municipal government is formed and carried on in France, Germany, and England. The style is clear, straightforward, and unpretentious, and the treatment is steadily confined to the subject in hand without any attempt to point a moral or aid a cause. At the same time references to American municipal methods frequently occur as incidents of the explanation of European procedure, and these add to the value of the ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the most normal and unpretentious tone that she hated the moon. I talked to the same lady several times afterwards; and found that this was a perfectly honest statement of the fact. Her attitude on this and other things might be called a prejudice; but it could not possibly be called a fad, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... He's as wholesome and good as oatmeal is, but the salt was left out. An excellent person but wingless; not stupid, but dull. Yet—there's something about him—he has an attractive integrity. He puts on no airs. He is simple, unpretentious, and he's so straightforward he ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... had remained in the obscurity of the passage, and who was laughing heartily, and I began to laugh in my turn, especially when I saw Marchas's face. Then motioning the nun to the seats I said: 'Sit down, Sister: we are very proud and very happy that you have accepted our unpretentious invitation.' ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... life Pericles was simple, unpretentious and free from all extravagance. No charge could ever be brought against him that he was wasting the public money for himself—the beauty he materialized was for all. He held no court, had no carriages, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... it was right for you to come here where the life is so different from the quiet, unpretentious one you have led," the doctor thought, but he merely said: "It's my impression they wear their best ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... write conclusively about it. Compared with this creative statesmanship, the administering of a routine or the battle for a platitude is a very simple affair. But genuine politics is not an inhuman task. Part of the genuineness is its unpretentious humanity. I am not creating the figure of an ideal statesman out of some inner fancy. That is just the deepest error of our political thinking—to talk of politics without reference to human beings. The creative ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... stood in the center of his quiet and sheltered office, seeming, to her, a strangely old-time and courtly figure, a proud yet unpretentious student of life at peace with his own soul. The years would come and go, the years that would so age and wear and torture her, but he would reign on in that quiet office unchanged, contented, still at peace with himself and all his ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... As to the unpretentious little sticks themselves, the use of these bits of waste wood is entirely unique and characteristic. No one else would have deemed them worthy of a place in school apparatus or among educational appliances; but Froebel had the eye and mind of ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a fairish number of streets, both of shops and villas, we drove out a winding roadway along a tarn to the country club. The house was an unpretentious structure of native wood, fronting a couple of tennis courts and a golf links, but although it was tea-time, not a soul was present. Having unlocked the door, my host suggested refreshment and I consented to partake of a glass of sherry and a biscuit. But these, it ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... to Forster by the fact that I was thus constituted his representative and champion in the Press, and I became a somewhat frequent visitor at his delightful but unpretentious residence on the banks of the Wharfe at Burley. It was on my first visit to him after his resignation that an incident took place which touched me deeply. I was sitting with his and my old friend, Canon Jackson, of Leeds, in the library after breakfast. Forster, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... on the central square—an unpretentious building in the trees, with a driveway leading up from two gates, at which stand two motionless sentries, each with one stiff feather in his cap. It is such an entrance as you might expect to find at any comfortable country place at home, and one day, when some student ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... Opportunity,' a story by Helen Campbell, is in a somewhat lighter vein than are the earlier books of this clever author; but it is none the less interesting and none the less realistic. The plot is unpretentious, and deals with the simplest and most conventional of themes; but the character-drawing is uncommonly strong, especially that of Miss Melinda, which is a remarkably vigorous and interesting transcript from real life, and highly finished to the slightest details. There is much quiet humor in the ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... and I took dinner at the hotel where the trio of government jobbers were stopping. They were in evidence, and amongst the jolliest of the guests, commanding and receiving the best that the hostelry afforded. Sutton was likewise present, but quiet and unpretentious, and I thought there was a false, affected note in the hilarity of the ringsters, and for effect. I was known to two of the trio, but managed to overhear any conversation which was adrift. After dinner and over fragrant cigars, they reared their feet high on an outer gallery, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... wing; the other contained his own private offices, a special reception-room, furnished in Chinese style—stiff chairs and rigid tables—for Chinese guests, and his living-rooms. It was characteristic of the man that these were the most unpretentious rooms ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... later Francisco entered the unpretentious establishment of Christopher Buckley. He found it more like an office than a drinking place; people sat about, apparently waiting their turn for an ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... of a Spaniard the wit and distinction of a French woman. General Merlin married her in Madrid in 1811, and brought her to Paris, where she created a sensation. Being an accomplished musician, she gave delightful concerts, and though also gifted as a writer she was as simple and unpretentious as if she had been created to remain obscure. In addition, she was so truly good that she had almost no enemies; her charity was inexhaustible, and she possessed one of those hearts which live only to do good and ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... pause to express my admiration for Lockhart's criticism of Scott, and particularly for his description of the way in which the Lay came to be written. It is really wonderful, Lockhart's sensible, unpretentious, thorough interpretation of the half-unconscious processes by which Scott's reading and recollections were turned into his poems and novels. Of course, it is all founded on ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... up a steep incline to the Villa Bleue. The hospitable little parsonage seemed an exact materialization of the personality of its owners. Canon and Mrs. Clark were both small and smiling and charitable and particularly kind, and their tiny unpretentious dwelling, with its sunny aspect and its flowers and its pet birds, was absolutely in keeping with their tone of mind. From some houses seem to emanate certain mental atmospheres, as if they reflected the sum total of the thoughts that have collected there, and sensitive visitors receive ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... on the contrary, is, on reaching his unpretentious home, received with a gentle, loving heartiness and the fondest caresses. He sits down to a frugal meal, but everything he eats is excellent; and how could it be otherwise? It is Pamela herself who has prepared it all. They eat with enjoyment, talking of their affairs, their plans, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... tall man with a brown beard. His wife, a stout, nervous woman, was the daughter of a manufacturer of underwear at Cleveland, Ohio. The minister himself was rather a favorite in the town. The elders of the church liked him because he was quiet and unpretentious and Mrs. White, the banker's wife, thought him ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... thing, with the bright, pleasure-loving nature which had come to her as an inheritance, had yet had the courage to deliberately put from her the greatest happiness which she could have known, in order to devote herself to the care of others. The simple, unpretentious manner in which the tale was told, made so light of the incident that it might have involved little or no suffering; but Mademoiselle knew better, and her voice trembled with sympathy as ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... were sitting on a narrow balcony that projected from the second floor of a neat but unpretentious boathouse. The rear end of the edifice was built against the sloping base of ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... the six and eight horse teams that had brought in grain. This square is still covered with fine primeval forest trees, and has at its centre a handsome soldiers' monument of the Civil War, to which four paved walks converge. It is an altogether pleasant and unpretentious town, which cherishes with no small amount of pride its association with the name of Thomas ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... denials, then. The religious founder is unmasked, the convenient and agreeable highway leading to the Straussian Paradise is built. It is only the coach in which you wish to convey us that does not altogether satisfy you, unpretentious man that you are! You tell us in your concluding remarks: "Nor will I pretend that the coach to which my esteemed readers have been obliged to trust themselves with me fulfils every requirement,... all through one is much jolted" (p. 438). ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... at this list will show that, at least as regards animal life, the native word is likely to be the more familiar and unpretentious. But we must not leap to the conclusion that, taking the language as a whole, the simple, easy word is sure to be native, the abstruse word classic. In the following list one word in each pair is simpler, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the crack or the fracture in the rod, he would have heard of it long before now; and if he had not, then the longer the time the less chance was there of the damage being laid at his door. So he let three weeks elapse, and then went to Maltby. The Cockchafer was a small, unpretentious tavern, frequented chiefly by carriers and tradesmen, and, I regret to say, not wholly unknown to some of the boys of Saint Dominic's, who were foolish enough to persuade themselves that skittles, and billiards, and beer were luxuries worth the risk incurred by breaking one of the rules of the ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... freezing look on his flippant protege and then commenced a very grave discussion of future ways and means, which ended in an immediate departure for Paris, where the two men entered upon an unpretentious career in the commercial line as agents and travellers for the patentees of an improved kind of gutta percha, which material was supposed to be applicable to every imaginable purpose, from the sole of an infant's boot to the roof of a cathedral. There are times when ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... a conscious thought connection. She remembered that Mrs. Bell had told her of her faithful landlady, Mrs. Mellen, with whom she always stopped when she came North; she remembered calling there many times for Mary, her smart motor waking the quiet, unpretentious street. Now she remembered recalling the boarding house and seeking shelter there in her fear and pain. Fear and pain—why, what was it? There was something cataclysmic, overpowering, that had happened. What could it be? Something was hanging over her head, some dreadful punishment. ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... Polidori. Of the four children of the marriage, Dante Gabriel and Christina became poets of distinction. The eldest sister, Maria Francesca, a religious devotee who spent her last years as a member of a Protestant sisterhood, was the author of that unpretentious but helpful piece of Dante literature, "A Shadow of Dante." The younger brother, William Michael, is well known as a biographer, litterateur, and art critic, as an editor of Shelley and of the works of Dante ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... in a side street in Kiel an unpretentious old frame house which had a forbidding, almost sinister appearance, with its old-fashioned balcony and its overhanging upper stories. For the last twenty years the house had been occupied by a greatly respected widow, Madame Wolff, to whom the dwelling had come by inheritance. ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... magnificent affair. On that same morning, while Haynerd sat gloomily in the office of the Social Era, meditating on his giant adversary's probable first move, Carmen, leaving her studies and classes, sought out an unpretentious home in one of the suburbs of the city, and for an hour or more talked earnestly with the timid, frightened little wife of Congressman Wales. Then, her work done, she dismissed the whole affair from her mind, and hastened joyously back to the University. She would ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... in darkened London conducting the last hour of business under lowered awnings, "as if it were a liaison." There are many such rewarding passages, some perhaps a little facile, but, taken together, quite enough to make this unpretentious little volume a very agreeable companion for the few moments of leisure which are all that most of us can get in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... will instantly appeal to tastes peppered and salted by [certain of our contemporary writers]; but one cannot forget Beethoven, and somehow all my inspiration came in these large and artless forms, in simple Saxon words, in unpretentious and purely intellectual conceptions, while nevertheless I felt, all through, the necessity of making a genuine song — and not a rhymed set of good adages — out of it. I adopted the trochees of the first movement because they COMPEL a measured, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... four freshmen lived was an unpretentious dwelling, built of wood and painted a dull gray. A straggling bit of uneven lawn in front by no means added to its appearance. Even in the concealing twilight it had a neglected look. It was in glaring contrast to stately ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... well-being of our appetites. We have not spoken, in the above catalogue, either of the liver, or of the fraise, or of the ears, which also share the honour of appearing at our tables. Where is the man not acquainted with calf's liver a la bourgeoise, the most frequent and convenient dish at unpretentious tables? The fraise, cooked in water, and eaten with vinegar, is a wholesome and agreeable dish, and contains a mucilage well adapted for delicate persons. Calf's ears have, in common with the feet and cervelles, the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... somehow warped out of the beauty of the perpendicular. His ideal Gentleman is the frigid product of a rigid mechanical drill, with the mien of a posture master, the skin-deep graciousness of a French Marechal, the calculating adventurer who cuts unpretentious worthies to toady to society magnates, who affects the supercilious air of a shallow dandy and cherishes the heart of a frog. True, he repeatedly insists on the obligation of truthfulness in all things, and of, honor in dealing with the world. His ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield |
