"Inopportune" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enlightenment, was demanded no more. She asked herself whether the present moment, now that she was a free woman again, were not as opportune a one as she would find in a world where everything had been so inopportune, for making a desperate effort to advance Elizabeth. To pocket her pride and search for the first husband seemed, wisely or not, the best initiatory step. He had possibly drunk himself into his tomb. But he might, on the other hand, have had ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... of the Revolutionary struggle was a most inopportune time for Timothy Edwards; but for that he would have become one of the wealthiest men of his day. All business was suspended and he gave himself to his country's cause with intense devotion. He was at once appointed on a commission with General Schuyler to treat with the Indians; ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... health of mind was concerned, itself grievously inopportune, the catastrophe could not have happened at a more opportune moment. Trading upon the heels of his encounter with Valerie, it made a terrific counter-irritant to the violent inflammation which that meeting had set up. Yet if the back of the sickness ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... well-nigh panic activity. One divined a scurrying as of rats about to desert a sinking ship. Untoward events had thrown this establishment into a state of excited confusion: their nature Lanyard could not surmise, but their conjunction with his designs was exasperatingly inopportune. To search this place and find his man—if he were there at all—without being discovered, while its inmates buzzed about like so many startled hornets, was a fair impossibility; to attempt it was ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... is surly, from getting up early (And tempers are short in the morning), An inopportune joke is enough to provoke Him to give you, at once, a month's warning Then if you refrain, he is at you again, For he likes to get value for money. He'll ask then and there, with an insolent stare, If you know that you're paid to be funny?" It adds to the task Of a merryman's place, ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... another shock to Miss West, another tumultuous, inopportune return to the experience of half a score years back, to find that she could no more dictate to Bill Nairne on this small matter than she could have done it as Mad ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... leader at the end of the eleventh. It was the misdemeanor of St. Louis, and a great error in his judgment, that he prolonged, by his blindly prejudiced obstinacy, a movement which was more and more inopportune and illegitimate, for it was becoming day by day more ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... impatience waved him aside. There were other silk hats and coats, and a woman's fringed wrap, on the stand where he left his stick and outer garments; and from above came a peal of mingled laughter. The presence of others, now, was singularly inopportune; it would be no good waiting for their departure—here such gatherings almost invariably drew out until dawn; and he abruptly decided that, after a short interval, he would give Essie to understand that he wished ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... great anxiety, since the little New Zealander appeared as capable of taking care of himself as any gentleman in Her Majesty's dominions; and a note had already been sent to his aunt informing her of his arrival. Still, a summons to the Doctor in an opposite direction was inopportune, the more so as the guest was to remain at Stoneborough only this one day, and had letters and messages for Mr. and Mrs. Rivers, while it was also desirable to see whether the boy ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... MINISTER managed to get the House out of its hostile mood and to satisfy the majority, at any rate, that the measure was neither provocative nor inopportune, but a necessary precaution against the possibility that "direct action" on the part of extra-Parliamentary bodies might confront the country with the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... as far as the library door on his way to the station, when he suddenly remembered the news with which he was fraught when he entered the poor bishop's bedroom. He had found the moment so inopportune for any mundane tidings, that he had repressed the words which were on his tongue, and immediately afterwards all recollection of the circumstance was for the time banished by the scene which ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... strength combined was not sufficient for the work we had to do, and now the loss of one man—the best of my followers—was an extra trial at the most inopportune moment. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... his seat. He was much agitated too, though doing all that was possible to conceal it. My inopportune arrival was evidently a great and unlooked-for vexation to him. He gave me the only look of passionate displeasure I have ever had from him, as he sat down again; but he ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... kegs while Nolan kept watch for inopportune visitors. It was thought inadvisable to unload the camp outfit from the car until the whisky was all removed. The outfit effectually hid what was below—and they were taking no chances. They both breathed freer when the two kegs ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... Patty seized this inopportune moment to forget her father's presence, and the tragic nature of the occasion, and, in her usual impetuous fashion, flung her arms around Waitstill's neck and gave her the ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... man-servant, approached Mrs. Barton with a gravy-tureen, and also with a slight odour of the stable, which usually adhered to him through his in-door functions. John was rather nervous; and the Countess happening to speak to him at this inopportune moment, the tureen slipped and emptied itself on ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... in utter weariness, were asleep. It was like a picture of 1870 by Detaille or De Neuville. Apparently, at last I had reached the headquarters of the mysterious general. I had arrived at what, for a suspected spy, was an inopportune moment. The Germans themselves had been surprised, or somewhere south of us had met with a reverse, and the air was vibrating with excitement and something very like panic. Outside, at great speed and with sirens shrieking, automobiles were arriving, and I could hear ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... Bay later in the afternoon, poorer by many dollars paid for rotten salmon. He wasn't in a particularly genial mood. The Sam Kaye affair had come at an inopportune moment. He didn't care to stand out as a bruiser. Still, he asked himself irritably, why should he care because Nelly Abbott and Betty Gower had seen him using his fists? He was perfectly justified. Indeed, he knew very well he could have done nothing else. The trailers had chortled over ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... went, making the best of their way up the rivers. There were several other craft lying off the town, into which the inhabitants were crowding, with all their effects of any value, no doubt intending to go a little way up into the country also, to avoid the inconvenience of inopportune calls. The signal was made for our little squadron to get out their boats, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... for the rest of the day! Then with easier pace I went in search of some wild and desert spot in the forest, where there was nothing to show the hand of man, or to speak of servitude and domination; some refuge where I could fancy myself its discoverer, and where no inopportune third person came to interfere between nature and me. She seemed to spread out before my eyes a magnificence that was always new. The gold of the broom and the purple of the heather struck my eyes with a glorious splendour that went to my very heart; the majesty of the trees that covered ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... an age whose only resource was tranquillity, she grew more restless. Her present vague agitation belonged ridiculously to youth. The philosophy of the evident that had supported her so firmly was breaking at the most inopportune time. And it was, she told herself, too late for anything new; the years for that had been spent insensibly with Arnaud. Linda was very angry with herself, for, in all her shifting state of mind, she preserved an inner necessity for the quality of exactness expressed in her clothes. There ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... enumerate the series of innovations that have been written socially and politically, until the promulgation of the new constitution, in which culminated the national pride of the people. The matter to be noted here is that the European civilization encountered but a few obstacles, notwithstanding its inopportune introduction, and was soon adopted with determined zeal. The like progressive phenomenon on a smaller scale is also recurring in Korea, but ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... could not have selected a more inopportune moment for his visit, and already began to fear that he would have no success to-day. But it began to look as though it were a question of now or never; Brodie would return despite the shotgun, and Brodie might now be looked to for rough-shod methods. So, in face of the bristling ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... a political election, or to tough fibre, as in a tropical climate. Of course a form of being that circumstances make impossible or hopelessly laborious had better dive under and cease for the moment to be; but the circumstances that render it inopportune do not render it essentially inferior. Circumstances have no power of that kind; and perhaps the worst incident in the popular acceptance of evolution has been a certain brutality thereby introduced into ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Balkan Wars.—Never in history had a more inopportune moment been chosen for such crying illegalities. For close upon the heels of the demonstrations and unrest which they evoked, came the dramatic events of the Balkan War, the crushing victories of the allies, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... were turning the House upside down; and in this her Care, she so well succeeded, that, to her Dismay, he bade her take Pen and Ink, and commenced dictating to her as composedly as if they were in Bunhill Fields. This was somewhat inopportune, for every Thing was to seek and to set in Order; and, indeed, Mother soon came in, all of a Heat, and sayd, "I wonder, my Dear, you can keep Nan here, at such idling, when she has her Bed to make, and her Box to unpack." Father let ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... were interrupted by a knock at the Master's door. It was most inopportune, for he was on the point of the great disclosure, but common politeness compelled him to answer it, and as the step which we had heard was that of one of the softer-footed sex, he chose to rise from his chair and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... so inopportune a moment was little calculated to smooth Joan's ruffled brow, being Charles, the eldest son of the Durazzo family. After he had introduced his fair cousin to the people as their only legitimate sovereign, he had sought on various occasions to obtain ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... covered the machine and its wiring in the outer office, although several times she had to quit at inopportune times to answer the telephone, or make ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... ideal. He felt there, felt amid the stirring of some wonderful new hope within himself, the genius, the unique power of Christianity; in exercise then, as it has been exercised ever since, in spite of many hindrances, and under the most inopportune circumstances. Chastity,—as he seemed to understand—the chastity of men and women, amid all the conditions, and with the results, proper to such chastity, is the most beautiful thing in the world and the truest conservation ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... in a kind of helpless maze when his servant came in with the card of Mrs. Spencer Birtwell. He read the name almost with a start. Nothing, it seemed to him, could have been more inopportune, for now he remembered with painful distinctness that it was at the party given by Mr. and Mrs. Birtwell that Ridley had yielded to temptation and fallen, never, he feared, to ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... that in an instant. This was the explanation of that mysterious parcel which it had been so difficult to pack and bring; whose contents he would not explain to her, saying that time would soon show her the purpose thereof. In his zest and his gaiety he had hung it there. How foolish and inopportune that mistletoe ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... apostolic," said the doctor, with one or two contented and discontented grunts. Eleanor understood them; the content was his own, the discontent referred to the speaker whose words were so inopportune. The doctor rose and left the ground. Mr. Rhys had gone even before him; and Eleanor wondered anew whether this man were indeed shy or not. He was so little seen and heard; yet spoke, when he spoke, with such ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the house of Mrs. Loring, his mind was in a state of painful excitement. The inopportune appearance of Dexter had so annoyed him, that he had found it impossible to assume the easy, cheerful air of a visitor. He was conscious, therefore, of having shown himself in the eyes of Miss Loring to very poor advantage. Her manner at parting had, however, reassured ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... Helen," said the other, "but it is certainly inopportune for you. Of course the company will all have ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... saengerfest came at a lamentably inopportune time! I regret to Inform you that old Bannister faces another problem, with regard to Thor, and unless it ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... when we left Crowland, and before we had replaced a tire casing that, as usual, collapsed at an inopportune moment, the long English twilight had come to an end. The road to Peterborough, however, is level and straight as an arrow. The right of way was clear and all conditions gave our car opportunity to do its utmost. It was about ten o'clock when we reached the ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... and agonized cry for help. As if in response to it, the door was suddenly opened, and the tyrant, making the most deprecating gestures and profound bows, entered the room and advanced towards Isabelle, who was at once released by Vallombreuse, with muttered curses at this most inopportune intrusion. ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... mania for organisation which is the sworn enemy of order; in its efforts to discover the best place for everything, it ends by diverting everything from its right function and locality, and making everything as inopportune as itself. It was a mistake to cut off all the lights this evening, on some pretext or the other. The rooms of the old mansion are not packed with bales of cotton, but with men who have ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... her throat, and she almost coughed. The feeling came upon her like a shock—what if she had let it out! But a sneeze! It was well known that sneezes came even to people the most healthy, and at moments the most inopportune, and well she knew from experience that to repress a sneeze would ensure an explosion fit to blow the little nose off her face. If a sneeze should come at ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... said, "I have been doing things lately that sometimes seem inopportune,—that concert ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... I speak truth, and say yes? Why does an objectlessly lying devil make its inopportune entry into me? Through some misplaced and crooked false shame I answer, "Not at all! not at all! of course a few minutes one way or the other could not make much difference; I was only puzzled to know what ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... of the company at least the situation was clear. Aunt Melvy, after seeking religion for nearly sixty years, had chosen this inopportune time to ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... had ever known. Mrs. Moss, almost as reticent as Mrs. Haney herself, came and went about the studio brightly, briskly, keeping vigilant eye on her husband's mail, moistening his "mud ladies," and defending him from inopportune callers, insistent beggars, and wandering models. Bertha, though sitting with the stolid patience of a Mississippi clam-fisher, was thinking at express speed. Her mind was of that highly developed type where a hint sets in motion a score of related ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the diplomatic situation when the Czar's telegram of June 11th was received by King Ferdinand. Nothing could have been more inopportune for the Bulgarian cause. Though the government had no intention of changing its plan, sufficient deference had to be paid to the Czar's request to suspend the forward movement of troops. The delay was fatal. The Servians, who were already aware that the Bulgarians were in motion, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... and straightway we made a sideboard of the stoop across which he had crept at so inopportune a moment. I had not the heart to raise my eyes again, yet it was many moments before ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... unsatisfactory if not defective, worried the genuine supporters of the bill not a little. The bill had been loosely drawn to begin with, and as originally introduced contained most unfortunate clerical errors, which bobbed up at most inopportune times. ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... Umballa. His brain and nervous system were in a state that involved a climax and reaction; and, unhappily, this climax, during which his identification of his present self with his memory of its past was intensified to the point of absolute hallucination, came at an inopportune moment. If he could only have kept the phantoms of his imagination at bay until he met Sally! But, really, speculation on so strange a frame of mind is useless; we can only accept the facts as ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... people,—from Baden, Bavaria, Saxony, Suabia, Hessen, and from all the districts of Prussia outside the provinces of Frederick the Great. These entirely voluntary manifestations, which were arranged by no one, and which not infrequently came to me at rather inconvenient and inopportune times, have impressed me with the existence of national harmony. Every one of them has given pleasure to my patriotic heart, and has borne witness to a common feeling existing in all German races—this much I wished to say concerning the stability ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this extremely inopportune moment to make a speech. He rose, swaying slightly, gripped the table-edge, while his eyes ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... Grenville that this "interweaving," as Pownall described it, should have been undertaken at a most inopportune time, when the very conditions which made Englishmen conscious of the burden of empire were giving to Americans a new and highly stimulating sense of power and independence. The marvelous growth of the colonies in population and wealth, much commented upon by all observers and asserted ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... Back of this obstruction Mosby had formed a large part of his command, and our column was stopped by a heavy fire from carbines and pistols in their front and also by a flank-fire from the woods. At this inopportune moment Mosby made a charge which broke our column. The boys were driven back at a furious rate, and had not strength to rally. Some horses giving out, the hapless riders ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... you, let me act. No false generosity! No inopportune devotedness! You knew nothing of my projects. You have done nothing of yourself. With me it is different. I alone am the author of this plot. I stood in need of my inseparable companion; I called upon you, and you came to me in ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The moment seemed inopportune for the delivery of my epistle: I endeavored to conceal it—without hypocrisy and by a natural movement—under the usual pile of manuscript on my table devoted to Progressive Geography. But the baron had spied his name on the address: "How ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an hour ago if they had not been shunted off their course by that inopportune bolide. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... you good morning;" and with these words Cornelia left the store. Her cheeks were burning; the old lady's angry voice was in her ears, she felt the eyes of every one in the store upon her, and she was indignant and mortified at a meeting so inopportune. Her heart had also received a new stab; and she had not at the moment any philosophy to meet it. Joris had evidently told his grandmother exactly what the old lady affirmed. She had not a doubt of that, but why? Why had he lied about her? Was there ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... however, he was not unwise enough to feel sure of the result. Were not all women, even the best of them, notoriously perverse? And there was always, conceivably, that inopportune third party, a preferred rival, to be counted with, who might have been ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... the house for the past week. My offers to take Ida's letters to the post, or to go and fetch home the mail, have been met with a hasty negative, and Minna despatched forthwith to attend to them; and whenever I might enter Ida's room, it would appear to be at a most inopportune moment, for the earnest conversation that had been going on between herself and Gabrielle would instantly stop, and their countenances assume a most transparent expression of indifference. Long whispered conversations with mamma were continually taking ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... for Clementina's benefit that he had been to Los Gatos only on business, yet there was no opportunity for even a significant glance, and he had the added embarrassment of seeing that she exhibited no surprise nor seemed to attach the least importance to his inopportune visit. In a miserable indecision he allowed himself to be carried away by the high-flown hospitality of his Spanish hostess, and consented to stay to an early dinner. It was part of the infelicity ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... intended to make a short speech, as the multitude seemed to demand it. The President was bowing his acknowledgments to the large gathering, when someone, with that bad taste that always crops out at the most inopportune moment, yelled 'Hurrah for Cleveland.' A great many others, with bad taste, laughed. Harrison flushed to his temples, bowed ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... at once, and then they sat still without talking. The children—must it be confessed?— asked all sorts of inopportune questions. At last Tom was even fain to tell the story of the bear himself, by way of silencing the Brick and Laura; and with much correction from Horace, had got the bear well advanced in smelling ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... had chosen an inopportune moment: despite the subdued light of the chamber, it was high noon and the sun shone burningly outside, and Bruce, who had just eaten a hearty dinner, was utterly devoid of sentiment and indifferent to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... they were playing their own game, and had a right to, and it was for their opponents, whom Nelson so well represented, to outwit and trap them into fighting; but as for having any grounds for complaint, it was not only silly, but inopportune, to give expression to having a grievance against the French admirals because they cutely slipped out of his deadly grasp from time to time and made him weary of life! His grievances were easier to establish ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... to time her appearance at a rather inopportune moment, and when daddy rose up from behind the stove to confront the two women, in a voluminous apron and with a smutch across his cheek, Janice could not entirely ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... already occupied by the recumbent and sleeping form of a man, and, jumping to the conclusion that he must be either a policeman or a detective, he promptly sat upon his head with a view to suppressing any inopportune remarks. A second later three men rushed into the room, and Banborough held his breath. But luck was with him, for one glance at the empty stove and the open door satisfied the ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... nourished than the other dogs of Jim Grimm's pack, no more because of greater strength and daring than a marvellous versatility in thievery. In a bored sort of way, being at the moment lazy with food stolen from Sam Butt's stage, Tog submitted. He yawned, stretched his long legs, and gave inopportune attention to a persistent flea near the small of his back. When, however, the butt of Jimmie's whip fell smartly on his flank, he was surprised into an appreciation of the fact that a serious attempt was being made to curtail his freedom; ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... the presiding officer of the joint assembly, surprised but courteous. Philip Danvers was not one to be ignored, no matter how inopportune the time. As he stood there for the moment silent, he conveyed the impression of perfect poise, and the honesty and sincerity of his purpose ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... DEAR PUPIL:—Despite the fact that your manuscript score arrived at a time most inopportune, I having recently renounced all but my most pressing lessons to plunge myself entirely into an atmosphere of profound creation, I have conscientiously performed the task you imposed upon me. That this task ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... any noise whatever. It was one of his amiable peculiarities that he never made any noise, but appeared and disappeared without giving any warning, making himself very agreeable thereby at inopportune moments. He slipped in without a sound, deftly left the door in its previous position, and at once slipped into a chair, or rather took possession of one, by balancing himself on the extreme edge of it, arranging his legs on the lower ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... an altogether easy bird to shoot, owing to his annoying predilection for the steepest and rockiest hillsides, and those most densely clothed in spiny jungle, wherein lurking, he chooses the inopportune moment when the sportsman is hopelessly entangled, like Isaac's ram, to rise chuckling and flee ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Washington during that summer will remember the suppressed activity in the State, War, and Navy Departments on a certain very humid night. Nothing leaked out at the time as to the cause, but it was understood later that a crisis was narrowly averted at a very inopportune season, for the heads of the departments were all away, the President was at his summer home in the North, and even some of the under-secretaries were out of town. Hasty messages had been sizzling over the wires in cipher ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... with which his position would enable him to secure a new base; and by the fact that as he would thus cover Washington, there would be little or no necessity for the authorities there to detach from his force at some inopportune moment for the protection of ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... were far away in Sicily, or travelling elsewhere, would not have satisfied her. They could not have understood her, their answers to her questions would have seemed foolish and worthless, and they would have tormented her with questions of their own, inopportune, importunate, tiresome. She herself did not know that what she craved was the love or the friendship of one strong, ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... rum-shrub out of a tumbler. An explanation followed. Sheriff's Deputy STRUGGLES, in the handsomest manner, offered to resign all claim to the possession of the Colonel's spouse. The Colonel, however, would not hear of this. Finally it was decided to spin a five-dollar green-back for the lady. An inopportune gust of wind, however, carried off the fateful money, and the momentous question is still undecided. The Colonel has announced his intention of continuing a bachelor, even if he has to fight the matter up to the Supreme Court, and a large majority of the inhabitants of the town are willing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... the process of digestion by torturing attempts at repartee, and racking their brain at a moment when it should be calm, to remind themselves of some anecdote so appropriate that they have forgotten it. It has been supposed that the presence of women at our banquets has occasioned this fatal and inopportune desire to shine; and an argument has been founded on this circumstance in favour of their exclusion from an incident which, on the whole, has a tendency to impair that ideal which they should always study and cherish. It may be urged that if a woman eats she may destroy her ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... submit the dogma of infallibility for consideration, "because the Church has to sustain at present a struggle unknown in former times, against men who oppose religion itself as an institution baneful to human nature, and that it is inopportune to impose upon Catholic nations, led into temptation by so many machinations, more dogmas than the Council of Trent proclaimed." It added that "the definition demanded would furnish fresh arms to the enemies of religion, to excite against the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... of keeping a "Family Skeleton" shut up in a cupboard is that the horrid thing will insist on rattling its old bones at the most inopportune moments—just, for example, when you are entertaining to tea the nearest local thing you've got to God—whether she be an "Honourable" (in her own right, mark you!) or merely the vicar's wife! Whatever family skeletons do or do not possess, they most assuredly lack tact. ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... Madrid newspapers made general comment upon the official explanation of the Maine's visit to Havana, and agreed in expressing the opinion that her visit is "inopportune and calculated to encourage the insurgents." It was announced that, "following Washington's example," the Spanish government will "instruct Spanish war-ships to ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... instead of whispers; and they feel that profanity, unless it be vociferous, is almost worthless. Horrible phrases were caught by early rising children and carried to older people for definition, sometimes at inopportune moments; while less investigative children would often merely repeat the phrases in some subsequent flurry of agitation, and yet bring about consequences so emphatic as to be recalled with ease in ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... Mr. Sherman addressed the Senate on the pending concurrent resolution. He approved the principle but doubted the expediency of now reaeffirming it. "I regard it," said he, "as a mere straw in a storm, thrown in at an inopportune moment; the mere assertion of a naked right which has never yet been disputed, and never can be successfully; a mere assertion of a right that we have over and over again asserted. My idea is that ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... this little hoard of affection to examine how or why it was given. To him she could give pleasure, but apparently to no one else in that household. Her aunt looked askance at her for many reasons: the first coming of Lois to Salem was inopportune, the expression of disapprobation on her face on that evening still lingered and rankled in Grace's memory, early prejudices, and feelings, and prepossessions of the English girl were all on the side of what would now be called ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... silenced the master of the puppet-show, and put a speedy and final end to that grave and solemn harangue, of which we have given the reader a sufficient taste already. Nothing indeed could have happened so very inopportune as this accident; the most wanton malice of fortune could not have contrived such another stratagem to confound the poor fellow, while he was so triumphantly descanting on the good morals inculcated by ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... first met him he would not have cared had I killed Leon, for he loved him not. The truth was that the doctor's devotion to Leon and Leon's to him were second only to the devotion of the dog and his mistress to each other, though, owing to the fact that Leon often stalked into his laboratory at inopportune moments, sometimes spoiling the most delicate experiment by poking his great inquisitive muzzle where it did not belong, the doctor's patience was sometimes tried almost beyond ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... the Caribbean extends a chain of islands which are really smoldering furnaces, with fires banked up, ever ready to break forth at some unexpected and inopportune moment. This group, commencing with Saba, near Porto Rico, and ending with Grenada, consists of ancient ash heaps, piled up in times past by volcanic action. For nearly one hundred years there has been not the slightest sign of explosion and we had ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... as far as local practice and arrangements go, varies in almost every parish of England more or less; and, I repeat, it is almost impossible to deal with it successfully. We ought not to enter into the subject of the poor laws hastily, or at an inopportune period like the present. It will be better to wait till the country is restored to a state of complete prosperity, and then investigate the subject with a proper ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... inopportune intrusion, Rob's first thought was to go back to the street and try another building; but, upon reflecting that the young man was not likely to remain long and he would soon be alone, he decided to wait. So he walked to the edge of the roof and appeared ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... might have done was never known; perhaps, with his strong arm round her, Nesta would have yielded then and there; but a most inopportune childish voice broke ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... for an instant, not knowing whether to make some excuse for his evidently inopportune visit and return later, or to keep his seat until the others had gone. Miss Felicia, who had not taken her gaze from the lad since he entered the room, called him to ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... he did eventually have a pension granted him of twenty pounds Scots a year, until such time as a benefice of at least fifty pounds should fall to him; so that he was kept in hope. After this Dunbar tunes forth a song of welcome to "his ain Lord Thesaurair," in which terror at this functionary's inopportune absence—since quarterday we may suppose—is lost in gratulations over his return. "Welcome," ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... so anxious to work. What in the world was the matter with them, he wondered, as he directed a couple of students on some work they were helping him with. It seemed that yesterday afternoon he had taken a new start; now he was eager to work things out while he felt like this. This was a very inopportune time for a cold, or whatever it was, to settle in his eyes. Perhaps the lights at the theatre last night, and then the wind coming home—but he smiled an intimate little smile with himself at thought of last night and forgot all about that sandy ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... interrupted this inopportune conversation, the violence increasing with the noise till the whole atmosphere seemed to ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... in hands where he would be safe, and whence he might recover him in time of need. While he stood deliberating where he should find a messenger, he saw Bradamante approach. That fair warrior had been parted from Rogero on their way to the abbey of Vallombrosa, by an inopportune adventure which had called the knight away. She was now returning to Montalban, having arranged with Rogero to join her there. To Bradamante, therefore, his fair cousin, Astolpho committed Rabican, and also the lance of gold, which would only be an incumbrance ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... brings to my mind another in which also Jew appears, but this time as the hero of a perilous adventure; and as enough has been said of God and of the truth our faith, it will not now be inopportune if we descend to mundane events and the actions of men. Wherefore I propose to tell you a story, which will perhaps dispose you to be more circumspect than you have been wont to be in answering questions addressed to you. Well ye know, or should know, loving gossips, that, as it often happens ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... changed colour, but felt that, inopportune as the demand was, she could not refuse it without laying herself open to suspicion, and perhaps worse. "Oh, let her come in, poor old soul," she said, "and find a seat for her. I'd really no idea she was ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... course, its object became plain to me—as indeed to anyone. For ten minutes, perhaps, a wire must be carried from the overhead line to the chestnut-tree. Creake has everything in his favour, but it is just within possibility that the driver of an inopportune train might notice the appendage. What of that? Why, for more than a week he has seen a derelict kite with its yards of trailing string hanging in the tree. A very calculating mind, Mr. Hollyer. It would be interesting to know what line of action Mr. Creake has mapped ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... proposition was regarded as the harmless hobby of an amiable man, from which a little knowledge of practical politics would soon dismount him."[45] Most members of Congress thought the reform a mere vagary, and that it was brought forward at a most inopportune time.[46] Mr. Jenckes was the pioneer of the reform, according to Curtis, who says that he "powerfully and vigorously and alone opened the debate in Congress."[47] He drew the amendment to the appropriation bill in 1871 that became the law, and under which the first civil service commission was ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... careful instructions, who had been exposed to the full influence of His personal character; and yet, notwithstanding all, the rock-bed of pride, that cast the angels down from heaven, that led to the fall of man, obtruded itself. This occasion in which it manifested itself was very inopportune; already the look of Calvary was on the Saviour's face, and the sword entering His heart. Surely, they must have been aware that the shadow of the great eclipse was already passing over the face of their Sun. ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... suspicion. The statement was reported to the other, they held a conference, and some thought they had become reconciled. As a fact they understood each other's dispositions accurately, and, thinking it inopportune at that time to put them to the test, they came to terms by making a few mutual concessions. For some days they were quiet; then they began to suspect each other afresh as a result of either some really hostile action or some false report of hostility,—as regularly ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... Clay promptly acknowledged the ticket, and it was elected. Then followed the death of the President in office, the obnoxious vetoes of the newly installed President—Tyler—the division of the Whig party, the nomination of Mr. Clay at this late inopportune time and ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... raised to condemn the war for its criminality and injustice: the arguments which were urged against it by M. Thiers and others were that the Government had fixed upon a bad cause, and that the occasion was inopportune. Whether the majority of the Assembly really desired war is even now matter of doubt. But the clamour of a hundred madmen within its walls, the ravings of journalists and incendiaries, who at such a time are to the true expression of public opinion what ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... there is a worse force than these external distractions working to draw us away, one that we carry within, in our own vacillating wills and wayward hearts and treacherous affections and passions that usually lie dormant, but wake up sometimes at the most inopportune periods. Unless we keep a very tight hand upon ourselves, certainly these will rob us of this consciousness of being justified by faith which brings with it peace with God that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren |
