"Unpromising" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite an old lady now. Jacquelina is insane, the commodore and Mrs. L'Oiseau scarcely competent to take care of themselves—and Luckenough a sad, unpromising home for a ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... printed in red ink, which certificate declared that I had paid $2000 toward the capital stock of —— Mining Company; Capital Stock, $250,000; signed Col. ——, President, a gentleman a little in arrears at his boarding-house, and my defaulting young man was secretary. Rather an unpromising show that, as the property consisted of a tavern, built of canvas upon Colonel Fremont's Maraposa grant, on the principle of squatter sovereignty. Near by the squatter had dug a promising hole, and if only money and machinery could be had, perhaps he might realize something ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... she's so sweet and self-denying, if you've known her such a short time?" asked Aunt Izzie, in an unpromising tone. ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... great granite cliff that seemed such an unpromising retreat for pursers, then he stepped out of the motor, and made his way around the sharp angle of stone wall. As he did so, a gale struck him that sent his hat careening over the precipice. He gazed after it in chagrin. The fact that one of the great panoramic views of the world lay ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... him; she heard his footsteps over the flagged hall. Poor Margot! Never before in her life had she so keenly desired to make a good impression; never had she so signally failed. It was indeed an unpromising beginning ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... felt as he sat behind the old desk in Chase Hall and watched us file in, year after year! Callow, juvenile, ignorant, and cocksure—grotesquely confident of our own manly fulness of worldly savoir—an absurd rabble of youths, miserable flint-heads indeed for such a steel! We were the most unpromising of all material for the scholar's eye; comfortable, untroubled middle-class lads most of us, to whom study was neither a privilege nor a passion, but only a sober and decent way of growing old enough to ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... these unpromising circumstances that little Benjamin grew up, his destiny being apparently nothing more than to work on the little farm beside his poor and ignorant parents. When he was approaching manhood, he went, in the intervals of toil, to an obscure and remote country-school; for, until the cotton-gin made ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... into another chamber fitted all round with a great, bare, wooden desk or counter, whereon lay files of newspapers, to which sundry gentlemen were referring. But there were no such means of beguiling the time in this apartment, which was as unpromising and tiresome as any waiting-room in one of our public establishments, or any physician's dining-room during his hours ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... for a time she had been a school-teacher. This, then, with the exception of two months at the village school, was the limit of young Edison's education—to use the conventional term. The world was now to take him in hand, and show what it could do with material so unpromising. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... other form of occupation. Yet whenever she talked of him she was met by the same hearty agreement and frank enthusiasm, the very words being taken out of her mouth and her own praises of him doubled and trebled. It was a promising friendship, but it was a singularly unpromising ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... castle, and the County Hotel,—and preferred the two former. One thing in Carlisle struck us as more remarkable than all else, and that was that the mean annual temperature was stated to be 48 deg. F. It was just that, when we were there, though cloudy and unpromising as to weather. In our opinion Carlisle ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... poorer part of the city a little north of east and close to the shore of the Lesser river. It was a region of tenement dwellings, a huddle of nondescript buildings, flanked by huge factories and sprawling coal and lumber yards—an unpromising region, surely, in which to look for Master Quinton Edge's particular retreat. And yet it would have marked the subtlety of the man to have set his secret here, where it would have been at once so easily seen and overlooked. Every labyrinth has its clew, but the fugitive ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... unpromising adjuncts of a ragged population of ingenious rascals who were out of employment eight months in the year because there was little for them to borrow and less to confiscate, and a waste of barren hills and weed-grown deserts, went ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... us through very extraordinary and unpromising neighbourhoods in the search for his remarkable house-agent. Neither of the brothers Grant failed to notice this fact. As the streets grew closer and more crooked and the roofs lower and the gutters grosser ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... before,—indeed, which are not commonly known! How will he be for ever eliciting unsuspected facts,—detecting undreamed of coincidences, but which are as important as they are true,—accumulating materials of value quite inestimable for future study in Divine things! However unpromising a certain collection of references may be, he is careful to extend it,—convinced, like a wise householder, that there will come an use for it after many days. His whole aim is to master thoroughly the record which he has undertaken ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... hurtful. Rex became conscious of its growth, and was surprised to find anything so delicate and beautiful in his own heart, where such beauties had never grown, or had budded only to wither prematurely, leaving the ground more dry and arid and unpromising than before. It was as though a soft light had dawned in his soul and was gradually brightening into day. From having distrusted himself a little at first, he put an unbounded faith in his own heart since he saw what it contained. He ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... convention by which it was framed; but when it was submitted to the several States for their action, he became a determined advocate of its adoption. In the Virginia convention, which was called to act upon that question, the prospects of a favorable decision seemed at first to be most unpromising. Among those who opposed ratification we find the names of Henry, Mason, Grayson, and Monroe, names which sufficiently attest that the opposition was one, not of mere faction or obstruction, but of principle and patriotic feeling. Henry, who had been one of the first in earlier days to sound the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... what care we? We will support them on the points of our lances!" In 1848, the Zouaves received a large accession from Paris; the gamins of the Revolution were sent to them in great numbers; out of this unpromising, rebellious material, some of the finest of these admirable troops have been made. And now, when the entry into this regiment was longed for by so many, as a species of promotion, on the 13th of February, 1852, Louis Napoleon, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... in the dining-room, was really getting to take an interest in Edward's puzzling cases. They were like tricks at cards. A quick motion, and out of the unpromising heap, all confused together, presto! the right card turned up. Edward stated his case, so that there did not seem loophole for the desired verdict; but through some conjuration, it always came uppermost at last. He had a graphic way of relating things; and, as he did ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... accentuated, as the effect may require, details are eliminated or made prominent as they are less or more essential and significant, as they hinder or aid the expressiveness of the whole. It is by such methods that beauty is achieved, that the most unpromising material is subdued to the purposes of art, that even our hideous modern costume may be made to yield a decorative effect. Pure sculpture, as the ancients understood it, the art of form per se, demands the nude figure, or a costume which reveals it rather than hides it. The costume of ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... poor for other reasons, and Mr. Babcock, like my father, objected to paying board bills. His attitude was so unpromising that Burton and I cast about to see how we could lessen the expense of upkeep during our winter ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... carried late at night to a mill in which the King had taken shelter. It gave him a bitter pang. He was successful; but he owed his success to dispositions which others had made, and to the valor of men who had fought while he was flying. So unpromising was the first appearance of the greatest warrior ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mere wood-ways, filled with bushes and carpeted with pine-tags; and, being travelled only by the inhabitants, appeared to outsiders "to jes' peter out," as the phrase went. This territory was known by the unpromising ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... that there ever lived human beings to undertake such an unpromising work, where such hardship and perseverance were required, and where the folly of any hope of success must have been apparent to an intelligent person every day, from the commencement to the close of the ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... sensitive creatures who burst into tears on being addressed, and had to be restored with glasses of cold water. There were some respondents who came two together, a highly promising one and a wholly unpromising one: of whom the promising one answered all questions charmingly, until it would at last appear that she was not a candidate at all, but only the friend of the unpromising one, who had glowered in absolute silence and ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... the print, or rather the ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. He asked whose the lines were, and it chanced that {p.121} nobody but myself remembered that they occur in a half-forgotten poem of Langhorne's, called by the unpromising title of The Justice of the Peace. I whispered my information to a friend present, who mentioned it to Burns, who rewarded me with a look and a word, which, though of mere civility, I then received, and still ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... college in July, determined to teach school all winter, and to make a success of it, too, in a most unpromising part of the world. But even the most enthusiastic teacher must fail to get on if there are no scholars to teach, and at present she had only Miles and Phil, her two brothers, as pupils. This was most trying to Katherine's patience, for, of course, if there had only ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... of the soil, the notorious corruptions of the body-politic—and a votary of superstition would ascribe the splendid fortunes of the scite to the favour of heaven, as announced in the vision to the monks who, eleven hundred years since, built Westminster-Abbey, in so unpromising ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... of weakened minds to see everything through a black cloud. The soul forms its own horizons; your soul is darkened, and consequently the sky of the future appears stormy and unpromising." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Eularia took her unpromising pupil out of the sacristy more hastily than she had led her in. And perhaps it was as well for Beatrice that Father Bruno arrived ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... oh Boston! I hail The stir of thy deck and the spread of thy sail, For they tell me I soon shall be wafted, in thee, To the flourishing isle of the brave and the free, And that chill Nova-Scotia's unpromising strand Is the last I shall tread of American land. Well—peace to the land! may her sons know, at length, That in high-minded honor lies liberty's strength, That though man be as free as the fetterless wind, As the wantonest air that the north can unbind, Yet, if health do not temper and sweeten ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... going to open his third campaign, he was seized at Vienna with the plague, which stopped his farther progress. Nothing, however, could abate his desire of being beneficial to mankind. 14. His fears for the youth and unpromising disposition of Com'modus, his son and successor, seemed to give him great uneasiness. He therefore addressed his friends and the principal officers that were gathered round his bed, expressing his hope, that as his son was now losing his father, he would find many ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... unpromising fashion did the conference begin. It was in progress at noon—and Hiram remained to dinner. Breaking bread with a friend has a consolatory effect—that cannot be denied. When they were smoking after dinner, the first selectman grudgingly ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... end in some thousands of pounds and commencing business again on fresh capital. Come, I've not got time to waste with you. There's no escape for you, so you'd better say yes, else I'll go and have a talk with a legal friend of mine who is used to screwing gold out of most unpromising mines." ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... notion that the poetic achievement is measured by the uniqueness of the poet's invention. Thus, it is not merely the poet's choice of a sublime subject that is important, but also the excellence with which he treats an unpromising subject. Ogilvie's criteria demand not merely a celerity of imagining, or a facility for the sublime, but a degree of innovativeness which ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... the Milesian meets one at almost every turn; the shrewdly solemn Scotchman, the transatlantic Yankee, blending the crafty thrift of Bryce Snailsfoot with the stern religious heroism of Cameron; the blue-eyed, fair-haired German from the towered hills which overlook the Rhine,—slow, heavy, and unpromising in his exterior, yet of the same mould and mettle of the men who rallied for "fatherland" at the Tyrtean call of Korner and beat back the chivalry of France from the banks of the Katzback,—the countrymen of Richter, and Goethe, and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Christianity. The violence of personal or superstitious animosity might sometimes prevail over the most natural apprehensions of disgrace and danger but it cannot surely be imagined, that accusations of so unpromising an appearance were either lightly or frequently undertaken by the Pagan subjects of the Roman ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... to give him subjects the most unpromising to test his powers. Thus, Campbell records that he once supplied him with a theme, "Pepper and Salt," and that he amply seasoned the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... her aunt was still reading the letter. But her look, Ellen felt, was unpromising. She did not venture to speak; expectation was chilled. She stood till Miss Fortune began to ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... being informed that the Messiah had been found in Jesus of Nazareth, asked: "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?"[272] The incredulous query has passed into a proverb current even today as expressive of any unpopular or unpromising source of good. Nathanael lived in Cana, but a few miles from Nazareth, and his surprize at the tidings brought by Philip concerning the Messiah incidentally affords evidence of the seclusion in which ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Clarence F. Underwood. The "Flirt," the younger of two sisters, breaks one girl's engagement, drives one man to suicide, causes the murder of another, leads another to lose his fortune, and in the end, marries a stupid and unpromising suitor, leaving the really worthy ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... route to the sea the road is lined with gardens. Nothing could be more unpromising in appearance than this soil before it is ploughed and pulverized by the cultivator. It looks like a barren waste. We passed a tract that was offered three years ago for twelve dollars an acre. Some of it now is rented to Chinamen at thirty ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... now nearly sixteen; she had emerged from the somewhat unpromising age, and had developed into remarkable beauty. Distinguished as were all the St. Legers for fine personal appearance, none had ever equalled this child of Della, given to God ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... A more unpromising place for a well could not have been selected in all his extensive grounds; but he was not a man to be patiently baffled even by Nature herself, and he stood looking with grim satisfaction at the hole which rapidly widened and deepened under ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... but my wife won't need to remind Mrs. Ellsworth of her debt," the answer came before Annesley could speak. "And she will be my wife in a day or two at latest. Good-night! Glad to have met you, even if it was an unpromising introduction." ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Horatio Paget regarded the man who had dared to question his probity. But Mr. Hawkehurst had done with strong impressions long before he met the Captain; and he listened to that gentleman's freezing reproof with an admiring smile. Out of this very unpromising beginning there arose a kind of friendship between the two men. Horatio Paget had for some time been in need of a clever tool; and in the young man whose cool insolence rose superior to his own dignity he perceived the very individual whom he had long been seeking. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... in the middle of a very unpromising stony street, before a house which presented no appearance of an inn. Here, however, we were told that we were to alight; and, having done so in a somewhat disconsolate mood, for the storm had increased in violence, our baggage was to be disengaged from the huge pile on the top of the diligence, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... human figure, an animal, or even inanimate objects, there is nothing, however unpromising in appearance, but may be raised into dignity, convey sentiment, and produce emotion, in the hands of a Painter of genius. What was said of Virgil, that he threw even the dung about the ground with an air of dignity, may be ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Wilkes, who is at the same time pushing for the Mayoralty of London, with hitherto a majority on the poll. It is strange how this man, like a phoenix, always revives from his embers! America, I doubt, is still more unpromising. There are whispers of their having assembled an armed force, and of earnest supplications arrived for succours of men and ships. A civil war is no trifle; and how we are to suppress or pursue in such a vast region, with ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... the poor and helpless alone who are the victims of imposition. There are fools in all walks of life. Many a well-dressed man or woman can be found in the rooms of the clairvoyant or the Chinese "doctor." In matters of health, especially, men grasp at the most unpromising straws. In certain cities of California there is scarcely a business block that did not contain at least one human leech under the trade name of "healer," metaphysical, electrical, astral, divine or what not. And these will thrive so long as men seek ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan
... they sympathized with the working class shook their heads at the mention of strikes, regarding them as calculated rather to hinder than help the emancipation of labor. Bred as I was in these prejudices, it may not seem strange that I was taken aback at finding such unpromising subjects selected for the highest place ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... similarly in bidding for unpromising contracts and in buying up estates thrown unexpectedly on the market. All his ventures turned out successfully, he gained great resources for indulging his fad for gems and rare curios, his collection grew and became one of the most famous private ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... with the negroes all on board, frozen in. For many days, her crew, aided by the crew of the frigate Siam, her convoy, had been cutting away at the ice; but, as more ice formed at night than could be removed by day, the prospect of getting to sea was unpromising. One afternoon, Captain Vanderbilt ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... If so, that would be most unpromising. But, in any case, you are my best darling." Then he kissed her and blessed her, and slowly opened the letter. His wife had now come close to him, and was standing over him, touching him, so that she also could read the archdeacon's letter. Grace, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... point and cleverness The Rump, however, from a technical point of view, is ill-digested and rough. The scenes were evidently thrown off hastily, and sadly lack refining and revision. Mrs. Behn has made the happiest use of rather unpromising material. The intrigues between Loveless and Lady Lambert, who in Tatham is very woodeny and awkward, between Freeman and Lady Desbro', which give The Roundheads unity and dramatic point, are entirely her own invention. In the original Rump neither ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... morning. A middle-aged woman, who was taking up all the available space in the dressing-room, grudgingly moved over a few inches when Mary tried to squeeze in to wash her face. Any one but Mary would have regarded her as a most unpromising companion, when she answered her question with a grumbling "Yes, been on two days, and got two more to go." The tone was as ungracious as if she had said, "Mind ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the undertaking,—the persons into whose hands the religion came after his death? A few fishermen upon the lake of Tiberias, persons just as uneducated, and, for the purpose of framing rules of morality, as unpromising as himself. Suppose the mission to be real, all this is accounted for; the unsuitableness of the authors to the production, of the characters to the undertaking, no longer surprises us: but without reality, it is very difficult to explain ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... he would be loth indeed to proceed, for a more dismal corner can hardly be conceived. The outline of the adjacent mountains was dreary and uninviting, with very little cultivation in the valley, which also bore a most desolate aspect—it was barren and unpromising, without participating in the wild and grand features which generally characterize these regions. Fuel was with difficulty procured, and our camp was but scantily furnished with even the most ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... beat is increased only twenty or less, if the patient has not been suffering from an exhausting disease, it shows "a degenerative process in the cardiac tissue which makes the outlook for improvement under treatment unpromising." He also believes that when the heart in auricular fibrillation is increased the normal amount or more than normal, the prognosis is good. He still further advises in auricular fibrillation an injection ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... Remarkably low grades were secured; in fact, as favourable as on the prairie section. Kaien Island, 550 miles north of Vancouver, was chosen as the terminus, rather than Port Simpson as originally designed, and soon on its magnificent harbour and most unpromising site of rock and muskeg the new and scientifically planned city of Prince ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... the street, kept drawing nearer, as he played and smiled and beckoned with his head. There trotted after him an unpromising little brown dog with limp tail and ears. The man, in his good-nature and success, looked very different from the organ-grinder of yesterday; and as he laughed aloud, the master of the yellow dog frowned and shouted something in Italian ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... a fancy for it. Sure it's fitter for you than the likes of me, that 'ud look a quare old scarecrow if I offered to go about in such a thing." She had not at first intended this generosity, her worldly goods being so few that she could not lightly part with even a very unpromising possession. ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... slightly mutilated. Before he had gone many yards, back came the sailing wings, and the birds settled again before his eyes. The rest of the low wood was but thin, and he soon emerged upon the open country; but it was most unpromising; and fitter for geese than men. A vast sedgy swamp with water in the middle, thin fringes of great fern-trees, and here and there a disconsolate tree like a weeping-willow, and at the end of this lake and swamp, which all together formed ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Hay and Devers hadn't been on speaking terms for two years. Truman could not like him, yet had had no open rupture. Cranston and he were personally and officially antagonistic. One and all, the officers regarded this detail under his command as one of the most unpromising of their experience, and could hardly contain themselves when Warren left. As for Warren, his relations with the senior troop commander had been of the stiffest and most formal character ever since ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... up with my back to the wall, and as the actors and people of the theatre passed by to rehearsal, I made a bow of my head to those whose countenances and manners seemed most promising. For several days not one of them took the least notice of me. There was one of them who looked so unpromising that I should hardly have given him the honour of my bow, if it were not for his superior age and venerable aspect; and I believe when I did give it to him, it was but a mutilated affair. There was a starched pompous man, too, whose aspect was, to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... south-south-west and afterwards southward; until we once more entered among the yarra trees on the more open ground by the river, and encamped after a journey of about twelve miles. The country we had this day traversed was of so unpromising a description that it was a relief to get even amongst common scrubs, and escape from those of the Eucalyptus dumosa. This species is not a tree but a lofty bush with a great number of stems, each two or three inches ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... mint, and lavender, and mignonette, sprout in the crevices where snakes and lizards harbour. The grass around is gemmed with blue pimpernel and convolvulus. Gladiolus springs amid the young corn-blades beneath the almond-trees; while a beautiful little iris makes the most unpromising dry places brilliant with its delicate greys and blues. In cooler and damper hollows, around the boles of old olives and under ruined arches, flourishes the tender acanthus, and the road-sides are gaudy with a yellow daisy flower, which may perchance ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... care—and it may be consoling to parents who are in the first crisis of impatience, at the sort of hopeless stupidity which some children exhibit, to know, that the dawn of Sheridan's intellect was as dull and unpromising as its meridian day was bright; and that in the year 1759, he who, in less than thirty years afterwards, held senates enchained by his eloquence and audiences fascinated by his wit, was, by common consent both of parent and preceptor, pronounced to ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... fast! How old they make us feel! Who would have supposed the most unpromising of little buds would have transformed itself so soon into what he gazed upon? Marien, as an artist, had great pleasure in studying the delicate outline of that graceful head surmounted by thick tresses, with rebellious ringlets rippling over the brow before they were gathered into the ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... growing out to a considerable distance in the water; and it was not until they had pulled three or four miles from the place where they first attempted to land that they were enabled to reach terra firma. They also stated that neither food nor water could be discovered on the island. Unpromising as appearances were, there was no alternative but to seek shelter on the inhospitable shore. Accordingly, every preparation was made, and by eight o'clock P.M., the people were all landed, excepting one division, who remained on board the wreck, with the captain, first lieutenant, ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... was one vast encampment, was the Anglo-Saxon savage, and therefore carried with him that chief trait of the American character, the principle that what a man earns—not what he steals, but what he earns—is his and his alone. This principle sowed in ground forbidding and unpromising was the seed of the law out of which has sprung the growth of a mighty civilization fit to be called an empire of its own. The growth and development of law under such conditions offered phenomena not recorded in the history of any other ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... pangs, in the fact that he was only one inch more than five feet high, and yet fat and awkward; stoop-shouldered, wild-haired, small-nosed, big-spectacled, thick-lipped, and of a complexion which has been called pasty to the point of tallowness. Haydn, however, almost as unpromising, was a great slayer of women. But Schubert either did not care, or did ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... to hear it, my young friend," said Mr. Whitney. "It is always pleasant to see a young man fighting his way upward. In this free country there is every inducement for effort, however unpromising may be the early circumstances in which one is placed. But, young gentlemen, as my nephew would be glad to speak further with you, I propose that we adjourn from the sidewalk to the St. Nicholas Hotel, where I ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... unpromising field of operation than western Virginia could scarcely have been selected for the new commander. The people of that region generally favored the Union, and the Federal troops had already obtained possession of the strongest positions, while some of the Confederate ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... there is no difficulty in the matter. Whatever be our personal infirmities, He whom we serve can overrule or supersede them. An act of duty must always be right; and will be accepted, whatever be its success, because done in obedience to His will. And he can bless the most unpromising circumstances; He can even lead us forward by means of our mistakes; He can turn our mistakes into a revelation; He can convert us, if He will, through the very obstinacy, or self-will, or superstition, which ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... shouldering his way to a lucrative practice; but it had been noted that he had not the striking and necessary faculty of extracting evidence from a heap of statements. A remarkable improvement, however, came upon him as to this. Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was his great ally. What the two drank together would have ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of the Village! It is something pathetic and yet triumphant, pitiful and also splendid. It is joyous life and growth hoping in the most unpromising surroundings: it is eager and gallant hope exulting in the very teeth of defeat. ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... person, and Mrs. Rushmore was not nearly so far wrong as Margaret thought her. Whether it was at all likely that he might succeed, was another matter, but he possessed both the qualities and the weapons which sometimes ensure success in the most unpromising undertakings. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... as I had broken up this unpromising tete-a-tete and settled Reginald where he could watch the croquet players losing their tempers, I wandered off to find my hostess and renew the kitten negotiations at the point where they had been interrupted. I did not succeed in running her down at once, and eventually it was Mrs. ...
— Reginald • Saki
... terraces above terraces, of loose stones, are built to secure and consolidate the scanty portion of earth which would otherwise be washed away from the roots of their vines by the first winter storm; and not a spot is neglected, however unpromising and difficult of access, where a barrow-full of mould can be raked together, and increased by hand-carriage. One cannot witness such industry without wishing that it could procure more of the comforts of life; ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... not of long duration. Allusion is here made to that especial headache under the acute effects of which he had taken so very unpromising a farewell of his nephew and heir. It lasted, however, for two or three days, during which he had frequent consultations with Mrs. Brownlow, and had one conversation with Edith. He was disappointed, sorry, and sore at ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... flower beds greeted my eyes; instead, dilapidated walls, abutting on these a peasant's cottage, and in front an acre or two of bare dusty field! My friends had indeed become the owners of a dismantled bakery and its appurtenances, to the uninitiated as unpromising a domain as could well be imagined. But I discovered that the purchasers were wiser in their generation than myself. Noticing my ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... of his own ability, and with a temper rebellious to all restraint, Poe soon broke away from his new duties, and started out to seek his fortune. He went to Boston; and, in eager search for fame and money, he resorted to the rather unpromising expedient of publishing, in 1827, a small volume of poems. Viewed in the light of his subsequent career, the volume gives here and there an intimation of the author's genius; but, as was to be expected, it attracted but little attention. He was soon ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... personae. Steevens has justly observed, however, on these skeletons, that although "The drift of these dramatic pieces cannot be collected from the mere outlines before us, yet we must not charge them with absurdity. Even the scenes of Shakespeare would have worn as unpromising an aspect, had their skeletons only been discovered." The printed Scenarios of the Italian theatre were not more intelligible; exhibiting only the hints ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... 1815, the Northumberland reached St. Helena, which presents but an unpromising aspect to those who design it for a residence, though it may be a welcome sight to the seaworn mariner. Its destined inhabitant, from the deck of the Northumberland, surveyed it with his spy-glass. St. James' Town, an inconsiderable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... step towards womanliness. When this has not been taken, and a girl is therefore unkind to her social inferiors out of fear of what rumor will say,—"the fume of little hearts,"—I blush for an indecent girlhood, and I grieve for an unpromising, unchristian womanhood. We know that encouragement, not intimacy, the gentle rebuke of a bow or a greeting, are more helpful to arouse the sparks of womanliness than the cold stare or averted head. Next to the respect of woman for woman, comes ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... attention of Mr. Sheridan during this session, the principal was a motion of his own for the repeal of the Excise Duties on Tobacco, which appears to have called forth a more than usual portion of his oratory,—his speeches on the subject occupying nearly forty pages. It is upon topics of this unpromising kind, and from the very effort, perhaps, to dignity and enliven them, that the peculiar characteristics of an orator are sometimes most racily brought out. To the Cider Tax we are indebted for one of the grandest ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... which I had been accustomed to meet him was at the top of the first flight, but he took me past that into what appeared to be the garret story, where, after many cautionary signs, he ushered me into a room of singularly strange and unpromising appearance. In the first place, it was darkly gloomy, being lighted simply by a very dim and dirty skylight. Next, it was hideously empty; a pine table and two hard-backed chairs, set face to face at each end of it, being the only articles in the ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... any of them. He was hurried up a tiled path, none too clean between swarthy and lack-lustre laurels; the steps had not been "done"; the door wore the nondescript complexion of prehistoric paint debased by the caprices of the London climate. One touch of colour the lad saw before this unpromising portal opened and shut upon him: he had already passed through a rank of pollard trees, sprouting emeralds in the morning sun, that seemed common to this side of the road, and effectually hid ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... 'The "History of Bevis of Hampton" is abridged by my friend Mr. George Ellis, with that liveliness which extracts amusement even out of the most rude and unpromising of our old tales of chivalry. Ascapart, a most important personage in the romance, is thus described ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... small tilted berg nearby. The country immediately ahead was much broken up. Great open leads intersected the floes at all angles, and it all looked very unpromising. Wild and I went out prospecting as usual, but it seemed too broken to ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... of that, Edward;—but the law is a study of years, and is expensive and unpromising in every respect. Your clothes already call for a considerable sum, and such a profession requires, more than almost any other, that a student ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... afresh a coalition to withstand the ever-growing menace of the formidable French power could scarcely have been more unpromising than it now appeared. Spain was utterly exhausted and feeble. Brandenburg and Denmark had been alienated by the States concluding a separate peace at Nijmwegen and leaving them in the lurch. The attention of the emperor was fully occupied in defending Hungary and Vienna itself against the Turks. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... expressed himself with a certain timidity, stumbling over his words. The almond trees were the greatest source of wealth on Can Mallorqui. Last year the crop had been good, and this year it did not look unpromising. It was being sold to the padrones, who were bringing it to Palma and Barcelona. He had planted nearly all his fields to almonds, and now he was thinking of clearing and cleaning off the stones from certain lands belonging to the senor, and of raising wheat on them—no more than enough ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sound, and uninterrupted repose. I rise early, refreshed, vigorous and cheerful, always occupied, always looking forward with new and renovated hopes, of living to see the enemies of my country and the persecutors of my suffering countrymen brought to justice. Though I am a determined and unpromising enemy of those who tyrannize over and oppress my fellow creatures, yet I feel that I am always ready to forgive my personal injuries, and I am never in better humor with myself, and never have a higher opinion of my own character, than when I find ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... he follows up with that most delicate species of flattery, that of praising them for the very virtue which they are most deficient in; telling them that they are "a people to whom the truth, however unpromising, can always be ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising surroundings those ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... inconsiderable degree of resolution to "turn out" under such unpromising circumstances; but Bush, after two or three groans and a yawn, made the attempt to get up and dress. Climbing hurriedly down when the ship rolled to windward, he caught his boots in one hand and trousers in the other, and began ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... to have settled our bivouac had long passed, yet we were still on the road. The path we were treading was flat and unpromising, and the water from the cave, with which we had filled our gourds, was so unpleasant in taste that we longed to find a spring. Being unable to get a clear view of the horizon, I directed l'Encuerado to climb to the summit of a lofty tree. The Indian ascended ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... their quarters in New York. The mother's health, which had been far from strong before this event, completely broke down, and she had never fully recovered. The seeds of consumption, which had probably been implanted in her before her birth, had rapidly developed themselves under the unpromising regimen to which she had been subjected, and it was apparent that she had not long to live. She was unable to afford proper nourishment to her child, which languished from day to day, and the only strong desire left to her was that she might survive long enough to see it fairly ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... the fact that the operation as then conceived was to be purely naval, the word "take" suggests an initial misconception of what the navy could do. The support for the decision, especially from the naval experts, was chiefly on the assumption that if Admiral Carden's first operation were unpromising, the ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... the way of our hopes, to the closer consideration of which we intend to return in the future, though it must be expected that the happiest consensus will be long quarantined from most schools. Meanwhile a second way, however unpromising, is still open. Noble types of character may rest on only the native instincts of the soul or even on broadly interpreted utilitarian considerations. But if morality without religion were only a bloodless corpse or a plank in a shipwreck, there is now need ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... for him before. The beggar, on receiving it, poured forth blessings without number; and, with a sort of smile on his countenance, said to Harley "that if he wanted to have his fortune told"—Harley turned his eye briskly on the beggar: it was an unpromising look for the subject of a prediction, and silenced the prophet immediately. "I would much rather learn," said Harley, "what it is in your power to tell me: your trade must be an entertaining one; sit ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... the truth, the vicinity appeared rather unpromising. The cliffs offered no ledge upon which they might have climbed out of reach of the rogue, the jungle might have afforded them a temporary shelter; but although it had concealed the elephant from their eyes, it could not long conceal them ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... specially large portion for one whose lot was so much worse than merely undistinguished. If that nameless curate had not been at the Thrales' that day, or, being there, had kept the silence that so well became him, his life would have been drab enough, in all conscience. But at any rate an unpromising career would not have been nipped in the bud. And that is what in fact happened, I'm sure of it. A robust man might have rallied under the blow. Not so our friend. Those who knew him in infancy had not expected that he would be reared. Better for him had they been right. It is well to ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... while drifting, she expressed the pleasure she had from the fortunate meeting with the Prince; his presence, she doubted not, contributed greatly to the good conclusion of what in its beginning seemed so unpromising. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... the dawn, had continued without a moment's intermission, they arrived at a small log-hut, situate on the skirt of a forest forming one of the boundaries of the vast savannah they had traversed. Such was the unpromising appearance of this apology for a human dwelling that, under any other circumstances, even the "not very d——d particular" Jackson, as the Aid-de-Camp often termed himself, would have passed it by without stopping; but after a long day's ride, and suffering ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... moreover, not to keep the rest of the party waiting. There was an Austrian general, however, amongst the number, and therefore we might safely have slept another hour. The morning was very unpromising, the rain descended in a dull persistent downpour. We tried to hope it was the pride of the morning. The prospect was dreary enough to damp the spirits of some of our party. One man found that urgent private affairs called him hence; another averred he had an inflammatory sore throat. I expected ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... this Mary received notice that her lover was coming. The Dean had seen him and had absolutely fixed a time. To poor Mary this seemed to be most unromantic, most unpromising. And though she had thought of nothing else since she had first heard of Lord George's intention, though she had laid awake struggling to make up her mind, she had reached no conclusion. It had ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... carriage, filled with blankets and clothes for distribution, down to Irish Row, where the warm-hearted recipients blessed their "Lady bountiful" in terms more voluble and noisy than refined. Still, however unpromising, the soil bore good fruit. Homes grew more civilized, men, women, and children more respectable and quiet, while everywhere the impress of a woman's ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... fundamental concepts, two points of view presented simultaneously become two sources of confusion. In the university only the student of tried worth is permitted to take a seminar course. In the upper classes in college, mediocre students are often welcomed into a seminar course in order to help float an unpromising elective. ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... there was a magic in her name and station which would overcome what she described as shyness, but which was in point of fact the frank dislike of her neighbours. A subscription list that she had opened had a weak and unpromising appearance. She had with the greatest difficulty secured help for the bazaar, and knew, even though it had been opened by a duchess, that it was a failure, even ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... any other country in the world can demonstrate what applied science has accomplished for industry; it has not only made possible the utilization of all sorts of unpromising raw material, but it has tremendously increased the invention and elaboration of machinery. The time must come, however, if indeed the moment has not already arrived, when applied science will have done all that it can do for the development of machinery. It may be that machines cannot ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... them; and his own wife—not then converted—did much to hinder his going; but Sarah did all in her power to encourage him; and a letter of hers on the subject decided him to go. She rejoiced to give up her friends, her pleasant home, and even her privileges, that he might labor in that unpromising field. Nor was she by any means idle. She spent all her vacations there, laboring with much acceptance and success; and after she graduated, in 1850, besides her day school through the week, she had a Bible class on the Sabbath, with the women; and on ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... of a pacific adjustment with the new Government was unpromising from the known hostility of its head to the United States, yet, determined that nothing should be left undone on our part to restore friendly relations between the two countries, our minister was instructed ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... two feet wide and roughly squared by pieces of shingle laid in the concrete, tip to tip. The final dressing, two inches of pebble mortar, looked unpromising on account of its coating of white. It would have hardened a dingy cement colour, instead of the deep, sparkling grey desired, had we not thought of turning a fine spray from the hose upon the newly trowelled surface to wash away the top cement. To make sure, the surface was then lightly ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... the fact I thus urged upon him, he would work for me with all the skill and ability my desperate situation demanded. I, therefore, watched him with great anxiety for the least change in the constrained attitude and fixed, unpromising gaze with which he had listened to me, and was conscious of a great leap of heart as the set expression of his features relaxed, and he ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... difficult to imagine a more unpromising pupil than Elsie appeared to be when Lilias first took her in hand; for to Lilias' special care was she committed. Wonder unspeakable to the children in the school was the sight of a girl of Elsie's age who could not say the catechism, which every Scotch child begins to learn almost in infancy. But ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... was compelled to admit that she had given me an inspiration. That girl, under a rough and unpromising exterior, has fecundity of ideas which astonishes me. Had she been in a higher class in life—or even able to spell—she might have been a regular ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... by the kingdoms of Holland and Belgium. The entire strip of land is simply the delta accumulations of the Rhine and other rivers emptying into the North Sea. Originally it was often overflowed by its streams and inundated by the ocean. But this unpromising morass, protected at last by heavy dykes against the invasions of the ocean and the overflow of its streams, was destined to become the site of cities which at one period were the richest and most potent of Europe, and the seat of one of the foremost commonwealths ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... heavy swell; and to-day it was accompanied with foggy weather and occasional showers of rain. Notwithstanding this, such was the confidence which the erection of the beacon had inspired that the boats landed the artificers on the rock under very unpromising circumstances, at half-past eight, and they continued at work till half-past eleven, being a period of three hours, which was considered a great tide's work in the present low state of the foundation. Three of the ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 1634, the very year in which Milton wrote his Mask. The so-called tradition collected by Oldys, of the young Egertons, who acted in Comus, having lost themselves in Haywood Forest on their way to Ludlow, obviously grew out of Milton's poem. However casual the suggestion, or unpromising the occasion, Milton worked out of it a strain of poetry such as had never been heard in England before. If any reader wishes to realise the immense step upon what had gone before him, which was now made by a young man of ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... even of marvellous beauty. In this case it stamped a woman as one who—by several signs—might be identified by the initiated as one of those, who, without reason or logic, spring now and again from most unpromising soil! ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... ever come round, when the question of the possible and the expedient is brought into discussion. It is the decision of the Holy See; St. Peter has spoken, it is he who has enjoined that which seems to us so unpromising. He has spoken, and has a claim on us to trust him. He is no recluse, no solitary student, no dreamer about the past, no doter upon the dead and gone, no projector of the visionary. He for eighteen hundred years has ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... of the enemy's guns. Of others, whom you may remember, Kreiner, Zetter, and Hartmann, are killed; and several are wounded: Kalmann and Hettinger very severely.—You shall hear from me again soon; but matters look very unpromising. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... interests to continue the war, whether we pay them or not for doing so. By subsidizing Austria, we acquire no greater force than that of the last campaign, and we put the justification of that enormous expense upon the unpromising chance of a vigour and energy on their part such as they appear to be altogether incapable of exerting, unless under the pressure of such a danger as would force them to act without hiring them to ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... had not yet found his distinctive aim as a poet, he was inwardly bent, all the time that his relatives saw in him only a wayward and unpromising aversion to work in any regular line, upon poetry as "his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... unpromising. Blackish pools of water alternated with a network of massive roots all over the soil, underneath broad evergreen branches; trunks of trees leaned in every direction, as if top-heavy. Wilder confusion of thicket could not be conceived. 'The cedars troublesome! I should think ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... morning Mr. Roe and Mr. Cunningham examined the river as far as the boat could penetrate. From Mr. Roe's report the country was low and of unpromising appearance. The river took its course by a very tortuous channel through a low country: for two or three miles from the entrance its banks are overrun with dense forests of mangroves; but beyond this they are superseded by red earthy cliffs, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... inclinations. Yet he seems to have been mainly intent upon society and the amusements of the passing hour, and, without the spur of necessity to his literary capacity, he yielded to the temptations of indolence, and settled into the unpromising position of a "man about town." Occasionally, the business of his firm and that of other importing merchants being imperiled by some threatened action of Congress, Irving was sent to Washington to look after their interests. The leisurely progress he always ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the growth of southern California, and especially of its orange culture, the use of water on the soil plays a prominent part. It was the discovery that the most sandy and unpromising-looking land became a miracle of fertility when subjected to the irrigating stream, that caused the wonderful prosperity of the dry portions of ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... the far West is constant and large. Almost every city, town or village suffers annually by the departure of some of its adventurous inhabitants. Companies have been formed to go and possess the Oregon territory—an enterprise hazardous and unpromising in the extreme. The old States are distributing their population over the whole continent, with unexampled fruitfulness and liberality. But why this restless, roving, unsatisfied disposition? Is it because those who cherish it are treated as the offscouring of all flesh, in the ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... of the front room, and the two men, watching her vivid face as it glowed above her furs, noting the capable, womanly way she had of looking at the best side of everything and discerning in a flash of imagination and intuition what could be done with unpromising material, appreciated her with that full masculine appreciation which it is so well worth the trouble ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... rattling tenant; there were jars in rows where "interesting cases" outlived the grief of widows and heirs in alcoholic immortality,—for your "preparation-jar" is the true "monumentum aere perennius;" there were various semi-possibilities of minute dimensions and unpromising developments; there were shining instruments of evil aspect, and grim plates on the walls, and on one shelf by itself, accursed and apart, coiled in a long cylinder of spirit, a huge crotalus, rough-scaled, flatheaded, variegated with dull ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Treaty of Cambrai been effectual in bringing his sons back to France, than Francois began to look out for new pretexts and means for war. Affairs were not unpromising. His mother's death in 1531 left him in possession of a huge fortune, which she had wrung from defenceless France; the powers which were jealous of Austria, the Turk, the English King, the members of the Smalkald ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... two inches at this time last year," said old Colonel Fox. Martie knew that this unpromising avenue would lead him immediately to Chickamauga; she slipped into the dining room and began to carve. Aurora was rushing about with butter-plates, her cousin Lyola, engaged merely for the dinner-hour, was filling glasses. A moment later the entire household ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... all the others, this hostility being so great that merely to walk into a neighboring rancheria in plain sight, not more than two miles off across the valley, was a sure way to commit suicide. And what is true of the Ifugaos is true of all the others. Could any other field have been more unpromising, have offered more difficulties? There were those thousands of savages shut up in their all but inaccessible mountains. Why not leave them there, to take one another's heads when occasion offered? They raised nothing but rice and sweet potatoes, anyway, and not enough of those to keep ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... intentions in the world, could not attain to tragedy like that of Gisli or of Grettir, because every one knew that Glum was a threatened man who lived long, and got through without any deadly injury. Glum is well enough fitted for the part of a tragic hero. He has the slow growth, the unpromising youth, the silence and the dangerous laughter, such as are recorded in the lives of other notable personages in ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... evening, was the Doctor's own performance on the single and double Jew's harp. From this most unpromising instrument he drew airs of such exquisite beauty that one could not have been more astonished had he heard the sweet tones of Grisi drawn from a cat by twisting its tail. But we were in a land of marvels and wonders, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the vocation of Carl himself in these matters. In art, as in all other things of the mind, again, much depends on the receiver; and the higher informing capacity, if it exist within, will mould an unpromising matter to itself, will realise itself by selection, and the preference of the better in what is bad or indifferent, asserting its prerogative under the most unlikely conditions. People had in Carl, could they have understood it, the ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... his finest power of analysis, and his most careful writing. As we have seen, the subject of dreams had always had a fascination for him, of a kind not unconnected perhaps with the opium-habit. The story, however it was to be treated, was unpromising; but as the denouement was what it proved to be, the astonishing thing is that Crabbe should not have felt the dramatic impropriety of putting into the young man's mouth passages of an impressive, and almost Shakespearian, beauty ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... acid that they are usually considered almost worthless for ordinary agricultural purposes. Blueberry culture, therefore, offers possibilities of profit to individual land-owners in districts in which the general conditions are especially hard and unpromising. Blueberries can not be grown in ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... Capper had mounted his horse a half-hour ago and ridden away somewhere—and she knew that he, too, had begun to fret against this insupportable waiting, and had set out on the unpromising mission of searching for the ambassador—who ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... more effectually into the song, but the memory of Errington's grave, intent face, as he had sat listening to her that night, kept coming betwixt her and the meaning of the music—and the result was even more unpromising ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... is Peace coming, and a new world, and there are my books; yet though this pipe after midnight is nearly done, and the fire too, I have not been able to settle on a book. The books are like the ashes on the hearth. And listen to the wind, with its unpromising sounds from the wide and empty desert places! What does any of these old books know about me, in the midst of those portents of a new age? We are all outward bound, and this is the first night of a long ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... "is more than I can tell you; but Harry Wyllard seems to find an interest in what other folks would consider most unpromising things, and, what is more to the purpose, he is rather addicted to taking a hand in them. It is a habit that costs him ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... elected included Spokes and Braider, and it was evident, from the half- nervous, half-gratified manner in which these two undertook their new responsibilities, that the Hermit had found out the trick of bringing out the good points even of the most unpromising boys. ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... to depict a species of exceptional innocence which never existed, an Arcadia which never really had a local habitation. On the contrary, we are taking pains to analyse the cause of a state of human goodness and felicity, springing up in the midst of exceptionally unpromising circumstances, which has no parallel, we think, in the history of mankind; which not only did exist, but which, with modifications, does still exist, and has been borne witness to through more than half a century ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... Benchers of his Inn he foresaw that nothing practical would come of it. This was his second futile attempt to class himself with a recognized order of society. Nay, strictly speaking, the third. The close of his thirteenth year had seen him a pupil at Polterham Grammar School; not an unpromising pupil by any means, but with a turn for insubordination, much disposed to pursue with zeal anything save the tasks that were set him. Inspired by Cooper and Captain Marryat, he came to the conclusion that his destiny was the Navy, ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... of uncultivated nature. The prospect of Rangoon, as we approached, was quite disheartening. I went on shore, just at night, to take a view of the place and the mission-house, but so dark and cheerless and unpromising did all things appear, that the evening of that day, after my return to the ship, we have marked as the most gloomy and distressing that we ever passed." The mission-house was not quite empty, though Felix Carey, who they had hoped would welcome them, was at ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge |
