"Unhandsome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sinfonie was to have been performed, when Ramm and Punto came to me in the greatest rage to ask me why my sinfonie concertante was not to be given. "I don't know. This is the first I hear of it. I cannot tell." Ramm was frantic, and abused Le Gros in the music-room in French, saying how very unhandsome it was on his part, etc. I alone was to be kept in the dark! If he had even made an excuse—that the time was too short, or something of the kind!—but he never said a syllable. I believe the real cause to be Cambini, an Italian maestro; for at our first meeting at Le Gros's, I unwittingly ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... head, the relaxed jaw, the ugly stain on the sheet. The examination needed only a moment. Death was written in the clear white of the nostrils, the colorless lips, the smoothing away of the sinister lines of the night before. With its new dignity the face was not unhandsome: the gray hair was still plentiful, the features strong ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... be far in advance, in spirit, even of his still active and powerful frame. With these must be connected a snub nose—a double chin, adorned with grisly honors, which are borne, like the fleece of the lamb, only occasionally to the shears of the shearer—and a small, and not unhandsome, mouth, at certain periods pursed into an expression of irresistible humour, but more frequently expressing a sense of lofty independence. The grisly neck, little more or less bared, as the season may demand—a kerchief loosely tied around the collar of a checked shirt—and a ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... and physicians are bad institutions of a country Plays of children are not performed in play Pleasing all: a mark that can never be aimed at or hit Pleasure of telling (a pleasure little inferior to that of doing Poets Possession begets a contempt of what it holds and rules Practical Jokes: Tis unhandsome to fight in play Preachers very often work more upon their auditory than reasons Preface to bribe the benevolence of the courteous reader Prefer in bed, beauty before goodness Preferring the universal and common tie ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... friends, men with whom he had been upon the closest terms of association. In a way they represented what now had come to be his world. His single swift glance took in the men, one after another. Annixter, rugged, crude, sitting awkwardly and uncomfortably in his chair, his unhandsome face, with its outthrust lower lip and deeply cleft masculine chin, flushed and eager, his yellow hair disordered, the one tuft on the crown standing stiffly forth like the feather in an Indian's scalp lock; Broderson, vaguely combing at his long beard with a persistent maniacal ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... have been paid, that have not one-hundredth part of the meaning or beauty that is to be found in Linton's woodcut of Rafaelle's Madonna, which may be had for twopence. The head reminds one of the observation made by Hazlitt upon a picture, that it seems as if an unhandsome act would be impossible in its presence. It embodies the ideas of mother's love, womanly beauty, and earnest piety. As some one said of the picture: "It looks as if a bit of Heaven ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... on with his vain wit and gay rhetoric till he had nothing more to say, knowing that he was hiding consciousness of unhandsome conduct. Sticking firmly to his point, Alfred showed that his client, though gentle, was resolved, and that, unless Buckhurst yielded, law must take its course—that though he should never give any hint, the ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... case of prologues. The delivery of an epilogue by a woman (i.e. by a boy playing the part of a woman) was clearly unusual at the time of the first performance of "As You Like It." "It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue," says Rosalind; "but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue. If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine they do use good bushes; and good plays prove the better by the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... feeling somewhat "mugwumpish" myself that morning, for it was pretty plain that I never could lead the Republican party in that house, as long as Addison was about. Still, I did not like the idea of being a "copperhead;"—for that was the unhandsome designation which Addison applied to all lukewarm or doubtful citizens. On the whole, I decided that I had better be a quiet, not very talkative Unionist, and not mix too freely in politics. I had some idea, ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... lilt from La Fille de Madame Angot, a light opera long since forgotten in New York. Hillard, genuinely astonished, lowered his pipe and listened. To sit dreaming by an open window, even in this unlovely first month of the year, in that grim unhandsome city which boasts of its riches and still accepts with smug content its rows upon rows of ugly architecture, to sit dreaming, then, of red-tiled roofs, of cloud-caressed hills, of terraced vineyards, of ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... annoying to have to reply to unhandsome and unjust accusations. The REV. MR. ARROWSMITH first transposes two lines of Shakspeare, and then, by notes of admiration, holds me up as a mere simpleton; and then A. E. B. charges me with having pirated from him my explanation of a passage in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... or set up a claim to private estate in the Holy Ghost. The Spirit blows where it lists. Truth inspires whom it finds. He who knows best to conspire with it has it. Both philosophers swerved from their native simplicity and nobleness of soul. Both sinned and were sinned against. Leibnitz did unhandsome things, but he was sorely tried. His heart told him that the right of the quarrel was on his side, and the general stupidity would not see it. The general malice, rejoicing in aspersion of a noble name, would not see it. The Royal Society would not see it,—nor France, until long after Leibnitz's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... a sacred poet; but the delicacy and insinuating gentleness of his disposition were better fitted to the veiled than the direct mode of instruction. His was a mind which would have shrunk more from the chance of debasing a sacred subject by unhandsome treatment, than of incurring ridicule by what would be called unseasonable attempts to hallow things merely secular. It was natural therefore for him to choose not a scriptural story, but a tale of chivalry and romance; ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... it, lamping Samminiato, 150 Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder, Perfect till the nightingales applauded. Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished, Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs, Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver, Goes dispiritedly, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... Northumberland; amongst which I had been one, but at that time I had caught cold and a dangerous sickness, in raising and training my whole regiment together on Paxton-Moor near Thornton, where one Hallden, a stubborn fellow of Pickering, not obeying his captain, and giving me some unhandsome language, I struck him with my cane, and felled him to the ground. The cane was tipped with silver, and hitting just under the ear, had greater operation than I intended. But either the man was ill or else counterfeited so, to be freed from service; which I willingly granted, ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... reptiles slowly crawling over one another in their slimy pond. But he was enraged at the similarity between the two sensations, and he walked briskly on that level and monotonous road, looking about him at the unhandsome spectacle of suburban ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... Night's Dream, and the other before the publication of the Twelfth Night. Shakspeare, it is well known, in very early youth, married a girl a good deal older than himself, and there is at least no evidence to shew that, as usual, he did not repent his choice. Now, we will admit that it was unhandsome in the poet at the beginning of the Dream to make Hermia and Lysander discourse upon this ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... apprehension into his even-featured, not unhandsome face. Evidently she found it hard to meet his eyes,—eyes wholly lacking in humor and kindliness, but unquestionably vivid and compelling under his heavy, dark brows. "I'm going home," she told him at last. "I guess, if you're ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... new experience, which is the best thing one can come home with, and the rarest nowadays; and with a pocketful of Alaskan garnets, which are about the worst he can come home with, being as they are utterly valueless, and unhandsome even when they are ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... justly called 'the father of Whitby,' and it is to him we owe a fascinating account of his life at Whitby in Stuart and Jacobean times. He describes how he lived for some time in the gate-house of the abbey buildings, 'till my house was repaired and habitable, which then was very ruinous and all unhandsome, the wall being only of timber and plaster, and ill-contrived within: and besides the repairs, or rather re-edifying the house, I built the stable and barn, I heightened the outwalls of the court double to what they were, and made all the wall round about the paddock; so that ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... doors a din of shrieks went abruptly still. They rose again in a squeaking babel of amazement and again were silenced as Chet Bullard stepped through the arch. Beside him was the slender figure of Anita; following was a stocky man whose unhandsome, face was ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... every woman; for a man to be shaking his head, or using any light motion with his hands or feet, whether he stands or sits, or speaks, is always accompanied with an extravagant motion, unnecessary, superfluous and unhandsome. Such a man, by the rule of physiognomy is vain, unwise, unchaste, a detractor, unstable and unfaithful. He or she whose motion is not much when discoursing with any one, is for the most part wise and well bred, and fit for any employment, ingenious and apprehensive, frugal, faithful and ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... dwell upon a march of three weeks, during which we alternately received kind or unhandsome treatment, according to the dispositions of those who had us in charge; but I must observe, that it was invariably the case, that officers who were gentlemen by birth treated us with consideration, while those who ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... be only intended."[450] It was a comfort to Scott at the end of his life to reflect that the tendency of all he had written was morally good,[451] and we can well believe that he was pleased by the enthusiastic tribute of his young critic, J.L. Adolphus, who said of his books: "There is not an unhandsome action or degrading sentiment recorded of any person who is recommended to the ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... Oldbuck dropped his snuff-box; and the Scottish rappee, which dispersed itself in consequence, had effects upon the nasal organs of our reporter, ensconced as he was under the secretary's table, which occasioned his being discovered and extruded in the illiberal and unhandsome manner we have mentioned, with threats of farther damage to his nose, ears, and other portions of his body, on the part especially of Captain Clutterbuck. Undismayed by these threats, which indeed ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of rock and sand; beyond, to the right, the cliffs rose in a cloud of gulls, and nearer and leftwards the long rollers broke upon a little beach which sloped up to the verdure of a tiny valley. It was a solitary but a not unhandsome prospect, and my eyes devoured it with inward satisfaction, even with longing. Far away a little hill was crowned with trees, and the sun was shining warmly on the gray ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... consulted high medical authority (as Hurstley judged), to wit, the Union doctor of last scene, an enterprising practitioner, glib in theory, and bold in practice—and it had been mutually agreed between them that "stomach" was the cause of these unhandsome symptoms; acridity of the gastric juice, consequent indigestion and spasm, and generally a hypochondriacal habit of body. Mr. Jennings must take certain draughts thrice a day, be very careful of his diet, and keep his mind at ease. As to Simon himself, he was, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... me to be under the necessity of entering into a detail of this sort; but the unhandsome representation Monsieur Las Cases has made to your Lordship of my conduct, has obliged me to produce proofs of the light in which the transaction was viewed by Buonaparte as ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... much as milk legs usually do. While there was no great pain the leg was unhandsome to look upon, and it gave to Old Silver a clumsiness of movement he had ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... married Lady Mary Thynne, widow of Thomas Thynne, and daughter of Edward, Earl of Jersey (see Letter 29, note 3). In October 1710 Lady Wentworth wrote to her son, "Pray, my dear, why will you let Lady Mary Thynne go? She is young, rich, and not unhandsome, some say she is pretty; and a virtuous lady, and of the nobility, and why will you not try to get her?" (Wentworth ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... granite pile, the Treasury building-an edifice that would command respect in any capital. The stores and hotels that wall in this broad avenue are mean, and cheap, and dingy, and are better left without comment. Beyond the Treasury is a fine large white barn, with wide unhandsome grounds about it. The President lives there. It is ugly enough outside, but that is nothing to what it is inside. Dreariness, flimsiness, bad taste reduced to mathematical completeness is what the inside offers to the eye, if it remains yet ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... stand, saying what she had said, hearing what she was hearing, eye to eye, open soul to open soul, with one who could make words—words at any rate—happen between himself and Gideon Hayle. She looked this time not alone into his eyes but on all his unhandsome countenance, and in a surviving upflare of her younger days' extravagance thought whether, among all time's heroes of the world's waters, there had ever been one too great for Hugh Courteney's face. So looking she thrilled with the belief that there was nothing such men had ever done which this ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... to say, my proof-sheets being still behind. Very unhandsome conduct on the part of the Blucher[501] while I was lauding it so profusely. It is necessary to halt and close up our files—of correspondence I mean. So it is a chance if, except for contradiction's ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... in other discourse, and most dully serious: they have a particular unaptness to describe any good thing, or commend any worthy person; being destitute of right ideas, and proper terms answerable to such purposes: their representations of that kind are absurd and unhandsome; their eulogies (to use their own way of speaking) are in effect satires, and they can hardly more abuse a man than by attempting to commend him; like those in the prophet, who were wise to do ill, but to ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... occasion, the centre of all this enthusiasm—thus carried as if in triumph into this assembly in evening dress, in white tulle and whiter kid, odorous of delicate sachets and scarce-perceptible perfumes—was a figure unhandsome and unkempt beyond description. His hair was long, and hanging over his eyes. A thick, uncared-for beard concealed the mouth and chin. He was dressed in a Chinaman's blouse and jeans—the latter thrust into slashed and tattered boots. The tan and weatherbeatings of nearly ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... uttered by a lady, so far from seeming to resent it, he will be the first to commend it; but notwithstanding that, he will remember it as a trait of malice, when the whole company shall have forgotten it as a stroke of wit. Women are so far from being privileged by their sex to say unhandsome or cruel things, that it is this very circumstance which renders them more intolerable. When the arrow is lodged in the heart, it is no relief to him who is wounded to reflect, that the hand which shot it was ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... man was seen to creep into the tunnel. Standing up when inside, he proved to be a tall, powerful Eskimo, with a not unhandsome but stern countenance, which was somewhat marred by a deep ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... moves with giant grace— That wild, tho' not unhandsome face; That voice which sometimes in its tone Is softer than the wood-dove's moan, At others, louder than the storm Which beats the side of old Cairn Gorm; That hand, as white as falling snow, Which yet can fell the stoutest foe; And, last of all, that noble heart, ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... low-minded, low-thoughted[obs3]; base-minded. undignified, indign|; unbecoming, unbeseeming[obs3], unbefitting; derogatory, degrading; infra dignitatem [Latin: beneath one's dignity]; ungentlemanly, ungentlemanlike; unknightly[obs3], unchivalric[obs3], unmanly, unhandsome; recreant, inglorious. corrupt, venal; debased, mongrel. faithless, of bad faith, false, unfaithful, disloyal; untrustworthy; trustless, trothless[obs3]; lost to shame, dead to honor; barratrous. Adv. dishonestly &c. adj.; mala fide[Lat], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and at the ensuing Minute, when I place him in the Condition my Anger would bring him to, how compassionate; it would give you some Notion how miserable I am, and how little I deserve it. When I remonstrate with the greatest Gentleness that is possible against unhandsome Appearances, and that married Persons are under particular Rules; when he is in the best Humour to receive this, I am answered only, That I expose my own Reputation and Sense if I appear jealous. I wish, good Sir, you would take this into serious Consideration, and admonish Husbands ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... justice to myself I must make a few observations. You say that the King thinks me resentful; this is extraordinary, for I have no such feeling; my feelings were and are deeply wounded at the unhandsome and secret manner (so totally, in letter and in meaning, contrary to an entente cordiale) in which this affair was settled, and in which the two marriages ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... much abounded, very many, fools and ignorant persons, have ofttimes, lest they should perish from the memory of the faithful, written the lives of the saints, certainly with a pious intent, but in a most unhandsome style. Wherefore, in reading the lives and acts of the saints composed in a rude manner or barbarous dialect, disgust is often excited, and not seldom tardiness of belief. And hence it is that the ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... through India; and so when four or five of the prettiest of these dusky damsels gather about me, smile at me winsomely ogle me with their big black eyes, smile again, smile separately, smile unanimously, smile all over their semi-mahogany but nevertheless not unhandsome faces, and every time displaying sets of pearly teeth, what could I do, what could anyone have done, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Madam Liberality in the end that his way was a wrong one, but she had her doubts many times in her life whether there were not something unhandsome in her own decided talent for economy. Not that economy was always pleasant to her. When people are very poor for their position in life, they can only keep out of debt by stinting on many occasions when stinting is very painful to a liberal spirit. And it requires a sterner virtue than ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... describe so far, his stature was certainly a splendid one. He stood not less than six feet two inches high; his chest was full, and his neck and limbs such as a sculptor might take as a model for a Hercules. His face was not unhandsome, but it was marred by an all-prevading expression of cruelty. In his eye there was no room for pity or remorse; nor was there a feature in his face that could harbour a generous or kindly impulse; or one of honour. His hair was dark, but tinged ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... fair readers who may have occasion to defend their rights at the point of the lance, that the days of chivalry or the cavaliers of chivalry will be very unhandsome in applying to them the rules of the tourney. Amadis, it will be observed here, does not condescend to use his sword against a woman. And this is not from tenderness, but from contempt. For when the Queen saw that he only took the broken ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... to Banff is very fine,"*[4] says Southey, "by the Earl of Fife's grounds, where the trees are surprisingly grown, considering how near they are to the North Sea; Duff House— a square, odd, and not unhandsome pile, built by Adams (one of the Adelphi brothers), some forty years ago; a good bridge of seven arches by Smeaton; the open sea, not as we had hitherto seen it, grey under a leaden sky, but bright and blue in the sunshine; Banff on the left of the bay; the River Doveran almost lost amid banks ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... small imitations of Plato:—Phaeax returning from an expedition to Sicily (compare Socrates in the Charmides from the army at Potidaea), the figure of the game at draughts, borrowed from the Republic, etc. It has also in many passages the ring of sophistry. On the other hand, the rather unhandsome treatment which is exhibited towards Prodicus is quite unlike the urbanity ...
— Eryxias • An Imitator of Plato
... she said, "ought to have remembered, brother, that the barony of Tillietudlem has the baronial privilege of pit and gallows; and therefore, if the lad was to be executed on my estate, (which I consider as an unhandsome thing, seeing it is in the possession of females, to whom such tragedies cannot be acceptable,) he ought, at common law, to have been delivered up to my bailie, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... led to the opinion, that there are few more disagreeable beings in creation than ill-nurtured bears,—bears that have been ill-licked,—those great, fierce, sullen, cross-grained and ill-tempered beasts, that are, unhappily, to be found in every part of this various world; but when all these unhandsome qualities are found in one individual of the species, and that one happens to have a sore head into the bargain, it is easy to believe the at home which he honours or dishonours with his presence can neither be very quiet ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... people of England. This fairly transported us. The royal features were strong, somewhat grim even, and he had a black brow and a swarthy complexion, reminding us of the southern part of his stock; but there was good temper in the smile of his wide though not unhandsome mouth; and his carriage was eminently that of the gentleman. Lady Castlemain at that time was little more than twenty. The Queen, though short of stature, was young also, and looked handsomer than we expected; and as all parties ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... Forschungen (1884), the work from which Mr. Max Muller cites the letter to Mullenhoff, Mannhardt discusses Demeter Erinnys. She is the Arcadian goddess, who, in the form of a mare, became mother of Despoina and the horse Arion, by Poseidon. {51a} Her anger at the unhandsome behaviour of Poseidon caused Demeter to be called Erinnys—'to be angry' being [Greek] in Arcadian—a folk-etymology, clearly. Mannhardt first dives deep into the sources for this fable. {51b} Arion, he decides, is no mythological personification, but a poetical ideal ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... type of ancient-youth, extraordinarily unhandsome if not positively ugly. He had a weak pimply grey face, was clad in a brownish uniform, puttees (on pipestem calves), and a regular Messenger Boy cap. Upon securing a place he instantly went to the card-table, seated himself hurriedly, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... responded John, "though I think it's perhaps the merest trifle unhandsome of you to fling it in my face. I have eaten a great deal, and I am still eating. That is what I come to table for. In an orderly life like mine there is a place for everything. I come to table ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... one of the most unhandsome speeches ever made; and indeed to this day I can scarce reconcile it to my notion of a gentleman that was my friend. I retorted upon him with his Scots accent, of which he had not so much as some, but enough to be very barbarous and disgusting, as I told him plainly; and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not one drachma for himself. When Dionysius, the tyrant, sent his daughters some costly gowns of Sicilian manufacture, he would not receive them, saying he was afraid they would make them look more unhandsome. But a while after, being sent ambassador from the same city to the same tyrant, when he had sent him a couple of robes, and bade him choose which of them he would, and carry to his daughter: "She," said he, "will be able to choose best ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... be much obliged to you for the copy of my letter to Pitt, which I enclosed to you in my last letter, as it is the only one I have. It has never been answered, nor has Pitt ever said a word to me on the subject, which I think unhandsome and unkind. He must be the best judge, whether such personal inattentions can ensure the continuance of zeal and activity in his interests of those who plague themselves with ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... was a lengthy ditty, and in its wording not oversqueamish; the Queen's career in England was detailed without any stuttering, and you would have found the catalogue unhandsome. Yet Sir Gregory delivered it with an incisive gusto, desperately countersigning his own death warrant. Her treacheries, her adulteries and her assassinations were rendered in glowing terms whose vigor seemed, even now, to please their contriver. Yet the minstrel ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... inveigling people to desert, and enlist with them!' said the Austrian Authorities; and ordered the Three Prussian Officers unceremoniously off the ground. Which Friedrich, when he heard of it, thought an unhandsome pipe-clay procedure, and kept in mind ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... talk of his "ha'porth of sack," On his weights make unhandsome reflection; But little he'll reck, as fines fall on our back, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... the Fables, was then at the court of this prince, by whom he was very kindly entertained. He was concerned at the unhandsome treatment Solon received, and said to him by way of advice: "Solon, we must either not come near princes at all, or speak things that are agreeable to them." "Say rather," replied Solon, "that we should either never come near ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... "Now, how unhandsome life is!" I broke out, at one point on our way home, after we had turned the affair over in every light, and then dropped it, and then taken it up again. "It's so graceless, so tasteless! Why didn't Tedham die before the expiration of his term and solve ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... fellow of the wonderful days of four or five years ago away down in the sunny Ohio valley where he had courted the Girl and where they lived before they moved to the farm in Canada. He tried to impress upon Little Jim's mind what it meant for a great big, unhandsome fellow like himself to be loved by a tender slip of a girl whose hair was like gold and whose eyes were as blue as the wood-violets. One evening he fumbled for a minute under his bunk and came back to the table with a worn and finger-marked manila envelope, from which he drew tenderly and ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... black fellow has been kept from the vices of civilization he is a most engaging savage. Tall, thin, muscular, with fine black beard and hair and a curiously wide and impressive forehead, he is not at all unhandsome. He is capable of great devotion to a white master, and is very plucky by daylight, though his courage usually goes with the fall of night. He takes to a horse naturally, and some of the finest riders ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... unhandsome conduct towards him, Warwick found an ally in Clarence, the king's brother, gave him one of his daughters in marriage, and even encouraged him to hope for the succession to the crown. Edward's extravagant and luxurious life had lost him much of his popularity. He had ceased, moreover, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... love it! Nor had he the slightest idea of any mode in which to make it. Most of the methods he had come in contact with, except that of manual labour, in which work was done and money paid immediately for it, repelled him, as having elements of the unhandsome where not the dishonest: he was not yet able to distinguish between substance and mode in such matters. The only way in which he ever dreamed of coming into possession of money—it was another of his favourite castles—was ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... while those of his illustrious confederates are either forgotten, or exist only to furnish proofs, that the same conclusion, which one man had deduced scientifically, may be brought out by another in consequence of errors that luckily chanced to neutralize each other. It would be unhandsome as a conjecture, even were it not, as it actually is, false in point of fact to attribute this difference to the deficiency of talent on the part of Burke's friends, or of experience, or of historical knowledge. The satisfactory solution is, that ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... remembrance of her, and with the less suspicion of mercenariness, as the silk, the symbolum materiale of your friendship, has not yet appeared. I think Horace says somewhere, nox longa. I would not impute negligence or unhandsome delays to a person whom you have honoured with your confidence; but I have not heard of the silk, or of Mr. Knox, save by your letter. Maybe he expects the first advances! or it may be that he has not succeeded in getting the article on shore, for ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... said Mark, irritably, 'anything you please. I'm a reformed character; I'll take the pledge to abstain from ink in all forms if you like.' It was not a very gracious way of accepting what was by no means an unhandsome offer; but he was jarred and worried, and scarcely knew ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... sat silent, disgraced, unable to explain a thing. It was unhandsome of Sarah Schuyler, she felt, though no more than she might have expected of her, she told herself. She had never liked her. Well, wait until her opportunity came. If they did not wish her to say the truth she must say something. She could at least tell what she thought. And what ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Donald Bean's cottage, and before three o'clock Phineas found himself mounted on a shaggy steed, which, in sober truth, was not much bigger than a large dog. "If Mr. Kennedy is really my rival," said Phineas to himself, as he trotted along, "I almost think that I am doing an unhandsome thing ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... ill-naturedly informed me that officers being at all detached from their regimental duty was contrary to some instructions he had from the Duke of York. In consequence I was obliged to give up his services after this unhandsome claim, but claimed him as my AIDE-DE-CAMP, and that the object of discovery should not be relinquished, I sent him on an embassy to ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... the simpler devices which are, after all, only less expert ways of labour. In those happy conditions, neither from the material, suggesting to the workman, nor from the workman looking askance at his unhandsome material, comes a first proposal to pour in cement and make fast the underworld, out of sight. But fate spares not that suggestion to the able and the unlucky at their task of making neat work of the means, the distribution, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... unhandsome treatment, it may be likewise added, Rover's tail, which he generally carried in a jaunty fashion, with the trifle of a twist to one side, as became a dog of his degree and one moving in the best canine ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... cavalry mount, but he took his rider there and back, safely. He was sure-footed, with a cat's ability to move at night, and in scout circles he had already made a favorable impression. But he certainly was an unhandsome creature. ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... inconvenience is to be accepted. I have myself, therefore, set forth this comedy; but so, that my enforced absence must much rely upon the printer's discretion: but I shall entreat slight errors in orthography may be as slightly overpassed, and that the unhandsome shape which this trifle in reading presents, may be pardoned for the pleasure it once afforded you when it was presented with the ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... dear," said Mrs Feasible, "what do you think of this? Very unhandsome on the part of Doctor Plausible! I was told this morning that several of our acquaintances have expressed a wish ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... I'd have helped myself," was Joyce's remark. "I would not go off in this unhandsome way ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to him." Ali Baba, who had expected that his brother, after what he had said, would go to the forest, had declined going himself that day, for fear of giving him any umbrage; therefore told her, without any reflection upon her husband's unhandsome behaviour, that she need not frighten herself, for that certainly Cassim would not think it proper to come into the town till the night should ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... two-wheel'd carroches, worse Than managing a wooden-horse Dragg'd out through straiter holes by th' ears, Eras'd or coup'd for perjurers; Who, though th' attempt had prov'd in vain, 215 Had had no reason to complain: But since it prosper'd, 'tis unhandsome To blame the hand that paid our ransome, And rescu'd your obnoxious bones From unavoidable battoons. 220 The enemy was reinforc'd, And we disabled, and unhors'd, Disarm'd, unqualify'd for fight, And no way left but hasty flight, Which though as desp'rate ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... my head, and saw the profile of a man who was leaning over the parapet beside me. It was a refined face, not unhandsome, though pinched and pale enough, and the coat collar turned up and pinned round the throat marked his status in life as sharply as a uniform. I felt I was committed to the price of a bed and breakfast ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... a point where, still hidden, she could see the lawn. The Vicar was in full career; the harsh creaking voice came to her from the distance. What an awkward unhandsome figure, with his long, lank countenance, his large ears and spectacled eyes! Yet an apostle, she admitted, in his way—a whole-hearted, single-minded gentleman. But the ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ruffianism too far. On the walls are black engravings of the French school, fit ornaments for the place. But, while we are taking this casual survey, one of the attendant nymphs, with great scantiness of clothing, affording display for bare shoulders and not unhandsome ankles, appears, and in a voice of affected sweetness wholly at variance with her brazen countenance and impertinent air, requests us to be seated, and asks what we'll have. We modestly ask for 'Two ales,' ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... clubmen.' Reginald Paynter had been, if not the only, at all events the best dressed man in town. His clothes were made in New York. This in itself had been sufficient to have set him apart from all the other males of Oakdale. He was widely travelled, had an independent fortune, and was far from unhandsome. For years he had been the hope and despair of every Oakdale mother with marriageable daughters. The Oakdale fathers, however, had not been so keen about Reginald. Men usually know more about the morals of men than do women. There were those who, if pressed, would have conceded ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... bank. Mr. Hooker wore somewhat shabby clothes for a banker; in fact, he never could recover from certain personal habits formed during a penurious boyhood. He had a thin hatchet face which just at this moment was shining though from some inward glow. Although he was an unhandsome little man, his expression was that of one at peace with man and God and was pleasant to see. He had been so excited by the minister that he was constrained to say something even to two negroes. So as he unlocked the little one-story bank, he told Tump and Peter that he had been listening ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... add the yet more lively allurement of a haunted house, for over these empty and silent miles there broods the fear of the negrito cannibal. For the Samoan besides, there is something barbaric, unhandsome, and absurd in the idea of thus growing food only to send it from the land and sell it. A man at home who should turn all Yorkshire into one wheatfield, and annually burn his harvest on the altar of Mumbo-Jumbo, might impress ourselves ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... breath. She had pitied the man sincerely, had kissed him with almost equal sincerity, for he was not unhandsome; it pleased her to be in a way and for a time his protector, and above all there were four thousand pounds to be handled by some one. Now through a slip of the tongue and a little feminine desire to give a little, not too much, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... heart, and passionately desirous of a military life. In figure he was deformed, one shoulder being higher and one leg longer than the other, while his chest was flat and his back slightly humped. His features were not unhandsome, though very pale, and he spoke with some difficulty. He was feeble and sickly as a boy, subject to intermittent fever, and wasted away so greatly that it seemed as if he would not ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... appearance of many years younger, though perhaps the extreme composure of his temperament, and the philosophic manner in which he viewed all circumstances, whether pleasing or disastrous, may have exercised the greatest influence in keeping his eyes clear and clean, and his countenance free of unhandsome wrinkles. He was more like a soldier than a doctor, and was proud of his resemblance to the earlier portraits of Bismarck. To see him in his own particular 'sanctum' surrounded by weird-looking ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the soldiers bore dead bodies by, He called the untaught knaves, unmannerly, To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse Betwixt ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... art connoisseur. He was of medium height, of stout build, with curly black hair and a curly black beard, a swarthy complexion, a bullet head, a bull neck, a huge chest and plump arms and legs. He was by no means unhandsome in appearance and very jovial, good-humored, and good-natured; manifestly fond of all the good things of life and able to discriminate and appreciate ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... my lord, but it seems to me that without the cistern there would be no need for the engine. How should you want or how could you use the unhandsome thing? Then how should the cistern ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... been, what company I had met with there, and what observations I had made to myself thereupon. He seemed to understand as little of them as I had done before, and civilly abstained from casting any unhandsome reflections on them. ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... Like a beaten puppy's tail. (A beaten puppy drops his tail and drags it weakly behind him. The feather drooped down behind him and dragged limply along. The figure gives a vivid picture of the wet feather, limp and unhandsome. The figure is a comparison in the form of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... this: the first critic that ever had occasion to describe my personal appearance littered his description with foolish and inexcusable errors whose aggregate furnished the result that I was distinctly and distressingly unhandsome. That description floated around the country in the papers, and was in constant use and wear for a quarter of a century. It seems strange to me that apparently no critic in the country could be found who could look at me and have the courage to take up his pen ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... emerged from the path a woman, who was neither very young nor very pretty, but her face was full of pain, and her eyes full of tears, which signs of sorrow were augmented by a considerable scare, as she suddenly found herself face to face with the unhandsome Jude. ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... belonged to this sort of people; and, of course, Mr. John Seymour's marriage afforded them opportunity for some wholesome moral discipline. The Ferguson girls were frank, social, magnanimous young women; of that class, to whom the saying or doing of a rude or unhandsome thing by any human being was an utter impossibility, and whose cheeks would flush at the mere idea of asserting personal superiority over any one. Nevertheless, they trod the earth firmly, as girls who felt that they were born to a certain position. Judge ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition. Nature does not like to be observed, and likes that we should be her fools and playmates. We may have the sphere for our cricket-ball, but not a berry for our philosophy. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... position was getting better; he was making fifteen thousand francs per annum, but that was nothing compared to his dreams. He was then twenty-eight years of age. He felt ready to do anything to succeed, except something unhandsome, for this lover of money would have died rather than enrich ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... "The unhandsome conduct of the Lord Mayor has occasioned me much trouble, and will give you equal displeasure. In the first place, your paragraph never would have appeared at all had I not interfered in the matter; secondly, cropped-tailed hacks had been procured without ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... I rose, not unhandsome, I trusted, in the moonlight. I was hoping Mr. Charteris would notice my new dress-suit, procured in honor of Stella's wedding. And I said: "The play is over, the little comedy is played out. She must go; at least she has tarried ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... mentioned that no sooner had my old lady found out John, than John made known to her and me that he had had his eye upon a thankless person by the name of Silas Wegg. Partly for the punishment of which Wegg, by leading him on in a very unhandsome and underhanded game that he was playing, them books that you and me bought so many of together (and, by-the-by, my dear, he wasn't Blackberry Jones, but Blewberry) was read aloud to me by that person of the name of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... that is comfortable—dear me! how glad I shall be to see him! Well, Mr Easy, it was hard to part with him in so unhandsome a way—but all's for the best in this world. What a dear, nice lady your wife is, Mr Easy—but I won't intrude—I beg pardon. Where is the brig, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to overwhelm Hamilton with disgrace, and that the President would feel himself obliged to expel him from the cabinet. When the resolutions with this aim were offered, a member said that delicacy, decency, and every rule of justice had been violated; "a more unhandsome proceeding he had never seen in Congress;" he might have remained a member to this day, and, save for the attempts in our time to expel John Quincy Adams and Joshua R. Giddings, not have ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... observe it in knaves themselves, that your beggarliest knaves are the greatest, or thought so at least, for those that have wit to thrive by it have art not to seem so. Now a poor man has not vizard enough to mask his vices, nor ornament enough to set forth his virtues, but both are naked and unhandsome; and though no man is necessitated to more ill, yet no man's ill is less excused, but it is thought a kind of impudence in him to be vicious, and a presumption above his fortune. His good parts lye dead upon ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... this particular, they render their faces still more repulsive looking by tattooing the lips on the outside to the depth of an inch all around, elongating the mark at the corners. This, of course, does not tend to lessen the apparent size of an aperture, already suggestive of a main hatchway. This unhandsome, open, flat countenance, is also further decorated with bands of blue on the forehead. The females wear large rings of iron—some ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... Attorney-General, which looks like a leaning towards the Whigs; but then Trench and Lord Edward Somerset are put into the Ordnance; George Bankes goes back to the India Board, and Government supports him in his contest at Cambridge against William Cavendish. This conduct is considered very unhandsome, and Tierney, who was well disposed towards the Government, told me yesterday that if the Duke did not take care he thought he would get swamped with such doings, that the way he went on was neither fish nor flesh, and he would offend more people ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... open and in walked Grater, and very large and rough he looked. Where Malay Kris had run him through, he wore a large patch of pink court-plaster. His eyes fell upon Andy and Hortense and a wide and wicked smile appeared upon his unhandsome countenance. ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... of merit that has been insisted upon by his counsel is the Mahratta peace. They have stated to you the distresses of the Company to justify the unhandsome and improper means that he took of making this peace. Mr. Hastings himself has laid hold of the same opportunity of magnifying the difficulties which, during his government, he had to contend with. Here he displays all his tactics. He spreads all his ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... disregarded by them? Or how could he fail to be concerned at the discredit which the course ascribed to him must bring upon the Expedition under his command, which was entirely separate from the Mission? It was the unhandsome treatment of himself and reckless periling of the character and interests of his Expedition in order to shield others, that raised his indignation. "Good Bishop Mackenzie," he wrote to his friend Mr. Fitch, "would never have tried to screen himself by accusing me." In point of fact, a few years ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... him I found him far better looking than the campaign pictures had represented. His face, when lighted up in conversation, was not unhandsome, and the kindly and winning tones of his voice pleaded for him like the smile which played about his rugged features. He was full of anecdote and humor, and readily found his way to the hearts of those ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... facing Sally as he bent over the table and fumbled with the lock of the jewel-case, and she made good use of this chance to memorise a countenance of mildly sardonic cast, not unhandsome—the face of a conventional modern voluptuary, self-conscious, self-satisfied, selfish—rather attractive withal in the eyes ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... grew steadily wetter and rougher and more disagreeable. The lower stretch of a glacier is an unhandsome sight in summer: all sorts of rock debris and ugly black shale, with discolored melting ice and snow, intersected everywhere with streams of dirty water—this was what it had degenerated into as we reached the pass. The snow was entirely gone from the pass, so the sled ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... and pausing a little to think, at length he said—'Sir, you are in the right; every man has his weak moments. But it would be unhandsome to expose them to the scoffs of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey |
