"Amateurish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as she talked and wept upon the bridge below the old castle. We had got rid of some amateurish reporters from Biarritz, and had walked together in the hot morning sunshine down through Port Luzon. There, for a time, we stood leaning on the parapet of the bridge and surveying the distant peeks, the rich blue masses of the Pyrenees. For a long ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... young lady is a lady of property. The mature young gentleman is a gentleman of property. He invests his property. He goes, in a condescending amateurish way, into the City, attends meetings of Directors, and has to do with traffic in Shares. As is well known to the wise in their generation, traffic in Shares is the one thing to have to do with in this world. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... deal of amateurish talking is done, in Gafsa, in regard to the profits that would be gained were the oasis to be given over to Sicilian cultivators. Apart from the fact that the wealthy Kaid of Gafsa, who is the chief owner of it, would have something to say on the subject, these advantages ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... own early experiments have, I admit, been amateurish. But I shall acquire skill, and the appetite shall learn refinements, to keep it in health. I don't think it was bad sport, on the whole, to open with low comedy. It tickled me, anyhow, to watch Farrell emerge from a sort of bathing-machine upon the ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the glass counter a little Sekhet boat, carved in wood and highly colored, and glanced up with a start. Truly my methods were amateurish; I had learnt nothing; I was unlikely to learn anything. I wondered how Nayland Smith would have conducted such an inquiry, and I racked my brains for some means of penetrating into the recesses of the establishment. Indeed, ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... to the sports at Gad's Hill, Mr. Langton has recorded how a friend sent him a broadside of a portion of one day's amusements, which from its amateurish appearance was probably printed by Dickens's sons at the private printing-press before alluded to. The occasion was the 26th December, 1866, and the Christmas sports were held in a field at the back of Gad's ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... local charities and institutions, what she hoped to do for it, what she would do if she could, what she thought it possible to do. She answered first reluctantly, then eagerly, her pride all alive to show that she was not merely ignorant and amateurish. But it was no good. In the end he made her feel as Antony Craven had constantly done—that she knew nothing exactly, that she had not mastered the conditions of any one of the social problems she was talking about; that not only was her reading of no account, but that she had not ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she felt, should this impulse return again. For, as she walked along the street to her office, the force of all her customary objections to being in love with any one overcame her. She did not want to marry at all. It seemed to her that there was something amateurish in bringing love into touch with a perfectly straightforward friendship, such as hers was with Ralph, which, for two years now, had based itself upon common interests in impersonal topics, such as the housing of the poor, or the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Ives, alias "the Dancing Girl "—though as to where she dances, how she dances, and when she dances, we are left pretty well in the dark, as she only gives so slight a taste of her quality that it seemed like a very amateurish imitation of Miss KATE VAUGHAN in her best day,—Drusilla Ives is the mistress, neither pure nor simple, of the Duke of Guisebury,—a title which is evidently artfully intended by the, at present, "Only JONES" to be a compound of the French "Guise" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... about July, 1915. My experiences since that date were very interesting; but I found that much of the romance had left the trenches. The old days, from the beginning to July, 1915, were all so delightfully precarious and primitive. Amateurish trenches and rough and ready life, which to my mind gave this war what it sadly ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... took their course, it marked really—if the question be of noting the exact point—a turn of the tide in Nick Dormer's personal situation. He was destined to remember the accent with which Nash exclaimed, on his drawing forth sundry specimens of amateurish earnestness: ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... he lacked capacity. He knew a great deal, in an amateurish way, about pictures, books, bric-a-brac, and about society. Why shouldn't he write? He visited the Loan Exhibition, and wrote a careful criticism on the pictures and sent it to a well-known journal. It was returned ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... suicide over that cliff (or any cliff for the matter of that), really, as an artist—" He laughed. "It's so damned amateurish." ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... obvious and even trite; his letters may lack any flavour of personality; but these dispatches are literature. Like his hero Napoleon, like Caesar and Wellington, Sir John French has forged a literary style for himself. There is nothing amateurish or journalistic about his communications from the front. The dispatch from Mons, for instance, is a masterpiece of lucid and incisive English. It might well be printed in our school-histories, not merely ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... commedia dell'arte, who in the sixteenth century spread their gay and varied art all over Europe, also supplied English players with that touch of professional technique in which their somewhat vacillating and half-amateurish arts were still wanting. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... how much the British had still to learn in July, 1916. The British officers excuse themselves because, they plead, they are still amateurs. "That is no reason," says the Frenchman, "why they should be amateurish." ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... understood that I was to perform the easier part of furnishing the money for an observatory and instruments of our own, and I was determined to keep pace with Margaret in her studies as well as I could in an amateurish way, so that she might be able to retain me as an assistant. We were to be married at sunrise sharp, on the first day of the next century, and to lay the corner-stone of our observatory at the exact moment of the summer solstice of the same year. These were Margaret's suggestions, but even I was ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... so much stronger in his health that he went on to get still more strength. He had regular lessons in boxing. He took long walks and studied the flora and fauna of the country round Cambridge in his amateurish but intense way. During his first Christmas vacation, he went down to the Maine Woods and camped out, and there he met Bill Sewall, a famous guide, who remained Theodore's friend through life, and Wilmot Dow, Sewall's nephew, another ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Morris won't let her pupils use those, though," said Netta. "She calls it an amateurish dodge. I should think we shall have to hold each other up while we ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... held aloof. Apart from circus performances there seemed no money to be made in aviation and consequently practically none was invested in it. What little manufacturing was done was by zealots and inventors. Workmanship was entirely by hand, slow, amateurish, and unreliable. ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... the room was just large enough to allow him to take three steps. He recalled the expression on Eleanore's face during the performance of the symphony; his greedy eyes had rested on her all the while. He became enraged: "You don't imagine that progress can be made by such amateurish efforts?" he said with a roar. "It is all hocus-pocus. There is as a matter of fact no such thing as progress in art, any more than there is progress in the course of ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... first crime is, as a rule, a shockingly amateurish affair. Now and then, it is true, we find beginners forging with the accuracy of old hands, or breaking into houses with the finish of experts. But these are isolated cases. The average tyro lacks generalship altogether. Spennie ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... with its eyes on the horizon. Leddy had the peculiar slouch of the desperado, which is associated with the spread of pioneering civilization by the raucous criers of red-blooded individualism. If Jack's bearing was amateurish, then Pete's was professional in its threatening pose; and his shadow, like himself, had an ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Smith—professional wanderers—were making back for Wellington, down through the wide and rather dreary-looking Hutt Valley. They were broke. They carried their few remaining belongings in two skimpy, amateurish-looking swags. Steelman had fourpence left. They were very tired and very thirsty—at least Steelman was, and he answered for both. It was Smith's policy to feel and think just exactly as ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... hardly a success, because bright eyes watching through the open door made us nervously amateurish. The Zeitoonli arrived true to his threat on the stroke of the half-hour, and we could not shut the door in his face because of the fumes of food and kerosene. (Two of the eggs, like us, were travelers and had been ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... say we live in blinkers, that we've no intellectual pursuits, no interest in 'this wonderful country.' I confess, to some of us, India and its people are holy terrors. As for art and music and theatres—where are they, except what we make for ourselves, in our indefatigable, amateurish way. Can't you see—you, with your imaginative insight—that we have virtually nothing but each other? If we spent our days bowing and scraping and dining and dancing with due decorum, there'd be a ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... though it may be a little more difficult now than formerly. Of course," he added, "we have a certain sprinkling of humanitarians even here; the kind of man, I mean, who stands aside in fervent prayer while his daughter is being ravished by the Bulgars, and then comes forward with some amateurish attempt at First Aid, and probably makes a mess of it. But Italians as a whole—well, we are lovers of violent and disreputable methods; it is our heritage from mediaeval times. The only thing that annoys the ordinary native of the country is, if his own son happens ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... slowly in her chair, 'you gave me to understand that you went out with the specific intention of trying to regain.... But there, forgive me, Arthur; I think I must be getting a little bit hardened to the position, so far at least as any hope is in my mind of rather amateurish experiments being of much help. I may seem unsympathetic in saying frankly what I feel. But amateurish or no, you are curiously erratic. Why, if you really were the Dr Ferguson whose part you play so admirably you could scarcely ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... How amateurish is the attitude of the Tolstoy disciple who cavils at his masterpieces. What is mere art compared to the message! And I say: what are all his vapourings and fatidical croonings on the tripod of pseudo-prophecy as compared to Anna Karenina? There is implicit drama, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... in general and the movement, erstwhile devoted primarily to organization of trade unions, entered, urged on by the Lassalleans, into a series of political campaigns somewhat successful at first but soon succumbing to the inevitable fate of all amateurish attempts. Upon men of Strasser's practical mental grasp these petty tempests in the melting pot could only produce an impression of sheer futility, and he turned to trade unionism as the only activity worth his while. Strasser had been elected president of the Cigar Makers' International ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... but in a few minutes they understood what I was about, for under the coatings of paint and plaster appeared the original bricks; and as my architectural knowledge had led me rightly, the space I had cleared was directly over a vertical joint between firm, workmanlike masonry on one hand, and rough amateurish work on the other, bricks laid anyway, and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... concern ourselves with methods and details; we swallow blindly the elaborate tradition under which we have ourselves been educated; we continue to respect the erudite mind, and to decry the appreciative spirit as amateurish and dilettante. We continue to think that a boy is well trained in history if he has a minute knowledge of the sequence of events—that is, of course, a necessary part of the equipment of a professor or a teacher; but here again lies one of the fatal fallacies of our ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Lord's; but by that time his confederate was on guard at the Piccadilly end, and Raffles had not only shown a clean pair of wings, but left the poor brutes to watch an empty cage. He dismisses them not unfairly with the epithet "amateurish." Thus I was the more surprised, but not the less relieved, to learn that he was "running down into the country for the weekend, to be out of their way"; but he would be back on the Monday night, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... put an explosive charge into the cylinders of all their big engines and left us to get new cylinders cast in Scotland. They blew out the grease boxes of the trucks; but their performance, on the whole, was amateurish. For they blew up, with dynamite, the masonry of many bridges and contented themselves that the girders lay in the river below. But this was child's play to our Sappers and Miners. With hand jacks they lifted the girders ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... asked the most direct questions about his occupation and his activities. His chief occupation was being the well provided heir of a capable lawyer, and his activities in the light of her inquiries struck him as being light and a trifle amateurish, qualities he had never felt as any drawback about them before. So that he had to rely rather upon aspirations and the possibility, under proper inspiration, of a more actively ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... German poets Lessing and Goethe. He thought their work vulgar and uninspired. But he invited literary Frenchmen to come to Berlin, and he put new life into the Berlin Academy of Science. Even Voltaire was for a time a guest at Frederick's court, and the amateurish poems written in French by the Prussian king were corrected by ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... and still religious bourgeois class was securely hooked; and then the name of "Middle Class Halls" was dropped, and the programme provided in these garish palaces became simply an inexpensive and rather amateurish imitation of those of the older halls, plus a kind of prudish, sentimental, and even quasi-religious lubricity, which made them altogether ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... crude and amateurish way I attacked those eggs, breaking into them, not with the finesse the finished egg burglar would display, but more like a yeggman attacking a safe. I spilt a good deal of the insides of those eggs down over their outsides, producing a most ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... feel lucky all his life. It's such fun to awaken in the morning with all your legs and arms and eyes and ears about you, waiting to be used again! So strong was this thought in me when we cast off, that even the memory of Bill's amateurish pancakes couldn't keep back ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... endure "amateurish mediocrity," and made war upon it, thus drawing jealous attacks upon himself. His great friend and ally, Nordraak, passed away in 1868, and the next year his baby daughter, aged thirteen months, the only child ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... Luncheon was at an end. Coffee had been served. Cigarettes were being lighted. Again and again he was referred to. Did he think this and didn't he agree to that? Wasn't this true of the way in which men regarded women? Their differences of opinion seemed so trivial. Their views so immature and amateurish. He watched them with curious, brooding attention. They were so nobly tender in their outward forms. He appreciated the grace of their gestures, the fine-boned smallness of their bodies, the delicacy of their molding, the tendril thinness of their fingers, the sagacity of their tiny aristocratic ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... have their proper places. But here is a point: suppose one of them is gold, and heavy at that, but not finely finished, quite amateurish and ill proportioned, in fact—is he to take precedence of Myron's and Polyclitus's bronze, or Phidias's and Alcamenes's marble? or is workmanship ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... These amateurish speculations on maritime books are of no value except for the fact that they elicited an interesting letter from an expert on these matters. William ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... her; the thoroughness of which, for that matter, she could closely compare with a looseness on Sir Luke Strett's part that—at least in Palazzo Leporelli when mornings were fine—showed as almost amateurish. Sir Luke hadn't said to her "Pay enough money and leave the rest to me"—which was distinctly what Eugenio did say. Sir Luke had appeared indeed to speak of purchase and payment, but in reference to a different sort of cash. Those were amounts not ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... old darling James," it began, and its purport was that she had written a play, and wished me to put my name to it and hawk it round: to pass off as my work her own amateurish effort at playwriting. Ludicrous. And so immoral, too. I had always imagined that Margaret had a perfectly flawless sense of honesty. Yet here she was asking me deliberately to impose on the credulity of some poor, trusting theatrical manager. The dreadful ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... be amateurish at its best, for where could she possibly have learned to dance? What instruction could she, living in this out-of-the-way corner of the world, have received in the art? As for local enthusiasm, it counted for ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... of any kind sound amateurish in the business that concerns us. Impressionistic philosophizing, like impressionistic watchmaking or land-surveying, is intolerable to experts. Serious discussion of the alternative before us forces ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... bravery, at the gallant courage with which she was starting into the battle, her colors flying. A moment later, he wondered again, for Cicely played well. He had braced himself for the girlish, amateurish performance, had braced himself for the inevitable fibs he must tell, the specious promises he must make. Instead of that, as she ended a Dvorak dance, he contented himself with one short exclamation which was ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... did not hear this other promise he would have made; for she was moving from the table with Doctor Stone, having pinned that gentleman as they first arose with no intention of letting him leave her. He had made one or two amateurish efforts to wait for Nancy, and now in a bewildered sort of way wondered why he continued with this other girl against his will. Doctor Stone's university course had not included psychodynamics in the female species. Thus it was that he walked ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Patty. It was crude and amateurish; but it was written to you and about you, so I did the best I could. Patty, are you in love with ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... Ours is an amateurish hotel, especially since the war. Any one who happens to have the time or inclination runs it: or if no one has time it runs itself. Consequently mistakes are made. But what can you expect for eight francs ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the same look of crisp chintz, of fresh flowers wherever flowers could be put, of a wall-paper that was in the bad taste of years before, but had been kept so that no more money should be spent, and was almost covered over with amateurish drawings and superior engravings, framed in narrow gilt with large margins. The room had its bright, durable, sociable air, the air that Laura Wing liked in so many English things—that of being meant for daily life, for long periods, for uses of high decency. But more than ever to-day ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... is love's best gift to beauty; gold but tempts the venal soul; Therefore, 'tis a song I send her on this amateurish scroll. Wind a page of saffron parchment round the white papyrus there, Polish well with careful pumice every silvery ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... "Venice called them bravi; here in America we brutally call them gun-men, but honestly, Kronberg, in all respect and confidence, you really haven't brains and originality enough for a clever professional murderer. Amateurish killing is a sickly sort of sport. And the danger of it! Take for instance that night when you fancied you were a motor bandit and waylaid me on the way to the farm. I was very drunk and driving madly and I nearly got you. A pretty to-do that would have been! To be killed by an amateur and ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... 1846 that Mario took the really exalted place by which he is remembered in his art, and which even the decadence of his vocal powers did not for a long time deprive him of. He never lost something amateurish, but this gave him a certain distinction and fine breeding of style, as of a gentleman who deigned to practice an art as a delightful accomplishment. Personal charm and grace, borne out by a voice of honeyed sweetness, fascinated the stern ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... in the main salon. Cleigh, senior, stood before the phonograph listening to Caruso. The roll of the yacht in nowise disturbed the mechanism of the instrument. There was no sudden sluing of the needle, due to an amateurish device which Cleigh himself had constructed. The son, stooping, was searching the titles of a row of new novels. The width of the salon stretched between ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... was quite familiar, without any rehearsal, an offer which led me to regard him as a genius sent down from heaven on purpose for me. Nothing could, therefore, equal my amazement at the unbounded impudence of the man; for on the evening of the concert he executed his task with the most amateurish timidity; he did not enunciate a single note of the song clearly, and nothing but astonishment at so unprecedented a performance appeared to restrain the audience from breaking out into marked disapproval. Yet, in spite of this, Lindau, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... the normal standpoint, Beddoes' idea of the drama was something wildly amateurish. As a practical playwright he would be beneath contempt; but what he aimed at was something peculiar to himself, a sort of spectral dramatic fantasia. He would have admitted his obligations to Webster and Tourneur, to all the macabre Elizabethan work; he would ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... thoughtful thing" with aspirations, for she tried to sing and draw, read verse and thought she understood—at any rate, loved the Great, the Good, and the Beautiful. But to him her "culture" seemed pitifully amateurish—him who took the arts in his stride, as it were, who could float wide and free over the whole province of them, as the sea-gull floats over the waters. Nevertheless he had walked and talked with her "twice" ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... no doubt that it was an interesting little community, that of the New Asiatic Bank. The curiously amateurish nature of the institution lent a certain air of light-heartedness to the place. It was not like one of those banks whose London office is their main office, where stern business is everything and a man ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... that side of the Plaza, when I saw a group of Columbian Guards, evidently off duty, place themselves against the wall quite near me. They were strolling gaily, and after a little, as the singers began a national anthem, some of them joined in the chorus or refrain. It was amateurish singing enough, until suddenly a new voice lifted itself among them—a tenor voice—sweet, strong, high, and thoroughly cultured. I turned to look closer, and saw that the singer was my friend, the handsome guard. He was standing slightly aloof from the others, ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... mechanics and engineers. Every year, with the advance of invention, new branches of activity, that change in their nature and methods all too rapidly for the establishment of rote and routine workers of the old type, call together fresh levies of amateurish workers and learners who must surely presently develop into, or give place to, bodies of qualified and capable men. And the point I would particularly insist upon here is, that throughout all its ranks and ramifications, from the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... tried positively to think well of him; this was a flight of sentimental benevolence of which, even in the days when he came nearest to reconciling himself to what had happened, Goodwood was quite incapable. He accepted him as rather a brilliant personage of the amateurish kind, afflicted with a redundancy of leisure which it amused him to work off in little refinements of conversation. But he only half trusted him; he could never make out why the deuce Osmond should lavish refinements of any sort upon HIM. It made him suspect that he found some private entertainment ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... things, of English prose fiction of something like the later modern type. First appeared a series of collections of short tales chiefly translated from Italian authors, to which tales the Italian name 'novella' (novel) was applied. Most of the separate tales are crude or amateurish and have only historical interest, though as a class they furnished the plots for many Elizabethan dramas, including several of Shakspere's. The most important collection was Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure,' in ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... head-lines and running-heads, should be avoided by the young compositor; there are places where it may be unobjectionable but it will require good judgment and some experience to prevent such lines making the page look freakish or amateurish. ...
— Capitals - A Primer of Information about Capitalization with some - Practical Typographic Hints as to the Use of Capitals • Frederick W. Hamilton
... the high and go beatin' it down the avenue, takin' signals from the traffic cops at crossing, skinnin' around motor busses, and crowdin' out a fresh taxi driver that tried to hog a corner on her. Nothin' timid or amateurish either about the way she handled that ten-thousand-dollar gas wagon of Old Hickory's. Where I'd be jammin' on both brakes and callin' for help, she just breezes along like she had the street all ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... replied Bryce, smiling. "To finish anybody with that stuff is easy enough—but no poison is more easily detected. It's an amateurish way of poisoning anybody—unless you can do it in such a fashion that no suspicion can attach you to. And in this case it's here—whoever administered that poison to Collishaw must have been certain—absolutely certain, mind you!—that ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... seriously bored by, The Man Who Came Back (HUTCHINSON) was largely due to the mild, dull way in which the story developed. And yet I think I could have forgiven the absence of lurid sensationalism if the book had been a good book of its kind. It is not. It is so crude and amateurish that it is difficult to believe that a professional writer could have written it. Mr. JEPSON, like most other authors, has had the idea of modernising the story of the Prodigal Son. He adheres to the original story closely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... hands greeted her words and then the audience became silent as the littlest scholar of the school rose and delivered the address of welcome. There followed music and more recitations, all amateurish, but they brought feelings of pride to many mothers and fathers who listened, smiling, to "Our John" or "Our Mary" do ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... apparatus. Yet it is entirely obvious that she must first have regarded it in the ordinary way to judge of its photographic merits. Anyhow it is true that quite a good deal of her time was spent beneath the folds of a black cloth (she never condescended to anything so amateurish as a mere kodak), or in the seclusion of a ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... constructed at enormous cost[269]. Parts of Northern France were to be the reward of King Leopold's complaisance, and the help of England and Turkey was to be secured by substantial bribes[270]. The whole scheme wears a look of amateurish grandiosity; but, on the principle that there is no smoke without fire (which does not always hold good for diplomatic smoke), much alarm was felt at Paris. The renewal of the Triple Alliance in June 1891, for a term of six years, was followed up a month later ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... "Very amateurish work," Alec protested, pleased nevertheless at Knight's praise. "The steer thought I looked so harmless that he took a big chance—that's how I ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... the beach or river bank in shallow water. Very stout lines and heavy hooks are used, for a 90-lb. or 100-lb. Jew-fish is very common. Baiting with a whole mullet or whiting, or one of the arms of an octopus, the most amateurish fisherman cannot fail to hook two or three Jew-fish in a night. (Even in Sydney Harbour I have seen some very large ones caught by people fishing from ferry wharves.) They are very powerful, and also very game, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... longer. The Chief Factor went to Mr. Archibald Clavering Gunter and the Home Publishing Company, and they made a very large sale of it. I never cared for the book however; it seemed stilted and amateurish, though some of its descriptions and some of its dialogues were, I think, as good as I can do; so, eventually, in the middle nineties, I asked Mr. Gunter to sell me back the rights in the book and give me control of it. This he did. I thereupon withdrew it from publication at once, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that it was slowing down, out of spite. I longed to feel its pulses with a stop-watch in the other hand, and make sure. Could it be that, after all, Alb had changed his mind, and meant to betray me? No, it must be a trick of my amateurish fancy. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... seemed especially to resent her music lessons, alluding to them with a sort of sneering impatience. She felt that he despised them as amateurish, and secretly resented it. He was often impatient, too, of the time she gave to the baby. His own conduct with the little creature was like all the rest of him. He would go to the nursery, much to Betty's alarm, and take up the baby; be charming ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... don't mean what you mean, dear—thanks just the same. I mean those women tonight. They all seem to 'go in' for something—votes or charity or dancing or social service, or something—even the girls. And they all sounded so amateurish, so untrained, so unprepared, yet they seemed to be ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... to assure her it was a perfectly natural mistake, the placard being but an amateurish affair; ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... said Betty, not unpleasantly at all, and still with her gentle air of mere unprejudiced speculation, "is that, if a man or woman is properly ill-treated—PROPERLY—not in any amateurish way—they reach the point of not caring in the least—nothing matters, but that they must get away from the horror of the unbearable thing —never to see or hear of it again is heaven enough to make anything else a thing to smile ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Heine might easily have retorted: "Where anywhere in the world are you going to find me a woman who is my equal, who is my true mate? You will bring me cultivated governesses, or titled ladies who preside over salons, or anemic little literary women with their imitative verse or their amateurish political dreams. No, thank you. I am a man. I am a sick, sad man. I need a kind, beautiful woman to love and take care of me. She must be beautiful, remember, as well as kind— and she must be not merely a nurse, hut a woman I can love. If she shouldn't understand my writings, what ...
— Old Love Stories Retold • Richard Le Gallienne
... an emblem of authority, is also an instrument of the supernatural. An indispensable instrument, one may say; for was ever a magician depicted in book, in picture, or in the mind's eye, without a wand? Does even the most amateurish of prestidigitateurs attempt to emulate the performances of the once famous Wizard of the North, without the aid of the magic staff? The magician, necromancer, soothsayer, or conjurer, is as useless without his wand as a Newcastle pitman is without ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... tried to sidestep him. Made me weak inside for a minute because I thought he was going to take water. Then he got riled a bit and then—whang! It was all over. Not a body shot. No, boys, nothing clumsy and amateurish like that, because a man may live to empty his gun at you after he's been shot through the body. This young Hollis, pals, just ups and drills Larrimer clean between the eyes. If you'd measured it off with a ruler, you couldn't have hit exact center any ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... said,—only they've got a set of phrases for expressing it. They said it was amateurish, that it was ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... in the way of establishing a world peace is that it is nobody's business in particular. Nearly all of us want a world peace—in an amateurish sort of way. But there is no specific person or persons to whom one can look for the initiatives. The world is a supersaturated solution of the will-for-peace, and there is nothing for it to crystallise upon. There is no one in all the world who ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... and their lack of foresight might well shock an oldtimer like Murphy. But he would have been still more shocked had he seen what poor amateurish preparations for the coming winter another young tenderfoot had been making. If he had seen the place which Jack Corey had chosen for his winter hide-out I think he would have taken a fit; and if he had seen the little ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... He was colouring like a boy. Lady Carey's thin lips curled. She had no sympathy with such amateurish love-making. Nevertheless, his embarrassment was ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... think that beautiful?" he asked, and received the honest answer, "No, sir; I don't think I do." He met Herbert in high spirits in the quadrangle during the interval. But Herbert thought his enthusiasm rather amateurish, and cautioned him. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... We knew very well that, though the miniatures showed promise of talent, they were amateurish and imperfect, and the reserve which we had placed upon them was quite out of all proportion to their merit. It must surely be a mistake! We followed Isobel across the room. A little elderly gentleman was sitting before a desk, engaged in the ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... smile. "You don't have to pay anything to be out of doors," she said. "That much is free, even here; it's perfectly delightful country, and when the weather improves a bit we have picnics and walks and even do a little fishing in an amateurish sort of way. It all helps to pass ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... part about these descriptions, for the writer, is where he attempts to tell you how to make your totems; but remember that a totem, in order to have a real totem look, must be very crude and amateurish, a quality that the reader should be able to give it without much instruction. The next important thing is that when you make one side of a head, be it a snake's, a man's, a beast's, or a bird's, ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... many pupils to work, so the class had been limited to seniors, among whom Doris Deane, Ruth White, and Stephanie Radford had begun to distinguish themselves. Each had made a small pendant, and while the craftsmanship might be amateurish, the general effect was artistic. Miss Teddington was delighted, and wishing to air her latest hobby, she decided to send the three pendants, together with some other specimens of school handiwork, to a small Art exhibition which was to be held shortly at Elwyn Bay. Miss Edwards, the teacher ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil |
