"Unsightly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... may justly cry for attraction. They cannot have it brighter than in the universal bearing of the eyes of their sisters upon a little prince, one who has the ostensible virtues in his pay, and can practise them without injuring himself to make himself unsightly. Let the races of men be by-and-by astonished at their Gods, if they please. Meantime they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... enlivened by an occasional settlement, with its log-house and zig-zag fences of split timber: these fences are very offensive to my eye. I look in vain for the rich hedge rows of my native country. Even the stone fences in the north and west of England, cold and bare as they are, are less unsightly. The settlers, however, invariably adopt whatever plan saves time, labour, and money. The great law of expediency is strictly observed;—it is borne of necessity. Matters of taste appear to be little regarded, or are, at ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... the lake and the precipice. The result may be easily guessed. When the last portion of the earth gave way, the waters of the lake precipitated themselves upon the beautiful and peaceful glen, carrying death and destruction in their course, and leaving nothing but a dark unsightly morass behind them. So is it with the mind of man. When he gives the first slight assent to a wrong tendency, or a vicious resolution, he resembles the shepherd's boy, who, unconscious of the consequences ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... and pretension to it much oftener disgusts, by appearing to hang loosely on the character, like something foreign or extraneous, not a part, but an ill-adjusted appendage; or by seeming to overload and weigh it down by its unsightly bulk, like the productions of bad taste in architecture, where there is massy and cumbrous ornament without strength or solidity of column. This has exposed learning, and especially classical learning, to reproach. Men have seen that it ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... ugly, a. repulsive, unsightly, loathsome, hideous, grewsome, frightful; (Colloq.) crossgrained, ill-natured, unamiable, inaffable, surly, refractory, vicious, indocile, spiteful, sullen, morose; uncomely, hard-visaged, homely, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... deep to be blanched by the most fervent of prayers. Her outlook on life, her intensest wishes, were those of a white girl of more than decent perceptions—of actual refinement, for they tended to the avoidance of everything unpleasant and unsightly. In other respects, too, she was an absolute variant from the type, for her sensitiveness to the pain of others and of the lower animals amounted almost to a mania; for though she had a girlish horror of blood, her eagerness to solace ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of the mouth are produced by constant use of the comforter. The continuous sucking affects the gums, pushes them out of shape and position, and the teeth as a consequence come at wrong angles, thus causing unsightly deformities, which last throughout the life ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... copses, and woods, that elsewhere are the fruits of time and planting. This is all a mistake, however, as the rule; though modified exceptions may and do exist. The tree of the American forest shoots upward toward the light, growing so tall and slender as to be unsightly; and even when time has given its trunk is due size, the top is rarely of a breadth to ornament a park or a lawn, while its roots, seeking their nourishment in the rich alluvium formed by the decayed leaves of a thousand years, lie too near the surface to afford sufficient support ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... with her solitary prejudice was wrong. Hidden from mankind,—forgotten by himself, or buried so deeply under a sculptured and ornamented pile of ostentatious deeds that his daily life could take no note of it,—there may have lurked some evil and unsightly thing. Nay, we could almost venture to say, further, that a daily guilt might have been acted by him, continually renewed, and reddening forth afresh, like the miraculous blood-stain of a murder, without his necessarily and at every moment ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... whoso entereth within this town, That sheening for celestial seems to be, Disconsolate will wander up and down, 'Mid many things unsightly strange to see, For hut and palace show like filthily; The dingy denizens are reared in dirt; No personage of high or mean degree Doth care for cleanness of surtout and shirt, Though shent with Egypt's plague, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... at me mighty demure; quoth she: "But only sometimes, Martin. Now, for instance, you are wondering why of late I have taken to wearing my hair twisted round my head and pinned with these two small pieces of wood in fashion so unsightly!" ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the great elevators that were silhouetted against a lowering sky, the little cluster of houses, and the sea of churned-up mire between them and the track comprised Clermont. There appeared to be no station except a big water tank and a rather unsightly shed, about which stood a group of blurred and shapeless figures. It seemed very cold, and Agatha shivered as she felt the raw wind strike ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... refreshing than mountain scenery to behold such homes as you find here. The highways were not bordered by unsightly weeds but had been mown. These thrifty farmers were not afraid that they would spend their last days in the poorhouse if they chanced to leave a few shade trees standing; so, in many places along the highways, lovely maples and ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... 'orse does seventy-five per cent. of 'is dirty work with 'is 'ind-legs it is advisable to keep clear of 'em, rail 'em off or strap boxing-gloves on 'em. The legs of the 'orse is very delicate and liable to crock up, so do not try to trim off any unsightly knobs that may appear on them with a hand-axe—a little of that 'as been known to spoil a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... "situations," and to publish the trash of the impertinently ambitious, the Titmice of the Credulous Societies! The ultra-ridiculous parade with which they have decked fair science, giving her a vest of unmeaning hieroglyphics, and thereby exposing her to the finger of scorn, is another prominent and unsightly feature of such societies; they do harm by the cliquerie which they generate, collecting little knots of little men, no individual of whom can stand his own ground, but a group of whom, by leaning hard together, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... thinks that the result may be productive of some embarrassment to Ministers. This is one of the cases in which the conduct of Government has been such as their bitterest enemies must applaud, when they risk their popularity to support a very unsightly list of pensions, not granted by themselves, or to their friends, from a sense of justice; and yet these high Tories will not support them even in fighting such a battle as this. On the other hand, the Government reject their support when they might avail themselves of it against the Radicals and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... neck, that may be due to this poisonous discharge. One would think that the mere knowledge that decayed teeth can cause all this havoc would lead to a grand rush to the dentist, but so far from being the case, doctors find it extremely difficult to induce their patients to part with this unsightly, evil-smelling, ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... but, since now we do not associate lances laid in rest with our heraldic Shields, it appears desirable that we should not draw our Shields bouche. In recent Heraldry the Shield has commonly been made to appear such an unsightly and un-heraldic deformity as is represented in No. 45. Instead of a true heraldic Shield also, arounded oval with a convex surface, called a cartouche, or cartouche shield, No. 46, is occasionally used for the display of armorial blazonry; or a circle is substituted ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... small unsightly root, But of divine effect. Unknown, and like esteem'd, and the dull swain Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon; And yet more med'cinal is it than that moly That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave; He call'd it haemony, and gave it me, And bade me keep it ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... railway's unsightly indications strewn across the countryside—ballast heaps, excavations, noisy stationary engines, hand-propelled barrows bumping along toy lines, gangs of men at labour with pick and shovel—met Sabre's thoughts on this June morning because he was thinking ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... in this world is the spider?" thought he; "it but increases the dust and dirt of the world, making places unsightly ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... like many others who by reason of weariness and despair have attained resignation; but the fictitious piety born of nervous excitement, and the abnormal elevation of feeling induced by continued spiritual exhortation during weeks of unrest and suspense, both gave way when his old mother, unsightly and pitiful as himself, asked leave to bid him good-bye, and came tottering to his side, saying as well as she could for the tears that choked her, "Oh, Tony! mammy ain't gwine back on you! Mammy don't b'lieve you done it, she don't keer who 'kuses you. Good-bye, my baby! good-bye! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Britain, and its main street, spacious, airy, and symmetrical, is hard to match. The architectural taste of the new University Buildings is perfect, and will be more striking still to the casual visitor, when the unsightly buildings all round have been torn down. It would be worth while going to Aberdeen if for nothing but to see the superb stretch of sandy beach between the mouths of the Don and the Dee: one could sit and dream away ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Commune has left undone,)—but it is, above all, because we fear the odium and ridicule that the false politician may throw upon the painter. Yes! whatever may be our horror for the nude women and unsightly productions with which Monsieur Courbet[58] has honoured the exhibitions of paintings, we remember with delight several, admirably true to nature, with sunshine and summer breezes playing among the leaves, and streams murmuring refreshingly over the pebbles, and rocks whereon ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... each of us is like these masqueraders; our whole life is often but an unsightly Carnival! And yet man has need of holidays, to relax his mind, rest his body, and open his heart. Can he not have them, then, with these coarse pleasures? Economists have been long inquiring what is the best disposal ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... them. There were viscid sloughs, from whose black depths bubbles arose wearily, with grey tree-roots like the legs of spiders clutching the slimy mud of their banks. There were oozy bottoms, rankly speared with rush-grass. There were leprous marshes spotted with unsightly niggerheads. Dripping with sweat, we fought our way under the hot sun. Thorny boughs tore at us detainingly. Fallen trees delighted to bar our way. Without let or cease we toiled, yet at the day's end our progress was ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the women in most other parts of Germany, particularly of the Austrian, is very different from this. Notwithstanding the advantages of size and make, their looks and features, though not unsightly, betray a vacancy of that life and spirit, without which beauty is uninteresting, and, like a mere picture, becomes utterly void of that indication of sensibility, which alone can ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... into the other world! Oh, the continual crackling of the terrible flames, darting over the sides of the accursed precipice, and the flashes of linked lightning rending the black, thick smoke, which the unsightly orifice was casting up! My dear companion, having brought me to myself again, gave me some spiritual water to drink; O how excellent it was in its taste and color! After drinking of the heavenly water, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... College who remained at Tanis were more heavily smitten than any others, so that some of them died. When he heard this, Ki laughed and said that he had told them it would be so. Also Pharaoh himself and even her Highness Userti were smitten, the latter upon the cheek, which made her unsightly for a while. Indeed, Bakenkhonsu heard, I know not how, that so great was her rage that she even bethought her of returning to her lord Seti, in whose house she had learned people were safe, and the beauty of her successor, Moon of Israel, remained unscarred and was even greater than before, tidings ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... threw it with blind fury at the ships. It narrowly escaped lighting upon the bark in which Ulysses sat, but with the fall it raised so fierce an ebb as bore back the ship till it almost touched the shore. "Cyclop," said Ulysses, "if any ask thee who imposed on thee that unsightly blemish in thine eye, say it was Ulysses, son of Laertes: the king of Ithaca am I called, the waster of cities." Then they crowded sail, and beat the old sea, and forth they went with a forward gale; sad for fore-past losses, yet glad to have escaped at any rate; till they ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... perceive, through the open door of another room, a goodly collection of well-bound and learned-looking volumes—the vicar's library. At the present moment these tomes of wisdom are inaccessible, as the library door is blocked up with unsightly mounds of earth, sewer-pipes, and certain workmen's implements. The fact is, the vicarage has been greatly disturbed of late, owing to a defect in the drainage—an unsavory circumstance which receives further and regretful explication in ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy
... weeds and foam, And brought my sea-born treasures home But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore, With the sun, and the sand, and ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... obliged to assist our father in another business, which, though simpler, was no less troublesome. The Roman views, which, bound by black rods at the top and bottom, had hung for many years on the walls of the old house, had become very yellow through the light, dust, and smoke, and not a little unsightly through the flies. If such uncleanliness was not to be tolerated in the new house, yet, on the other hand, these pictures had gained in value to my father, in consequence of his longer absence from the places represented. For at ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... nearer to the source of all light. And think again that often the brightest and fairest forms come from the least likely materials. Of the same mould are the black coal, and the glittering diamond. The unsightly slag which is thrown away from the iron furnace forms beautiful crystals, and the very mud under foot can, as men of science tell us, be turned into gleaming metal, and sparkling gem. The fair colours which dye our clothing ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... manorial residence, called Castle Philipse on account of its strength and armament, it not only being loopholed for musketry, as was common in those days, but was also defended by several small cannon. All these evidences of the strenuous days of old have been covered by unsightly clapboards, and the place as it stands now looks as though it might have seen better days, but gives no hint of its former important station. It is related that in 1756 a Virginia colonel named Washington called here to pay his respects to the beautiful Mary Philipse, but ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... star having atmospheric conditions at all approaching those of Barsoom, shows forms of animal life almost identical with you and me; and, further, Earth men, almost without exception, cover their bodies with strange, unsightly pieces of cloth, and their heads with hideous contraptions the purpose of which we have been unable to conceive; while you, when found by the Tharkian warriors, were entirely undisfigured ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... melodious, pure, and cool, And meads, with life and mirth and beauty crown'd? Ah! see, the unsightly slime and sluggish pool, Have all the solitary vale imbrown'd; Fled each fair form, and mute each melting sound, The raven croaks forlorn on naked spray: And, hark! the river, bursting every mound, Down the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... back each shoot to about two or three buds from its base. Small pieces of grass will periodically need mowing, and this ought to be done with a proper mowing-machine, as a pair of shears invariably causes an irregular and jagged after-growth. All unsightly vegetation, such as dead leaves or flowers, dried up stems, &c., must be promptly removed; weeds ought not to be allowed to grow a second pair of leaves—much less to flower—before being exterminated. Trailing and climbing plants, especially roses, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... could all comprehend the wonderful power of love! It is the fire that melts; while fear only smites, the strokes hardening, or breaking its unsightly fragments. John Thomas has many good qualities, that ought to be made as active as possible. These, like goodly flowers growing in a carefully tilled garden, will absorb the latent vitality in his mind, and thus leave nothing from ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... fighting-man has verily been got up, and can fight. While so much has not yet got into being; while so much has gone gradually out of it, and become an empty Semblance or Clothes-suit; and highest king's-cloaks, mere chimeras parading under them so long, are getting unsightly to the earnest eye, unsightly, almost offensive, like a costlier kind of ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... us that the Marechal Luxembourg (who had precisely Pope's figure) was not only somewhat too amatory for a great man, but fortunate in his attachments. La Valiere, the passion of Louis XIV. had an unsightly defect. The Princess of Eboli, the mistress of Philip the Second of Spain, and Maugiron, the minion of Henry the Third of France, had each of them lost an eye; and the famous Latin epigram was written upon them, which has, I believe, been either ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... fifty-four hours, so utterly devoid of movement that the ash-dust and galley refuse hove overboard by the cook during that time collected into an unsightly patch alongside, just abaft the larboard fore-rigging, in the exact spot where they had been thrown. The weather was now excessively hot, and those of us who could swim took advantage of so favourable an opportunity ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... natural boughs, gives a sense of their reality, which no unnatural situation can give. Even to look up at them perched on bough and stem, as one rides by; and to guess what exquisite and fantastic form may issue, in a few months or weeks, out of those fleshy, often unsightly, leaves, is a strange pleasure; a spur to the fancy which is surely wholesome, if we will but believe that all these things were invented by A Fancy, which desires to call out in us, by contemplating them, such small fancy as we possess; and to make us poets, each according to his power, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... money in use among the Romans was nothing more than unsightly lumps of brass, which were valued according to their weight. Servius Tullius stamped these, and reduced them to a fixed standard. After his reign, the Romans improved the old, and added some new coins. Those in most frequent use, were the As, ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... out young Rob, and there has not been so much as a Border raid these four years and more. There are the nuns at Gateshead, as hard as nails, will not hear of a maid without a dower, and yonder mansworn fellow Copeland casts her off like an old glove! Let us look at you, wench! Ha! Face is unsightly enough, but thou wilt not be a badly-made woman. Take heart, what's thy name—Grisell? May be there's luck for thee still, though it be hard of coming to Whitburn," he added, turning to Warwick. "There's this wench scorched to a cinder, enough ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of refuse; a little circular four-foot tower of pierced brick over an iron grating. Miss Fowler had noticed the design in a gardening journal years ago, and had had it built at the bottom of the garden. It suited her tidy soul, for it saved unsightly rubbish-heaps, and the ashes lightened the ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... of the field. We must take our Lord's words exactly. He is speaking of the lilies, the bulbous plants which spring into flower in countless thousands every spring over the downs of Eastern lands. All the winter they are dead, unsightly roots, hidden in the earth. But no sooner does the sun of spring shine upon their graves, than they rise into sudden life and beauty, as it pleases God, and every seed takes its own peculiar body. Sown ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... is perhaps most remarkable of all about an orchid is that this marvel of colour and form and of texture of fabric unfolds itself from within a most ungainly, unsightly, unlikely-looking tuber. From shapeless, colourless tubers, which attach themselves to trunks and branches of trees and cling on to rocks, there emerge these peerless aristocrats of the flower-world, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... down in some unsightly neighbourhood, and especially if we have come to be more or less dependent on what we see, we must set ourselves to hunt out beautiful things with all the ardour and patience of a botanist after a rare plant. Day by day we perfect ourselves in the art of seeing nature more favourably. We learn ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... convulsion, strode sharply forward one step, stopped short, had another convulsion, and walked rapidly away. Approaching the spot I found a small iron grating in the sidewalk, and between the bars two little boot heels, riven from their kindred soles, and unsightly with snaggy nails. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... master, Titian. Tintoretto was about twenty-eight years old before he got any very big commission, but at that age a chance came to him. In the church of Santa Maria del Orto were two great bare spaces, unsightly and vast, about fifty feet high and twenty broad. In that day anything and everything was decorated with masterpieces, and it was almost disgraceful for a church to let such a space as that go unfrescoed. Tintoretto saw an opportunity, and finally offered ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... course; but that is the very point. The fight is never among the sheep, but only among the shepherds. Look at our splendid system, beginning with Tom, Jim, and Ned, and culminating in the President—the roots rather red and unsightly, but oh! such a pretty flower, all broadcloth, kid gloves, and affability—contemplate the superb machinery," continued the General, warming, "the primaries, the ward committees, the—in fact, all the rest of it—see how gloriously it works—the ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... and formed by itself a vast niche, or bracketed shelf, in the hollow flank of the mountain that, to Hale's first glance, bore a rude resemblance to Eagle's Court. But there was neither meadow nor open field; the few acres of ground had been wrested from the forest by axe and fire, and unsightly stumps everywhere marked the rude and difficult attempts at cultivation. Two or three rough buildings of unplaned and unpainted boards, connected by rambling sheds, stood in the centre of the amphitheatre. Far from ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... immense volume of water which makes them so impressive. Every year Trolhattan grows more and more disfigured by saw-mills, carbide of calcium works, and other industrial buildings sprouting up like unsightly mushrooms along the river-banks. The last time that I was there it was almost impossible to see the falls in their entirety from any point, owing to ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... bridge or semicircle of rock, about two feet in diameter and about twenty feet high, which rises some little way below it, and under which the water, after reaching the bottom, passes, which intercepts the sight, and prevents it from taking in the whole fall at once. This unsightly object has stood where it now stands since the day of creation, and will probably remain there to the day of judgment. It would be a desecration of nature to remove it by art, but no one could regret if nature in one of her floods were to ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... down on a comfortable bench. The only other occupant was a female in black. As I take no interest in females in black, I disregarded her presence, and gave myself up to the contemplation, of the trim lawns and flower-beds, the green trees masking the unsightly Surrey side of the river, and the back of the statue of Sir Bartle Frere. A continued survey of the last not making for edification (a statue that turns its back on you being one of the dullest objects made by man), I took from my pocket a brown ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... years slip away, Colvin; and we walk little cycles, and turn in little abortive spirals, and come out again, hot and weary, to find the same view before us, the same hill barring the road. Only, bless God for it, we have still the same eye to see with, and if the scene be not altogether unsightly, we can enjoy it whether or no. I feel quite happy, but curiously inert and passive, something for the winds to blow over, and the sun to glimpse on and go off again, as it might be a tree or a gravestone. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 1856 the colouring matters derived from coal-tar were practically unknown. Until then, that black evil-smelling substance was looked upon as almost worthless; but gradually the unsightly grub emerged into a beautiful butterfly, clothed first in mauve and next in magenta. After its long winter of neglect, there sprung from coal-tar the most vivid and varied hues, like flowers from the earth at spring. At a touch of the fairy wand ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... came to market on their own legs, and very long, feeble legs they were, for a more unsightly beast than a Breton pig was never seen out of a toy Noah's ark. Tall, thin, high-backed, and sharp-nosed, these porcine victims tottered to their doom, with dismal wailings, and not a vestige of spirit till the trials and excitement of the day goaded them to rebellion, when their antics furnished ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... its best to justify the name. Here and there, in the tiny patches of front garden, a tenant tried to help mid-June by cultivating wall-flowers and geraniums and snapdragon and a rose or two; but the majority cared as much for the beauty of mid-June as for the cleanliness of their children,—an unsightly brood, with any slovenly rags about their bodies, and the circular crust of last week's treacle on their cheeks. In his abominable speeches before the war Gedge used to point out these children to unsympathetic Wellingsfordians ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... the interests of my own self- respect. Presently we came up with the leper promontory: lowland, quite bare and bleak and harsh, a little town of wooden houses, two churches, a landing-stair, all unsightly, sour, northerly, lying athwart the sunrise, with the great wall of the pali cutting the world out on the south. Our lepers were sent on the first boat, about a dozen, one poor child very horrid, one white man, leaving a large grown family behind him in ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the body, an effect that is comic. If, then, at this point we wished to define the comic by comparing it with its contrary, we should have to contrast it with gracefulness even more than with beauty. It partakes rather of the unsprightly than of the unsightly, of RIGIDNESS ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... and direct the young discoverer. He sees the apple tree let fall its blossoms, and, lo! the fruit grows day by day to a mellow and enticing ripeness under his eyes. Suddenly he detects a hidden sequence between flower and fruit! The rose bush is covered with buds, small, green, unsightly; a night passes, and, behold! great clusters of blossoming flowers that call him by their fragrance, and when he has come reward him with a miracle of colour. Here is another mystery; and day by day they multiply and grow yet more wonderful. These varied ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... indeed, the contrary must be the case, and, if it were in no manner actually harmful, our sense of the aesthetic and of what is proper to eat, should make us reject in this case, as with other foods, that which is unsightly to the eye and unpleasant to the taste. We should no more eat bad grain than a rotten apple, or putrefying meat. The increased prevalence of pellagra is exciting attention all over the United States, ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... her as she wrote these words: "I have made a great mess of it." To make a mess of one's life—one mistake after another, till what might have been at least honest, pure, and of good report, becomes a stained, limp, unsightly thing, at which men feel that they may gaze openly, and from which women turn away in scorn unutterable; and that Adelaide, my proudest of proud sisters, had come ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... tones. "Wast thou so vexed that thou wouldst strip thyself of the pleasant shape which heaven has given thee? Surely this is madness, Atene, for how knowest thou in what likeness thou mightest be sent to tread the earth again? As no queen perhaps, but as a peasant's child, deformed, unsightly; for such reward, it is said, is given to those that achieve self-murder. Or even, as many think, shaped like a beast—a snake, a cat, a tigress! Why, see," and she picked the dagger from the ground and cast it into ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... determination not to let a Spencer get ahead of them, others goaded into action by Improvers in their own households, had followed his example. The result was that there were long strips of smooth velvet turf where once had been unsightly undergrowth or brush. The farm fronts that had not been done looked so badly by contrast that their owners were secretly shamed into resolving to see what they could do another spring. The triangle of ground at the cross roads had also been cleared and seeded down, and ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... likely to strike camp sooner than was intended. And the stricken camp is a melancholy sight. The woods have been despoiled; the stumps are ugly; the bushes are scorched; the pine-leaf-strewn earth is trodden into mire; the landing looks like a cattle-ford; the ground is littered with all the unsightly dibris of a hand-to-hand life; the dismantled shanty is a shabby object; the charred and blackened logs, where the fire blazed, suggest the extinction of family life. Man has wrought his usual wrong upon Nature, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the governor and the board of public works of this District the city of Washington is rapidly assuming the appearance of a capital of which the nation may well be proud. From being a most unsightly place three years ago, disagreeable to pass through in summer in consequence of the dust arising from unpaved streets, and almost impassable in the winter from the mud, it is now one of the most sightly cities in the country, and can boast ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... medium of thought and passion that they 'unmould their essence'; and all that remains of our original impressions is what we would wish them to have been. Not only the untried steep ascent before us, but the rude, unsightly masses of our past experience presently resume their power of deception over the eye: the golden cloud soon rests upon their heads, and the purple light of fancy clothes their barren sides! Thus we pass on, while both ends of our existence touch upon Heaven! ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... hill-tops seemed to have been swept clear of ice and snow. They were shorn of their winter shroud. They stood up like black, unsightly, broken teeth, against a cavernous background of fire burning in the maw of some Moloch colossus. They stood out bared to the bone of the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... a valuable team which he hired out to his neighbors when he left the place, a few implements and a little rude furniture. The sale was held outside, and when George arrived upon the scene during the afternoon a row of light wagons and buggies stood behind the rickety shack, near which was an unsightly pile of broken crockery, discarded clothes and rusty provision cans. It was characteristic of Langside that he had not taken the trouble to carry them as far as the neighboring bluff. In front of the bluff, horses were picketed; along ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... nothing but general impressions of what I had almost called the most important moment of my life. Only one occurrence at dinner stands out in my memory—namely, in the ardor of the conversation I yielded to an old habit of breaking up the piece of bread beside me into unsightly crumbs. Goethe lightly touched each individual crumb with his finger and arranged them in a little symmetrical heap. Only after the lapse of some time did I notice this, and then I discontinued ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... but the fun of the thing—I'll take my chances with him! He'll learn that a mysterious silence can demoralize the enemy quite as effectively as murderous cries. The low garden wall seems to me a convenient place. Let him try his hoarse miauling in all possible keys! May his unsightly face, and more hideous body dislocate itself in a deceitful ataxia (for they're still at these old tricks)! I'll be proof against it all, and merely flash the green magnetism of my magnificent eyes upon him. ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... tide is out, the rocks along the shore, covered with seaweed and moss, present an unsightly appearance; but when the tide comes in, these unsightly things are all covered with water, which present the appearance of a sea of glass. When the grace of God is low in our soul, the unseemly parts of human nature are on exhibition; but when the grace ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... as repulsive as the upper part was attractive. The mouth was the mouth of a wild beast, and the lips and cheeks and chin were seared and seamed as though with fire, and what looked like the remains of a moustache and beard stood in black ragged patches about the heavy unsightly jaws. ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... Where, in the dull eyes of doating men, are the laughing light and life of childhood, the gaiety that has known no check, the frankness that has felt no chill, the hope that has never withered, the joys that fade in blossoming? Where, in the sharp lineaments of rigid and unsightly death, is the calm beauty of slumber, telling of rest for the waking hours that are past, and gentle hopes and loves for those which are to come? Lay death and sleep down, side by side, and say who shall find the two akin. Send ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... it ever necessary to excise the tumour from the outside of the eyelid; when this has been done in error there frequently remains an awkward and unsightly scar. ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... picturesque turn of the head—a sense, as it were, of the outwardly pictorial side of existence. He moved his chair, in order to turn his back on a Russian officer who was seated near, and did it absently, as if mechanically closing his eye to something unsightly and conducive to discomfort. Then he turned to his coffee with a youthful spirit ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... slopes where the rain washes the earth away; and they affect slopes, probably to avoid being flooded. Gardeners and farmers express their detestation of worms; the former because they render their walks unsightly, and make them much work; and the latter because, as they think, worms eat their green corn. But these men would find that the earth without worms would soon become cold, hard-bound, and void of fermentation, and consequently sterile; ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... and to the custom in the poultry books of classifying the Asiatics as meat breeds, the Brahmas and Cochins are among the very poorest fowls that can be used for farm production of poultry meat. At the age spoken of these breeds are lanky and unsightly and not wanted ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... let him give up the use of tobacco entirely. Many times over, when limbs have been condemned by the medical men, we have seen them saved in this way. We have seen the same treatment save arms and fingers, reducing them from swollen and unsightly sores to perfect shape ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... very tedious. An untrue stitch spoiled the smooth continuance of the embroidery that was to represent tied ribbon bows. An untrue stitch—and she made several—had to be picked out and done over, and this often meant frayed silk, or an unsightly ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... kind. Such a course was believed, by the fond parents and others, as likely to be productive of the most healthful and happy consequences. The result was an accumulation of adipose substance, that rendered me one of the most unsightly, not to say monstrous productions of nature. I ought not to say nature, perhaps; for, if not perverted, she produces no such monsters. At the age of six months, my weight was twenty-five pounds; and it rose soon after to ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... of Schiller's first acquaintance—arrived there July 21, 1787—consisted of a petty provincial court plus an unsightly village. The inhabitants numbered about six thousand. Of the space built over about one-third was occupied by the buildings of the court, much of the outlying modern Weimar being then under water. The streets were narrow, muddy ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... heinousness of mistake. Look at that popular work Goldsmith's Animated Nature. In the abridged London edition of , there are plates of an alleged whale and a narwhale. I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow; and, as for the narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon any intelligent public of schoolboys. Then, again, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... deg. F. For this reason, the mushrooms in these caves spread out more, and the edges do not turn up so soon. Since the cap is so thick and firm at the center, it continues to grow and expand for some little time after having opened, without turning up on the edges, and without becoming black and unsightly underneath. These large and firm mushrooms are not only desirable for their shipping qualities, but also, if they are not too large, they are prized because they are of such a nice ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... pain to the animal, by means of sharp scissors or a knife; but never allow any one to bite the tail off, as is often done by some dirty and unfeeling stable-men. Although a long tail is inconvenient, a too short one is more unsightly; care should therefore be taken not to remove too much. The quantity should be regulated by the size of the breed: for a medium breed, an inch is sufficient to be cut off at this age. Some sportsmen in England, Mr. Blain also informs us, draw out the lower tendons of the tail, which ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... prefer the sporadic tent, if it were not for the hard work involved. But if camping out is to be a real success, such understandings and arrangements must be made. Where this is not done the result is a failure, obvious to the passer-by. Separate and unsightly fires for cooking, and untidiness, because there are no "hours" for performing the light but necessary domestic work, are common objects of individualism on the camping ground. Yachts, which are self-maintaining, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... bull appeared, a feeble, unsightly, ugly, dirty animal, and said to the boy: "Who gave you leave to come here with your Tellerchen to drink my water and spoil the grass in ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... from the room above greeted my ear, while the printing-room was bedecked with a most unsightly litter of tattered garments of nondescript shape and purpose laid out to dry. I was not surprised at this, however, as I had long grown used to unannounced invasions. Unexpected persons would arrive at the office, of whom nobody perhaps knew anything; they would stroll in, seat themselves ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... there, on either side this narrow street, ugly gaps showed where houses had once stood, comfortable homes, now only unsightly heaps of rubbish, a confusion of broken beams and rafters, amid which divers familiar objects obtruded themselves, broken chairs and tables, a grandfather clock, and a shattered piano whose melody ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... thronged, that some unusual spectacle was approaching. And peering forward through the folds of the curtains, she beheld, amidst a slowly-advancing crowd, a meanly clad, simple looking country youth wearing a ragged broad-brim, and mounted on an unsightly, donkey-like beast, whose long tail and mane were stuck full of briers, and whose hair, lying in every direction, seemed besmeared with mange and dirt; all combining to give both horse and rider a most ungainly and poverty-struck appearance. ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... wrought a wonderful change. Its population was now something over fifteen thousand, the streets were well paved and brilliantly lighted, and long blocks of tall, substantial buildings had superseded the unsightly shacks of the days of the Civil War. But on this occasion I found no vestige of our "Soldiers' Home," nor was any person of whom inquiry was made able to give me the slightest information as to ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... disfigure, defigure^; distort &c 23; blemish &c (injure) 659; soil &c (render unclean) 653. Adj. ugly, ugly as sin, ugly as a toad, ugly as a scarecrow, ugly as a dead monkey; plain, bald (unadorned) 849; homely; ordinary, unornamental^, inartistic; unsightly, unseemly, uncomely, unlovely; unshapely; sightless, seemless^; not fit to be seen; unbeauteous^, unbeautiful; beautiless^, semibeautiful; shapeless &c (amorphous) 241. misshapen, misproportioned^; monstrous; gaunt &c (thin) 203; dumpy &c (short) 201; curtailed of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... stumps, at an expense of about $10 per acre. Thus treated, good pasturage can be secured cheaply. In time some of the stumps will rot out and be easily removed. When the stumps are not too thick, the lands can be successfully prepared and planted to orchards without removing the stumps, and their unsightly appearance can be turned into a thing of beauty and great profit by planting evergreen blackberries and loganberries about them, using the stumps for trellises. These berries in the climate of western Washington are wonderfully prolific and find a ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... came, it was to shine upon the same broken and unsightly quarter of the world. Mile upon mile, and not a tree, a bird, or a river. Only down the long, sterile canyons, the train shot hooting, and awoke the resting echo. That train was the one piece of life in all the deadly land; it was the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... followed the upper waters of the stream (the Ohio) along which Celoron, of whom I shall speak later, planted his emblems of French possession. He would doubtless care to claim that valley even to-day, though unsightly houses and sheds line it, and pipes and shafts of iron, hastily rigged up and left to rust when done with, run everywhere, and the scum of oil is on the water. The profit of the hour was all that was visible of motive ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... even had he closed his eyes to it with elaborate tightness. The only neglect must have been on his own side, where indeed it did take form in that of as signal an opportunity to become "spoiled," probably, as ever fell in a brilliant young man's way: so that to help out my comprehension of the unsightly and unsavoury, sufficiently wondered at, with which his muse repeatedly embraced the occasion to associate herself, I take the thing for a declaration of the idea that he might himself prevent the spoiling ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... descended the stairs, as I have said, from what I now know to have been her own room. Her dress was, in all respects, the same as before, with one exception—her white slippers had been exchanged for blue ones. This seemed to show that they had been rendered unserviceable, or at least unsightly, by the walk she had taken. This in itself was not remarkable nor would her peculiar escapade have made more than a temporary impression upon my curiosity if she had not afterward shown in my presence such an unaccountable and extraordinary interest in the murder which had taken place in the town ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... life; the tenacity with which, in sorrow and suffering, we cling to it; our attachment to our home, to the spot that gave us birth, to any place, however rude, unsightly, or barren, on which the history of our years has been written, all show how dear are the ties of kindred and society. Misery makes a greater impression upon us than happiness; because the former is not the habit of our minds. It is a strange, unusual guest, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... predisposition to water in the head, it is dangerous to interfere with them at all, except they run to such an extent as to become very troublesome. The sudden healing of these cutaneous affections has again and again been followed by head-disease. They are unsightly in the eyes of a parent, but it must be recollected that they render the situation of such children much more safe; and when teething is completed they will generally disappear spontaneously; or, if they should not, they will readily do so by proper medical treatment. I have no doubt ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... put to his speed he plunges through the deep snow very expeditiously; the hair is dark brown, very shaggy, curling about the head, neck, and hump, and almost covering the eye, particularly in the bull which is larger and more unsightly than the cow. The most esteemed part of the animal is the hump, called by the Canadians bos, by the Hudson's Bay people the wig; it is merely a strong muscle on which nature at certain seasons forms a considerable quantity ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... time for things unsightly, Life's the day and life goes lightly; Science lays aside her sway— Love rules ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... worth while to accomplish puff paste, for so many dainty trifles may be made with it, which, attempted with the ordinary short paste, would be unsightly. Some of these that seem to ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... yesterday, when he attempted to sketch Constantinople from Tophana. A superior officer, however, soon ordered him to be released, and gave him two soldiers as a protection whilst he finished his drawing. [Sidenote: ST. SOPHIA.] Thence our course lay to St. Sophia, which is a confused heap of unsightly buildings; the centre having enormous buttresses built against it, and the dome is much too low in proportion to the great size of this edifice. The principal entrance to the seraglio is also situated in the square, of ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... the nails properly trimmed. They should not be too long nor too short. If long they are liable to break and if short to be sensitive. Biting the nails is a filthy practice and mutilates the fingers dreadfully and makes them unsightly. It is a very hard habit to overcome ofttimes and will require persistent effort in order to succeed. By keeping the nails smooth the tendency to bite them will to some extent be overcome. A bitter application to the nails will often remind one of the habit, as often ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... walls were brightly whitewashed, and adorned with portraits of Keats and Shelley; on brackets in two opposite corners Homer and Shakespeare gazed at each other with mutual approval. The stove was black and glossy as an Ashantee chief, and the clock, once an unsightly mass of fly-specks and cobwebs, now showed a white front as immaculate as Mr. Homer's own. Opposite the clock hung a large photograph, in a handsome gilt frame, of a mountain peak towering ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... sudden rushes were rather against the general finish of the pictures, causing in some places an unsightly smudge or a blotchy appearance. In one page the Tower of Babel was disfigured by this very injudicious haste, and the bricks and the builders were wholly indistinguishable for a sad blotch of ochre; ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... courts Love laughed at Death, because he was unsightly, and because She couldn't help it, and because he never did anything worth doing, and ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... in not very picturesque confusion. In a corner of this engaging boudoir, sitting in an armchair with a glass of liquor beside him and smoking a strong cigar, was the most extraordinary and repulsive object he had ever clapped his eyes on. The face, daubed and glistening with an unsightly coating of red, white, and yellow-ochre paint, and adorned with protuberant bristles by way of eyebrows, appeared twice its natural dimensions. The throat was bare to the collar-bones. A huge wig covered ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... quantity of grog, and complains of dyspepsia; the old fat major of marines, with a brown wig not pretending to imitate natural hair, but only to cover his baldness and grayness with something that he imagines will be less unsightly: he has a potent odor of snuff, but has left off wine and strong drink for the last twenty-seven years. A Southerner, all astray among our New England manners, but reconciling himself to them, like a long practised man of the world, only somewhat tremulous at the idea ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... the train was now crawling through. The odors that greeted her nostrils were the reverse of pleasant, and glancing down with the faintest shiver of disgust, her eyes rested on the litter of empty cans, discarded garments, and other even more unsightly things which are usually dumped in the handiest bluff by the citizens of a springing Western town. They have, for the most part, but little appreciation of the picturesque, and it would take a good ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... that suggested itself about our new dwelling, was the removal of some very unsightly pickets surrounding two or three Indian graves, on the esplanade in front of the house. Such, however, is the reverence in which these burial-places are held, that we felt we must approach the subject with ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... on the sofa, and saw how the flame shot up from beneath, through the mass of coal that had been piled above. It shot up in wild beautiful jets, and then unexpectedly sank again, and all was black, unsightly and forlorn. And thus, I thought, is it with my life at present. Yet if the fire beneath persists and conquers, that black dead mass will become all radiant, life-giving, fit for the altar or the domestic hearth. Yes, and it ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... worse than hopeless; even bodily force would not avail. She cast one lurid glance at the supine figure, and gave up the quest in that direction as sheer waste of time. With new determination, she again essayed the closet, tossing shoes and rubbers behind her in an unsightly heap, quite heedless of the confusion of rights and lefts. At last, in a dark corner, behind a blue chest, she came upon her treasure. Too hurried now for reproaches, she drew it forth, and with trembling fingers untied the strings. ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... deeper glitter of paint and colored glass, and the thin veneering which barbarism takes upon itself in such localities, what infinite relief was theirs! The last heap of ragged rock and clay passed, the last unsightly chasm crossed,—how the waiting woods opened their long files to receive them! How the children—perhaps because they had not yet grown quite away from the breast of the bounteous Mother—threw themselves face downward on her brown bosom ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... mother during the whole period of pregnancy, the ultimate constitution of the offspring greatly depends. All the surroundings and employments of the pregnant woman should be such as conduce to cheerfulness and equanimity. Above all, she should avoid the presence of disagreeable and unsightly objects. Vivid and unpleasant impressions should be removed as soon as possible by quiet diversion of the mind. All causes of excitement ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... their hips stood out bony and unsightly above their swollen stomachs as they racked across the benches, and their eyes were wild and haggard. But to the eye of Creede, educated by long experience, they were still strong and whole. The weaklings were those that hung about the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... the richest. It is surmounted by two lofty towers, and the interior is a perfect blaze of gilding. The monastery attached to it is one of the largest in the world, but the greater part of it is in ruins, and one of the wings is used as a barrack. Those unsightly, unadorned convents, which cling to every church save the cathedral, have neutralized nearly all ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... in proper condition, else they are not only unsightly, but may serve as carriers of germs of disease. The nails are often injured by too much interference, and should never be trimmed to the quick. The upper surfaces should on no account be scraped. The nail-brush is sufficient to cleanse ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... other performing all services in the body of the Church. In 1559 the rubric before the Order for Morning Prayer was brought into its present shape, and the "accustomed Place" would undoubtedly be the Chancel, but still the discretion left with the "Ordinary" sanctioned the use of the unsightly "reading-pew" or desk, which is occasionally found outside the Chancel and in ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... silver cord in twain) when youth should have fled, and have carried forever with it her numberless graces, and left in its stead that ribaldry-stained, drink-defiled, hardened, battered, joyless, cruel, terrible thing which is unsightly and repugnant to even the lowest among men; which is as the lees of the drunk wine, as the ashes of the burned-out fires, as the discord of the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... stony ridges. One day their timbers were raw and clean, the next day they were black and greasy, advertising the fact that once again the heavy rock pressure far below had sent another fountain of fortune spraying over the top. Then pipe lines were laid and unsightly ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... which occurred was that which passed under the tank, the entire remaining portion being absolutely tight. The amount of leakage, while insignificant, was, until remedied, sufficient to spot the outside of the tower, making it unsightly; and this, in the writer's opinion, is just what would have happened had the tank been constructed in the ordinary manner, with deformed bars, except that it would have extended over more or less ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 - A Concrete Water Tower, Paper No. 1173 • A. Kempkey
... buried in the same place. Well had it been, if he had been allowed to rest undisturbed in this grave where his family had laid him. But well-meaning, though ignorant, officiousness would not suffer it to be so. Nearly twenty years after the poet's death, a huge, cumbrous, unsightly mausoleum was, by public subscription, erected at a little distance from his original resting-place. This structure was adorned with an ungraceful figure in marble, representing, "The muse of Coila finding the poet ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... reptile strikes a person unless it be attacked, or trodden upon. The people say they feed on trāb, "dust" or "dirt." Yesterday the chameleon was seen in the gardens: there is a few in Ghadames, and in most parts of North Africa. The one I saw was a most unsightly creature. The construction of the eyes is remarkable; they turn on a swivel, or seem to do so, and are directed every way in a moment of time. It is a trite observation, that the lower brute animal has many advantages over the more perfect and rational animal. I often, en ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... answered. "Up to a certain point he did well. He was always a man of iron nerve, and the story is still told in India how he crawled down a drain after a wounded man-eating tiger. There are some trees, Watson, which grow to a certain height and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity. You will see it often in humans. I have a theory that the individual represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that such a sudden turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for the tattered volume gave her the word she wanted, and soon the misspelled one was scratched out and rewritten. There were now three unsightly blots on the letter and she hovered over them a moment, her pride demanding that she should make a clean, fair copy. But it seemed such an endless task to rewrite it from beginning to end, that she finally decided to ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... purify The heavy atmosphere, and banish thence All lingering traces of the feast. Ye sick And poor, whom misery or whom hope, perchance! Has guided in the noonday to these doors. Tumultuous, naked, and unsightly throng, With mutilated limbs and squalid faces, In litters and on crutches from afar Comfort yourselves, and with expanded nostrils Drink in the nectar of the feast divine That favourable zephyrs waft to you; But do not dare ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... feeling, are often obstinate and wilful, will not be remodelled, and hard, in their self-sufficiency, refuse to bear any stamp save that of their known and fixed value. Like irregular beads of uncut coral, they protrude their individualities in jagged spikes and unsightly thorns, breaking often the unity of the whole, and painfully wounding the sense ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... lingered and talked about many a thing besides the unsightly old meeting-house—things that had happened in the old time, when the bairns were young, and the world was to them a world in which each had a kingdom to conquer, a crown to win. Those happy, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... Pan would not have minded owning him. The others were not bad looking, of fair size, weighing around a thousand pounds, but they showed inbreeding. After they had drunk their fill they pawed the mud and rolled in the water, to come up most unsightly beasts. Pan let out a loud yell. Swift as antelopes ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey |
