"Obtrusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... until the coast was entirely clear. He did not see me, and was looking backward into the kitchen, a cheerful and animated expression upon his face. This expression did not strike me pleasantly. He had escaped a great danger, it was true, but it was no reason for this rather obtrusive air of exultation. Just then Alice came into the dining-room from the kitchen, and the young man stepped back, so that she did not notice him. As she passed he gently threw his arm quietly around her ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... I was carrying was a snare and a deceit. Everybody knows that reporters use recorders in interviews, but it never pays to be too obtrusive about them, or the subject gets recorder-conscious and stiffens up. What I had was better than a recorder; it was a recording radio. Like the audiovisuals, it not only transmitted in to the Times, but made a recording as ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... left of the door, it was not until she had passed him and flung herself into a chair, that I thought to look in his direction. Then it was too late, for he had turned his face aside and was gazing with rather an obtrusive curiosity at the old-fashioned room, murmuring, as he did so, some such commonplaces to his ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... appreciation and a tribute to Miss Johnson's memory rather than a criticism, the writer will touch but lightly upon the more prominent features of her productions. Without being obtrusive, not the least of these is her national pride, for nothing worthier, she thought, could be said ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... say. Mr. Powle wants him here all the time. It is a mercy the man has a little consideration—or some business to keep him at home—or he would be the sauce to every dish. As it is, he really is not obtrusive." ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... in train or omnibus will every inch of boarding Be covered with advertisements of variegated hue; No more in every thoroughfare will each obtrusive hoarding Blaze, hideously chromatic, with its yellow, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... are not private, but public interests. There are legal means for abating nuisances; and there is no reason why houses which affect the health of whole districts should not be treated in the same way as nuisances which are more obtrusive, though less pernicious. In some of the cities of Europe, in Nuremberg, for instance, there is a public architect, to whom all plans for new buildings are submitted for approval or rejection according as they correspond or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... principle, and that, asking no sentimental affection, and indeed yielding none, he was, without presuming on his relationship, devoted to his cousin's interest. It seemed that from being a glancing ray of sunshine in the house, evasive but never obtrusive, he had become a daily necessity of comfort and security ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... an old man of a very venerable appearance, called our attention to a dirty stone which he held in his hand, affirming it to be a piece of Henri Quatre's identical foot: but none were troublesome or obtrusive, and most appeared to be deriving as much enjoyment from their own little vagaries as their melancholy state would admit of.[30] Their apartments, built round the square, are neat and airy, each furnished with a bed, dressing table, and a few plain utensils. In one ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... space. Mrs. Lawrence reminded him vaguely of Beatrice, not in temperament, but in her perfect grace and dignity. The house, its furnishings, the manner in which dinner was served, were in immense contrast to what he had met in the great places on Long Island, where the servants were so obtrusive that they had positively to be bumped out of the way, or even in the houses of more conservative "Union Club" families. He wondered if this air of symmetrical restraint, this grace, which he felt was continental, was distilled through ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Fernan's diamonds on, Mrs. Audley was quite at home and at perfect ease in German and Hungarian society, speaking the languages without hesitation when she did speak, while in her quiet way keeping every one entertained, showing the art de tenir un salon, and moreover, preserving Francie from obtrusive admiration in a way perhaps learnt by experience on that more perilous subject, Angela, who had invited what Francie shrank from. The two girls were supremely happy, and Francie seemed to have a fountain of joy that diffused a ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Ogreish Thing; The soul-revolting, sense-degrading She, Who swayed and sickened, scourged and scarified The unwilling slaves of fashion and discomfort A quarter of a century since! She sat, A spectral, scraggy, beet-nosed, ankle-less, Obtrusive-panted, splay-foot, slattern-shape, Of grim Medusa-faced Immodesty, Caged cumbrously in a stiff, swaying, swollen, Shin-scarifying, hose-revealing frame Of wide-meshed metal, like a monster mousetrap— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... be slowly consumed by time. The Colorado River will carry their ashes to the sea, and where they once stood will be seen gray, desert-like plateaus. Their outlines now stand out like skeletons from which the flesh has been removed—sharp, angular, obtrusive, but bound together as by ligaments of granite. The tooth of time gnaws at them day and night and has been gnawing for thousands of centuries, so that in some cases only their stumps remain. From the Temple of Isis ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... Fordyce, at Monkwell-street,) resided many years in the Lower-street, Islington. One day, when he got into the stage to come to London, he met with two ladies of his acquaintance, and a loquacious young Irishman, who was very obtrusive with his "would-be wit" to the females. The coachman soon stopped to take up another passenger, who, Dutchman-like, was "slow to make haste." A young dog, being confined in the neighbourhood, bewailed its loss of liberty, by making ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... is less notable in detail, and in general effect is more spoiled by obtrusive blues. There is, however, one young man of wholly Lionardesque loveliness, whose divine innocence of adolescence, unalloyed by serious thought, unstirred by passions, almost forces a comparison with Sodoma. The only painter who approaches Luini in what may be called the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... has given us an amusing picture of the behaviour of gallants on the Elizabethan stage, in his "Cynthia's Revels." In this scene a child thus mimics the obtrusive beau: "Now, sir, suppose I am one of your genteel auditors, that am come in (having paid my money at the door, with much ado), and here I take my place, and sit downe. I have my three sorts of tobacco ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... Some conversations might as well be headed, in legal phraseology, Landor v. Landor, or at most Landor v. Landor and another—the other being some wretched man of straw or Guy Faux effigy dragged in to be belaboured with weighty aphorisms and talk obtrusive nonsense. Hence sometimes we resent a little the taking in vain of the name of some old friend. It is rather too hard upon Sam Johnson to be made a mere 'passive bucket' into which Horne Tooke may pump his philological notions, with scarcely a feeble sputter ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... all the elements of the Republican party, free from any suspicion of intrigue with foe or faction. The causes of his Senatorial defeat thus gave him a certain party authority and leadership, which were felt if not openly acknowledged. On his part, while never officious or obtrusive, he was always ready with seasonable and judicious suggestions, generous in spirit and comprehensive in scope, and which ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... the carriage, we again advert to its upholstery in silk-velvet orange-tinted; to the cushions covering the seat; to the lace curtaining the windows in a manner to permit view from within while screening the occupant from obtrusive eyes without; and to the elaborate decoration of the exterior, literally a mosaic of vari-colored woods, mother-of-pearl and gold, the latter in lines and flourishes. In fine, to such a pitch of gorgeousness ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... ways of the house and assumed a recognized position in the family,—I say recognized, because after he became known he was always inquired for by visitors, and in the letters to the other members of the family he always received a message. Although the least obtrusive of beings, his ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the Romanist theology remained as they were before. But a marked change took place in the public conduct of the papal functionaries. Morality was made more prominent, and mere ritualism less obtrusive. Comparatively speaking, an emphasis was taken from ecclesiastic confession and indulgence, and laid upon ethical obedience and piety. The Council of Trent, held at this time, says, in its decree concerning indulgences, "In granting indulgences, the Church desires that ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... are a thousand instances where a regard for formal mannerism takes the place of the easy grace that is the mark of true politeness, which being well acquired and habitual, is never obtrusive or offensively prominent. Too rigid an observance of the laws of etiquette makes them an absurdity and ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... did it without making one of them feel cross or contrary. You only showed them something better than they had, and did it without being obtrusive. Every one wants what is better than he has;—if he is allowed to take it of his own accord, and doesn't have it ...
— By the Roadside • Katherine M. Yates
... limits. In Germany the schools are two—one of so-called historical painting at Munich, one of what we may name domestic painting at Duesseldorf. This last may be put on one side as having no specially obtrusive characteristics, and by German pictures will be meant those of the Munich and Vienna type, whether actually from the studios of Munich and Vienna or not. In English contemporary art can one pretend to find a school at all in any ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... the ivy-grown porch and stared for a moment at the half-legal official parochial notices posted on the oaken door,—his first obtrusive intimation of the combination of church and state,—and hesitated. He was not prepared to find that this last resting-place of his people had something to do with taxes and tithes, and that a certain material respectability and security ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... Maker this chronicle does not lie—obtrusive and ostentatious though they were in tone and attitude. Enough that they were a general arraignment of humanity, the Bar, himself, and his brother, and indeed much that the same Maker had created ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... topic, our views would extend no further than to a mutual pledge of the parties to the compact to maintain the principle in application to its own territory, and to permit no colonial lodgments or establishment of European jurisdiction upon its own soil; and with respect to the obtrusive interference from abroad—if its future character may be inferred from that which has been and perhaps still is exercised in more than one of the new States—a joint declaration of its character and exposure of it to the world may be probably all that the occasion ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... sends the bravest of our youth post-haste to confusion—so impinging and inexorable are the thing's portentous horns. It is indeed after these maturer considerations that we manage to hit upon the right key really capable of impounding the obtrusive animal; the idea, namely, of indicating to our youthful questioner the importance of aesthetic austerity in these regions—an austerity not only no less exclusive, but far more exclusive than any mandate drawn from ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... restriction, it must grow far beyond its present limits; that beauty or propriety of aspect in town and country forms as real a part of the national wealth as any material product, and that to save these from impairment is a national interest; that the recent developments of vexatiously obtrusive advertising have not grown out of any necessities of honourable business, but are partly the result of a mere instinct of imitation, and partly are a morbid phase of competition by which both the consumers and the trade as a whole lose; that restriction as regards the size and positions ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to conquer and outgrow the study in time, while leaving many observations upon self-culture and self-training, that will no doubt become deeply valued as the result of the practical experience of one who so truly mastered that obtrusive self. ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sleeping girl, that perfume of innocence shed around the maidenly couch, that lamp, open-eyed amid the shadows, like a soul in prayer, had inspired the seducer with an unknown distress. Irritated by what he called an absurd cowardice, he had extinguished the obtrusive light, and was advancing towards the bed, and addressing unspoken reproaches to himself, when Gabriel swooped upon him with a wounded tiger's fierce gnashing of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tiny sitting-room, for Pinto was somehow less alarming to her than he had been. Perhaps she was conscious that at the corner of the street stood a quietly dressed man doing nothing particular, who was relieved at the eighth hour by an even less obtrusive-looking ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... further misled his unsophisticated sister by making no special effort to seek Mildred's society. After one or two rather futile attempts he saw that he would alienate the sad-hearted girl by obtrusive advances, and he contented himself by trying to understand her, in the hope that at some future time he might learn to approach her more acceptably. The thought that she would soon leave the farmhouse depressed him greatly. She had suggested to him ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... hazard-room of a well-known house in St. James's-street: the shutters were closed, the curtains down, and we had candles the whole time; even in the adjoining rooms we had candles, that when our doors were opened to bring in refreshments, no obtrusive gleam of daylight might remind us how the hours had passed. How human nature supported the fatigue, I know not. We scarcely allowed ourselves a moment's pause to take the sustenance our bodies required. At last, one of the markers, who had been in the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... firmly upon his nose, and ran his gaze calculatingly over the assembled voters. No one of those patriotic citizens seemed to desire to be obtrusive ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... about the room, stared for a second in blank amazement at the intruders. They were certainly unlike any other visitors who had ever come to Pendlemere. The speaker was a little, short, wiry man, in a slack-fitting, brown tweed suit, with a rather obtrusive striped tie. His raggy, grey beard straggled under his chin and up to his ears; his eyes twinkled through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles; in defiance of European etiquette, he wore his hat over ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... brilliant and calm, and Humphreys lingered almost as long at his window. The Irish yew came to his mind again as he was on the point of drawing his curtains: but either he had been misled by a shadow the night before, or else the shrub was not really so obtrusive as he had fancied. Anyhow, he saw no reason for interfering with it. What he would do away with, however, was a clump of dark growth which had usurped a place against the house wall, and was threatening to obscure one ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... He wasn't obtrusive about his heart. You wouldn't have known he had one. He only left it to the physical laboratory at Waterbury for the benefit of science, since he considered it to be quite an extraordinary kind of ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... pause, and then there rose in the stillness the unearthly howling of the baron's hounds, a cheerful sound which only their owner's somewhat loud converse of the evening had kept from becoming excessively obtrusive. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... me a bit of pasteboard, and dangling from a resinous bough is the statement that it is "Pinus strobus" that welcomes me to fragrant shade. Like many city manners which are new to country folk these seem to be a bit obtrusive at first. Yet on second thought I find it an excellent custom which ought to be enlarged upon in various ways. I can fancy people coming to the bungalow for a day's intercourse with the pasture shrubs that have never before met them, and ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... advance made by the last wave of the tide. The frontiersmen of to-day, bibulous gamblers, reckless duelists, blasphemous savages of mixed blood, had no prototype in Colonial days, for even the human harvest then gathered to the stocks, the whipping-post and the gallows, was of a far less obtrusive class of offenders against morals and social decency. Prescott was a Puritan soldier, a seeker of liberty not license; fiercely rebellious against tyranny, but no contemner of moral law. It was no accident that put him in the advance guard ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... does her own work, is dependent upon circumstances. She certainly shouldn't follow her hostess all over the house with offers of help: "Can't I do this?" "Shan't I do that?" Let her quickly and unostentatiously render such small services as are helpful without being obtrusive. She may care for her own room; she may fill the vases with flowers; she may tell stories to the children or take them for a walk, but she must carefully respect the hostess's privacy and not intrude in the rear regions where the domestic ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... from the champagne. Perhaps I shall do well to say that on questions of right and wrong he had a will of iron. All his life he moved resolutely in whichever direction his conscience pointed; and, although that ever present and never obtrusive conscience of his made mistakes of judgment now and then, as must all consciences, I think it can never once have tricked him into any action that was impure or unclean. Some critics maintain that the heroes and heroines ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... squalor, steaming with unwholesome stenches, and swarming with half-naked children and whole worlds of dirty people—make up, altogether, such a scene of wonder: so lively, and yet so dead: so noisy, and yet so quiet: so obtrusive, and yet so shy and lowering: so wide awake, and yet so fast asleep: that it is a sort of intoxication to a stranger to walk on, and on, and on, and look about him. A bewildering phantasmagoria, with all the inconsistency of a dream, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... the partner of my confinement a man of uncommon capacity, but something there was hung about him, or hung about me, that prevented my assimilating-with him in anything. I saw he was endowed with great powers of agreeability; but I thought him obtrusive ; and that alone is a drawback to all merit, that I know not how to pass over. He spoke his opinions with great openness, equally upon people and things ; but it seemed rather from carelessness than confidence, and I 'know him too ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... only the more sedate dances, because of that obtrusive tendency of the red sham to her skirt, Sissy was able to chaperon her senior all the more effectively at Crosby Pemberton's party. Irene danced like a thing whose vocation is motion. She was a twig in a rain-storm, a butterfly seeking sweets, a humming-bird whose wing beat the air with a very rhapsody ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... obtrusive, I fear, to enter into this sort of personal details; but, without some few words of explanation, such passages as the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... down with sunny greetings, fearless, trustful, never obtrusive. They looked innocently into human faces and pretended that they did not see the irritation there. "Tsic a dee. I wish I could help. Perhaps I can. Tic a dee-e-e?"—with that gentle, sweetly insinuating up slide at the end. Somebody spoke, for the first ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... Some had come from Virginia, some from New England, and others from the island of Bermuda. They had their little assembly and their governor Stevens, their humble plantations, their modest trade, their beloved solitudes, and the plainest and least obtrusive laws imaginable. They paddled up and down their placid bayous and rivers in birch-bark canoes; they shot deer and 'possums for food and panthers for safety, they loved their wives and begat their children, they wore shirts and ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... looked out of the windows with distaste—agreed that the outskirts of Frankfort were hideous with their obtrusive and insistent collection of factory chimneys; and shuddered at the distant and beautiful background of mountain and forest, to us so teeming with painful memories. We exclaimed at the unsightliness of the huge skeleton lettering proclaiming to all the world that a maschinen-Fabrik ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... him for a brief walk in the open air. I applied the next morning for a fresh cell, and was duly accommodated. My new apartment was very much lighter, but the change was in other respects a disadvantage. The closet was fouler, and as the lid was a remarkably bad fit, it emitted a more obtrusive smell. The copper basin also was filled with dirty water, which would not flow away, as the waste-pipe was stopped up. To remedy these defects they brought the engineer, who strenuously exercised his intellect on the subject for three days; but as he ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... Hawthorne, has commented on the extent to which the nobler qualities and conquering energy of the English character are hidden, not only from foreigners, but from ourselves, by the "detestable lay figure" of John Bull. In like manner, the obtrusive type of the "canny Scot" is apt to make critics forget the hot heart that has marked the early annals of the country, from the Hebrides to the Borders, with so much violence, and at the same time has been the source of so much strong feeling and persistent purpose. ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... again—Odontoglossums and such; the seventh is given to Dendrobes. But facing us as we enter stands a Lycaste Skinneri, which illustrates in a manner almost startling the infinite variety of the orchid. I positively dislike this species, obtrusive, pretentious, vague in colour, and stiff in form. But what a royal glorification of it we have here!—what exquisite veining and edging of purple or rose; what a velvet lip of crimson darkening to claret! It is merely ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... in the forenoon that we arrived with Borland and Lathrop. I could not help noticing the cordial manner with which Borland greeted Miss Winslow. There was something obtrusive even in his sympathy. Strong, whom we met now for the first time, seemed rather suspicious of the presence of Borland and his chemist, but made an effort to talk ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... half-dozen men, transfixed by what Mr. Snodgrass called "the mild gaze of intelligence beaming from the eyes of the defenders of their country," was, however flattering, somewhat disturbing to one not naturally obtrusive. With us the salute would have been given, of course; but only by the non-commissioned officer, touching his cap. Afterwards I was on the lookout for this, and dodged ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... inclinations lead them to associate with each other on terms of equality for the ordinary purposes of good fellowship. Such people, not being fenced in by conventional barriers and owning no special or obtrusive privileges, represent much more fully and naturally the characteristic national traits of their country; and their ways and customs are the most fruitful field for a comparative study of national character. The daughters of dukes and princes can hardly be taken as ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... duty. What would, in my opinion, be very necessary, would be to prevail upon the zealous Catholics to change that belief which they are so anxious to have embraced by all the rest, to wit, that they of the religion are all damned. There are certainly, also, some ministers and other obtrusive spirits amongst the Huguenots who would fain persuade us of the same as regards Catholics; for my own part, I believe nothing of the kind; I hold it, on the contrary, as indisputable that, of whatever ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... this, and there is a deep truth in it, is that gentle and quiet manners do not attract attention at all. Their greatest charm is their unobtrusiveness, just as the charm and distinguishing mark of a well-dressed person is that the dress is not striking or obtrusive. You can infer from this how inconsistent with good manners is heat and exaggeration in conversation. It is a just complaint among refined and cultivated people that many, even of the well-educated young women of the present day, talk too loudly and vehemently; are given to exaggeration ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... Their delight seemed to be to seize on all the youngsters they could by any pretext lay hands on and hale them to appear before him. By this means they imagined they were making his authority known and dealing a serious blow at the less obtrusive captain in the schoolhouse. ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... far the cathedral shows no charm of outline. Its ridgepole is marred by three unusually obtrusive "lightning conductors," which could hardly have been more offensive had they been turned into those lath-like crosses which are seen elsewhere. Its tower is a monstrosity, with an egg-shaped protuberance which is neither ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... New York State history during the Colonial period. And, if the hours spent in poring over old maps and reading up old records and journals do not show, the result is always apparent. The facts are not obtrusive, but they are there, interwoven in the gauzy woof of the artist's imagination. That is why these romances carry conviction always, why we breathe the very air of the period as we ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... and to his secretary, that the Relation does not differ substantially from other contemporary accounts, and that the attempt to varnish over the exceptionable passages in the conduct of the Conquerors is not obtrusive. ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... you doing that. I don't think you could. You're generally more obtrusive than any one else I've ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... of the house is not only to be useful, but to be aesthetically a background for the dwellers therein, subordinate to them, not obtrusive. In most of our modern building and furnishing the people are relegated to the background as insignificant figures. This is largely why the home feeling is absent, why children do not form an affection for the ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... sadly, and Bob went off into a fit of obtrusive chuckling. Eugene cast a large cushion dexterously at him and caught him just in the mouth, and, still sadly, rose and went in ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... a taste for natural history became obtrusive and sought close investigation. It was part of Nickie's duty to fill such visitors with a proper respect for Missing Links, but ninety-nine out of every hundred accepted Mahdi in good faith. It is an axiom in the show ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... gradually taking concrete form. It had not assumed much importance when the two friends were first discussing their trip, but now that they were actually at grips with the affair it was becoming more obtrusive, and Merriman felt it must be faced. He ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... gets into the tiny harbor the inhabitants come down to see it, and the skippers of small craft pop up from their cabins and yell out to know where it's coming to. Even when they see it bound and guided by many hawsers they are not satisfied, but dangling fenders in an obtrusive fashion over the sides of their ships, prepare for ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... Emperor of Brazil, I think any application made to him would come best from those officially connected with the celebration. At any rate, I fear it would be obtrusive on my part to mix in it, as I have no special relation with him, though he has made a ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... undecided. He was now standing in the M.B. waistcoat and the pink bed-gown. The sleeves were more obtrusive than ever. The minister was reminded of his official duties. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... group of less admirable qualities, such as self-sufficiency and self-conceit. They are seldom manifested with that coarseness which in the West we associate with them, for the Japanese is usually too polished to be offensively obtrusive. He seldom indulges in bluster or direct assertion, but is contented rather with ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... with the Spanish race everywhere, and notoriously prevalent in continental Spain, persistent in Havana and Matanzas, and nearly universal throughout the Mexican republic, still, in the national capital it is far less obtrusive than elsewhere, because the police are instructed to suppress it. So, also, begging is prohibited by law in Paris, London, and Boston, but how constantly the law is disregarded we all know. Sad is the condition of things ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... amuse myself by letting them grow larger or smaller, black or blue, and by making them assume curious shapes. Amid throngs numbering hundreds of them I have moved about, and though my power over them varies, yet I never feel again the old nameless dread and when they become too obtrusive I can keep them at a distance by vigorous words of authority and also by a lash of the whip. This perhaps sounds strange to you, dear reader, but you must in truth understand that even in the senseless sphere, thought alone is not efficacious without a certain plastic expression in shape ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... That very evening another spirit reigns, a something intangible that makes Violet shrink into silence, and Floyd uneasy. Even Gertrude is less social. Marcia has a curious faculty of making people uncomfortable, of saying wrong things, of being obtrusive. She quite takes possession of the professor, and he hardly knows how to understand her small vanities and delusions, and is glad when the dainty French clock tolls nine, as that is their hour for working. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... If you put a drop of intense stain and a drop of powerful scent into a large tank of distilled water, you change the superficial character of the water, make it seem to be other than what it is. But it remains essentially a tank full of water, now containing an obtrusive trifle of alien matter in addition to the hydrogen and oxygen that decide its most significant properties. That is what the Challon did to Homer—he released the potential, then accidentally but indelibly stained it with ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... and vivacious, with gleams of her former great beauty, the gracious and agreeable hostess; again, her condition was that of sheer indifference and semi-torpor. And who was the officious and familiar ayah, her attendant and shadow, an obtrusive creature with bold black eyes and a resolute mouth? Why did she speak so authoritatively to her mistress? Why did she wear such handsome jewellery and expensive silk saris, heavily fringed with gold, and strut about with such an ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... enlightening him directly and immediately; but the obligation was there all the same, and to Jacob Boehm's influence we must attribute the evolution of the distinctive doctrine of the Muggletonians, which just about this time comes into obtrusive prominence. ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... four o'clock next morning before continuing the trip. He made a landing at daylight at a frame house over the door of which was painted the word "confectionery" and he thought he could get some breakfast. He was given a room, but it was soon filled with obtrusive questioners. A farmer, seeing the look of hunger in his eyes, volunteered to procure some breakfast. The Captain was prepared to do justice to the kind of a meal he had been wishing for, when the farmer ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... handle the trowel and to lay stone. After a few attempts, she managed quite well and found a curious pleasure in the manual labor of fitting stone to stone and properly bedding the whole in cement. She learned to select the right pieces with a rapid glance and to chip an obtrusive corner or face a rock with a few taps of the heavy hammer. It gave her a pleasure akin to her experiments in jewelry, and it must be said the results were better. She used to show her visitors proudly the bit of wall she had laid up herself ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... our English speech. Spenser, Ben Jonson, and Marlowe; Dryden, Cowley, and Waller; Milton, George Herbert, and Gray—to mention only the most familiar names—had owed allegiance to that mother who received Wordsworth now, and Coleridge and Byron immediately after him. "Not obvious, not obtrusive, she;" but yet her sober dignity has often seemed no unworthy setting for minds, like Wordsworth's, meditative without languor, and energies advancing without shock or storm. Never, perhaps, has the spirit of Cambridge been more truly caught than in Milton's ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... moral retrocession had already begun. She was gay and chatty, and her countenance fresh and blooming. But I missed something—something the absence of which awakened a sigh of regret. Ralph was very lover-like in his deportment, fluttering about Delia, complimenting her, and showing her many obtrusive attentions. But eyes that were in the habit of looking below the surface of things, saw no heart in ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... loves the picturesque. "Towns are generally so obtrusive; isn't it nice to know that Clovelly is here and that all we have to do is to walk 'down-along' and find it? Come, Tommy. Ho, for ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Unable to judge at once of the social position of those he meets, an Englishman prudently avoids all contact with them. Men are afraid lest some slight service rendered should draw them into an unsuitable acquaintance; they dread civilities, and they avoid the obtrusive gratitude of a stranger quite as much as his hatred. Many people attribute these singular anti-social propensities, and the reserved and taciturn bearing of the English, to purely physical causes. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the ladies of Quebec and Montreal were often seen graces which visitors from France were astonished to find at the edge of a wilderness. Yet this small though lively society had anomalies which grew more obtrusive towards the close of the war. Knavery makes strange companions; and at the tables of high civil officials and colony officers of rank sat guests as boorish in manners as they were ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... black-haired lady, but of natural and cultured manner, was now received by her with much cordiality, and I had an opportunity to survey the whole concourse and continue my observations. Brought up as I had been for the last few years, I found my own people markedly foreign,—not so much in any obtrusive respect as in that general atmosphere to which we often apply ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... far as the exercise of legislative power is controlled by the Supreme Court our government is essentially aristocratic in character. It represents the aristocratic principle, however, in its least obtrusive form. But while avoiding the appearance, it provides the substance ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... this text. There was, at least, this advantage in duelling, that it set a certain limit on the tongue. When Society laid by the rapier, it buckled on the more subtle blade of etiquette wherewith to keep obtrusive vulgarity at bay.' In this connection, I may be permitted to recall a playful remark of his upon another occasion. The painful divisions in the First Parish, A.D. 1844, occasioned by the wild notions in respect to the rights of (what Mr. Wilbur, so far as concerned the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... The discipline and education of the disciples are recorded with a plain revelation of their mistakes and their spiritual dulness. When they had settled in Capernaum Christ shows them that He must find a wider sphere of work (i. 38); He meets with a significant silence their obtrusive remonstrance when the woman with the issue of blood caused Him to ask, "Who touched My clothes?" (v. 30, 31); He tells them with affectionate care "to rest a while," when they had been too busy even to eat (vi. 31); He rebukes them gravely when they put a childish interpretation upon His command ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... neat in their persons, and appropriately, and, if I may use the phrase, technically dressed; they move about the house without hurry or noise; there is nothing of the bustle of employment, or the voice of command; nothing of that obtrusive housewifery that amounts to a torment. You are not persecuted by the process of making you comfortable; yet everything is done, and is done well. The work of the house is performed as if by magic, but it is the magic of system. Nothing is done by fits and starts, nor at awkward seasons; the whole ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... world; but these dates we withhold, from a delicate regard to personal feelings, which will be duly appreciated by those who have felt the sacredness of their domestic hearth to be tampered with by the obtrusive impertinences of a census-paper. ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... not know that I would not be a Social reformer—I would profess myself a Social agnostic, and prosecute my mission by the methods of the opportunist. I would endeavor to direct the Social ax to the most obvious and obtrusive roots of the Social evil, and having removed them and watched the result, would then determine what to do next. Possibly I would endeavor to begin with the abolition of wills and collateral inheritance, and so limiting direct inheritance that ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... them. The constant habit of meeting and discussing subjects connected with their own interests, in their own fields, and 'under their own fig-trees', with their landlords and Government functionaries of all kinds and degrees, prevents their ever feeling or appearing impudent or obtrusive; though it certainly tends to give them stentorian voices, that often startle us when they come into our houses to discuss ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... baro, kontrauxajxo. Obstinacy obstineco. Obstinate, to be obstini. Obstinate obstina. Obstruct obstrukci. Obstruction baro, obstrukco. Obtain ricevi, atingi. Obtrude trudi. Obtrusion trudo—eco. Obtrusive trudema. Obtuse malakra, malinteligenta. Obverse antauxa flanko. Obviate malhelpi. Obvious videbla, evidenta. Occasion okazo. Occasional okaza. Occult kasxata. Occupant okupanto, logxanto. Occupation okupo. Occupy okupi. Occupied with, to be okupigxi pri. Occur ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... small-town, New England best-family banker, reserved in pose, unobtrusively important—a placid exterior hiding querulousness and a fussy temper. JOHN JUNIOR is his father over again in appearance, but pompous, obtrusive, purse-and-family-proud, extremely irritating in his self-complacent air of authority, emptily assertive and loud. He is about forty. RICHARD, the other brother, is a typical young Casino and country club member, college-bred, good looking, not unlikable. ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... although (as you remarked just now)—I am old, possess a heart over whose emotions time and age have no power. I love as I have ever loved, passionately, profoundly; but my love is disinterested, and soars high above all self-gratification. Now that it has become obtrusive, its current shall be turned to heaven, and in the sacred walls of a cloister I will spend the remainder of my days in prayer for him whose image I shall cherish unto death. Sire, I respectfully request permission to enter the ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... in doubt as to the great question of Donatello's ears, and the mysterious influence which he retains over the animal world so long as he is unstained by bloodshed. In 'Septimius' alone, it seems to me that the supernatural is left in rather too obtrusive a shape in spite of the final explanations; though it might possibly have been toned down had the story received the last touches of the author. The artifice, if so it may be called, by which this is effected—and the romance is just sufficiently dipped ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... turn of the war the discontent in Cape Colony became less obtrusive, if not less acute, but in the later months of the year 1900 it increased to a degree which became dangerous. The fact of the farm-burning in the conquered countries, and the fiction of outrages by the British troops, raised a storm of indignation. The annexation ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we may go further. What is it which makes memory in this life so imperfect? What is it but the obtrusive hindrance of the body? The body is at the mercy of the disturbing assaults of present impressions. Through ear, and eye, and touch external objects invade the mind, and dispel and distract fixed and ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... short servitude ended. As soon as a bend in the road hid us from the house I opened my portmanteau, got out my own clothes, and, sub there, changed my raiment, putting on a quiet suit of blue, and presenting George Sampson's rather obtrusive garments (which I took the liberty of regarding as a perquisite) to Jean, who received them gladly. I felt at once a different being—so true it is that the ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... quality of the teachers was improving. The short term of the schools was being lengthened by private subscription in some districts, and new and adequate buildings appeared in others. Progress was evidently being made, even if it was not obtrusive, and in that progress one of the leading factors ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... did not come here to receive instructions from you, dem you," cried his lordship defiantly. He had succeeded at that moment in surreptitiously slashing the hitch rein in two with his pocket-knife. There was nothing now to prevent him from giving the obtrusive young man a defiant farewell. "I am ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... not depend entirely on a sufficiency of the necessaries of life. Some of our neighbours were far from being agreeable to us. Being fresh from England, it could hardly be expected that we could at once accommodate ourselves to the obtrusive familiarity of persons who had no conception of any differences in taste or manners arising from education and habits acquired in a more refined state of society. I allude more particularly to some rude and demoralised American farmers ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... when he expatiates in the regions of exalted fancy, as in the introductory discourse of the Spirit, and the invocation to Sabrina. They recur when he moralizes; and his morality is too interwoven with the texture of his piece to be other than obtrusive. He fatigues with virtue, as Lucan fatigues with liberty; in both instances the scarcely avoidable error of a young preacher. What glorious morality it is no one need be told; nor is there any poem in the language where beauties of thought, diction, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... a similar mortification nightly awaited the unconscious sleepers, although "upon uneasy pallets stretching them," in the occasional tinkling of an obtrusive bell, that peremptorily hurried them from their recumbent position to the cold stones of the chapel, where on bended knees they were obliged to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... land which have been continuously available for settlement have contributed, not only to the abundance of American prosperity, but also to the formation of American character and institutions; and undoubtedly many of the economic and political evils which are now becoming offensively obtrusive are directly or indirectly derived from the gradual monopolization of certain important economic opportunities. Nevertheless, these opportunities could never have been converted so quickly into substantial benefits had it not been for our more democratic political and ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... shadow of premonitory fear. The silence prevailing was painful—almost terrible. A great ormolu clock in the room, one of the Holy Father's "Jubilee" gifts, ticked the minutes slowly away with a jewel-studded pendulum, which in its regular movements to and fro sounded insolently obtrusive in such a stillness. Gherardi abstractedly raised his eyes to a great ivory crucifix which was displayed upon the wall against a background of rich purple velvet,—Manuel was standing immediately in front of it, and the tortured head of the carven Christ drooped over him as ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... are of such importance, a gesture or a word at the outset is enough to ruin a newcomer. It is the principal merit of fine manners and the highest breeding that they produce the effect of a harmonious whole, in which every element is so blended that nothing is startling or obtrusive. Even those who break the laws of this science, either through ignorance or carried away by some impulse, must comprehend that it is with social intercourse as with music, a single discordant note is a complete ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... your beautiful collection of irises produces a pitiful pennyworth of bloom to an intolerable quantity of leaves. But the petunias and the sweet-williams, and the balsams, and all the other ill-bred and obtrusive flowers leap promptly into life and vigor, and fight each other for the ownership of the beds. And the ever-faithful and friendly nasturtium comes early and stays late, and the limp morning-glory may always be counted upon to slouch familiarly over everything ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner |
