"Uncongenial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... friend is engaged or married, or has inherited a fortune, has written a successful book, or has painted an immortal picture. Joy opens the closet of language, and the gems of expression are easily found; but the fountain of feeling being chilled by the uncongenial atmosphere of grief, by the sudden horror of death, or the more terrible breath of dishonor or shame, or even by the cold blast of undeserved misfortune, leaves the individual sympathizer in a mood of perplexity and of sadness which is of itself a most discouraging frame of ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... cement is wanting—the sense of security and permanence, without which the body of affection cannot be consolidated, nor the heart commit itself to its whole capacity of emotion. I believe that many a brother and sister spend their days in uncongenial wedlock, or in a restless faintly expectant-singlehood, who might form a "comfortable couple" could they but make up their minds early to take each other ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... "bread-and-butter wages," and subsequently to his translating Legendre's "Elements of Geometry" from the French for L50. At the beginning of the session of 1819, he enrolled in the class of Scots Law, with the intention of becoming an advocate. But he found law as uncongenial a study as divinity. Till 1822 he lived in various lodgings in Edinburgh, finding his chief relief from tutorial drudgery in visits to his parents in Dumfriesshire. His health, which had suffered from too close application to study, was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... [Greek: meta salpingos phones megales] (St. Matt. xxiv. 31) presents an uncongenial ambiguity to Western readers, as our own incorrect A. V. sufficiently shews. Two methods of escape from the difficulty suggested themselves to the ancients:—(a) Since 'a trumpet of great sound' means nothing else but 'a loud trumpet,' ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... creating new duties for myself, throwing out fresh feelers everywhere; now and then crying out in my undisciplined way that the task was too hard for me; that I loathed my life; that it was impossible to live any longer without love and appreciation and sympathy; that so uncongenial an atmosphere could be no home to me; that the world was an utter ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... which I have been describing, were uncongenial to my natural temper, to the genius of the Movement, and to the historical mode of its success:—they were the fruit of that exuberant and joyous energy with which I had returned from abroad, and which I never had before or since. I had ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... does him the still further service of securing his relief from the ban, whereupon Gottfried settles down to a peaceful life in his own castle, and to relieve its monotony betakes himself to the uncongenial task of writing his own memoirs. In the fifth act we sup with horrors. The peasants rise in rebellion and wreak frightful vengeance on their oppressors. In the hope of controlling them, Gottfried, at their own request, puts himself at their head, but finds himself powerless ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... he became wiser, partly because he became a little blind, and, especially, because he himself became changed at last. By and by his life was too busy to permit him to watch those about him, or to pronounce judgment on their aims or character. Uncongenial as he had at first found the employment which his uncle had provided for him, he pursued it with a patient steadiness, which made it first endurable, then pleasant to him. At first his duties were merely mechanical; ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... When Napoleon escaped from Elba, the 39th returned to Europe, but all too late to join in the victory of Waterloo, and it was stationed with the Army of Occupation in the north of France. In 1818, the regiment was sent to Ireland. Here for several years Sturt remained in most uncongenial surroundings, watching smugglers, seizing illicit stills, and assisting to quell a rising of the Whiteboys. It was in Ireland that the devoted John Harris, his soldier-servant, who was afterwards the companion of his Australian wanderings, was first ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... son, after five years' uncongenial work in a London office, emigrated to Australia in 1860. His quality was quickly recognised by the Provincial Government, which, in 1862, appointed him to command an expedition to examine the rivers in the province of Canterbury, with a view to ascertaining whether they contained ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... ventures before his release—his "Four Last Things," his "Ebal and Gerizim," and his "Prison Meditations"—can be said to show much poetical power. At best he is a mere rhymester, to whom rhyme and metre, even when self-chosen, were as uncongenial accoutrements "as Saul's armour was to David." The first-named book, which is entitled a "Conference between Christ and a Sinner," in the form of a poetical dialogue, according to Dr. Brown has "small literary merit of any sort." The others do not ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... different from that of Mozart. Beethoven's talent was essentially symphonic rather than dramatic, and magnificent as 'Fidelio' is, it has many passages in which it is impossible to avoid feeling that the composer is forcing his talent into an unfamiliar if not uncongenial channel. This is especially noticeable in the concerted pieces, in which Beethoven sometimes seems to forget all about opera, characters, dramatic situation and everything else in the sheer delight of writing music. No one with an ounce of musical taste in his composition ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... heroism and self-sacrifice what is merely pride and self-will, discontent with the relations by which God has bound them, and the circumstances which God has appointed for them. I have known girls think they were doing a fine thing by leaving uncongenial parents or disagreeable sisters, and cutting out for themselves, as they fancied, a more useful and elevated line of life than that of mere home duties; while, after all, poor things, they were only saying, with the Pharisees of old, "Corban, it is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... oppress, Whom eighty sons of martial courage bless![36] They for their brother slain, incensed will rise, And pour their vengeance on my enemies." Then thus aloud—"Can idle words avail? Why still of Rustem urge the frequent tale? Why for the elephant-bodied hero ask? Thee, he will find—no uncongenial task. Why seek pretences to destroy my life? Strike, for no Rustem ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... here was many months ago submitted to the Secretary of War. A Commander-in-chief, as mentioned above—one fighting and manoeuvring on paper—making plans in his office, unfamiliar with every thing constituting a genuine military, scientific or practical soldier—to whom field and battle are uncongenial or improper—to whom grand and even small tactics are a terra incognita—such a chief is at best but an imitation of the English military organization, and certainly it is only in this country that obsolete English routine is almost uniformly imitated. Such a Commander-in-chief ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... Why? It would be hard to plumb into all the black secrets of that heart. It would have been but natural to her, who shrank from dooming Helen to no worse calamity than a virgin's grave, to have designed to throw her into such uncongenial guidance, amidst all the manifold temptations of the corrupt city,—to have suffered her to be seen and to be ensnared by those gallants ever on the watch for defenceless beauty; and to contrast with their elegance ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... feel the want of variety, and grew tired of it. It was like the life of the cloister, cut short before it had well begun. He drifted on till he reached a crisis, which is neither spleen nor disgust, but combines all the symptoms of both. When a human being is transplanted into an uncongenial soil, to lead a starved, stunted existence, there is always a little discomfort over the transition. Then, gradually, if nothing removes him from his surroundings, he grows accustomed to them, and adapts himself to the vacuity which grows upon him and renders ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... denounced the mockery of such a couple coming to God's altar. Quiet waters in landscapes, with the sun reflected in their depths, asked, if better means of escape were not at hand, was there no drowning left? Ruins cried, 'Look here, and see what We are, wedded to uncongenial Time!' Animals, opposed by nature, worried one another, as a moral to them. Loves and Cupids took to flight afraid, and Martyrdom had no such torment in its painted history ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... then to withdraw without committing themselves to a decisive combat, with a view of protracting the campaign until William should be forced to leave Ireland, and his foreign army should be worn out by winter service in an uncongenial climate. Every day would, they calculated, improve their own army and weaken and ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... went to the front door, to answer the eager questions of young Farnham, who had been wandering for hours in sight of the house. At last, as if struck with sudden compassion, the old lady invited him into the kitchen, and these two seemingly uncongenial persons, sat and conversed together with strange confidence till ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... feelings, no preference, and thus no credit; that I go before the wind; that all this was in my character. And indeed, one thing is true, that it is easy, too easy, to leave things undone. But Seraphina, I begin to learn it is not always wise. If I were too old and too uncongenial for your husband, I should still have remembered that I was the Prince of that country to which you came, a visitor and a child. In that relation also there were duties, and these duties ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... say nothing of the uncongenial nature of the employment, to a man such as described by his devoted pupil Emery Tylney, who had been under his tuition at Cambridge, for twelve months, in 1543, it may further ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... you are so eager for, are chiefly valuable to you as a means of discipline— as a means of preparing you for the work that is before you in the world. And I am not sure but that the discipline of little cares and uncongenial work that has come upon you this winter, may answer the purpose quite as well. At any rate, the wish to get on with your studies for the sake of excelling Ned Hunter, ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... somewhere, in regret for uncongenial pursuits (public life, I suppose): what is it? N. B. Longinus is not in my London catalogue, but is here, I know,—I think in a ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unconsonant^; divergent, repugnant to. inapt, unapt, inappropriate, improper; unsuited, unsuitable; inapplicable, not to the point; unfit, unfitting, unbefitting; unbecoming; illtimed, unseasonable, mal a propos [Fr.], inadmissible; inapposite &c (irrelevant) 10. uncongenial; ill-assorted, ill-sorted; mismatched, misjoined^, misplaced, misclassified; unaccommodating, irreducible, incommensurable, uncommensurable^; unsympathetic. out of character, out of keeping, out of proportion, out of joint, out of tune, out of place, out of season, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... existence of weariness or exhaustion. To be bored even is natural enough, if one is bored by, say, forced inaction, or obligatory action of a futile, meaningless kind. But negative boredom; to be uninterested, not because adverse circumstances confine you to this or that barren and uncongenial milieu, but because you see nothing of interest in life as a whole; because life seems to you a dull, empty, or prosaic business—that argues a kind of blindness, a poverty of imagination, which amounts to disease, and, surely, to disease of a ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the Mission Dolores. It has a strangely solitary aspect, enhanced by its surroundings of the most uncongenial, rapidly growing modernisms; the hoar of ages surrounded by the brightest, slightest, and rapidest of modern growths. Its old belfries still clanged with the discordant bells, and Mass was saying within, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the dogs, far from being ferocious or shy, were, on the contrary, very appreciative of these visits. They sometimes came in for an extra tit-bit in the form of a sandwich or something of the sort. Besides which, it was a little diversion in their life of captivity, so uncongenial to an Arctic dog; for every one of them was securely chained up. This was necessary, especially to prevent fighting among themselves. It happened not infrequently that one or more of them got loose, but the two guardians were always ready ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... interest. Both are signed "Your loving Zoo." The first contains kindly references to Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot, who had been visiting her, and to the widow of Professor Huxley [694] who was staying at Eastbourne; and the second, which is amusing enough, records her experiences among some very uncongenial people at Boscombe. Wherever she went, Lady Burton, as we have seen, was always thrusting her opinions, welcome or not, upon other persons; but at Boscombe the tables were turned, and she experienced the same annoyance that she herself had so ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... do I contrast the sweet, unbroken quiet of the home I now enjoy with the uncongenial one I ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... in plenty of time, for the boat was not due to sail before early next morning, and I felt relieved at being at last rid of my uncongenial companion. ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... deal harder to bear than others. It would be nonsense for some people to talk about crosses. There are Ruth and Flossy; what do they know about annoyances or self-denials? Such homes as theirs and such occupations as theirs have very little in common with hard, uncongenial work such as mine. Eurie Mitchell has less easy times; but then it is home, and father, and mother, and family friends. She isn't all alone. None of them can sympathize with me. I don't see how Flossy Shipley is ever to grow, if 'crosses are a fruitful ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... the uncongenial tasks of the officers of the association has been the answering of the many attacks made in Eastern papers on the position of women in Colorado, though this becomes far less trying when it is remembered that in most States public opinion on the question ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... loved Cubism, though Braque uses it beautifully. How should they love anything so uncongenial to their temperament? How should that race which above all others understands and revels in life care for an art of abstractions? How, having raised good sense to the power of genius, should France quite approve aesthetic fanaticism? What would Poussin have said to so passionate a ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... encouraged him, and prevented him from committing suicide in his dark days of distress. On the other hand, the friendship of a man like Balzac must have been of absorbing interest to a woman of great delicacy of feeling, and evidently considerable literary powers, whose surroundings were uncongenial; and his warm and enduring affection helped her to tide over many of the troubles of ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... are commonplace and rude; He says he cannot relish uncongenial prison food. When quite a boy they taught him to distinguish Good from Bad, And other ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... we can judge without a close and uncongenial scrutiny of statistics, that daily journey, that has governed and still to a very considerable extent governs the growth of cities, has had, and probably always will have, a maximum limit of two hours, one hour each way from sleeping place to council chamber, counter, workroom, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... 1709, or the Duc de Saint-Simon's comment upon that lady's wit and deportment, affords a high certificate of the savoir vivre of the old fortress town; and the letters of the Marquis de Montcalm, keen connoisseur of social arts, show that the drawing-rooms of the Rue du Parloir were far from uncongenial. Moreover, the fascinating Angelique des Meloises was something more in the history of New France than the prototype of the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... a sharp tongue, a sarcastic wit, and a shrewish temper, over which perilous traits she had no control. It is related that her sister, Mrs. Edwards, opposed the match, from a belief that the two were utterly uncongenial, and later on this came to be the accepted belief of the people at large. That Mrs. Lincoln often severely harassed her husband always has been and always will be believed. One would gladly leave the whole topic veiled in that privacy which ought always ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... control of their nerves, but let them run away with them. Sometimes this is shown in palpitation of the heart, headache, backache, and many other disorders. There may be a tendency to cry at trivial things, or a feeling of having "the blues." The cause usually can be found in uncongenial surroundings or occupation, loss of friends, or real or fancied troubles. Whatever the cause, it should be removed, if possible, and measures taken to restore the worn out nerves that are crying for ...
— Confidences - Talks With a Young Girl Concerning Herself • Edith B. Lowry
... to remain alone much longer,' said Agnes, 'and while I have an opportunity, let me earnestly entreat you, Trotwood, to be friendly to Uriah. Don't repel him. Don't resent (as I think you have a general disposition to do) what may be uncongenial to you in him. He may not deserve it, for we know no certain ill of him. In any case, think ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... were so totally dissimilar as to make mutual affection incompatible; and that they were unfitted for each other by nature, education, and habit. All this she had said, and with the earnestness of sincerity; yet this was not enough, for he immediately denied there being anything uncongenial in their characters, or anything unfriendly in their situations; and positively declared, that he would still love, and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... upon their countenances, and other operations of a kindred nature, had no attractions whatever for me; my tastes and proclivities were all in favour of an active outdoor existence; and, though I was prepared to yield obedience if my father chose to insist upon my following so uncongenial an occupation, I felt that it was only due to myself to point out to him that it would be utterly out of my power to infuse any spirit or enthusiasm into my pursuit ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... realized until Sprudell had told her of his death how strongly she had counted upon him. He was the only one left to her of her own blood, and had been the single means of escape that she could see from the exhausting, uncongenial grind and the long, lonely hours in the shabby hotel when her work was done. If the future had looked dark and hopeless before, how much worse it seemed with illness staring her in ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... contrast to the almost childlike harmlessness and universal respect toward me observed in the disposition of the villagers. It requires no penetrating scrutiny of these fellows' countenances to ascertain that nothing could be more uncongenial to them than the state of affairs that prevents them stopping ine and looting me of everything I possess; a couple of them order me quite imperatively to make a detour from my road to avoid approaching too near their flock of sheep, and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... and for some fifteen years Oxford was his home, latterly as Fellow and Lecturer of Corpus. The story of his marriage is slightly pathetic, but more than slightly ludicrous, and he appears to have been greatly henpecked as well as obliged to lead an uncongenial life at a country living. In 1585 he was made Master of the Temple, and held that post for seven years, distinguishing himself both as a preacher and a controversialist. But neither was this his vocation; and ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... attempt to form an opinion of his own upon Arnold's life and character, while achieving a result that not only assured his own position at Oxford, but brought him well into the front rank of contemporary writers. The religious animosity at Oxford was uncongenial to Stanley, and it was only the prospect of Dr. Arnold occupying the Chair of Modern History that reconciled him to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... on the scene she was fifty-two francs to the good; her nieces were hovering forlornly in the background, like chickens that have been hatched out by a duck and are despairingly watching their parent disporting herself in a dangerous and uncongenial element. The supper-party which Roger insisted on standing that night in honour of his aunt and the three Miss Brimley Bomefields was remarkable for the unrestrained gaiety of two of the participants and the funereal mirthlessness of the ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... birds in their flights. And when I turned my eyes nearer home, and compared the distant beauty of the forests and their radiant clouds with the nakedness and desolation here, I gave up looking from the window with a determination to be gone as soon as possible from a country so uncongenial. ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... twenty-five years of life, which included seven years of uncongenial tasks, and three of writing, and three of wandering in search of health,—that sums up the story of Keats. He was born in London; he was the son of a hostler; his home was over the stable; his playground was the dirty street. The family prospered, moved to a better ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... beautiful images are always before him. His time is his own: he can arrange his own hours for study, rest, and recreation. Especially he can avoid the friction and annoyance of dealing with rude and uncongenial people. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... and educated under the iron discipline of the monks, he demanded of others the same gloomy formality and reserve as marked his own character. The cheerful merriment of his Flemish subjects was as uncongenial to his disposition and temper as their privileges were offensive to his imperious will. He spoke no other language but the Spanish, endured none but Spaniards about his person, and obstinately adhered to all their customs. In ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... on which the subject of this chapter depends are too various to lead to a single definite and trustworthy answer. Men who have won their way to the front out of uncongenial environments owe their success principally, I believe, to their untiring energy, and to an exceptionally strong inclination in youth towards the pursuits in which they afterwards distinguished themselves. They do not seem often ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... interruption. As Charleston was the first to throw off the yoke of Great Britain and draw up a constitution which she thought adapted to independent government, so did she first express the determination of South Carolina to break the bonds that held her turbulent political soul in uncongenial association. ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... your calling do not stand hesitating and doubting too long. Enter somewhere, no matter how hard or uncongenial the work, do it with all your might, and the effort will strengthen you and qualify you to find work that is more in ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... what a unique position she was occupying there. Judge Saxon grumbled and scolded, but he was part of the group in the room. He had grown into it, and belonged to them, as he might have belonged to an uncongenial family. The Colonel's distinguished guests saw them only on their best behaviour. Their local critics never penetrated here at all. Judith was the only outsider who did, and she had besides the irrevocable right of youth to pronounce judgment upon those ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... confess, gave me a rather gloomy impression of Russia, and accounted in some measure for the grave and uncongenial aspect of the people. One always likes to find some bond of sympathy between himself and the inhabitants of the country through which he travels. I remember reading somewhere of a Scotchman who had occasion to visit the United States ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... a puzzle to all who knew her. She was a puzzle even to herself, and was wont to say, indifferently, that the problem was not worth a solution. For this beautiful girl of fifteen was somewhat bitter and misanthropic, a condition perhaps due to the uncongenial atmosphere in which she had been reared. She was of dark complexion and her big brown eyes held a sombre and unfathomable expression. Once she had secretly studied their reflection in a mirror, and the eyes awed and frightened her, and made her ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... Lilburne and his friends hoped that the civil war and the abolition of monarchy would bring in democracy, though democracy was never in the mind of men like Hampden, who made the war, and was utterly uncongenial to Cromwell and the Commonwealth men. But the sanctity of monarchy received its death-blow from Cromwell, and perished with the deposing of James II.; and there has been no resurrection. To the Whig rule we owe the transference of political power from the Crown to Parliament. Once it ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... whose one aim in life was the destruction of every vestige of Dutch independence, Dutch self-government and Dutch influence in Africa. Those who thus maligned him applied themselves to make him unpopular and to render his task so very uncongenial and unpleasant for him that he would at last give it up of his own accord, or else become the object of such violent hatreds that the Home Government would feel compelled to recall him. Thus they would be rid ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... matter, Whittenden asked himself. The ineradicable germs of pessimistic Calvinism? The uncongenial wife? Some lurking weakness in the man himself, that forbade his ever coming to a full content? Some residuum of jealous self-distrust, left over from his primitive beginnings, and causing him to look on every prosperous man as on a potential foe? The alternatives were ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... you that he is struggling along in uncongenial employment; that if he had his way his life ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... lines of dingy two-storied brick houses looked out into a small railed-in enclosure, where a lawn of weedy grass and a few clumps of faded laurel-bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden and uncongenial atmosphere. Three gilt balls and a brown board with "JABEZ WILSON" in white letters, upon a corner house, announced the place where our red-headed client carried on his business. Sherlock Holmes stopped in front of it with his head on one side and looked it all over, with his eyes shining ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... camp where he might not enter to-night, if he chose; he might come over here and talk to me. The East, with all its cherished memories and prejudices and associations, seemed so hopelessly far away; they two alone, in that strange, uncongenial new world which had crowded out the old, seemed to speak a common language: and yet how little she ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... austerity was as yet only contending with the more genial currents of humanity, had a far greater than average susceptibility to the charm of woman. Even at the later date of Paradise Lost, voluptuous thoughts, as Mr. Hallam has observed, are not uncongenial to him. And at an earlier age his poems, candidly pure from the lascivious inuendoes of his contemporaries, have preserved the record of the rapid impression of the momentary passage of beauty upon his ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... drafted into the army at war time. When he lay down at night in the company of men whom in ordinary times he would never think of associating with, he was so tired that he forgot the uncomfortable surroundings and uncongenial society. Never in his life had he slept as he slept now. Never did he imagine he would have to ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... interest, since, as a rule, the features presented were those of mere lacerated wounds, while the more severe of the cases which survived only offered scope for operations of the mutilating class so uncongenial ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... the Legislative Assembly could, at the most, only be composed of thirty members, many of whom would be half pay officers, the Crown, through its representative, had a direct and overwhelming preponderance. Yet, however unsuited such a Parliament would be for the present time, however uncongenial it might have been to the feelings of a Cobbett or Hunt-man, escaped from Spa Felds ten or twenty years afterwards, it undoubtedly well represented the conservative, semi-despotic feelings of the military settler, or United Empire loyalist, a kind of privileged being, whose very descendants were ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... praise, a somewhat unusual circumstance. But now he was called back to the work that more properly belonged to an officer of Her Majesty's North West Mounted Police and his soul glowed with the satisfaction of those who, having been found faithful in uncongenial duty, are rewarded with an opportunity to do a bit of work which ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... parted from her only boy, and weary with the cotton-picking,—the captive pining in his cell,—the patient wife of the drunkard, saddened by a consciousness of the growing vileness of one so dear to her once,—the delicate spirit doomed to harsh and uncongenial surroundings,—all in such hours feel the soothings of a celestial harmony, the tenderness of more than a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... it must be one thing or the other—either a hurry and rush over Europe with uncongenial companions, or a going away to some peaceful retreat as the ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... fearlessness of death no small help to ease of mind in life. For to one who can enjoy life when virtue and what is congenial to him have the upper hand, and that can fearlessly depart from life, when uncongenial and unnatural things are in the ascendant, with ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... constitution, and of a highly nervous temperament, Sillery found the study of medicine somewhat uncongenial, and had formed the intention of qualifying himself for the Church. He calculated on early ecclesiastical preferment through the favour of Her Majesty Queen Adelaide, to whom he had been presented, and who had evinced some interest on his behalf. But his prospects were soon ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... all the world was bright. All these things seemed to be involved in the present crisis. What more likely than that Lucy, at last enlightened, should turn upon her husband, who no doubt had forced this uncongenial companion upon her, should turn from Sir Tom altogether, and put her trust in him no longer! And the men who most admired the Contessa were those who looked with the greatest horror upon a marriage made by her, and called young Montjoie poor little ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... suggested, in a more or less open manner, that the family is a bad institution, have generally confined themselves to suggesting, with much sharpness, bitterness, or pathos, that perhaps the family is not always very congenial. Of course the family is a good institution because it is uncongenial. It is wholesome precisely because it contains so many divergencies and varieties. It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy. It is exactly ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the bird forgot altogether his uncongenial occupation of watchman, and launched himself into the air toward me, soaring round and round me, letting fall such a flood, such a torrent, of liquid notes that I thought half a dozen were singing,—and then dropped into the grass. Soon others appeared ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... the soul inhabiting the human body more than once, but thinks as a rule (instanced in the case of John the Baptist forgetting that he had been Elijah) it is not permitted us to remember our former experiences of this life while yet again we are in exile here as strangers and pilgrims in an uncongenial clime away from our ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... that case," he answered, "you'll find me very glum and uncongenial. You'll probably be only too glad to leave ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... is sixteen," said Mrs. Bebberly Cumble severely, "one talks of things being impossible which are merely uncongenial. It is not only possible but it is desirable that Betsy Mullen should move into smaller quarters; she has scarcely enough furniture to fill ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... similar proverb, "Knowledge is power." It is an offer of a prospective bribe to the student, a promise of an ulterior reward which is more important than knowledge itself. Temptations, held before us as inducements to be good or to pursue uncongenial paths, are most often flimsy lies or half-truths, such as the oft-quoted maxim of respectable piety, "Honesty is the best policy," at which politicians all over the world seem to laugh in their sleeves. But unfortunately, education conducted ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... soil is not in good condition when it is hard and crusted on top. The crust may be the cause of wasting water, it keeps out the air, and in general it is an uncongenial physical condition; but its evaporation of water is probably its chief defect. Instead of pouring water on the land, therefore, we first attempt to keep the moisture in the land. If, however, the soil becomes so dry in spite ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... Cathedral), it might have seemed natural that I should be tossed about by the turbulence of the vast London whirlpool. But I had drifted into a still eddy, where conflicting movements made a repose, and, wearied with a good deal of uncongenial activity, I found the quiet of my temporary haven more attractive than anything that the great town could offer. I already knew London well; that is to say, I had long ago satisfied (so far as it was capable of satisfaction) ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... least can be given for the composition of one of the heaviest and most unreadable of dramatic performances, interesting now, if interesting at all, solely as a curious example of the result of bestowing great powers upon a totally uncongenial task. Young men, however, may be pardoned for such blunders if they are not repeated, and Johnson, though he seems to have retained a fondness for his unlucky performance, never indulged in play writing after leaving Lichfield. The best ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... we are not alone, I will not dilate upon his appearance, much as it struck me at the time. I will merely say he offered a contrast to Guy, who, if I may speak so plainly in this presence, had seemed much at home in the task he had set himself, uncongenial as one might consider it to the usual instincts and habits of a gentleman. But Dwight—you see I can be just, Miss Sterling—looked anxious and out of place; and, instead of seeming to be prepared for the situation, turned and peered anxiously about him, as ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... as the orphaned offspring of a cousin far-removed, and had brought her up at her own expense, expecting no return (excepting humility, gratitude, unquestioning affection, and uncomplaining acceptance of a life of incessant toil at tasks uncongenial when not downright unsavoury, without spending money or hours of untrammelled liberty in ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... to be thwarted in many ways before the visions of that night became reality. For many and various were the difficulties which Layard had to contend with during the following months as well as during his second expedition in 1848. The material hardships of perpetual camping out in an uncongenial climate, without any of the simplest conveniences of life, and the fevers and sickness repeatedly brought on by exposure to winter rains and summer heat, should perhaps be counted among the least of ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... speak of heroes and artists of work. Brilliant figures in literature will probably not appear. Those who plunge into politics will only destroy themselves in vain. This is all true; but many cannot reconcile themselves at first to the fact, to the uncongenial milieu, to this modest resolve, especially such responsive and enthusiastic women as yourself. They may say what they please, they want to be charmed, carried away. You yourself say that you wish to bow in reverence; but before useful people ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Madame; indeed I have seen something of that skill with mine own eyes. But, alas! I fear that the case of our friend was beyond human skill. I think that, had he had the choice, he would have chosen to die as he did in the hour of victory. To wear out a life of suffering in uncongenial inactivity would have been sorely irksome to his unquenchable spirit; and yet, after the hardships through which he had passed, I misdoubt me if he could ever have taken the field again. He would have endured the peril and pain of another long voyage only to die upon shipboard, ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... charming, unspoiled little person with both beauty and ability, and certainly he was to be congratulated since he had been married for love alone, Truletta knowing full well his unfortunate and straitened circumstances.... Yes, her people lived in Michigan but were uncongenial. Still, there was good blood in the family only it was a long ways back, probably as far back as the age of spear fighting, and he relied upon Beatrice, his old playmate, to sympathize with and uphold ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... very prolific in "ideas," and seems to be chiefly inspired when engaged in the uncongenial pastime ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... known to him and by no means uncongenial; but Saltash the saint, not only beloved, but reverenced and enshrined as such, as something beyond his comprehension! How on earth had he managed to ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... accordance with the advice of his physician, he still hoped to be able, after his strength was recruited, to accomplish something in the matter of soliciting aid to the funds of the college; a work which, however uncongenial to his tastes, he found would necessarily be ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... thus strangely brought together again, lay a few feet from one another; the mind of each turning in the stillness of the night, to the link which had bound them, nay, which still bound them in a forced and uncongenial union. ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... for her aunt, and would naturally be inclined to gratify any wishes that she might express, even had they involved tasks uncongenial and unattractive. But the proposal that she should become an ally in the effort to lure young Haldane from his evil associations, and awaken within him pure and refined tastes, was decidedly attractive. She was peculiarly romantic in her disposition, and no rude contact ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... liberator for her ruler? Alfieri and Niccolini, having taken, as it were, a brief in favour of tyrannicide, praised Lorenzino as a hero. De Musset, who wrote a considerable drama on his story, painted him as a roue corrupted by society, enfeebled by circumstance, soured by commerce with an uncongenial world, who hides at the bottom of his mixed nature enough of real nobility to make him the leader of a forlorn hope for the liberties of Florence. This is the most favourable construction we can put upon Lorenzo's conduct. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... ex-officer had sought employment, indoor or outdoor, congenial or uncongenial. The quest was vain. Once he had broached the matter haltingly to an influential acquaintance. The latter's reception of his distress had been so startlingly obnoxious that he would have died rather than repeat ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... unreality that had begun to darken the world. For it was as if some power had pronounced against him—as if, by some heedless action, he had offended an Olympian god. Like many another, he wondered whether the god might be appeased by work—hard uncongenial work. Perhaps he had not worked hard enough, or had enjoyed his work too much, and for that ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... visits to "Aunt Jane"—whom he hated with a deep unreasoned hate—and "Uncle George," who had a kind, stupid face, but anyhow tried to be funny and made futile bids for favour with pen-knives and half-crowns. Possibly it was these uncongenial visits that quickened in him very early the consciousness that his own beautiful home was, in some special way, different from other boys' homes, and his mother—in a still more special way—different from ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... longed for the pleasures that pleased in the day of prosperity; the dance, the banquet, and those visits that won the momentary gratification of flattery and admiration were sighed for. So irksome was the monotony and so uncongenial the role forced upon them by disguise, they hailed with joy the least circumstance that might be ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... courage is visible in the hasty adaptation of the Frenchwoman to all kinds of uncongenial jobs. Almost every kind of service she has been called to render since the war began has been fundamentally uncongenial. A French doctor once remarked to me that Frenchwomen never make really good sick-nurses except ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... in all the excitement of that exciting time, to the leaders of the party. It was quite a delight to me, as I listened, to recall my own dislike of his style of speaking, his fishy coldness, his uncongenial and unsympathetic politeness, and his insufferable though most gentlemanly artificiality. The shape of his head (I see it now) was misery to me, and weighed down my youth. . ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... added but little to the conversation. The Countess Muhlen-Sarkey awoke only when there was a fitful attempt to break the embarrassment which held all the others. The quondam Parisian openly welcomed each stopping-place as an excuse to escape from such uncongenial companionship. In the throngs on the platforms he found both transient excitement and opportunities of stretching his cramped and restless limbs. Josef conscientiously attended him on these brief excursions, never relaxing for an instant his grave ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... quiet time generally; back Monday morning in season for biz!" This was certainly satisfactory as far as it went, but I added, by way of parenthesis, "and who else will be present?" knowing well enough that one uncongenial spirit might be the undoing of us all. To this Bartholomew responded, "No one but ourselves, old fellow; now don't be queer." He knew well enough my aversion to certain elements unavoidable even in the best society, and how I kept very much to ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... strained every nerve to retain the Spanish troops, and to send them away by sea when it should be no longer feasible to keep them. Escovedo shared in the sentiments and entered fully into the schemes of his chief. The plot, the secret enterprise, was the great cause of the advent of Don John in the uncongenial clime of Flanders. It had been, therefore, highly important, in his estimation, to set, as soon as possible, about the accomplishment of this important business. He accordingly entered into correspondence with Antonio Perez, the King's most confidential ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... were down to greet the newcomers, whom they had never seen before, and invite them to their homes. The present laws of restriction against them, I think, are all right. We cannot afford to run the risk of having the institutions of our country injured by an emigration that is uncongenial to it. We have gone too far in that line already, not from selfishness, but to perpetuate the institutions founded by our revolutionary ancestors, in their purity, ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... themselves to the position of British merchants, but by a greedy desire to get what little might be gotten in the scramble. Robinson still kept his shoulder to the collar, but he did so with but little hope. He had made a fatal mistake in leaguing himself with uncongenial partners, and began to feel that this mistake must be expiated by the ruin of his present venture. Under such circumstances Maryanne Brown was not unreasonable in desiring that something should be done. She had now given a tacit consent ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... increased. Tumult and coldness make uncongenial neighbors. The man, all passion, and the woman, who has no answering spark, grope toward each other through devious and ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... frequently been adopted by the modern Latin poets; and Scaliger, Taubman, Barthius, and others, have shown that it is by no means uncongenial with that language. The Anacreontics of Scaliger, however, scarcely deserve the name; as they glitter all over with conceits, and, though often elegant, are always labored. The beautiful fictions of Angerianus preserve more happily than any others the delicate ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... of policy were to be maintained the influence of one guiding spirit must be felt. Order had to be reduced out of chaos, and some semblance of business methods must be observed. If that could be done by any one, it must be by the Chancellor. It forced him into many uncongenial spheres. Amongst these none was more out of the reach of his sympathy than the turbid stream of ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... should waken up from its long slumber." The first year that he spent at St Paul's was, writes one of his friends, one of "misery" for a man who loved study and quiet and the country, and hated official pomp and financial business and ceremonious appearances. But he performed his difficult and uncongenial task with almost incredible success, and is said never to have made an enemy or a mistake. The dean was distinguished for uniting in a singular degree the virtues of austerity and sympathy. He was pre-eminently endowed with the faculty of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... genial smile did not even quiver, but he continued to move forward. His opponent's left flashed out again, but this time, instead of ignoring the matter, the Kid replied with a heavy right swing, and Mr. Fisher leaping back, found himself against the ropes. By the time he had got out of that uncongenial position, two more of the Kid's swings had found their mark. Mr. Fisher, somewhat perturbed, scuttled out into the middle of the ring, the Kid following in his ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... impressions of his childhood. A famous example of this is found in the beautiful affection of Auguste Comte for his idolized Clotilde de Vaux. Although Comte was bound to a woman whom he had married in the flush of erotic desire and whom he found entirety uncongenial, Clotilde became the inspiration of his later life, and held his affection without the aid of any material bond because she so closely resembled the dead ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... (newly transfigured) theatre of man's worst and darkest passions; that the army—that odious, hideous, necessary curse of civilization, the severe and hateful guardian of liberty and peace, (though uncongenial to both)—was at that moment evoked by all the lovers of both for their salvation; was even then violating the ideal harmony of the hour, by its foul yet saving presence; was parading those green suburbs, and the sweet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... you carping, skeptical creature? It's all perfect. An uncongenial, tiresome husband—and she need have no self-reproach about him, either—finally out of the way; a reverential adorer at hand; youth still theirs; money; a delightful ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... reflected Karenin. 'I seem to remember everybody about my childhood as if they were ill. They were ill. They were sick with confusion. Everybody was anxious about money and everybody was doing uncongenial things. They ate a queer mixture of foods, either too much or too little, and at odd hours. One sees how ill they were by their advertisements. All this new region of London they are opening up now is plastered with advertisements ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... of letters, however, has not seemingly regretted the inability of Byron to trammel his muse with the uncongenial fetters of Pope's metre, and has certainly never quarrelled with Tom Moore for not assuming the manners and diction of the revered ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... into the stock market by mistake," observed Adams. "I believe he would have been perfectly happy if he could have owned a single farm, a cow or two and a pair of horses to his plough, but he's condemned to bear the uncongenial weight of millions, and I hear that he has even to give his charities in secret. I never look at him that I don't think of Marcus Aurelius oppressed by the burden of the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... up with conventional ideas upon the subject of marriage (her own mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, having had very unusual opinions upon that subject), and she fell an easy victim to Shelley's impassioned eloquence, when he urged her to flee with him from an uncongenial home. Shelley appeared to Mary as almost a divine being, and her worshipful love never waned, even during her long widowhood of thirty years' duration. For Shelley, in the whole matter, there seems to be no valid excuse. He deliberately defied the world and the world's ways, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... his studies were not entirely given up during his malady; but it is a subject of great wonder and regret that the Wartons, the intimate friends both of his better and darker days, have left no particular memorials of him. He had a sister, lately, if not still, living, from whom, though of a very uncongenial nature, something might surely have been gathered. But there is a familiarity which, by destroying admiration, destroys the perception of what will interest others. There are few of our poets of rare genius, of whose private life and character much is known. Little ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... It is true—such uncongenial interpretation—if you feel that way about it. And I remember, in my rambles along the famous thoroughfare, seeing a saturnine old fellow in a dingy black coat and slouch hat, with a sour snarl ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... the shyest and most undemonstrative of men. To a single friend whom he trusted, he would pour out his inmost heart; but let two or three be gathered together, above all, introduce a stranger, and he instantly became a quiet, unobtrusive listener, though never a moody or uncongenial one." ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... those whom Julius brought forward. Michelangelo and Raffaello were in the full swing of work when Leo claimed their services. We shall see how he hampered the rare gifts of the former by employing him on uncongenial labours; and it was no great merit to give a free rein to the inexhaustible energy of Raffaello. The project of a new S. Peter's belonged to Julius. Leo only continued the scheme, using such assistants as the times provided after Bramante's death in 1514. Julius instinctively selected men of soaring ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... entail great differences of manners and habits. Other and minor disparities of circumstances between girl life and married life will have their effect, but they are less strong and less invariable. Some of the happiest marriages have been marriages of emancipation, which removed a girl from uncongenial family surroundings, and placed her for the first time in an intellectual and moral atmosphere in which she could freely breathe. At the same time, in the choice of a wife, the character, circumstances, habits, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... not take up a definite line of work, is apt, for a time at least, to be unquiet. That quality so lovingly described by Peacock as "stayathomeativeness" is her least noticeable characteristic. The smiling discharge of uncongenial social duties, which disciplines the woman of the world, seems to her unseeing eyes a waste of time and opportunities. She has read little, and that little, not for "human delight." Excellence in literature has been pointed out to her, ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... not that of Giorgione's last works. Rather must we conclude that, like the "Aeneas and Evander," and several other pictures yet to be mentioned, Giorgione stopped short at his work, unwilling to labour at an uncongenial task (as, perhaps, in the present case), or from some feeling of dissatisfaction at the result, nay, even despair of ever realising ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... absent. The two sisters were strongly contrasted. Louisa, as a child, was afflicted with a sensitive, almost morbid shyness and reserve, and an incapacity for enjoying the society of other children whose tastes were uncongenial with her own. The shyness passed with her childhood, but the sensitiveness and exclusiveness never quite left her. Her love of books was a passion, and she would resent an unfair criticism of a favorite author as warmly as if it were an attack on a personal friend. To Lizzy, on the contrary, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... patiently straighten out the confusion of books and papers on the table they shared in common. Although there were no more frozen silences between them their conversations were far from satisfactory. They were totally uncongenial. But after the first week, that part of their relationship did not affect Mary materially. She was too happily absorbed in the work and play of school life, throwing herself into every recitation, every excursion and every experience with a zest that left no time for mourning ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... ten of St. Paul's Epistles. Modern writers have sometimes urged that Marcion's list of New Testament books proves that all other parts of the New Testament were regarded as doubtful about A.D. 140. But it is quite evident that Marcion, unlike those Gnostics who adapted uncongenial books to their own systems by means of allegorical explanations, cut out the books and verses which would not correspond with his own dogma. In spite of his pretended fidelity to St. Paul, he mutilated not only St. Luke's Gospel, but even the Epistle to the Galatians. ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... she was glad of it; but here she stopped. She was sanguine, impulsive, courageous, but, with all that could be said for it, the change she must face if he claimed her was a startling one. Besides, he must clear himself of suspicion, and because the part of a mere looker-on was uncongenial, there was a course which she would urge on him. She must see him and convince him of the necessity for it. Soon after she had made up her mind on this point, Jernyngham and Colston came in, and she had to ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... sacred symbol of Buddhism, for the Mongolian lama in the cold and arid borders of Gobi or the wind-swept highlands of sterile Tibet? And yet these exotic ideas live on, even if they no longer bloom in the uncongenial soil. But to explain them in terms of their present environment would be ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... leaving Mademoiselle to his companion. The stranger was a warm talker, and seemed to please the lady from the first; but if he pleased, nothing else did. Kookoo, intensely curious, sought some pretext for staying, but found none. They were, altogether, an uncongenial company. The lady seemed to think Kookoo had no business there; 'Sieur George seemed to think the same concerning his companion; and the few words between Mademoiselle and 'Sieur George were cool enough. The maid appeared nearly satisfied, but could not avoid ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... inducing that deadly morning languor so fatal to early exertion in a warm climate. We could stand it no longer; but, shouldering our hoes, moved on to the house, resolved to impose no more upon the good-nature of the planters by continuing one moment longer in an occupation so extremely uncongenial. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... certain that he himself knew.' Francis W. Newman, Newman's brother, who later became a Unitarian, remembering his own years of stress, speaks with embitterment of his elder brother, who was profoundly uncongenial to him. ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... We could not live together half slave and half free; shall we succeed better in trying a second left-handed marriage between democracy and another form of aristocracy, less gross, but not less uncongenial? They who before misled the country into a policy false and deadly to the very truth which was its life and strength, by the fear of abolitionism, are making ready to misrule it again by the meaner prejudice of color. We can have no permanent peace with the South but ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... or time, no near familiar thing or duty, was material wholly, or pertained to this world alone;—there was another side to it, connected with the unseen and the gods. There were Great Gods in the Pantheon; but your early Roman had no wide-traveling imagination; and they seemed to him remote and uncongenial rather,—and quickly took on Greekishness when the Greek influence began. Minerva, vaguely imagined, assumed soon the attributes of the very concretely imagined Pallas; and so on. But he had nearer and Numaish divinities much more a part of his life,—which indeed largely consisted ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... was then regarded as the less civilized country to the south. Several explanations have survived as to the cause of his departure, one being that his interest in the rising tide of Methodism had made him uncongenial to his Church of England relatives; in the absence of definite knowledge, however, it may safely be assumed that the impelling motive was that love of seeking out new things, of constructing a new home in the wilderness, which has never forsaken his descendants. His son, Anderson ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... disgruntled, the uncongenial and the habitually inattentive, almost all men may be and should be profitably employed, the prime requisite being reasonably close attention to business. The thoughts must not habitually wander away from ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... arrangements, and as much comfort is to be found as is compatible with throng and publicity. Still the domestic charm of private life is wanting, and its absence renders the system of constant residence most uncongenial to English habits and feelings. An unsocial reserve lies on the surface of English character, and the love of privacy, or at least of a retirement which can be closed and expanded at will, is an extensive and deep-seated feeling. Yet the Anglo-American, even of the purest ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... sat evidently approving. It was almost as though the two were in league against her, just as children get in league against an adult who insists on unpleasant duties or uncongenial food. ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... sat by her, strange but not uncongenial watchers, each taking heart from the other's devotion. All night long Ramona slept. As Felipe watched her, he remembered his own fever, and how she had knelt by his bed and prayed there. He glanced around the room. In a niche in the mud wall was a cheap print of the Madonna, one candle just ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... with no worse reception, and sat down in a corner near the stove to mend the coarse, dirty horse-blankets. She usually disliked it exceedingly; but her little attempt at making Christmas presents had so warmed her heart, and her head was so full of the Fair, that it did not now seem so uncongenial, and she was really surprised when ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... not criminals, they were nothing earthly now—nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air—and nearly as thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of the eyes under the trees. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... leave at any time, she told herself, should the position prove to be an uncongenial one; but since she had chosen the vocation of a seamstress, she might as well sew for Mrs. Richmond Montague as any one else; while possibly she might be able to learn something more regarding her mother's ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... of Bodhidharma, however, this conception of Buddha seemed too crude to be accepted unhesitatingly and the doctrine too much irrelevant with and uncongenial to actual life. Since Zen denounced, as we have seen in the previous chapter, the scriptural authority, it is quite reasonable to have given up this view of Buddha inculcated in the Mahayana sutras, and to set at naught those statues and images of supernatural beings kept in veneration by the ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... men and women drag along in comparative poverty and uncongenial occupations and surroundings, because they have never learned how to get away from these conditions. Many others wonder why they never get ahead when they work so faithfully and try so hard. Often the reason of failure is found in some mild form of disease, so mild in fact that ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... retreated very close against Hamil, "but, oh, I don't love them even when they are harmless." And rather thoughtfully she disengaged herself from the sheltering arm of that all too sympathetic young man, and went forward, shivering a little as the hiss of the enraged adder broke out from the uncongenial mud where he had ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... practical female being, you know me not; we are sundered as fah apart as if you was sitting on the North Pole and I was sitting on the South Pole. Uncongenial being, you ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... some people who think it impossible in their narrow sphere and in their uncongenial circumstances to live so as to win God's favor or be blessings in the world. But there is no doubt that many of the most beautiful lives of earth, in Heaven's sight, are those that are lived in ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... was at least not so embarrassing as his dinner of the night before with Lady Poynter. Barbara seemed chilled by uncongenial company, though she touched his hand on her way to the door and turned, with patent consciousness that she was being watched, to give him a parting smile. Mrs. Manisty also turned, before she could control her curiosity, to see for whom the smile was intended. And, as Eric threw away ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... which he had uttered Miss Pratt's name, demanding loosely to be presented to her, regardless of the well-known law that a lady must first express some wish in such matters—these were indications of a coarse nature sure to be more than uncongenial to Miss Pratt. Its presence might make the whole occasion distasteful to her—might spoil her day. Both William and Joe Bullitt began to wonder why on earth Johnnie Watson didn't have any more sense than to invite such a big, fat lummox of ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... taken in the latter case to present persons to each other only, who will prove mutually agreeable, as it is surely no friendly act to force upon your friends a life-long acquaintance, perhaps with uncongenial persons. ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... an answer, and like the falsity of woman, like the weakness of man, like life itself, a cruel, cruel riddle." 'Une Crime d'Amour,' one of his most popular novels, deals with a woman who, being married to an uncongenial husband, falls in love with a brilliant, heartless society man, with the usual result. The crime is the hero's inability to understand the meaning of genuine love. 'Mensonges' (Lies) is a striking picture of the endless falsities of a Parisian woman of innocent ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Leicester's found this increased activity decidedly uncongenial. He had no real patriotism in him. He played cricket well, but he played ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... to us, O dear, lost child! With beam of love, A star—death's uncongenial wild— Smiling above! Soon, soon thy little feet have trod The skyward path, the seraph's road, That led thee back from ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... commands in the army could be sought only through a political career; and Marius, inspired with the highest hopes by Scipio's commendation, was forced to breathe the uncongenial atmosphere of the city and to fight his way upwards to the curule offices. There is no proof that he took advantage of the current of democratic feeling which accompanied the movements of the Gracchi. It was, perhaps, as well ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Iroquois. Such at least was the view of the case held in full faith, not by the Jesuit Fathers alone, but by most of the colonists. Never before had the fiend put forth such rage, and in the Iroquois he found instruments of a nature not uncongenial with his own. ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... the proviso that the mother was to have a home with him. Hence it was not unusual for the mother, who had brought all the property into the family, to be made an unhappy dependent on the bounty of an uncongenial daughter-in-law and a dissipated son. The tears and complaints of the women who came to my father for legal advice touched my heart and early drew my attention to the injustice and cruelty of the laws. As the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... journey up the Nelson River and across Lake Winnipeg. Being artisans and city-dwellers they were unable to endure the rough agricultural labors in the bleak north. Cold, floods, grasshoppers, and uncongenial neighbors ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen |
