"Ungracious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appears, they don't want to nip us in the bud? I can imagine their rushing up to prevent us. But an enthusiasm for us that can wait so very little—such intense eagerness, I confess," she went on, "more than a little puzzles me. You may think me," she also added, "ungracious and suspicious, but the Prince can't at all want to come back so soon. He wanted quite too ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... friend, and hast ever wronged, in thought, or word, or deed, the spirit that generously confided in thee; if thou hast given one unmerited pang to that true heart, which now lies cold and still beneath thy feet; then be sure that every unkind look, every ungracious word, every ungentle action, will come thronging back upon thy memory, and knocking dolefully at thy soul; then be sure that thou wilt lie down sorrowing and repentant on the grave, and utter ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... heavier airs, from the low vaults, The mansions of the dead.—Roused from their slumbers, In grim array the grisly spectres rise, Grin horrible, and, obstinately sullen, Pass and repass, hushed as the foot of night. Again the screech-owl shrieks: ungracious sound! I'll hear no more; it ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... fellow," said Parton, with a dubious shake of the head. "If a dead body should turn up near or on Skiddaw to-morrow morning, I wouldn't like to wager that Mr. Carleton Barker hadn't put it there. He acted to me like a man who had something to conceal, and if I could have done it without seeming ungracious, I'd have flung his old flask as far into the fields as I could. I've half a mind to show my contempt for it now by filling it with some of that beastly claret they have at the table d'hote here, and chucking the whole thing into ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... no harm," she says, "in telling my own dear nephew that I never felt satisfied with the support your father received towards his undertakings, and far less with the ungracious manner in which it was granted. For the last sum came with a message that more must never be asked for. (Oh! how degraded I felt, even for myself, whenever I thought of it!) And after all it came too late, and was not sufficient; for if expenses had been out of ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... a glance. "Go, Marian," he said,—not impatiently, for he was too thoroughly courteous ever to be ungracious, even to a child,—but with a steady indifference that cut me with more pain than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... climb down yourself and fetch it? I'll hold the reins.' The voice was husky, the tone ungracious. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... very well satisfied with the fruits of this apparently ungracious refusal. She went to the city less frequently than before, and only when it was necessary. This, he decided, was significant. It could have but ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... is, with its vegetable carpet, soft and embroidered, beneath man's feet; with its valleys covered with corn until they laugh and sing; with its noble architecture of the mountains covered with mighty carvings and painted legends. Verily, it would be an ungracious thing for us to go on living here without taking the trouble to look upon this earth's floor, so firm and solid, or study the beauteous ceiling lighted with star lamps by night. And the evenings of one week with Geikie or Dana will tell us ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... for them both, his pride came into play; his shrewd intelligence also, and his affection for his father—the most penetrable spot so far in his hard and splendid youth. He had done his best—a haughty, ungracious best—but still he had done it, and in the course of a few days, now that the tension of concealment was over, Sir Arthur had become almost childishly dependent ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reputation for extreme politeness and gallantry toward women; which may be true, as neither under such conditions costs any earnest sacrifice. But the rank and file of the middle class of Austrians, the class with which travellers have naturally most to do, are most brusque and ungracious in manner as well as in deed, unembellished with any ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... I'm all right." The tone was ungracious, and there was no mistaking the import of her speech, so ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... Troth in the City, Lady. I have known an Heiress married and bedded, and yet with the Advice of the wiser Magistrates, has been unmarried and consummated anew with another, so it stands with our Interest: 'tis Law by Magna Charta. Nay, had you married my ungracious Nephew, we might by this our Magna Charta have hang'd him for ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... against the Tories that her irritation rose. As the time for her wedding approached, her temper grew steadily sharper and more arbitrary. Queen Adelaide annoyed her. King Leopold, too, was "ungracious" in his correspondence; "Dear Uncle," she told Albert, "is given to believe that he must rule the roost everywhere. However," she added with asperity, "that is not a necessity." Even Albert himself was not impeccable. ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... her father endeared him extremely to Emily, whose heart found almost its first relief in conversing of her parents, with a man, whom she so much revered, and who, though with such an ungracious appearance, possessed to much goodness of heart ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... To the ungracious complaint-charge of his want of racy nativity and special originality, I shall only say that America and the world may well be reverently thankful—can never be thankful enough—for any such singing-bird vouchsafed ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... into more freedom of speech than I had ever before been accustomed to; and his judicious management of my troubled spirit, for a time, stifled its contradictions, and suppressed its habitual tendencies. But it was with some jealousy, and an erectness of manner which was surely ungracious, though, perhaps, not offensive, that I endured and replied to his inquiries into my personal condition, my resources, and the nature of that dependence which I bore to the family of my uncle. When ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... to get away from the ungracious old dame, who stood at her door, shouting messages to his father about his duty and her intentions, till the lad was out of sight, when he could not help seeing the comic side of the matter, and wondered, laughingly, what his father would say to her if she kept her word, and came ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... plenty of wine and victuals, with the sails of their ship and some planks, to build huts or tents for them to dwell in. The owners of the prize being thus disposed of, the next thing was to share the booty; which ungracious work of distribution soon involved Candish in all the troubles of a mutiny, every one being eager for gold, yet no one satisfied with his share. This disturbance was most violent in the Content; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... you what, we be growing old women!" saith Aunt Joyce. "Ned and Edith, ye ungracious ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... her in a second to hold her coat. The way in which she turned her back on him so that he might lift it on was peculiarly ungracious. ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... steadiness and indifference of your temper; but I should despise myself, if I were conscious of the deficiency in courage which you seem willing enough to impute to me. However, I suppose, this ungracious hint proceeds from sincere anxiety for my safety; and so viewing it, I swallow it as I would do medicine from a friendly doctor, although I believed in my heart ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Three can't play whist very well," added Hynard in rather ungracious tones. "Be a good fellow and stay ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster
... from the rich who had now become too high for them, and from the poor, whom they still regarded as too low; and even to-day, when poverty forces them to unfasten their door to a guest, they cannot do so without a most ungracious stipulation. You are to remain, they say, a stranger; they will give you attendance, but they refuse from the first the idea ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... music, introduced himself and begged that he and his wife might be allowed to call on her to enlist her interest and services in a great charity entertainment which he was getting up. Christine agreed, with the feeling that it would be ungracious to decline, and the next ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... using your eyes, or not using them, is a question of doing Right or doing Wrong. God has given you eyes; it is your duty to God to use them. If your parents tried to teach you your lessons in the most agreeable way, by beautiful picture-books, would it not be ungracious, ungrateful, and altogether naughty and wrong, to shut your eyes to those pictures, and refuse to learn? And is it not altogether naughty and wrong to refuse to learn from your Father in Heaven, the Great God who made all things, when he offers to teach you all day ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... hastily, "that you people—" and he stopped suddenly, realizing the ungracious ending to ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... which appeal so strongly to the commoner sort of English mind; he played first for safety, and that assured, for the uttermost advantage. These tendencies became more marked with maturity. When he took up tennis for his health's sake he developed at once an ungracious service that had to be killed like vermin; he developed an instinct for the deadest ball available, and his returns close up to the net were like assassinations. Indeed, he was inherently incapable of any vision beyond the express prohibitions ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... see if I had wished to refuse it, it would have been difficult and ungracious. But, on the whole, I thought the precedent good. Playfair tells me he tried to get it done in the case of Faraday and Babbage thirty years ago, and the thing broke down. Moreover a wicked sense of the comedy of advancing such a pernicious heretic, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... that I was about to drive to Cosenza. A delightful day, and a magnificent country! They too thought of journeying to Cosenza, and, in short, would I allow them to share my carriage? Now this was annoying; I much preferred to be alone with my thoughts; but it seemed ungracious to refuse. After a glance at their smiling faces, I answered that whatever room remained in the vehicle was at their service—on the natural understanding that they shared the expense; and to this, with the best grace in the world, they at once agreed. ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... her head and glided softly away. She knew her chance of learning the secret was gone for the moment, and she had too much of the guile of the savage woman to spoil her chances by loitering about unnecessarily while her lord was in his present ungracious humor. ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... you, mother, how nice!" the little boys exclaimed. Elsie's ungracious silence passed unnoticed by all ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the exhaustive studies which I subsequently devoted to one of the bronze weights found in 1851 in the excavations at the Serapeium, it would be ungracious for me not to think well of them, as they opened for me the doors of ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... he is little known. His title comes From an estate, they say, beyond the hills. He looks ungracious: I have seen the children Run to the doors when he ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... Elizabeth dabbed hers as she told the story; then she caught me in her arms, kissed me, and said that her happiness was complete. What was I to do? I was profoundly surprised, but any display of that emotion would have been inappropriate and ungracious. I could appear only ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... dear, if you like," returned Mrs. Adair, with an ungracious shrug of the shoulders. "But there is a reason, I suppose. I don't understand why ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... we had the honour of being the first to abolish the unhospitable, troublesome, and ungracious custom of giving vails to servants. JOHNSON. 'Sir, you abolished vails, because you were too poor to ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... generous and admirable army, and my sole concern is to take part, however modestly, in the work of the nation. True, a thousand memories and reflections crowd my mind; the notion of pausing to express them in writing had not occurred to me, but it would be ungracious in me to decline your kind invitation. Please omit from the ideas I throw on paper whatever seems to you to be ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... prove that the Catholic faith does not prevent any one from holding the Darwinian theory, and especially a declaration from an authority eminent among American Catholics—a declaration which has a very curious sound, but which it would be ungracious to find fault with—that "the doctrine of evolution is no more in opposition to the doctrine of the Catholic Church than is the Copernican theory or that ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... to the girl herself, could it be for her happiness that she should be thus lifted into a strange world, a world that would be hard and ungracious to her, and in which it might be only too probable that the young lord should see her defects when it would be too late for either of them to remedy the evil that had been done? She had thought something of all this before, having recognized the possibility of such a step as ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... all. You can copy it if you like—if you think your sister can make anything of it." Then, a little ashamed of her ungracious manner, she added, "I will copy it for you—and another, a much prettier one. When shall you ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... proceeded, until they reached the Grange, where the first person they met was Jemmy Branigan, who addressed his old enemy, the pedlar, in that peculiarly dry and ironical tone which he was often in the habit of using when he wished to disguise a friendly act in an ungracious garb—a method of granting favors, by the way, to which he was proverbially addicted. In fact, a surly answer from Jemmy was as frequently indicative of his intention to serve you with his master as it was otherwise; but so adroitly did he disguise his sentiments, that no earthly penetration ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... in the course of the afternoon (April 20); and my first wish was that now Lord Aberdeen himself would go and tell them how we stood upon Graham's speech. To this they were all opposed; and they seemed to feel that as we had had no meeting yet, it would seem ungracious and unkind to an old friend to hold one by way of ovation over his departure. It was therefore agreed that I should acquaint Young it was their wish that he should tell any one who might come, that we, who were there present, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... came down the gangplank and I greeted him as is my ungracious way, as if he had been off on a sailing trip. But he knew, and he held to me, the tall fellow, with his arm around my shoulder unashamed, and from that moment to this in the den he had hardly let me ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... a chair and sit down," said Blount, not too ungraciously, considering his just cause to be more ungracious. "I was thinking of you a little while ago, Dick. I saw your name in the list of Transcontinental representatives to the traffic meeting in Boston, and—well, at the present moment I'm not sure but you are the one man in the world ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... I attempt to explain, or in any way excuse this seemingly ungracious act, it may be well to give some account of the doers thereof. ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... refusal, the colonists contrived to secrete the sum of twenty thousand castellanos on board his vessel, with the idea, that, once in his own country, with his mission concluded, the president's scruples would be removed. Gasca did, indeed, accept the donative; for he felt that it would be ungracious to send it back; but it was only till he could ascertain the relatives of the donors, when he distributed it among the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... thus granted the desired permission, he did it in a very ungracious manner, for he took care to say that he yielded to the Duke of Saxony's request solely out of kindness to his good cousin Anne, and a desire to do her a favor, and not at all out of regard to the ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... been the shoulder of a friend. "The fellows sat upon me, I assure you, when I brought it out. Told me it was worse than a wife. But I've carried my point, ... wife and all. And now, perhaps you will reward me,—if I haven't been too ungracious to deserve it?" ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... very bright, but what were these to her? She wanted dimness, sleep, forgetfulness. At eight o'clock, breakfast-time, the 'dauntless three' were driving in a waggonette amid blazing, breathless sunshine, over country naked of shelter, ungracious and harsh. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... regard as a public misfortune. The Whig members all supported this resolution, and all the members, I believe, with the exception of some five or six, were very anxious in some way to get rid of the treasury order. But Mr. Ewing's resolution was too direct. It was deemed a pointed and ungracious attack on executive policy. It must therefore be softened, modified, qualified, made to sound less harsh to the ears of men in power, and to assume a plausible, polished, inoffensive character. It was accordingly put into the plastic ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... in spite of their ungracious nursing, and when she was not irritated by them Nan was very proud of the ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... obstinate: his genius was fertile in mathematical experiments, and he possessed some knowledge of chemistry: he was polite even to excess, unseasonably; but haughty, and even brutal, when he ought to have been gentle and courteous: he was tall, and his manners were ungracious: he had a dry hard-favoured visage, and a stern look, even when he wished to please; but, when he was out of humour, he was the true ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... humming softly. Her sins were evidently so little in her mind that she paid no heed to his remark or the confusion that covered him when he realized that he had been guilty of a tactless and ungracious speech. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... to be told of him: that once, as a stage-coach containing, only a few passengers passed him on the road, he asked the favor of a seat on the top, and was refused. There were many miles between him and his destination. But he did not upbraid the ungracious driver; he only swung his two canes a little more briskly, and kept breast of the horses all the way, entering the town side by side with the inhospitable vehicles—a running reproach to the churl on ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... the village-physician's somewhat ungracious comment; and his eyes said, what his lips dared ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... turning of the street where her mother lives. She smiles, undecided, declares herself well again, and begs to return to our house on the heights. This did not precisely enter into my plans, I confess. However, it would look very ungracious to refuse. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... conciliatory. The English, it was said, had always been forbidden to trade in the Dutch colonies. The Dutch ought therefore to find no fault with the recent Navigation Act, from which measure the Council did not "deem it fitting to recede." As to the colonial boundary, the ungracious reply was returned, ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... proper to be laid up with care, such as are rare and precious, or such as are common and of no account? Why do you give me no answer? Well, though you should dissemble, the Greek proverb will answer for you, "Foul water is thrown out of doors;" which, if any man shall be so ungracious as to condemn, let him know 'tis Aristotle's, the god of our masters. Is there any of you so very a fool as to leave jewels and gold in the street? In truth, I think not; in the most secret part of your house; nor is that enough; if there be any drawer in your iron chests more ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... in some cases he allows the French draw absurd consequences from them. But I conceive he is mistaken. The consequences are most logically, though most mischievously, drawn from the premises and principles by that wicked and ungracious faction. The ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... has been particularly ungracious to me. A fine, superb, big creature she is, named Alice Carter. This Alice came up to the children and me in the street the other day, and told me, in the gruffest manner, that she was interested in a little crippled girl over there, and ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... impossible to approve the style of that sermon. But the complaint was not less ungracious from that man, who had behaved so ill by his original libel, and, at the time, when he received the reproach he complains of. In the last article, all the plaintiffs are equally concerned. It struck me also with some wonder, that the Judges should ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... Shergold, Reigate in the old coaching days was the scene of the most romantic episodes imaginable. He is full of comparisons between the easy charm of conversation among riders by coach and the ungracious silences of travelling by rail, and this is what you read about Reigate and the fair who travelled ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... also am feeling some unpleasant consequences of too much mental disturbance," said Mr. Casaubon. In fact, he had it in his thought to tell her that she ought not to have received young Ladislaw in his absence: but he abstained, partly from the sense that it would be ungracious to bring a new complaint in the moment of her penitent acknowledgment, partly because he wanted to avoid further agitation of himself by speech, and partly because he was too proud to betray that jealousy of disposition which was not so exhausted on his scholarly compeers that there ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... except in a singular peculiarity of appearance. Indeed, Hintzpeter's looks invite caricature. He is lanky, ungainly and lantern-jawed, and seems like a man who has never been young, and who has not yet obtained the venerability of old age. His manners are exceedingly ungracious, and even repellent, but when once he becomes interested in a discussion he seems to undergo an entire transformation. He is no longer the same man, and gives one at that moment the impression of being nothing but a bundle of seething nerves, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... about their coming and going, and Mrs. Vervain perfectly understood the art of letting him make himself at home. He perceived with amusement that this amiable lady, who never did an ungraceful thing nor wittingly said an ungracious one, was very much of a Bohemian at heart,—the gentlest and most blameless of the tribe, but still lawless,—whether from her campaigning married life, or the rovings of her widowhood, or by natural ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... little entrapped, and would have preferred to see the actress under conditions more favourable to an independent judgment, but he was conscious that a refusal would be ungracious, so he accepted, and prepared himself to meet the beauty in as sympathetic a frame of mind ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ready to cry at this ungracious reception by her brother; but she quickly remembered, as if by intuition, that misfortune in its first shock often makes people harsh, unkind, and quarrelsome. So ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... longer indulged the ungracious idea of spiting her against me, and, by degrees, all my other fears were allayed. Assuredly I had not been smitten; I long examined into the nature of my scruples, wrote down my reflections upon the subject, and derived no little ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... announced, Buonaparte, viewing himself as a Royal personage, which he continued to do while on board the Bellerophon, and which, under the circumstances, I considered it would have been both ungracious and uncalled for in me to have disputed, led the way into the dining-room. He seated himself in the centre at one side of the table, requesting Sir Henry Hotham to sit at his right hand, and Madame Bertrand ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... I did fluctuate—during that period. Now, too, it was necessary for me to consult those who had already gone deeply into the subject; and the record of my experiences would be both imperfect and ungracious if I did not here acknowledge the prompt kindness of the two gentlemen to whom I applied—Mr. Benjamin Coleman and Mr. Samuel Carter Hall. I was comparatively a stranger to each of them, but they replied to my inquiries with ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... disobey, Monmouth drew his arm away; he loosed Barbara's hand, she drew back, leaning against the wall; the Duke stood with his arms by his side, looking at the man who interrupted his sport and seemed to have power to control his will. Then, at last, in crisp, curt, ungracious ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... the distinction of having the breed with me," said Lady Lundie. "I won't appear ungracious. I will see her myself, as soon as I am a little better, and tell her that I have changed my mind. Send one of the men to Craig Fernie with a message. I can't keep a trifling matter of this sort in my memory—send ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... protested, half-mollified, with her parting nod. "Don't—for pity's sake!—talk about it," she added, rudely, to Norma, as Norma began some consolatory murmur on the stairs. But when they were before her own fire, waiting for the expected girls, she made Norma a rather ungracious confidence. ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... questions which it is not wise to put; questions whose answers may seem ungracious to give, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... as well as upon the Court of Livery in Common Hall assembled, neither of these courts being able to meet unless convened by him; and he can at any time dissolve the court by removing the sword and mace from the table, and declaring the business at an end; but this is considered an ungracious display ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... single absence would not put down extravagant, pompous parties, we were not strong enough to let the morsels drop into unappreciating mouths; or we might say, that if a man invited us to see his new house, it would not be ungracious nor insulting to his hospitality, to point out whatever weak parts we might detect in it, nor to declare our candid conviction, that it was built upon wrong principles and could not stand. He might believe us, if we had been ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... He could not refuse a request so urged, but his step was slow and his manner next to ungracious as he led the way to the door of the adjoining room and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... for the third time to my desk. The one person who might be trusted to find the answer to those questions was Mr. Playmore. I wrote him a full and careful account of all that had happened; I begged him to forgive and forget my ungracious reception of the advice which he had so kindly offered to me; and I promised beforehand to do nothing without first consulting his opinion in the new emergency which now ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... being taken to task by man, woman, or child. As to children, he's very good to my child; there's one loves him," pointing to George, "and I'm glad of it: for I should be ashamed, so I should, that my flesh and blood should be in any ways disregardful or ungracious to those that be ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... dear. There is nothing so ungracious as a refusal, and no mark of high breeding so rare as the art of gracious acceptance. Any booby can give a present; but to receive a gift without churlish reticence or florid rapture is no easy accomplishment. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... degenerate into a nod; this is both ungracious and ungentlemanly. The hat should be lifted sufficiently to clear the head, and the bow, in the reception room, should slightly incline the body also. Ladies should incline their heads gracefully and smile upon their ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... are we not here a family party? Is that not sufficiently evident by the somewhat ungracious things that have ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... without noticing the somewhat ungracious form of invitation. "It war me," he said, "dropped in, not finding ye downstairs. Let's have ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... listening to the "voice of the charmer," till our enfeebled organs can no longer listen to the voice of "singing men and singing women," and not to devote our days to heaven till we have "no pleasure in them" ourselves, is but an ungracious offering. And it is a wretched sacrifice to the God of heaven, to present him with the remnants of decayed appetites, and the leavings of ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... feeling of insult, self-condemning, and ill-satisfied in every way, Bold returned to his London lodgings. Ill as he had fared in his interview with the archdeacon, he was not the less under the necessity of carrying out his pledge to Eleanor; and he went about his ungracious task with ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... of the young woman's reserve ungracious, or was it only natural that in her particular situation she should not have a flow of compliment at her command? I noticed that Mrs. Nettlepoint looked at her often, and certainly though she was undemonstrative Miss Mavis was ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... photographs, to light up the walks in the garden and the greenhouse, and to provide a delicious supper for my entertainment, and then ask, I will say, only one person whom I want to see, is it not very ungracious, very selfish, and very snobbish for me to refuse to take what is, because of something which is not,—because Ellen is not there or George is not? What Act of Parliament is there that I should have everything in ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... and bracelets and pendants, and flowers and fruit, and bon-bons and books, because they were given in such a way that it would have been ungracious to refuse. But the givers were the very women whose bosom friend she would have liked to seem, in the sight of the world: a duchess, a countess, or a woman distinguished above ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the command of a division. That official replied promptly that he did not oppose it himself, but that he could not do it without the recommendation of the army officers, and that recommendation had not been given. Possibly the field officers believed the suggestion would have been ungracious to Mr. Davis. General Toombs had not hesitated to criticise the policy and appointments of the Richmond administration. That practice had strained his relations with the Confederate Government, but Toombs was a man who "would not flatter Neptune for ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... ungracious way of putting it. And her eyes, while not exactly hostile, were ungracious, too. They would make anyone with a spark of pride want to go away at once. The professor told himself this. Besides, his only possible reason for wishing to stay had been some unformed ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... he was always called, was not of a sociable disposition and lived alone. As he was never known to speak of his own affairs nobody thereabout knew anything of his past, nor of his relatives if he had any. Without being particularly ungracious or repellent in manner or speech, he managed somehow to be immune to impertinent curiosity, yet exempt from the evil repute with which it commonly revenges itself when baffled; so far as I know, Mr. ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... took command of the Southern army in Charlotte on the 3rd of December, 1780, the commissary department was left vacant by the resignation of Colonel Polk. At the earnest solicitation of General Greene, Colonel Davie was induced to accept the position, an ungracious and troublesome office at any time, but then attended with peculiar difficulties, as the country had been lately devastated and stripped of its usual resources by ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... would meet him that evening;—or rather had not so promised. When asked to do so she had not refused, but even while not refusing had reminded him that her mother would be there. Her manner to him had, he thought, been cold, though she had not been ungracious. Upon the whole, he could not make up his mind to expect success. "Then he must have been a fool!" the reader learned in such matters will say. The reader learned in such matters is, I think, right. In that ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... interview, she had expected to hear something more definite. It seemed to her as though all his trouble had resulted in nothing. Still, she was not one to give way to disappointment, and she had too much good sense to show herself either ungrateful or ungracious. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... in to find old Martha with her crabbed face watching her sourly. But she did not care, nothing could touch her now. Even the old woman, cross with waiting by the fading kitchen fire, noticed the light in the girl's eyes. She had always thought the girl hard and ungracious, but now that face was soft, and the mouth smiling over its secret thoughts, and the eyes ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... hope that it will not be considered ungracious in me that I oppose the wish of any lady. But when she so far misunderstands her duty as to want to go to working on the roads and making rails and serving in the militia and going into the army, I want to protect her against it. I do not think that ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... be more fascinating and infectious than the mirthful ingenuousness which accompanied and seemed to mitigate this ungracious speech, and the consul was greatly amused, albeit conscious that it was only an attitude, and perhaps somewhat worn in sentiment. He knew that during the war of the rebellion, and directly after it, Great Britain was the resort of certain Americans from the West as well as ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... interested in what he is reading to me." In the nervous irritation which produced this ungracious answer, she overthrew one of the flower-pots. Oscar set it up again for her with ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... give you an undeniable proof of my considering your desires as indispensable orders. Ungracious then as the task may be, I shall recall to view those scandalous stages of my life, out of which I emerged, at length, to the enjoyment of every blessing in the power of love, health and fortune to bestow; whilst yet in the flower of youth, and not too late to employ the leisure ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... Alora, she is strongly prejudiced against her father and we must make due allowance for her bitterness. The feeling probably arose through her sudden transfer from the care of a generous and loving mother to that of an ungracious father—a parent she had never before known. A child of eleven is likely to form strong affections ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... being laughed at by this slender, graceful girl, who was scarcely older than herself; but she was too unsophisticated to know how to resent it. Louise insisted upon warding off her enmity, or at least establishing a truce, and Beth, however suspicious and ungracious, could find no way of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... TIME!" Now and then we have thought it would be pleasant to have a little motor-car that could be tucked away at any roadside, without reference to a good hitching-place, but if we had it, I am sure we should miss that ungracious welcoming whinny. We should miss, too, the exasperated violence of Kit's pace on the first bit of the home road—a violence expressing in the most ostentatious manner her opinion of folks who keep a respectable horse hitched by the roadside, far ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... correctly maintained that they were approaching the Azores,—a good instance of his consummate judgment in nautical questions.[523] From the Portuguese governor of the island this Spanish company met with a very ungracious reception. A party of sailors whom Columbus sent ashore to a small chapel of the Virgin, to give thanks for their deliverance from shipwreck, were seized and held as prisoners for five days. It afterwards appeared ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... subject; and on Captain Wentworth's making a distant bow, she comprehended that her father had judged so well as to give him that simple acknowledgement of acquaintance, and she was just in time by a side glance to see a slight curtsey from Elizabeth herself. This, though late, and reluctant, and ungracious, was yet better than nothing, and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... see your box, and I shan't open the door,' said the ungracious girl. 'Take your box away, and get some one else to help you to put your puzzle together,' she added; and poor Fred, thus rudely repressed, turned to wend his way downstairs again. Unfortunately, his foot caught the fringe of the door-mat, ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... the sweetest voiced, and, notwithstanding the ungracious things I have said of it and of its relations, merits to the full all Trowbridge's pleasant fancies. His poem is indeed a very careful study of the bird and its haunts, and is good poetry as well as ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... communication to the 'Bogus Four Corners Weekly Meridian,' has endeavored to show that this is the sepulchral inscription of Thorwald Eriksson, who, as is well-known, was slain in Vinland by the natives. But I think he has been misled by a preconceived theory, and cannot but feel that he has thus made an ungracious return for my allowing him to inspect the stone with the aid of my own glasses (he having by accident left his at home) and in my own study. The heathen ancients might have instructed this Christian minister in the rites of hospitality; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... for?" she asked, suddenly lifting her eyes to him. The expression of her face was cold and ungracious. "You told Stiva you were staying on to get Yashvin away. And ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... ago,' he replied. 'I met him in France, and you know when one is abroad it is an ungracious task to reject the advances of one's countryman, otherwise I think I should have avoided his society—less upon my own account than because I am sure the acquaintance would be a source of continual though ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... considered in the former, as a breach of good manners, whereas in the latter, the longer a person is made to wait before the introduction takes place, the greater is the honour done him, and the higher is the rank of that person supposed to be, who exacts that ungracious duty. They discovered the chief, or rather governor, sitting on a piece of leather, under a large verandah at one end of a commodious square yard. He was clad in the prevailing finery of crimson velvet tobe ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... keepsake. From a distance. We had not many opportunities for a closer view, because she did not care to give them to us. We would have been glad to drop in at the Davidson bungalow, but we were made to feel somehow that we were not very welcome there. Not that she ever said anything ungracious. She never had much to say for herself. I was perhaps the one who saw most of the Davidsons at home. What I noticed under the superficial aspect of vapid sweetness was her convex, obstinate forehead, and her small, red, pretty, ungenerous mouth. But then I am an observer with ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... extravagant mark of attachment; and all this, he persuaded himself, was to be exposed in their letters to all the clerks of the post-office at paris and all the idlers at Versailles. This accounts for the ungracious language in which he often replied to the importunities of her anxious affection; a language so foreign to his heart, and so contrary to his own habits in friendship: this too accounts for his constantly repressing ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... coldly. She could have beaten herself for a rude, ungracious creature; yet for the life of her she could not command another manner. Susy drew back. She and Winnington began to talk again, ranging over persons and incidents quite unknown to Delia—the frank talk, full of matter of comrades in a public service. ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of her mother, was a privileged subject, used to come to the manse on the Saturdays for a meal of meat; and so it fell out that as, by some neglect of mine, no steps had been taken to regulate the disposal of the victual that constituted the means of the augmentation, some of the heritors, in an ungracious temper, sent what they called the tithe-ball (the Lord knows it was not the fiftieth!) to the manse, where I had no place to put it. This fell out on a Saturday night, when I was busy with my sermon, thinking not of silver or gold, but of much better; so that I ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... and intelligent set, whose conversation entertained me, as they met three times a day at table. They were all friends of Mr. Seabrook, which gave them the privilege of saying playful things to me about him daily. To these remarks I must make equally playful replies, or seem ungracious to them. You will see how every such circumstance complicated my ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... when, so to speak, the small, learnt-by-rote lessons of civilization, of kindness, graciousness, or intelligence, are not being called into play by common business or acquaintanceship. There, in the train, they sit in the elemental, native dreariness of their more practical, ungracious demand on life; not bad in any way, oh no; nor actively repulsive, but trite, empty, everyday, in the sense of what everyday often, alas! really is, but certainly no day or hour or minute, in a decent universe, should ever be. And suddenly a new traveller gets in; and, turning round, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Hermiston was coarse and cruel; and yet the son was aware of a bloomless nobility, an ungracious abnegation of the man's self in the man's office. At every word, this sense of the greatness of Lord Hermiston's spirit struck more home; and along with it that of his own impotence, who had struck - and perhaps basely struck - at his own father, and not reached so far as to have even ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... twisted the MSS. in my head, and can make nothing of them. I knew when I took them that I could not; but I do not like to do an act of ungracious necessity at once; so I am ever committing myself by half engagements and total failures. I cannot make any body understand why I can't do such things. It is a defect in my occiput. I cannot put other people's thoughts together; I forget every paragraph as fast as ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... there would have been some kindly relentings towards her; but there seemed none. So she answered him sadly, and the two sat down to their gloomy, silent breakfast. And thus it was all that day. Mr. Greylston still mute and ungracious; his sister shrank away from him. In that mood she scarcely knew him; and her face was grave, and her voice so sad, even the servants wondered what was the matter. Margaret Greylston had fully overcome all angry, reproachful feelings against her ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... reached Portsmouth, my kinsman, Captain Tilton, gave me an ungracious reception. He rebuked me severely for expressing a determination ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... wished me a bon-jour in, as I thought, a somewhat colder tone than he had hitherto used towards me, and looked me at the same time enquiringly in the face. It seemed as if he wished to read there whether his courtesy and kindness were likely to be requited by the same ungracious stiffness that I had shown him on the preceding day. Well, I will do my best to obliterate the bad impression I have apparently made. They are good people, these Creoles—not particularly bashful or discreet; but yet I like their forwardness and volatility better than the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... but painful collision with various conflicting orders of their fellow-men, was not his. He was to the last plain and blunt; at this time I can easily believe him to have been so to a degree which Scott might look upon as "ungracious"—I take the epithet from one of his letters to James Ballantyne. Mr. Blackwood, therefore, upon reading what seemed to him the lame and impotent conclusion of a well-begun story, did not search about for any glossy periphrase, but at once ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Barouche at the meeting, she realized how sincere yet insincere he was; how gifted and yet how ungracious was his mind. Her youth was over; long pain and regret had chastened her. She was as lonely a creature as ever the world knew; violence was no part of her equipment; and yet terrible memories made her assent to this new phase of Carnac's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of envious pride, A miscreant born for a plague to men; A monster that devoureth all he meets. Were but his father dead, so he would reign, Yea, he would go good-near to deal by him As Nebuchadnezzar's ungracious son, Foul Merodach[124], by his father dealt: Who when his sire was turned to an ox Full greedily snatch'd up his sovereignty, And thought himself a king without control. So it fell out, seven years expir'd and gone, Nebuchadnezzar came to his shape again, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... told herself bitterly that she hadn't a friend in the world—not even one who cared enough for her to come and see her or write her a letter now and then. She thought her boarding-house acquaintances disliked her and she resented their dislike, without admitting to herself that her ungracious ways were responsible for it. She smiled sourly when little ripples of laughter came faintly down the hall from the front room where The Trio were writing their letters and laughing over the fun ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... replied the prince almost testily; "but, of course, it would be ungracious not to appear. This, however, I do know, that I shall take no ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... gave Redmond complete and most useful backing. It would have been possible to call together a group consisting of men who had been members of the national organization which would have excluded all these and included the Bishops;[10] but Redmond probably felt it would be ungracious to do this. His chief desire was to avoid all recognition of party and still more of partisan machinery. His conclusion was to do nothing; and it was a conclusion to which he was prone at all times when he did not see his way clear. This ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... undoubted tyranny, which Julian accepted, carelessly, thoughtlessly, a prey to the internal degradation of his mind. Once he had only been nobly susceptible, a fine power. Now he was drearily weak, an ungracious disability. But with his weakness came, as is usual, a certain lassitude which even resembled despair, an indifference peculiar to the slave, how opposed to the indifference peculiar to the autocrat. Valentine recognized in the voice the badge of serfdom, even more than in the ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... education and habits of all the inhabitants of this part of the world, have been from infancy so regulated, and during many generations so completely formed to this sort of life, that not the smallest ungracious familiarity ever ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... he hung the flat wallet containing the message around his neck inside his kamis and pushed on. Every foot of progress he essayed was snarlingly disputed until the rank of the aggressive stranger was guessed by his superior dress, when he was given a moody and ungracious path. But he finally met an immovable obstacle in the shape ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... course we would tell him how truly thankful he ought to be for never having been robbed before, in spite of living so long in this world, and that he was taking a very ungrateful, not to say ungracious, view, in thus repining, and feeling aggrieved; when anyone else would have knelt and thanked God for enjoying so long an immunity. But say what we would, it was all as one. Uncle Ben stuck fast to it, that he had nothing to thank ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... if you will let me say so," he began, gently. "I hope you are right in what you said, and that Mr. Lockwood will not meet with a rebuff or an ungracious answer. Why," he went on quickly, "I have seen him take out his gun now every spring and every fall for the last ten years and clean and polish it and tell what great shots he and Henry, as he calls him, used ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... be quite generally true of those who have been the great masters of literature, however, that in proportion as they have been great they have proved to be as ungracious and as tantalisingly elusive as the universe itself. They have refused, without exception, to bear down on the word "how." They have almost never told men what to do, and have confined themselves ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... shall the effect of this good lesson keep As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whilst, like the puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... ungracious and rude," she added, "and yet he didn't look in the least the sort of man who would be like that. There was no lack of breeding about him. He was just deliberately snubby—as though I had no right ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... 'That is ungracious, but, nevertheless, I will continue. It is better, I see, to be honest with you, if a man wants to get anything from you. Now, I want to get a bit of information from you. I want to know where you got the money with ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... was the only craft in the trade then)—with little things to sell, and a return cargo of flour, gin, tobacco, and such like Yankee notions, which the Nova Scotians must have, and upon which her Majesty lavished most ungracious duties, to fetch home. Well, the Squire lived at the town of Annapolis, twenty miles up a river, where Digby, at its entrance, was the only port of entry within a hundred miles. Seeing that I liked to make quick trips, it was not always convenient to stop at this obdurate port of entry, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... worlds to conquer at least, or scalps to hang at my belt. No? You ungracious little thing! There is a good-by kiss to show you that I always hold out ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... his temper was vile, and his valet trembled. Then he went down into the restaurant scowling, and was ungracious to the polite and conciliating waiters, ordering his food and a bottle of claret as if they had done him an injury. "Anglais," they said to one another behind the serving-screen, pointing their thumbs at him—"he pay ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... old then—none of us were; it was a short time after the death of that old harpy, the Duchess of Wrexe, and some wag said that the dinner was in celebration of that happy occasion. Johnny was not so ungracious as that, but he gave us a very merry evening and he did undoubtedly feel a kind of lightness ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... forgive the seduction of his daughter, in revenge for which he had taken a solemn oath to overturn the kingdom of Sind, raze the capital, and feast his eyes with the blood of the old sultan and his son. On receipt of this ungracious reply to his proposals, the sultan and Eusuff had no alternative but to oppose so inveterate a foe. They collected their troops, by whom they were much beloved, and marched to meet the enemy, whom, after ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon. |
