"Inoffensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unable to help herself as yet, was still imprisoned in her cot in the bedroom until such time as her mother could attend to her, and on the dining-room floor George and the three-year-old, ordered to keep extremely quiet and inoffensive, played with their bricks. Now and again an erection of bricks toppled down accidentally with a shattering noise, when Osborn exclaimed: "Shut up, you kids!" and their mother implored: "Do try to keep quiet ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... rhapsodists as trenching on the province of poetry. He condemns all French writers (as well of poetry as prose) in the lump. His list in this way is indeed small. He approves of Walton's Angler, Paley, and some other writers of an inoffensive modesty of pretension. He also likes books of voyages and travels, and Robinson Crusoe. In art, he greatly esteems Bewick's woodcuts, and Waterloo's sylvan etchings. But he sometimes takes a higher tone, and gives his mind fair play. We have known him enlarge with ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... office of captain over them, that you might lead them in this service of mine in the ways of duty, submission, and loyalty. Instead of that, you were the instigator of that outrage this morning, when murder was almost done upon an inoffensive man who was my guest. What have you ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... backgrounds. That he did not wholly abandon the decorative convention which he heired, and often employed to excellent purpose, was due in large measure to caution. "He came," says W. E. Henley, "at the break between new and old—when the old was not yet discredited, and the new was still inoffensive; and with that exquisite good sense which marks the artist, he identified himself with that which was known, and not with that which, though big with many kinds of possibilities, was as yet in perfect touch with nothing actively ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... (gratified) by sacrifices, the Rishis, by study, meditation, and asceticism, the (deceased) ancestors, by begetting children and offering the funeral cake, and, lastly other men, by leading a humane and inoffensive life. I have justly discharged my obligations to the Rishis, the gods, and other men. But those others than these three are sure to perish with the dissolution of my body! Ye ascetics, I am not yet freed from the debt I owe to my (deceased) ancestors. The best of men are born ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... writ, The ladies might mistake him for a wit.' Then, Millamant is the ultimate expression of those who, having all the material goods which nature and civilisation can give, live on paradoxes and artifices. Her insolence is the inoffensive insolence only possible to the well-bred. 'O ay, letters,—I had letters,—I am persecuted with letters,—I hate letters,—nobody knows how to write letters; and yet one has 'em, one does not know why,—they serve ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... negroes of Cranceford County, and eager ears in the North, not the ears of the old soldier, but of the politician, shutting out the suggestions of justice, heard only the clamor of a political outrage; and again arose the loud cry that the South had robbed the inoffensive negro of his suffrage. But the story, once so full of alarm, was beginning to be a feeble reminiscence; Northern men with business interests in the South had begun to realize that the white man, though often in the wrong, could sometimes be in the right. But now a problem—graver than the ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... do, what shall I do! My home is gone! My husband is gone! My children are gone! And for what?"—wringing her hands and gesticulating wildly. "For what, Messieurs? For being quiet, inoffensive, loyal people!" ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... —a quieter, more inoffensive ghost than that described by Defoe in his Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions: "A grave, ancient man, with a full-bottomed wig and a rich brocaded gown, who changed into the most horrible monster that ever was seen, with eyes like two fiery daggers ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... and several more, while the days were passed suspiciously and uneasily. But we saw no sign of more Indians, those who shared our camp seeming quite at home, and proving to be gentle, inoffensive creatures, now that they were satisfied that we intended to do them ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... the other lady rejoined gaily. "I am as inoffensive as a stained-glass saint in a chapel window. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... art matters has already been spoken of. He took himself very seriously, moving through life with a sunny-faced self-complacency so inoffensive and sincere as to be positively delightful. He was too good-natured and in all respects of character too little virile to meet Irons with anything but kindness, but as he was a trifle less sure of his social ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... even a Thousand new Vegetables, created ad libitum.' Having been struck by the fact, that the ass so often feeds upon the thistle, he took some specimens of that plant, and, by careful experiment, has succeeded in producing for the table 'a savoury vegetable, with thorns of the most inoffensive and flexible sort.' Whatever be the kind of thistle, however hard and sharp its thorns, he has tamed and softened them all, his method of transformation being, as he says, none other than exposing the plants to different influences of light. Those which grew unsheltered, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... the glorification of suffering little Belgium. Whatever brief we may hold for her though, we ought not to picture even her peasant people as a mild, meek and inoffensive lot. That isn't the sort of stuff out of which her dogged and continuing resistance was wrought. That isn't the mettle which for two weeks stopped up the German tide before the Liege forts, giving the allies two weeks to mobilize, and all they had asked the Belgians for was two or ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... could answer there was a noise as of men and horses coming up the defile, and, thinking it was some of the former gang returning, guns were whipped out. But they were not needed. Two mild-mannered and inoffensive appearing men rode into sight. They had the look of college professors. Behind them ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... Ruo, lying directly to the south of it, is inhabited by heathens, each village governed by its own chief, holding little or no communication with their neighbours. The people appear to be mild and inoffensive, though perfect pagans. They posses a considerable amount of ingenuity, and manufacture a most beautiful fabric from fine grass, equal to the finest grass cloth ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... said he was merely making his rounds in his park; the senator and Monsieur Grevin might perhaps have been alarmed at the sight of his gun and have thought his intentions hostile when they were really inoffensive. He called attention to the fact that in the dusk a man who was not in the habit of hunting might easily fancy a gun was pointed at him, whereas, in point of fact, it was held in his hand at half-cock. To explain the condition of his clothes when arrested, he said he had slipped and fallen ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... eye had told him, at a glance, that there was no chance for him to escape; and, before his natural looks could be noted, he had become transformed into a lout of so stolid and inoffensive an appearance, that his captors seemed greatly disappointed, and evidently entertained doubts whether he could be the one they supposed they were about to secure. And it was not till his pale and trembling fellow-prisoner had been conducted off on her horse some rods, that they could make him ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... voice behind them, "that man can have descended to such a state of congenital idiocy as to do all this to an inoffensive carrot field." ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... Winkle was urged by a variety of considerations, the first of which was his reputation with the club. He had always been looked up to as a high authority on all matters of amusement and dexterity, whether offensive, defensive, or inoffensive; and if, on this very first occasion of being put to the test, he shrunk back from the trial, beneath his leader's eye, his name and standing were lost for ever. Besides, he remembered to have heard it frequently surmised by the uninitiated in such matters that by an understood arrangement ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... eyes rest for a moment on the motley of dressing-gowns, mackintoshes, uniforms, I inevitably see in the line one face set on a slant, one pair of eyes forsaking the stage and fixed on me in a steady, inoffensive beam. ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... wounded me, that she should look upon me as being so utterly inoffensive. I braced myself up, steeled my heart, and seized her hand; but she withdrew it softly, and moved a little away from me. That just put an end to my courage again; I felt ashamed, and looked out through the window. I was, in spite of all, in far too wretched a condition; ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... along Piccadilly, the more stately pace of the private carriages crossing the Park. Was it possible that in the world of today—the world of telegraphs and express trains, of the newspaper and the motor car—two inoffensive human beings could be done to death so shamefully and openly as would be the fate of Iris and himself if they fell into the hands of these savages! It was inconceivable, intolerable! ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... that item of evidence so satisfactory as Isel did. But he had not come with any intention of ferreting out doubtful characters or suspicious facts. He was no ardent heretic-hunter, but a quiet, peaceable man, as inoffensive as ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... these instruments of rural felicity would afford me few gratifications. I never shot but to miss the mark, and, to confess the truth, was afraid of the fire of my own gun. I could discover no musick in the cry of the dogs, nor could divest myself of pity for the animal whose peaceful and inoffensive life was sacrificed to our sport. I was not, indeed, always at leisure to reflect upon her danger; for my horse, who had been bred to the chase, did not always regard my choice either of speed or way, but leaped hedges and ditches at his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... assailant, and grappling with another, brought him to the ground and cut his throat with a pocket knife. Lieutenant Peyton was by birth, education, and character a thorough gentleman. Perfectly good natured and inoffensive—except when provoked or attacked—and then—he dispatched his affair and his man in a quiet, expeditious and thorough manner. The Federal cavalry retreated from the town ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... settled peoples. In physical characters they closely resemble the Kenyahs, being well-built and vigorous; their skin is of very light yellow colour, and their features are regular and well shaped. Mentally they are characterised by extreme shyness and timidity and reserve. They are quite inoffensive and never engage in open warfare; though they will avenge injuries by stealthy attacks on individuals with the blow-pipe and poisoned darts. Their only handicrafts are the making of baskets, mats, blow-pipes, and the implements used for working the wild sago; but in these and in ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... keep watch over my temper always, and I hope it isn't too bad; yet I'm certain that in Jonkheer Brederode's place I couldn't have endured Nell's behavior, but would have stopped being skipper the second day out, even if I left a whole party of inoffensive people stranded. Instead of leaving us in the lurch after undertaking to act as skipper, however, he has worked for us like a Trojan. Not only has he been skipper, but guide, philosopher and friend—to say nothing ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... it. But it was a difficult thing to find any pretext for its capture. It was held by the Knights of St. John, the decrepit remnant of an order whose heroism had many times been the shield of Christendom against the Turk, and whose praise had once filled the whole earth. They were now as inoffensive as they were incapable. Their helplessness was their true defence,—and the memory of their good deeds. At last, in 1798, Napoleon, on his way to Egypt, partly by force and partly by treaty, obtained possession of it. So strong were its fortresses, that he himself acknowledged ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... an erring mind, which, on his return to England soon afterwards, ripened into mental derangement of the milder species. After several years passed in this way, during which the mental disease considerably relaxed, so that young Campbell became wholly inoffensive, and his father received him into his house. The effect of this upon a mind of the most exquisite sensibility like the poet's, may be readily imagined: it was, at times, a source of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various
... cautiously avoided all engagements with that youth; for besides that Tommy Jones was an inoffensive lad amidst all his roguery, and really loved Blifil, Mr Thwackum being always the second of the latter, would have ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... like them at all," she retorted, shaking her head. "You remind me of a toy I used to play with years ago—a very pretty, harmless, inoffensive-looking toy, but which when touched unguardedly changed all of a sudden into a dreadful little fiend that flew right up into your face. Such a surprise is enough to make one's hair ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... now began to be called by their enemies. There was perhaps good reason for intelligent disapprobation, but Understanding was left far behind the flying feet of Zeal, who, torch in hand, rushed from house to house. It was related that Joseph Smith was in the habit of wounding inoffensive sheep and leading them bleeding over the neighbouring hills under the pretext that treasure would be found beneath the spot where they would at last drop exhausted; and there were dark hints concerning ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... unfortunate human creature, who, if his ill-treatment had made him "frenetic," was chained in the cellar or garret of a workhouse, fastened to the leg of a table, tied to a post in an outhouse, or perhaps shut up in an uninhabited ruin; or, if his lunacy were inoffensive, was left to ramble, half-naked and half-starved, through the streets and highways, teased by the rabble, and made the jest of the vulgar, ignorant, and unfeeling. "I have witnessed," he says, "instances of each of these modes ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... Mills, the superintendent of the Royal Victoria, had many a secret conference with Jim Woppit, and it finally leaked out that the cold, discriminating, and vigilant eye of eternal justice was riveted upon Steve Barclay, the stage-driver. Few of us suspected Steve; he was a good-natured, inoffensive fellow; it seemed the idlest folly to surmise that he could have been in collusion with the highwaymen. But Mr. Mills had his own ideas on the subject; he was a man of positive convictions, and, having pretty nearly always demonstrated that he was in the right, ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... clean Elzevir, or a tall portly Stephens, concluding his inward estimate of the prize with a peculiar grunting chuckle, known by the initiated to be an important announcement. This is no doubt one of the milder and more inoffensive types, but still a thoroughly confirmed and obstinate case. Its parallel to the classes who are to be taken charge of by their wiser neighbours is only too close and awful; for have not sometimes the female members of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... The process is more slow, but none the less sure; and it is clear that in the case of my dirt-heap the foul matters added have thus been destroyed. The practical bearings of this fact are of the utmost importance. Earth is not to be regarded as a vehicle for the inoffensive removal beyond the limits of the town of what has hitherto been its most troublesome product, but as a medium for bringing together the offensive ingredients of this product, and the world's great scavenger, oxygen. My experiment seems to demonstrate the fact that there is no occasion to carry away ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... from the tops of the hills, and the sides of the boat offered no protection against the latter. The men of the fleet returned the fire, but their lead was sent into the forest and the undergrowth, and they did not know whether it hit anything except inoffensive ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... feet. He had just been knocked down by Nelson. As the man was rising Nelson gave him a blow across the loins with the handle of his whip, which had the effect of straightening out the villain on the grass and rendered him an inoffensive spectator during ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... solemn occasions they are thoughtful, serious, and grave; yet I have seen them free, open and merry at feasts and entertainments. In their common deportment towards each other they are respectful, peaceable, and inoffensive. Sudden anger is looked upon as ignominious and unbecoming, and, except in liquor, they seldom differ with their neighbour, or ever do him any harm or injury. As for riches they have none; nor covet any; and while they have plenty of provisions, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... being carried off by a lurking wolf while his parents were working in the field, to the time when, after having been recovered by his mother six years later, he escaped from her into the jungle. In all these cases certain marked features reappear. In the first, the boy was very inoffensive, except when teased, and then he growled surlily. He would eat anything thrown to him, but preferred meat, which he devoured with canine voracity. He drank a pitcher of buttermilk at one gulp, and could not be induced ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... judgment of Gringoire, was an inoffensive and charming creature, pretty, with the exception of a pout which was peculiar to her; a naive and passionate damsel, ignorant of everything and enthusiastic about everything; not yet aware of the difference between a man and a woman, even in her dreams; ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Andirondacks, whose blood remained unrevenged. In vain did the youth plead his love; in vain did he show, that if the spirits of the flood warred on their neighbours, who were unable to inflict a wound on their adversaries, it furnished no reason why the beautiful maiden, so lovely and so inoffensive, should be banned. She had not injured, then why should she be spurned? But his argument availed not to influence the warriors, or to bend their stern hearts to pity. They drove the fair Menana from the arms of him she loved best, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... with marvellous knowledge and skill to pierce the nerve-centre on which their power of locomotion (but none of their other vital functions) depends, so that the paralysed insect, beside which her egg is laid, will furnish the larva, when it is hatched, with a tamed and inoffensive quarry, incapable either of flight or of resistance, but perfectly fresh for the larder: in the same way Francoise had adopted, to minister to her permanent and unfaltering resolution to render the house uninhabitable to any other servant, a series of crafty and pitiless stratagems. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... was arrested and charged with injuring with intent to murder. Tried with many others from other villages in the district at the Salisbury Assizes, he was found guilty and sentenced to transportation for life. Yet the Doveton shoemaker was known to every one as a quiet, inoffensive young man, and to the last he protested his innocence, for although he had gone with the others to the farm he had not taken the hammer and was ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... at Brunn, the capital of Moravia, where an English colonel, a Mr. Mills, was detained in exile; he was a man of the most perfect goodness and obliging manners, and according to the English expression, altogether inoffensive. He was made dreadfully miserable, without the least pretence or utility. But the Austrian ministry is apparently persuaded that it will derive an air of strength from turning persecutor; its counsellors ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... The Portuguese are wholly inoffensive, except when their pride is touched. In politics, or when they hunger after African territory we fancy needed for our own people, they may not seem so. When a rebuff excites them against the English, Lisbon may not be pleasant for Englishmen. But in such cases would London commend itself ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... white with black spots on them. His back was gray with a huge patch of yellow on one side and a black patch on the other. His tail was yellow with a gray tip. One ear was black and one yellow. A black patch over one eye gave him a fearfully rakish look. In reality he was meek and inoffensive, of a sociable disposition. In one respect, if in no other, Joseph was like a lily of the field. He toiled not neither did he spin or catch mice. Yet Solomon in all his glory slept not on softer cushions, or feasted more fully on ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... never knew a college besides ours whereof the members were so perfectly well satisfied with one another, and so inoffensive to the other part of the University. All the Fellows I have yet seen are both well-natured and well-bred; men admirably disposed as well to preserve peace and good neighbourhood among themselves as to preserve it wherever ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... time the children were in a state of intimidation. It was plain that their mother was fairly aroused, and each deemed it best to be as quiet and inoffensive as possible. The reappearance of harmony being thus restored, Mrs. Abercrombie, whose head and heart were now both throbbing with pain, retired in a most unhappy state of mind to her chamber, where she threw herself into a large chair, ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... flight with Lilla and my aunt upon the little raft, while I and Tom covered their escape with our guns; but the distance being lessened each moment, we could make out that these men belonged to one of the inoffensive fishing tribes who lived upon the rivers and their banks; and a new thought struck me—one which I directly ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... killing of a Negro has come to be regarded in some Southern communities is brought out by an incident of the week at Memphis, which hardly needs comment. An inoffensive Negro was hawking chickens about the street, when ——, who was not in uniform at the time, jumped to the conclusion that the chickens had been stolen, and arrested the man. While he went to put on his uniform he left his prisoner in custody of a nearby grocer, ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... South Seas upon some of the inoffensive islanders will nigh pass belief. These things are seldom proclaimed at home; they happen at the very ends of the earth; they are done in a corner, and there are none to reveal them. But there is, nevertheless, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... several office buildings in the city, they will realize that the problem is not without a solution. In almost every case where the architect has refrained from useless decoration and stuck to simple lines, the result, if not beautiful, has at least been inoffensive. It is where inappropriate elaboration is added that taste is offended. Such structures as the Singer building, corner of Liberty Street and Broadway, and the home of Life, in Thirty-first Street, prove ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... Is not that a convincing proof of what I say, that you have no cause to be afraid of them, and that it is very silly to be so? It is certainly foolish to be afraid of any thing, unless it threatens us with immediate danger; but to pretend to be so at a mouse, and such like inoffensive things, is a degree of weakness that I can by no means suffer any of my children to indulge.' 'May I then, madam,' inquired the child, 'be afraid of cows and horses, and such great beasts as those?' 'Certainly not,' answered her mother, 'unless they are likely to hurt you. If a ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... trouble one so inoffensive and so easily troubled as her poor little self? They did not know all they were doing,—but if they had eyes they must see a little of it. Why could she not have been allowed to keep her old free simple feeling with everybody, instead of being hampered and constrained and miserable from this ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... not have idled those autumn days away so lazily, even though he so urgently required rest after that rapid travelling, had he but known that the person who occupied the next room to his—that middle-aged commercial traveller—an entirely inoffensive person who possessed a red beard, and who had given the name of Jules Dequanter, and his nationality as Belgian, native of Liege—was none other than Gustav Heureux, the man who had been recalled from New York by the evasive doctor ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... service. They never heap the ashes of charitable oblivion upon the coals of prejudice and hate, but continue to replenish it with the most exciting and fiery appeals. The Edgefield paper makes light of this dastardly violence done to aged and inoffensive women by ascribing it as the work of "rash boys." Manly pastime for these brave boys! a crime sir, that in any other State, and done to any other class, would have demanded and met with immediate punishment, perhaps in the Court of Judge Lynch, as was the case in Marlboro County a few ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... inoffensive but not brilliant prince (who, by the way, was Chancellor of the University of Cambridge) it is related that once at a levee he noticed a naval friend with a much-tanned face. "How do, Admiral? Glad to see you again. It's a long time since you have been at a levee." "Yes, sir. Since I last ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... in the forest I often came across snakes of considerable length, but never found any difficulty in killing them, as they were sluggish in their movements and seemed to be inoffensive. The rubber-workers, who had no doubt had many encounters with reptiles, told me about large sucurujus or boa-constrictors, which had their homes in the river not many miles from headquarters. They told me that these snakes were in possession of hypnotic powers, but this, like many other ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... Rousseau, he had a loving tenderness for all nature; for the fields, the woods, and for animals. An aristocrat by birth, he hated '93 by instinct; but of a philosophical temperament and liberal by education, he loathed tyranny with an inoffensive and declamatory hatred. The strongest, and at the same time the weakest, trait in his character was his generosity; a generosity which had not enough arms to caress, to give, to embrace; the generosity of a creator which was utterly devoid of system, and to which ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... Good Spirit, (whom they call in the Seneca language Nau-wan-e-u,) as the Creator of the world, and of every good thing—that he made men, and all inoffensive animals; that he supplies men with all the comforts of life; and that he is particularly partial to the Indians, whom they say are his peculiar people. They also believe that he is pleased in giving them (the Indians) good gifts; ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... stage Calliope generally began to drink. Finally, about midnight, he was seen going homeward, saluting those whom he met with exaggerated but inoffensive courtesy. Not yet was Calliope's melancholy at the danger point. He would seat himself at the window of the room he occupied over Silvester's tonsorial parlours and there chant lugubrious and tuneless ballads until morning, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... his fellow roomers. A strange, drab lot he thought them from the occasional glimpses he had had in passings upon the dark stairway and in the gloomy halls. They appeared to be quiet, inoffensive sort of folk, occupied entirely with their own affairs. He had made no friends in the place, not even an acquaintance, nor did he care to. What leisure time he had he devoted to what he now had come to consider ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... checked it! Did you see the man stare as you reached out to take my check away from me? Have I eaten or drunk to-night? I've not, for I'm not a creature! And mad, I? Look to yourself, as I told you to look before it was too late! You fool, you've been staring inoffensive women out of countenance, with all the hate from my face printed on yours, and in the eyes of all these people you've been sitting here for half an hour talking to yourself, and ordering wine and food for an empty ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... district by Mr. Macauley, who published a history of Claybrook, may be amusing to many readers.—The people here are much attached to wakes; and among the farmers and cottagers these annual festivals are celebrated with music, dancing, feasting, and much inoffensive sport; but in the neighbouring villages the return of the wake never fails to produce at least a week of idleness, intoxication, and riot. These and other abuses by which those festivals are grossly perverted, render it highly desirable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... deed of justice, Dinsmore in high good humor with himself set out to call on Clint Wadley. He had made an inoffensive human being suffer, and that is always something to a man's credit. If he could not do any better, Pete would bully a horse, but he naturally preferred humans. They were more sensitive ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... handsome face (which I beheld with loathing) looked in upon us at all hours across the fence; and once, from a safe distance, he avenged himself by shouting a recondite island insult, to us quite inoffensive, on his English lips ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... compulsatorily; such are we all by nature, discontented, perverse, and changeable; though all have not courage to appear so, and few, like Belfield, are worth watching when they do. He told me he was happy; I knew it could not be: but his employment was inoffensive, and I left him without reproach. In this neighbourhood I heard of you, and found your name was coupled with praise. I came to see if you deserved it; I have ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... appeared. He was decidedly good as an actor; but as a comic singer (with considerable powers of pathos as well) he is quite first-rate. His chief merit seems to be the earnestness with which he throws himself into the work. The songs (mostly his own writing) were quite inoffensive, and very funny. I am very glad to be able to think that his influence on public taste is towards refinement and purity. I liked best "The Future Mrs. 'Awkins," with its taking tune, and "My Old Dutch," ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... mare was the better horse," and poor Bishop, an inoffensive man, and a cripple withal, was wedded to a regular Xantippe. It was evident that unpleasant thoughts were dominant in the woman's mind as she proceeded sullenly and vigorously with preparations for breakfast. The bitter bread ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... the wavering fortunes of the state. Third in the list, the happy lover's prize Is won by honeyed words from women's eyes. If some would have it first instead of third, So let it be,—I answer not a word. The fourth,—sweet readers, let the thoughtless half Have its small shrug and inoffensive laugh; Let the grave quarter wear its virtuous frown, The stern half-quarter try to scowl us down; But the last eighth, the choice and sifted few, Will hear my words, and, pleased, confess ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... superior race of beings. It was very cruel in Lord Spencer to shoot the poor animal—but it was honorable in him to make up the farmer's loss, for it doubled the amount of wages he gained; yet to sum up the proceeding, it was wrong—for besides killing an inoffensive animal, it did ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... general. I indulge the hope and expectation that WAR shall one day be universally and finally extinguish'd. But I will confess also, that appearances would tempt us to apprehend that day is far distant. And while we make War for Sport on useful, generous, inoffensive Animals, it is not easy to imagine that we shall cease to make War ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... her again and she stopped. I could see the look of amazement on our junior's face, and did not wonder at it. What sudden dislike could her mistress have conceived against this inoffensive and devoted creature? ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... is dangerous. People think that dreamers do no harm. They are mistaken: dreamers do a great heal of harm. Even apparently inoffensive utopian ideas really exercise a noxious influence. They tend to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... accomplished with a precision that was almost automatic, so did the work yet to be done go off with the nicety of a well-regulated schedule. Everything came about as Holmes had predicted, even to the action of the police in endeavoring to fasten the crime upon an inoffensive and somewhat impecunious social dangler, whose only ambition in life was to lead a cotillion well, and whose sole idea of how to get money under false pretences was to make some over-rich old maid believe that he loved her for herself alone ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... manners, agreeable in society, not given to monkish austerities—except in the matter of Fridays—nor yet to the Low-Church severity of demeanour. He was thoroughly a gentleman, good-humoured, inoffensive, and sociable. But he had one fault: he ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... him with contempt. Whoever he might be he looked upon a Quaker as a mild, inoffensive person, hardly deserving the name ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... branch of society, it follows that it can be proper to none who is not in his nature social. Now, society is agreeable to no creatures who are not inoffensive to each other; and we therefore observe in animals who are entirely guided by nature that it is cultivated by such only, while those of more noxious disposition addict themselves to solitude, and, unless when prompted by lust, or that necessary instinct implanted in them by nature for the ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Sovereign was an appreciable influence, and it was her desire that a paragraph in the Queen's Speech opening Parliament in February 1864 was erased. Words which contained at least a veiled or attributed threat to Germany were omitted, and instead of them an inoffensive paragraph was inserted expressing the Queen's ardent desire for peace and recording the earnest efforts she had made to maintain it.[51] At the same time when, by the Convention of Gastein in August ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Portugal. May the Lord in his mercy grant that the soldiers who proceed to her assistance may be of a different stamp: and yet, from the lax state of discipline which exists in the Portuguese army, in comparison with that of England and France, I am afraid that the inoffensive population of the disturbed provinces will say that wolves have been summoned to chase away foxes from the sheepfold. O! may I live to see the day when soldiery will no longer be tolerated in any civilized, or ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... of the watch, "as I was going on my rounds late last night, I saw this ferocious young foreigner, sword in hand, slashing and stabbing three inoffensive creatures. When I arrived they were lying dead upon the ground. Their murderer, overwhelmed by his terrible crime, fled into a house, and hid there, hoping, no doubt, to escape in the morning. Men of Hypata, you do not allow your own fellow-townsmen to commit murder with impunity. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... The failure here alluded to is his Ploutos or Plutus—an inoffensive but tame comedy written when Aristophanes was advanced in years, and of which the ill-success has been imputed to this fact. Mr. Browning, however, treats it as a proof that the author's ingrained ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... too, that the stranger might have imagined the Apaches. But in his motions was something of the lithe grace of the puma. It was part of the business of the cattleman to judge men and he was not convinced that this young fellow was as inoffensive as he looked. ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... unmindful of our case that it looks on with indifference when indignity upon indignity is heaped, not only upon our innocent men, but even upon our inoffensive women? ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... lilac and a blue lilac; or a rose pink and a blue pink; or drab and yellow. Instances might be multiplied without end of incongruous inharmonious blending of colours, the mere sight of which is enough to give any one a bilious fever. There are colours which, in themselves, may be inoffensive, but of which only particular shades assort well together. Blue and pink was a very favourite combination at one time; but in order to be both pleasing and effective, it must be one particular shade of each, and these softened and blended by the addition of white. ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... states his surviving brother, "and he wished to see every one happy around him." As a child, his brother informs us, his exemplary behaviour was so conspicuous, that mothers were satisfied of their children's safety, if they learned that they were in company with "Bob Tannahill." Inoffensive in his own dispositions, he entertained every respect for the feelings of others. He enjoyed the intercourse of particular friends, but avoided general society; in company, he seldom talked, and only with a neighbour; he shunned the acquaintance of persons of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Butler was experiencing a change of heart. That they could plan ruthlessly to slaughter the inoffensive little animals passed his comprehension. A remark below him caused the lad to prick up his ears ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... kangaroos, from the tiny kangaroo rat, about the size of an English water-rat, to the huge red kangaroo, which is over six feet high and about the weight of a sucking calf. The kangaroo is harmless and inoffensive as a rule, but it can inflict a dangerous kick with its hindlegs, and when pursued by dogs or men and cornered, the "old man" kangaroo will sometimes fight for its life. Its method is to take a stand in a water-hole or with its back ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... Allwick. "I knew his parents. I have been to their village, and he himself is not a stranger to me. He recognised me this morning in the crowd, and that induced him to pay us this visit. The truth is, I have seen much of the Molokani. A more inoffensive, earnest, religious people do not exist. When travelling in the south of Russia with a gentleman, to whom I was attached as secretary, we have had thirty of them dining with us at once, and, though peasants of the humblest class, they have invariably behaved like gentlemen. Their Christianity ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... 1118 Hugues de Payens, Geoffrey de St. Aldemar, and seven other French noblemen, whose hearts were touched by the sufferings which the pilgrims underwent in their journey to Jerusalem, formed themselves into a society with the object of the protection of these inoffensive persons on their transit from the coast inland. Hugues de Payens, received in audience by Pope Honore II., was sent by the Pontiff to the Peers of the Council, then assembled at Troyes in Champagne; the Council ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... close to which the spring gurgled out of the rock. Here he took the precaution of drinking deeply himself before letting the ponies have their fill of the refreshing water, after which they began grazing in their quiet, inoffensive way, leaving their guardian to his thoughts, which ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... with natives, we feel so anxious to conciliate, and to avoid giving offence, that our behaviour, thus guarded and circumspect, has an air of restraint about it, which may produce distrust and apprehension on their part; whilst, on the other hand, Jack, who is not only unreflecting and inoffensive himself, but never suspects that others can possibly misconstrue his perfect good-will and unaffected frankness, has an easy, disengaged manner, which at once invites ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... discovered among the documents which filled his drawers. As to his relations with women, they appeared to have been promiscuous but superficial. He had many acquaintances among them, but few friends, and no one whom he loved. His habits were regular, his conduct inoffensive. His death was an absolute mystery, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the third lieutenant, had none. How he had got his promotion was surprising to those who knew him, till it was whispered about that he had a very near relative in a high position, who had no difficulty in obtaining it for him. Sims was, however, generally liked; he was very inoffensive, he never talked about himself or his friends, seemed to wish to be let alone, and to let others alone. He was always ready to do a good-natured action, to take a brother officer's watch, or to give up his own leave to ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... manner of fun over Bluff owning a shotgun built after the same principle, nor could they settle the dispute, Jerry claiming that it was all right in a rifle, as a man hunted big game with that, and his life might be in danger; while with the other weapon he usually only shot birds and inoffensive small animals; while Bluff declared that what was black for the pot was also black for ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... At the scaffold he tried to speak a last word to his people. The drums were ordered to drown his voice, and an attendant priest uttered the words, "Fils de Saint Louis, montez au ciel!"—Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!—and all was over. The kindest-hearted, most inoffensive gentleman in Europe had expiated the ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... were buccaneers. They claimed the same rights as privateers but differed in this—that they would attack any ship or settlement and plunder it at will. At first they confined themselves to small Spanish settlements only, but, later, their desires increased, and neutral ships and inoffensive villages ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... motion rules, The tendons stiffen, and the spirit cools; Each asks the aid of Nature's sister, Art, To cheer the senses, and to warm the heart. The gentle fair on nervous tea relies, Whilst gay good-nature sparkles in her eyes; An inoffensive scandal fluttering round, Too rough to tickle, and too light to wound; Champagne the courtier drinks, the spleen to chase, The colonel burgundy, and port his grace; Turtle and 'rrac the city rulers charm, ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... pleasure of his own importance, and, unshackled by business, occupy himself solely in being civil to all the world. For, though elated by his rank, it did not render him supercilious; on the contrary, he was all attention to everybody. By nature inoffensive, friendly, and obliging, his presentation at St. James's had ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... likeness; thine's a tympany of sense. A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ, But sure thou'rt but a kilderkin of wit. Like mine, thy gentle numbers feebly creep; Thy tragic muse gives smiles, thy comic sleep. With whate'er gall thou set'st thyself to write, Thy inoffensive satires never bite. In thy felonious heart though venom lies, It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies. Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame In keen Iambics, but mild Anagram. Leave writing plays, ...
— English Satires • Various
... cliffs could tell! What a romance they could narrate of various tribes, as distinct from each other as the nations of Europe, crowding each other; and at the last of this inoffensive race, coming from the far south, it may be; driven from pillar to post, making their last stand in this desert land; to perish of pestilence, or to be almost exterminated by the blood-thirsty tribes that surrounded them—then again, when the tide changed, and a new ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... about without a keeper; but inoffensive books must not stir forth without a visible jailor in their title; nor is it to the common people less than a reproach; for if we dare not trust them with an English pamphlet, what do we but censure them for a giddy, vitious, and ungrounded people, in such a sick and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... over the child and remained perfectly still. He did not dare to move, lest any action, however inoffensive, might induce Moosa to change his mind and separate ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... that this measure was justifiable on military grounds, there can be no excuse for the brutal precipitancy with which it was enforced. It crowded the colonial ports with homeless and impoverished fugitives; it inflicted unnecessary suffering and pecuniary loss upon inoffensive and innocent non-combatants, both European and native; and it was accompanied in some instances by displays of wanton cruelty and deliberate spite utterly unworthy of a people ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... it before? Ever since he had turned on the lights, he had been subjectively busy trying to invest her presence there with some plausible excuse. But somnambulism had never once entered his mind. And in his stupidity, at pains though he had been to render his words inoffensive, he had ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... blow commonly exhausts the receptacle of the duct, a second (the venom being more or less mingled and diluted by the salivary secretion) is comparatively less fatal in results; and each successive repetition correspondingly inoffensive until finally nothing but pure mucus is ejected. Nevertheless, when thoroughly aroused, the reptile is enabled to constantly hurl a secretion, since both rage and hunger swell the glands to enormous size, and stimulate to extraordinary activity—a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... attacks[129] always took place under the pressure of some great injustice, some excess of suffering imposed by the strong on the weak and inoffensive, we must also add that there was in this pretended misanthropy more real goodness and humanity than in all the elegies, songs, meditations, Messenian odes, etc., of all those who ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... been a willful and persistent nuisance in the little community, and there were good reasons for wanting to be rid of her, and right ways to that end. They took the wrong way and tried her for heresy. In like manner, when the Quakers came among them,—not of the mild, meek, inoffensive modern variety to which we are accustomed, but of the fierce, aggressive early type,—instead of proceeding against them for their overt offenses against the state, disorderly behavior, public indecency, contempt of court, sedition, they proceeded ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... brought to a sudden close Gov. Geary's term of office. When he had disbanded the three thousand "Law and Order" militia that were to attack Lawrence, that part of them known as the Kickapoo Rangers were returning home by way of Lecompton. One of this number went into a field where "a poor, inoffensive, lame young man" named David C. Buffum was plowing, and demanded his horses. Buffum protested against this robbery, but the wretch shot Buffum and took the horses. The unhappy man gave the following ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... mutual slaughter, hungering to live." Molluscs are murderers and the most shameless of cannibals. No creature at all conspicuous is safe, unless it is agile and alert, or of horrific aspect, or endowed with giant's strength, or is encased in armour. A perfectly inoffensive crab, incapable of inflicting injury to anything save creatures of almost microscopic dimensions, assumes the style and demeanour of a ferocious monster, ready at a moment's notice to cry havoc, and let loose the dogs of war. Another hides itself as a rugged ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... in villanous man, and when cheating and craftines is counted the cleanest wit, and soundest wisedome.'[28] Fuller also, in a similar strain, says, 'He was a pious poet, his conscience having the command of his fancy, very temperate in his life, slow of speech, and inoffensive in company.' ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... settled what the whites called Bulltown, on the Little Kanawha. This was at a salt spring about a mile and a quarter below the present Bulltown P. O., Braxton county, Va. Capt. Bull and his people were inoffensive, and very friendly to their white neighbors, as our ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... contradictions that your artistic zeal encounters. The world is so formed that the practice of the Good and the search for the Better is not made agreeable to any one; not in the things of Art, which appear the most inoffensive, any more than in other things. In order to deserve well one must learn to endure well. The best specific for the prejudice, malice, imbroglios and injustice of others is not to trouble oneself about them. It seems that such and such people find their pleasure where we should not ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... and sneak off to go swimming in the East River. But it kept me from being very much afraid of the Bowery (we went down on the surface cars), but Olive was scared beautifully. There was the dearest, most inoffensive old man in the most perfect state of intoxication sitting next to us in the car, and when Olive moved away from him he winked over at me and said, 'Honor your shruples, ma'am, ver' good form.' I think Olive thought he was going to murder us—she was sure he ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Jack!" growled Phil, walking the floor of his room and savagely kicking an inoffensive chair out of his way. "I should have known. If I had taken Hooker in hand and coached him, instead of Grant—— But I never did like Roy very much, and somehow Rod Grant got on ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... to be a murmur of pleasure at the announcement from those who were with the speaker. Stanford slowly opened his eyes, wondering what these savages were who rejoiced in the death of an inoffensive stranger cast upon their shores. He saw a group standing around him, but his attention speedily became concentrated on one face. The owner of it, he judged, was not more than nineteen years of age, and the face—at least ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... eventually it will necessarily have its effect. Each war, as it occurs, even if it does not finally settle some conflicting claims, will most assuredly help to teach the warring nations just how far they can go, and will help, consequently, to restrict its subsequent policy within practicable and probably inoffensive limits. It is by no means an accident that England and France, the two oldest European nations, are the two whose foreign policies are best defined and, so far as Europe is concerned, least offensive. For centuries these Powers ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... maniac as yet not dangerous. North Aston held him in deeper horror than it had held even Pepita, and his true personality exercised its wits more keenly than had even the true personality of madame. In point of fact, he was a quiet, inoffensive, amiable man, who gave his mind to Sanskrit for work and to entomology for play, and did not trouble himself about his own portrait as drawn in the local vernacular. Nevertheless, for all his reserved habits and quiet ways, he had learnt the whole ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... was promulgated in 1850, their chief spoke of it, in his ill-timed letter to the Bishop of Durham, as "insolent and insidious." For many an age to come, Catholics will read with astonishment that so inoffensive an act of the Holy See, done at the request of the Catholic bishops of England, and in the interest of the Catholic people, at the time some seven millions in number, should have excited the anger of so great a portion of the English nation. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... altogether if they can without disturbance of the Queen's peace? The procession enabled many thousands to do that without the least inconvenience or danger to themselves, and with no injury or offence to their neighbours. To prohibit or punish peaceful, inoffensive, orderly, and perfectly innocent processions upon pretence that they are constructively unlawful, is unconstitutional tyranny. Was it done because the ministers discovered that the terror of suspended habeas corpus had not in this matter stifled ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... admit our own right to live, and therefore to kill in self-defence all creatures that would kill us. Where the line is drawn, however, by many earnest thinkers and feelers, is at killing harmless, inoffensive ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... been stabbed in wanton cruelty, through the shoulder and the arm, but not mortally. The Indians were still drunk, and some of them having knives in their hands, I thought it most prudent to withdraw from their tents, without offering any assistance. The Indians appear to me to be generally of an inoffensive and hospitable disposition; but spirituous liquors, like war, infuriate them with the most revengeful and barbarous feelings. They are so conscious of this effect of drinking, that they generally deliver up their guns, bows and arrows, and ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... admiral's corpse lying in the court-yard, he went to the adjoining house, in which Teligny lived. All the inmates were killed, but he escaped by the roof. Twice he fell into the hands of the enemy, and twice he was spared; he perished at last by the sword of a man who knew not his amiable and inoffensive character. His neighbor La Rochefoucault was perhaps more fortunate in his fate. He had hardly fallen asleep when he was disturbed by the noise in the street. He heard shouts and the sound of many footsteps; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... never wanted the pretext, and seldom the will, to harass and pursue, even to the very edge of destruction, any of their less powerful neighbours, who attempted to separate themselves from their authority, and to trust for their protection, during the dangers of the times, to their own inoffensive conduct, and to ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... scheme of interplanetary rules or order they harassed and attacked peaceful shipping and inoffensive cultures throughout a wide territory. They were something demanding the Council's military action. But the ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... velvet hat, not of the latest style, its well-kept strings of black vastly different from the glossy blue he had so much admired at an earlier period of the day. Was ever man more disappointed? Who was she, the old witch, for so he mentally termed the inoffensive woman devoutly conning her prayer book, unconscious of the wrath her presence was exciting in the bosom of the young man beside her! How he wished he had stayed at home, and were it not that he sat so far distant from the door, he would certainly have left in disgust. ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... were ordered to burn, sink, and destroy; and that in those times it was not uncommon for a British admiral to do much mischief with a strong fleet; but it is evident that the style is since changed, for our admirals are now very inoffensive, and go out only to come back. I, therefore, think the motion highly necessary, and such as ought ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... forget what the original title was, but they've had Castle Drachenstolz for centuries. Such a picturesque old place! And—actually, Duchess!—Count Ruprecht has a pet dragon there—it's the only one left in Maerchenland now, and as it's rather a curiosity in its way, and quite inoffensive, we see no objection to his keeping it. You will probably meet the Count to-day, he generally drives over to luncheon now—so devoted to dear Edna! And ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... Harvey sat there staring at him, very still; such a pathetic figure that it seemed like rank cowardice to strike again. And yet Fairfax, now that he had begun, was eager to go on striking this helpless, inoffensive creature with all the frenzy of the brutal victor who stamps out the life of his ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... turn this power to a bad use. The amiable cannot use such an instrument, the highminded disdain it. And on the other hand, the husbands against whom it is used most effectively are the gentler and more inoffensive; those who cannot be induced, even by provocation, to resort to any very harsh exercise of authority. The wife's power of being disagreeable generally only establishes a counter-tyranny, and makes victims in their turn chiefly of those husbands who ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... turf fire on the hearth needed no stove nor grate, nor was there any in the house. A second room on the ground floor, used as a bed room, had a boarded floor, and although to English notions bare and bald, having no carpet, pictures, dressing table, or washstand, it was clean and inoffensive. The churning and dairy operations are carried on in the room first described, where also the ducks and hens do feed. The farmer holds fifty acres of good land, for which he pays fifty pounds a year. His father, who died thirty years ago, paid twenty-four pounds, which he thinks a ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Indians who came in verified the statement of the ox-driver, and declared that if the teamster had not killed their inoffensive warrior who only asked for something to eat there would have been no ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... editorials, once the most important feature of a daily paper, are rarely so now. They have become in many cases mere casual comment, in some have been altogether eliminated, in others so neutralized and inoffensive that a man who had bought a certain daily for a year might be puzzled if you asked him its political, religious, and sociological views. He would not be in doubt if asked what his favorite magazine was trying to accomplish in the world. Unless it is a mere periodical of amusement ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... following him from the room seemed to imitate his salutation as they passed her—all but the youngest, who made her a profound bow accompanied by a wonderful smile. The eldest was about the age of twelve, the youngest about seven. They were rather sickly looking, but had intelligent faces and inoffensive expressions. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... fall in with more people. Just ordinary peaceful people taking a walk, wearing their Sunday clothes and faces; poor people with their babies: workmen loafing. A few here and there wore the red eglantine in their buttonholes: they looked quite inoffensive: they were revolutionaries by dint of self-persuasion: they were obviously quite benevolent and optimistic at heart, well satisfied with the smallest opportunities for happiness: whether it were fine or merely ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... all," said Berry. "Only last week we bound one over for discussing the housing question with a wart-hog. The animal, which, till then, had been laying steadily, became unsettled and suspicious and finally attacked an inoffensive Stilton ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... a definition of what is undesirable matter for the minds of young people, and to make that cover as much suggestive indecency and coarseness as possible, to cover everything, indeed, that is not virginibus puerisque, and to call this matter by some reasonably inoffensive adjective, "adult," for example. One might speak of "adult" art, "adult" literature, and "adult" science, and the report of all proceedings under certain specified laws could be declared "adult" matter. In the old times there was an excellent system of putting "adult" matter into ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... judged that a few years in a country village would improve her health and broaden her view of life beyond that of cockney provincialism. For, though Mrs. Howard had more refinement than strength of mind, and passed generally for a sweet and inoffensive little woman, she did not lack a certain true perception of values, due doubtless to the fact that she had been a New England girl, and, before her marriage and emigration to the great city, had passed her life among unexciting realities, and among people who ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... not observing this rule. The case of the son of Napoleon I. is a notable instance, who, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, began his career of sexual indulgence, which ended his life at the early age of twenty-one years. He was an amiable, inoffensive, and studious youth, beloved by his grandfather and the whole Austrian court; and though the son of the most energetic man that modern times has produced, yet, from his effeminate life, he scarcely ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... younger son of the Jaysalmer family. The first Raja of Sirmaur, whom Hariballabh recollects, was Vijay Prakas, who married a daughter of Jagat Chandra of Kumau. He was succeeded by his son Pradipa Prakas, who, like his father, was a tame inoffensive man. His son Kirti Prakas succeeded when eight years old, and died in his twenty-sixth year; but during this period of youth he fought many battles with the Mogul officers, and took from them Larpur, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... had not had the fly in his web for five weeks without casting some light toils around him. Heathcote himself would have said that Pledge was as inoffensive to-day as he had been on the first day of the term, and would have angrily scouted the idea that "Junius," or any one else, had been right ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... as remain of the original Quakers, have come to be as good Quakers in character—though still loyal Catholics in dogma—as if they said "thee and thou," and wore drab. They are peaceable, gentle folk, sober and inoffensive; and the transforming influence of Quaker character is seen in certain of them in a ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... Essay on Humour in Comedy, published in a Collection of Dennis's Letters, is an entertaining, and correct piece of criticism: All his other Letters are written with a great deal of wit and spirit, a fine flow of language; and are so happily intermixt with a lively and inoffensive raillery, that it is impossible not to be pleased with them at the first reading: we may be satisfied from the perusal of them, that his conversation must have been very engaging, and therefore we need not wonder ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... fact filled with much curiosity concerning and interest in the Marquis of Coombe. She was a clever and well trained person, but socially a simple creature, who in an inoffensive way "loved a lord." If her work had not absorbed her she could not have kept her eyes from this finely conventional and rather unbending-looking man who—keeping himself out of the way of all who were in charge of the seemingly almost dead boy—still would ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of Austria declared war against Russia because the great empire, ever faithful to its historical traditions, could not forsake inoffensive Serbia, nor acknowledge ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the most unrelenting foe of this inoffensive animal. It is a native of New Holland and Van Diemen's Land, and was first discovered by the celebrated navigator Captain Cook, in 1770, while stationed on the coast of New South Wales. In Van Diemen's Land the great kangaroo is regularly hunted with fox-hounds, as the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... [p. 20 ed. 1684]), 'Since God has prescribed an inoffensive life, as that which only can give acceptance with him; and on the contrary hath determined never to justify the wicked, &c.—Will not the abomination appear greatest of all, where God shall be found condemning the just, on purpose to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... descriptions, sprightliness, and lightness of touch, and was admired by Pope and Gray. The poem owes its name to the use of the term in the author's day to denote depression. G., who held an appointment in the Customs, appears to have been a quiet, inoffensive person, an ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... gaiety of temper in Davenant, while he was in the most deplorable circumstances of distress, carries something in it very singular, and perhaps could proceed from no other cause but conscious innocence; for he appears to have been an inoffensive good natured man. He was conveyed from the Isle of Wight to the Tower of London, and for some time his life was in the utmost hazard; nor is it quite certain by what means he was preserved from falling a sacrifice to the prevailing fury. Some conjecture that two aldermen of York, to whom he had ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... has had a letter from Mr. Forster with the date of Shakespeare's birthday, and overflowing with kindness really both to himself and me. It quite touched me, that letter. Also we have had a visitation from an American, but on the point of leaving Florence and very tame and inoffensive, and we bore it very well considering. He sent us a new literary periodical of the old world, in which, among other interesting matter, I had the pleasure of reading an account of my own 'blindness,' taken from a French paper (the 'Presse'), and mentioned with ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... would gladly have done, would be too crude a thing to do, too gross a rebuke to the little Doctor's Ego. She was wrong, of course, though her sensibilities were indubitably right. Therefore she feigned enormous engrossment in her algebra, and struggled to make herself as small and inoffensive as she could. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison |
