"Unconvincing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that in some respects the modern age is superior in conduct and morals to antiquity, but he said little on the matter. Hakewill develops the suggestion at great length into a severe and partial impeachment of ancient manners and morals. Unjust and unconvincing though his arguments are, and inspired by theological motives, his thesis nevertheless deserves to be noted as an assertion of the progress of man in social morality. Bacon, and the thinkers of the seventeenth century generally, confined their views of progress in the past to the intellectual ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... have some more West Coast tales while you are out. Stories with the true African ring about them, from such a practised pen as your own, are hard to come by. Our "critic" passed Mr. Everett with honours. You will no doubt see yourself by now how comparatively bald and unconvincing Red Shadows is, when set against a tale "hot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... upon varying considerations. As to the right or wrong wording of a clause in the Factory Amendment Act, he could be lucid, explanatory and convincing; as to the justice of the same clause when compared with other forms of legislation, he was vague and unconvincing, didactic and prejudiced. If Dartrey's object had been to bring these two men into closer understanding of each other, he was certainly succeeding. It is doubtful, however, whether the understanding progressed entirely in the fashion he had desired. ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... public of the novelist. The novelist announces that Millicent accepted the hand of the wrong man, and in spite of all the novelist's corroborative and exegetical detail the insulted reader declines to credit the statement and condemns the incident as unconvincing. The dramatist decides that Millicent must accept the hand of the wrong man, and there she is on the stage in flesh and blood, veritably doing it! Not easy for even the critical beholder to maintain that Millicent could not and did not do ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... ignoring him, and recalled a glimpse he had of her face, bright and serene, as his train ran out of Wimbledon. He recalled with exasperating perplexity her clear, matter-of-fact tone as she talked about love-making being unconvincing. He was really very proud of her, and extraordinarily angry and resentful at the innocent and audacious self-reliance that seemed to intimate her sense of absolute independence of him, her absolute security without him. After all, she only ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... her trunk to the puzzling insouciance of her manner. They all, and particularly Roberta, had begun to feel a little hurt as the days went by and Mary indulged in many mysterious absences and made unconvincing excuses for refusing invitations that, as Katherine Kittredge said, were enough to turn the head of a crown-princess. Friday, the day that had been reserved for the expedition to Smuggler's Notch, dawned crisp and clear, and some ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... Raetsel fur uns." LeGrand[127] follows Weise's conclusion that it is an imitation from the Greek and in support of this instances Curculio's use, while running, of the presumed translations from the Greek: agoranomus, demarchus, etc. He also cites as parallels some unconvincing phrases from fragments of New Comedy, while developing an ingenious theory that the device is a heritage from the Greek orchestra, where it could have been performed with a hippodrome effect. Terence berates the practice,[128] but makes ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... cavalry-man. We abolished altogether that magical freedom of an unassisted gun to move two feet. And on such rules as these we fought a number of battles. They were interesting, but not entirely satisfactory. We took no prisoners—a feature at once barbaric and unconvincing. The battles lingered on a long time, because we shot with extreme care and deliberation, and they were hard to bring to a decisive finish. The guns were altogether too predominant. They prevented attacks getting home, and they made it possible for a timid player to put all ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... with a persistence almost pitiful, but he had neither the appearance nor the manner which begets confidence in unlikely tales, and in his mouth the truth itself sounded like a fabrication. He was a willing but an unconvincing liar, and the few who lingered long enough to listen to his clumsy attempts ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... unromantic honk-honk of a piratical night-owl taxicab on the street so far below. He steadied his mental equilibrium, and looked again at the self-possessed young woman, whose regal manner was as convincing as all the other details were unconvincing. On the table lay a fortune in jewels and rings and a necklace. He had not noticed them before. He remembered the Spanish conversation which he had heard through the bathroom door. He realized from the size and elegance of the ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... Audrey had imagined of her. Her evening dress made Audrey doubt whether after all her own was the genuine triumph which she had supposed; in Madame Piriac's boudoir, and close by Madame Piriac, it had disconcertingly the air of being an ingenious but unconvincing imitation of ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... ruin her teeth, but she had confounded him utterly by displaying twin rows as sound as pearls, as white and regular as rice kernels. Her digestion, he had to confess, was that of a Shetland pony, and he had been forced to fall back upon an unconvincing prophecy of a toothless and dyspeptic old age. He pictured her at this moment propped up in the middle of the great mahogany four-poster, all lace and ruffles and ribbons, her wayward hair in adorable confusion about her face, as she pawed over the sweets and breathed ecstatic ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... his foot and then scurried away chattering in dismay at its own rashness; finally, a preposterous little Cock Chickadee sang "Spring soon—spring soon," as though any one were interested in the gratuitous and unconvincing fib, when a brown, furry form hopped noiselessly from the green leaves by the pond, skipped over a narrow bay without wetting its feet, paused once or twice, then in the middle of the open glade it sat up in plain view—a Rabbit. It sat so long and so still that Yan first ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a pleasant signification, that word "Dolcedorme": it means Sweet slumber. But no one could tell me how the mountain group came by this name; they gave me a number of explanations, all fanciful and unconvincing. Pollino, we are told, is derived from Apollo, and authors of olden days sometimes write of it as "Monte Apollino." But Barrius suggests an alternative etymology, equally absurd, and connected with the medicinal herbs which are found there. Pollino, he says, a polleo dictus, quod nobilibus ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... that there was a power in his tone and manner which he had never used before; a power which would affect a judge or a jury, as it had affected Willie. The curse cursed here too! It was that hasty, nervous disposition, which gave manner and tone to his very public speaking; which made his arguments unconvincing, his pathos unaffecting. It was just that calm, deep, serene feeling and manner, which was needed at the bar as well as with Willie. Arguing with that feeling and manner, he felt, would convince irresistibly. ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... at that but did not answer, although he seemed to have a hot word ready. And thenceforward he hung his head more, and at least tried to seem bereaved. But his manner was unconvincing none the less, and King found ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... politically-creative part, as distinguished from the politically-shattering part, is not convincing. The hero's change of party, and his popular success with the policy of the endowment of motherhood are indeed strangely unconvincing—inconceivable to common sense. Here the author's hand has trembled, and his persuasive power forsaken him. Happily he recaptured it for the final catastrophe, which is absolutely magnificent, a masterpiece of unforced poignant tragedy ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... over the blue he caught sight of three long, dark shapes like hurrying fish that drove one after the other, as porpoises follow one another in the water. They were very fish-like indeed—with tails. It was an unconvincing impression in that light. He blinked his eyes, stared again, and they had vanished. For a long time he scrutinised those remote blue levels ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... the "body" of music: that part which is visible even to the unobservant eye and audible to the indiscriminating ear. This is a matter of notes and tones quite apart from any real meaning or value. Such would be an academic exercise, or a technically correct but unconvincing ballad. It might possibly make some appeal to the intellect by by virtue of the "exhibition of balance and symmetry, the definiteness of plan and design, the vitality and proportion of organic growth,"[25] but this would not suffice to ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... and heaved and slid about. A chair crawled to my lap and at last to the top of the table, apparently of its own motion. A little rocking-chair moved to and fro precisely as if some one were sitting in it, and so on. It was all unconvincing at the time, but as I look back upon it now, after years of experience, I am inclined to think part of it at least was genuine. And this brings me to say to Mrs. Quigg, and to any other doubter, that you have only to step aside into ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... brought them back—the bringing up of their boy and girl in an American tradition. If Mrs. Lestrange ever missed the polish and variety of European social life, if she found the "Anglo-mania" (just then so fashionable in New York) a little shallow and unconvincing, she never showed it. Handsome and serene, a trifle more matronly than women of her age appear to-day, perhaps, but none the less admired for it, she moved through her duties of household, nursery, ballroom and salon, omitting nothing, excelling ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... two subordinate constables—obeyed a command, rather than accepted an invitation. He was a tall man, slender of build but wiry, a little past middle-age, with hair beginning to gray at the temples, pale blue eyes and lantern jaws. As a policeman he was a singularly unconvincing figure, yet he had served creditably enough for five years in the peaceful village of Hambleton, where an occasional speeding motorist or some native exalted by too much home-brew constituted the whole criminal calendar for a year. A quiet job ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... band. And though history was one of his few strong points at school, the glittering galaxy of kings and queens appealed to him no more than the great writers at their little desks and the great cricketers in their unconvincing flannels. They were waxworks one and all. But when the extra sixpence had been paid at the inner turnstile, and he had passed down a dungeon stair into the dim vaults below, his imagination was at work upon the dreadful faces in the docks before he had brought ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... P. Brownwell, he went about his daily task, editing the Banner, making it as luscious and effulgent as a seed catalogue, with rhetorical pictures about as florid and unconvincing. To him the town was a veritable Troy—full of heroes and demigods, and honourables and persons of nobility and quality. He used no adjective of praise milder than superb, and on the other hand, Lige Bemis once complained that the least offensive ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... masked and buskined, with the telling of incomprehensible parricides, of inexplicable incest, of gods faded beyond symbolism, of that Relentless Law we did not believe in for a moment, that no modern western European can believe in. We thought of the characters in the unconvincing wigs and costumes of our school performance. No Gilbert Murray had come as yet to touch these things to life again. It was like the ghost of an antiquarian's toy theatre, a ghost that crumbled and condensed into a gritty dust of construing as one ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... faith, so far as he understood it, that was in him. We astonished ourselves and our hearers by the irregular and fragmentary nature of the creeds we produced, clotted at one point, inconsecutive at another, inconsistent and unconvincing to a quite unexpected degree. It would not be difficult to caricature one of those meetings; the lecturer floundering about with an air of exquisite illumination, the audience attentive with an expression ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... though true to life, may be lifeless and colorless, and their doings and what happens to them uninteresting. For this reason, many modern writers of tales for children, respecting the worth of the realistic, neglect to comply with what the realistic demands, and produce insipid, unconvincing tales. The realistic tale should deal with the simple and the ordinary rather than with the exceptional; and the test is not how much, but how little, credulity ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... luncheon for Rat when the Badger and the Mole at length returned, and he had to face them at table with his pitiful and unconvincing story. The Badger's caustic, not to say brutal, remarks may be imagined, and therefore passed over; but it was painful to the Rat that even the Mole, though he took his friend's side as far as possible, could not help saying, "You've been a bit of a duffer this time, Ratty! ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... the tone arrested Kate's attention, an unconvincing, insincere note in it. She fixed her eyes upon her face searchingly, then she crossed the room swiftly and dropped upon her knees beside her. Taking one of her thin hands between both ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... LAPIS LAZULI. Malachite and azurite are usually correctly named, but "lapis lazuli" is a name that is frequently misused, being applied to crackled quartz that has been stained with Prussian blue, or some other dye, to an unconvincing resemblance to true lapis. Such artificially produced stones are sometimes sold as "Swiss lapis." They are harder than true lapis and probably wear much better in exposed ornaments, but they are not lapis and are never of equal color, and names should not be misused, and ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... "direction" is unconvincing, if not suicidal in character. Assuming that direction may have occurred, the fact of direction adds nothing to the qualities or possibilities of existence, any more than the "directivity" of a chemist adds to the possibilities of certain elements when he brings them into combination. ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... removed. These arguments are generally used with the greatest gravity by bachelors. If men have families to support, women by the hundreds support brothers and sisters and weak parents. That they are incapable of doing as much sounds unconvincing to one who has seen the work of sweat-shops. The argument that men have more expensive tastes to satisfy is too feeble to deserve attention. Finally, when men argue that women should be forced to marry by giving them smaller wages, they are simply reverting to the time-honoured idea that ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... Jack, grinning a little, "somebody else's nerves are kinda frazzled, too. I don't want you to begin worrying over my affairs, Dade. I'm not," he asserted with unconvincing emphasis. "But all the same, I'd like to get my fingers on the fellow that took ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... time we heard of them, I will admit that we were thrilled. They gave a touch of reality to an otherwise over-hairy and unconvincing narrative of conspiracy. The second time we were told of them we were pleasurably moved. So it was true, after all, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... woman," he thought, "who has had hundreds of men in love with her, making a demand for verbal assurances that can't possibly add anything to her peace of mind. Either they are true and superfluous, or they are false and transparently unconvincing." ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... and prominence in that party by his talents, contriving at the same time to make his origin a service rather than a detriment. Like Mr. Disraeli, he has been consistent only in devotion to success. Like him, accomplished, handsome, plucky, industrious, and dangerous, if unconvincing, in debate, he brings to bear on every question the immediate force of personal courage and readiness, but none of that force drawn from persistent principle, whose defeats are tutorings for victory. With a quick eye for the weak point of an enemy, and a knack of so draping commonplaces with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... Dict. II. 1267a), that this piece was separated from the original book because "elle retarde le récit et est en dehors du but final" seems unconvincing—as much so as Dereser's (quoted in Bissell, p. 444), from whom perhaps it was borrowed—that "the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem shortened it for convenient use," An equally unsatisfying "reason" is that of H. Deane in Daniel, his Life and Times, p. 70 (pref. 1888). "There is ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... the distinction is thus obliterated under the influence of environment. The fixed polarity of cuttings from full grown stems cannot be destroyed; it is the expression of previous development. Vochting speaks of polarity as a fixed inherited character. This is an unconvincing conclusion, as nothing can be deduced from our present knowledge as to the causes which led up to polarity. We know that the fertilised egg, like the embryo, is fixed at one end by which it hangs freely in the embryo-sac and afterwards in the endosperm. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... persons you have to cater to their whims. I rid myself of the pump—I'd never dreamed I'd be reluctant to part with the monster—while she made perfunctory and unconvincing motions to fit herself for the street. Of course she neither washed nor madeup, but she peered in the glass argumentatively, pulled her jacket down decisively, threw her shoulders back to raise it askew again and gave the swirl of hair ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... of the biological view to point out in detail the distinguishing inherent traits of the Orient. Let them also catalogue the essential psychic characteristics of Occidentals. Such an attempt is seldom made. And when it is made it is singularly unconvincing. Although Prof. Le Bon states that the mental constitution of races is as distinctive and unaltering as their anatomical characteristics, he fails to tell us what they are. This is a vital omission. If ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... unconvincing fact of his wife's brother being a gamekeeper on the Marquis's estate near Jarge's native village, he had acquired, and retained through all the years of my farming, a sporting reputation; he was always the man selected for trapping any evil beast ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... (Leipzig, 1871). Ulrici's 'Shakespeare's Dramatic Art' (first published at Halle in 1839) and Gervinus's Commentaries (first published at Leipzig in 1848-9), both of which are familiar in English translations, are suggestive but unconvincing aesthetic interpretations. The German Shakespeare Society, which was founded at Weimar in 1865, has published thirty-four year-books (edited successively by von Bodenstedt, Delius, Elze, and F. A. Leo); each contains useful ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... forehead; he straightened himself and threw the hair back again, and so he kept on, time after time casting those plumes to and fro. At last, sated with homage, he thought of justice, and pointed to the band and smiled with an unconvincing air of humility, as if saying: "I am naught. Here are the true heroes." And on the end of his stick he lifted to their feet eighty men, whose rising drew invigorated shouts. Enthusiasm reigned; triumph was accomplished. Even when the applause had expired, enthusiasm ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the color, the detail, the thousand and one little things in the way of personality—you know what I mean; all that which is necessary to "lend artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative." (I wish I were in New York to-night! I'd go to the Casino and see the revival of "The Mikado.") The Pittsburg story can't be written, and it should not be written, without this; and to do it properly one would have to spend much time in Pittsburg ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... difficult to find, couched in such euphemistically appreciative language, so accurate a summary of the intention and quality of this book. Casanova is pale, diffuse, and unconvincing, indeed, beside the d'Annunzio who so early gave his full measure as the supreme novelist of sensual pleasure in this book. As Arthur Symons so well says, "Gabriele d'Annunzio comes to remind us, very definitely, as only an Italian ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... state of his world, found time to think that a gamekeeper who used such words as that had most likely a romantic past. But at the same time he saw that such a man would be far less easy to "square" with an unconvincing tale than Eliza, or Johnson, or even Mademoiselle. In fact, he seemed, with the only tale that they had to ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... descended like a mantle upon Daniel Levy: no uncommon reaction in the case of very passionate men, and yet in this case ominous, sinister, and completely unconvincing so far as I personally was concerned. I longed to tell Raffles what I thought, to put him on his guard against his obvious superior in low cunning. But Raffles would not even catch my eye. And already he looked insanely pleased with himself and his ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... duplicate Church's success, but with very indifferent result. They were Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran. The former sought the Rocky Mountains for his subjects; the latter, the Yosemite and the Yellowstone; but neither of them succeeded in transferring to canvas more than a pale and unconvincing presentment of the wonders ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... large order for clover-seed, his emotions are mixed. Joy may be said to predominate, but with the joy comes also uncertainty. Are these people, he asks himself, proposing to set up as farmers of a large scale, or do they merely want the seed to give verisimilitude to their otherwise bald and unconvincing raspberry jam? On the solution of this problem depends the important matter of price, for, obviously, you can charge a fraudulent jam disseminator in a manner which an honest ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... listened to the conversation with a curl of her lip for the stupid child who proffered her request in so unconvincing a manner, and an angry resentment against the authorities who should presume to dictate times and seasons. "They ought to have a system of cuts," she thought. "That's the only fair way. Then you can take them when you please, and if you cut over you know it and you do ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... jealousy which he had declared absurd a little while earlier. And the two are forced at last to walk their different ways. Unfortunately the dialogue is heavy and stilted. The play is a tract rather than a piece of art, and the tirades of Fedor are equally unconvincing when he speaks for or against that "fiction" which is killing both his own and the girl's hope of happiness in mutual love. Yet the play marks a step ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... play consists of two very loosely connected parts. The second is decidedly unconvincing. Madness has never been treated in literature with more power than in Hamlet and Lear. Besides Shakespeare's work, the description in the mouth of a messenger, though vivid enough, is less effective, for "what is set before the eyes excites us more than what ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... despairing shout: 'You've brought me to this, Carlotta!' And the profound injustice of that cry tainted even the sad sweetness of my immense sorrow. To this day, whenever I hear it, as I do still, my inmost soul protests, and all the excuses which my love found for him seem inadequate and unconvincing. I was a broken creature. (How few know what it means to be broken—to sink under a tremendous and overwhelming calamity! And yet who but they can understandingly sympathize with the afflicted?) As for my friends, I did not give them the occasion to desert me; ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... oversight," Hayes said with unconvincing reassurance; then, at the hurt look on the supervisor's face, added, "Beyond our control here, of course. Something it would take at least a scientist to spot, something we couldn't be expected ... What I mean is, we shouldn't get ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... found her aunt gazing at her curiously, sometimes beginning a sentence, and stopping, as one fearful of trespassing on prohibited ground. When Mr. Trew called, he and Mrs. Mills conferred in undertones, breaking off when the girl came near, and speaking, in an unconvincing way, of an interesting murder in South London; Trew thought the police could find the missing man if they only went the right way about it. Great Titchfield Street, from eight o'clock in the morning till ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... the house now," said Lord Thornaby, looking Raffles in the face. But his manner was that of an actor in an unconvincing part and a mood to play it gamely to the bitter end; and he seemed embittered, as even a rich man may be in the moment of losing ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... pension was denied January 9, 1884, because there was no record of the alleged diseases, and no satisfactory proof of their contraction in the Army was produced, and because of the meager and unconvincing evidence of disability found by the surgeon on an actual ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... her head as she forced herself to eat a morsel of bread. How unconvincing sounded the argument from another's lips! and yet she knew now that secretly it had carried with it more weight than she had realized. Miss Delia glanced apprehensively at the folded paper as it lay on the table. She herself was disappointed, deeply disappointed; she had expected ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... proved abortive, inasmuch as there was a complete absence of data based upon actual experience. The novelist was without any theory: he avowedly depended upon the brilliance of his imagination. The critic could only theorise, and no matter how dogmatic his reasonings, they were certainly as unconvincing as those of ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... reason for anxiety. In vain he told lie upon lie about a legacy of some old uncle in the clouds; in vain he stuck to the foolish and transparent falsehood, with a dogged pertinacity that appealed, not to reason, but to blows; in vain he made affirmation weaker by his oath, and oaths quite unconvincing by his cudgel: no one believed him: and the mystery was rendered more inexplicable from his evidently nervous state and uneasy terror ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... lead to a realisation of the duties of woman, founded on a level-headed facing of the physiological realities of her nature. It is a complete disregard of sexualogical difficulties which renders so superficial and unconvincing much of the talk which proceeds from the "Woman's Rights" platform. All efforts made to understand the sex problem, which is the woman question, must be based on the full knowledge of the physical capacity of woman ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... with a growl, and I was taken to the guardroom, where the same Hun N.C.O. casually informed me that I was to be shot. In an unconvincing way I told myself this was nonsense. The next move was not at all reassuring. I was marched through the back door into a tiny courtyard, accompanied by the sergeant of the guard and several privates armed with rifles! ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... glorious riot of horror, 'The Destroying Angel,' in 'The Dynamiter,' that it is 'highly fantastic and putting a strain on our credulity.' This is rather like describing the travels of Baron Munchausen as 'unconvincing.' The whole story of 'The Dynamiter' is a kind of humorous nightmare, and even in that story 'The Destroying Angel' is supposed to be an extravagant lie made up on the spur of the moment. It is a dream within a dream, and to accuse it of improbability is like accusing the sky ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... is, Balderstone, I'm glad of it. She's too snippy for me, and I'm afraid I should have quarrelled with you about her in a half-hearted, unconvincing manner." ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... convincing. It seemed highly unconvincing, later, because some long-delayed perception produced a reaction in the dinies' minuscule brains. They became aware of their visitors. They appeared, in a slow-motion fashion, to become interested in them. Slowly, heavily, numbly, ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Pooh-Bah calls "corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to a bald and unconvincing narrative." From the same ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... London—a list, as far as that were possible, of all the gems and baubles which the dead men and women on the sunken steamers had owned. This was a paltry record of bracelets, and rings, and tiaras, and clasps, such stuff as any fellow of a jeweller may sell; unconvincing stuff, worth no more than a near relation for purposes of evidence. There was but one piece of the whole mass that did not come in my category—a great box with a fine painting by Jean Petitot upon its lid, and a curious circle of jasper all about the miniatures. This was ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... lain awake in the night to laugh over it is no guarantee of your being passably amused. Yourselves, I dare say, have known what it is to awake in irrepressible mirth from a dream which next morning proved to be flat and unconvincing. Well, this my pet story has some of the qualities of a dream; being absurd, for instance, and almost incredible, and even a trifle inhuman. After all, I had better change my mind, and tell ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... o'clock Miss Foster summoned them and they went into the invalid's room; to Susan it was all unreal and unconvincing. The figure in the bed, the purple face, the group of sobbing watchers. No word was said: the moments slipped by. Her eyes were wandering when Miss Foster suddenly ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... makes it almost impossible not to compare Ferdinand Fathom with Jonathan Wild: and the effect is very damaging to the Count. Much of the book is dull: and Fathom's conversation is (to adopt a cant word) extremely unconvincing. The fact seems to be that Smollett had run his picaresque vein dry, as far as it connected itself with mere rascality of various kinds, and he did well to close it. He had published three novels in five years: he waited ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... discussion with Johnson opened. But they remained disheartening prospects. He imagined himself wonderfully smartened up, acquiring style and value in a London shop, but the picture was stiff and unconvincing. He tried to rouse himself to enthusiasm by the idea of his property increasing by leaps and bounds, by twenty pounds a year or so, let us say, each year, in a well-placed little shop, the corner shop Johnson favoured. There was a certain picturesque interest in imagining cut-throat economies, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... succeeded had the key been larger and had the situation required less accurately coordinated movements. However, it is fair to say that the evidence of the idea of using the key in the lock was unconvincing. My assistant's observation was, perhaps, misleading in so far as it suggested that idea. It may and probably was purely by accident that the animal used the splinter ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... to think the second was the most probable; but they were all unconvincing; and he shuffled them carelessly together and ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... Senseless! That, for Lee Randon, described the whole proceeding. He had looked forward to the dance with a happy anticipation, and, now that it was here, even before he had come, he was out of key with it. The efforts of the people about him to forget themselves were stiff and unconvincing; their attitudes were no more than masks held before their faces; there wasn't a genuine daring emotion, the courage of an admitted thrill, to be found. And then, as if to mock his understanding, he saw Peyton ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... printing to a higher level than it had reached since the days of John Day, was born at Cradley, near Hales Owen in Shropshire. We are indebted for his biography partly to Bowyer and partly to Nichols, but it must be confessed that the earlier part of it is vague and unconvincing. According to this oft-quoted story, Caslon began life as an engraver of gun-locks, and made blocking tools for binders. This was somewhere about 1716, in which year it is said John Watts, the printer, became his patron, and employed him to cut type punches. Bowyer ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... mess you've got us into, with your nodding head and the deference due to a man of pedigree! POOH. Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. PITTI. Corroborative detail indeed! Corroborative fiddlestick! KO. And you're just as bad as he is with your cock— and-a-bull stories about catching his eye and his whistling an air. But that's so like you! You must put in your oar! POOH. But how ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... After all, what right had he to assume that she would gratuitously intermeddle in the disastrous fates of others? A rigorous respect for the rights of privacy was written into the rules of the game as she played it. He argued, with logic irrefutable as it was unconvincing, that this alone ought to stay her hand; yet he knew, by the power of their own yearning, one for the other, that in the great cause of love, whether for themselves or for Camilla Van Arsdale and Willis Enderby, she would resistlessly follow the impulse born and matured of her own ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... at first an unhappy one. During three or four years, unable, it seems, to match the new conception of form with his intensely personal reaction, Renoir produced a certain number of unconvincing and uncharacteristic pictures (e.g., the dance series, Dance a la Ville, etc.). There is an uneasy harshness about the contours, the forms are imperfectly felt, they are wooden even, and in their placing one misses the old inevitability. Signed with another ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... a very large pink cambric pocket-handkerchief, and performed behind its shelter an elaborate but unconvincing sneeze: ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... to instantly send the radio call that would stop the waiting fleet of H-bombers. But an unconvincing message would be worse than no message at all. He had to describe exactly what he saw here so the Nyjorders would know he wasn't lying. What he told them had to fit exactly with the information they already had about the launcher ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... insurgents and attempted to frighten the Convention with a vision of the inevitable failure of the insurrection, which, he claimed, would be suppressed by the forces from the front. His address sounded unconvincing and out of place within the walls of a hall where the overwhelming majority of the delegates were enthusiastically observing the victorious advance of the ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... yet surrounded themselves with the atmosphere of experience and association, and they had lost the romance of novelty; they lay before him detached, so to say, and unconvincing. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... criminality, that I could have put that man up to, which would have transformed his Judas from woodenness into breathing life. As it was, with no one in the village apparently who was worth his salt as a felon to teach him, his performance was unconvincing, and Judas became a figure to laugh rather ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... bring up objections that the prospect has not raised in his own mind. That would be putting up a straw man and knocking him down, which is profitless and unconvincing. Of course you must clear the path when there is no other way to proceed, but do not block it yourself. Sometimes it will not be advisable to clear the path. If you can get around a difficulty you see, without attracting your prospect's attention to it, ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... that is very pretty, but it is also unconvincing. So, my friend [To ASTROFF] you must let me go on burning firewood in my stoves and building my sheds ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... order to give verisimilitude, as it were, to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative, flung so much agitated surprise into the last word that it woke Mike from a troubled doze into which he ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... distrusted their age. They were too old to sympathise really with her. They would most likely understand as little as her step-father had done. An Inward Monitor told Betty that the story of the fortune-telling, of the seven stolen meetings with no love-making in them, would sound very unconvincing to any ears but those of the one person already convinced. But she would not be shut up in a convent—no, not by fifty aunts and a ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... throat, a scarf of some gauzy material, also mauve, floated around her neck. She was wearing a hat with a wing, which he was guiltily conscious of having once admired, and which she attempted, in an airy but exceedingly unconvincing fashion, to explain. ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have in a few words an unconvincing summary of a long and complicated story—one that I detest telling. However, I could not permit you to sit with me at the directors' table of this bank without knowing who I am, what I am, and why I have run that rat into his hole. Colonel Nelson spoke the ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the Marseillaise, the Pacificist had already decided upon his conduct. He sat still, even for a few moments he feigned to be absorbed in his favourite newspaper, but almost immediately gave this up as unconvincing and remained ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... boldly advanced, waving aloft his symbol of peace, and shouting, in as many of the African dialects as he could call to mind, that they were friends. His assurances, however, if understood, appeared to be quite unconvincing—to put it mildly—the attitude of the natives growing momentarily more hostile and menacing, as though the mere sight of a white man stirred their worst ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... is a chance," said O'Reilly In an unconvincing manner—as if he wanted to believe something his better sense did not permit him to do, "that this outfit was not used since Strong and the other man ...
— Ted Marsh on an Important Mission • Elmer Sherwood
... transcripts in the British Museum, and made some slight corrections in his translation, but omitted to note the crucial error of the 'third of THIS month ' for 'the third of LAST month.' This was in 1886. Mr. Gairdner's arguments as to dates were unconvincing, in this his first article. But in 1892 the letter of de Quadra was retranslated from Mr. Froude's transcript, in the Spanish Calendar (i. pp. 174-176). The translation was again erroneous, 'THE QUEEN HAD PROMISED ME AN ANSWER ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... would only introduce a little brightness into its bald and unconvincing narrative of Parliamentary procedure it would provide reading-matter which would grip the heart and stir the emotions, winning many new readers from the students of fiction and other light literature. Hansard will otherwise never find it worth while to organise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... implacable deity of the London slum! Whenever I hear or read the phrase "Salvation Army" then do I see a young exquisite with a white camellia in his buttonhole, gazing like a hypnotised Indian Seer at a crude transparency blotted with unconvincing texts, then rushing off to found a celibate order—from Margarita, who was no more celibate that Ceres ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... utterly oblivious of present company in the consciousness of deeds that need attention. Generals of command, great captains of industry, and a few rare statesmen have it; but the statesmen are most rare, because they are trained to pretend, and therefore unconvincing. The generals and captains are detested for it by all who have never humbled themselves to the point where they can think, and be unselfishly absorbed. Kagig stepped out of one zone of thought into the next, and ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... now I see that I must have felt—known—all along.... But," said the strange young man, setting down the vase and hurriedly running his fingers through his hair, "I—I realize that this must sound most unconvincing to you. Probably foolish. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... with the nomadic nature of his mind. That lack of roots, this remoteness from ancient instincts and traditions is responsible for a certain bleak and heartless extravagance of statement on certain subjects which makes the author really unconvincing as well as exaggerative; satires that are saugrenu, jokes that are rather silly than wild, statements which even considered as lies have no symbolic relation to truth. They are exaggerations of something that does not exist. For instance, ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... be seen, Miss Worldly Wisemiss," he retorted with unconvincing lightness. He was disturbed, and he was impressed, by her indifference to the fortune. It appeared not to concern or to interest her. She spoke not merely as one who objected to unearned wealth but as one to whom the annals of the Prohack family were henceforth a matter ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Endurances reached me, I had met with Invocation, a smaller volume published by Lieut. Nichols in December 1915. There has rarely been a more radical change in the character of an artist than is displayed by a comparison of these two collections. Invocation, in which the war takes a small and unconvincing place, is creditable, though rather uncertain, in workmanship, and displays a tendency towards experiment in rich fancy and vague ornament. In Ardours and Endurances the same accents are scarcely to be detected; the pleasant ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... remain silent, his self-respect would never recover from the blow. Then, in response to Mrs Hamps's prediction about his usefulness to his father in the business, he said, with a false-jaunty, unconvinced, unconvincing air— ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Polchester so much as saw the outside of a gipsy van. The Dean's Ernest was accustomed to boast that he had once been given a ride by a gipsy on a donkey, when his nurse was not looking, but no one credited the story, and the details with which he supported it were feeble and unconvincing. The Polchester children in general were told that "they would be stolen by the gipsies if they weren't careful," and, although some of them in extreme moments of rebellion and depression felt that the life of adventure thus offered ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... sick. He had expected McNabb's anger at his foolish whim, and knew that he deserved it—but that McNabb should accuse him of theft! Sick at heart, he faltered his answer, and in his own ears his voice sounded strange, and dull, and unconvincing. ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... intelligence; that there was nothing in the letter but notorious facts; that his exaggerations of the American force could only be designed to favour the cause of his country; and that his object was purely patriotic. He added, in a burst of sounding though unconvincing oratory: "The warmest bosom here does not flame with a brighter zeal for the security, happiness, and ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... was an unfortunate omission, for many a Congressman had sought to dodge the question.[364] The partisan press did not spare him, though he stated publicly that he would have voted for the bill, had he not been forced to absent himself. Such excuses were common and unconvincing. Irritated by sly thrusts on every side, Douglas at last resolved to give a detailed account of the circumstances that had prevented him from putting himself on record in the vote. This public vindication was made upon the floor of the Senate a year later.[365] A "pecuniary ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... conviction his manner showed embarrassment as he began his explanation. The smooth phrases he had used so often that he could have spoken them in his sleep came readily to his lips, but even to himself they sounded hollow and unconvincing. He was embarrassed too, by Persis' tendency to ask questions, to inform herself as to every detail of the plan he was unfolding. So persistent was she in her cross-examination, that Mrs. Hornblower showed signs ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... to what he called home—one room in the cottage of an oldish woman who had prejudices against the perilous night air. He was too sleepy to go through any toilet save pulling off his shoes, and achieving an unconvincing wash at the little stand, whose crackly varnish was marked with white rings from ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... a smoking-room were talking of their private-school days. 'At our school,' said A., 'we had a ghost's footmark on the staircase. What was it like? Oh, very unconvincing. Just the shape of a shoe, with a square toe, if I remember right. The staircase was a stone one. I never heard any story about the thing. That seems odd, when you come to think of it. Why didn't somebody invent ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... the D'Urbervilles is one of the most unconvincing books I ever read. I neither believed in it nor cared about it in ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... leaving her paler even than before. "You are very kind, Mr. Morrow, but I do not think that I should speak of it to anyone. And indeed, my fears are so intangible, so vague, that when I try to formulate my thoughts into words, even to myself, they are unconvincing, almost meaningless. Yet I feel ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... it is to be characterised as such—upon which it has been recently asserted that del Gesu was a pupil of Andreas Gisalberti is so trivial and altogether unconvincing that it seems unsuitable for discussion or analysis in a serious ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... making no mistake; before Sadie came back at supper-time he had his arms about Comrade Jennie, and was pressing kisses upon the lovely white throat; and Comrade Jennie was sobbing softly, and her pleading with him to stop had grown faint and unconvincing. ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... It was the first time he had spoken to her in that way. She stammered something about "general principles," but he was regarding her so fixedly that her attempt at dissembling was most unconvincing. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... over his fields, who played bo-peep with each other in and out of the valleys of the plough-land. But they were grey valleys now, that yesterday were smiling in the sun. And the sky was a mere self-coloured sky (a modern expression, as unconvincing as most of its congeners), and wanted to make everything else as grey as itself. Also there came drifts of fine rain that wetted you through, and your umbrella wasn't any good. So a great many of the visitors to St. Sennans thought ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... It must, in justice to Mrs. Marland, be remembered that she had always found the simplest explanation of Charlie's devotion to the Pool hard to accept, and the most elaborate demonstration of how a Canadian canoe may be upset unconvincing. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... mean to assert that the baby's mind is a finished product at birth; that coming into life is simply the last stage of its growth? How unconvincing ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... said "yes" the anthropomorphic teaching was undoubted; while if the answer were in the negative I should be guilty of fostering the abominable denominational spirit which ruins this land. My reply must have been unconvincing, for I overheard the children later deciding, the Methodist Church having been barred as a place of residence, that the attic was the only remaining possibility. It is the one spot in the Home unvisited by them, and ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... and the feelings of Elena towards them, and her own self-communings are interwoven with unfaltering skill. All the most complex and baffling shades of the mental life, which in the hands of many latter-day novelists build up characters far too thin and too unconvincing, in the hands of Turgenev are used with deftness and certainty to bring to light that great kingdom which is always lying hidden beneath the surface, beneath the common-place of daily life. In the difficult art ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... opening address to the jury for the defence was brief, and, to sharp legal ears, vague and unconvincing. Although he pointed out that the evidence was purely circumstantial, and that in the absence of direct testimony the accused was entitled to the benefit of any reasonable doubt, he did not attempt to controvert the statements of the Crown ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... merits of his undesired wares. A spirit of wistful emulation took possession of the author; why could he not live up to the cold stern name he had adopted? Why must he sit here weakly and listen to this weary, unconvincing tirade, why could he not be Mark Mellowkent for a few brief moments, and meet this man on ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... latter country outlawed herself when she proclaimed the law of necessity. In the light of this consideration the German outcry that the Belgians were breaking both the laws of humanity and international jurisprudence lacks sincerity and remains unconvincing. ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... been much attacked as involving an indefensible 'State absolutism', a denial of 'personality' to lesser groups, even as a negation of the right to lesser loyalties. Mr. Figgis, in a number of suggestive, if unconvincing, writings, has recalled the theories of the Jesuits and other anti-state minorities and protestants on this subject, reinforcing them from the Nonconformist and Trade Union theories or inclinations ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... flooded with descriptions of Walvis Bay; at least I have seen two books with long descriptions of the place, and more than a dozen articles on the subject. I shall not add to this list by any long (and assuredly unconvincing) attempt at a new picture. When you have left the green-covered kopjes of the Cape a few days before and come to anchor in Walvis Bay on a cold morning you think you have reached No-man's-land after a fast voyage. It is a first impression only. The place is desolate ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... the same appearance of prosperity. Yet if you ask for signs, there are surely many to be seen. I am anxious," he continued, gazing around him with an air of bland enjoyment, "to avoid anything in the nature of an epigram. There is nothing so unconvincing, so stultifying to one's statements, as to express them epigrammatically. People at once give you credit for an attempt at intellectual gymnastics which takes no regard to the truth. I will not, therefore, weary you with a diatribe upon the condition of that heterogeneous mass which ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fool"—Siegfried with all his bull-strength and energy shorn away. He carries a bow and arrow, and promptly shoots a Swan, one of the prides of Montsalvat. He is too stupid to understand that he has done any wrong—wrong to a helpless bird or his own nature. Gurnemanz explains in very unconvincing accents; Parsifal, the poor, "pure" fool, bursts into tears, breaks his weapons and throws them away. And now the reader must bear with me if I am both tedious and inexplicable in my explanation. At some unknown period in the past it was prophesied that only the "pure fool" taught by suffering ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... queer woman in all respects, from her broad face and squat body to her forced, timbreless voice and her unconvincing gestures. It was only her clumsiness that had prevented her from opening the French window; the lock was all right. Ellen felt that she would die if she did not have an hour alone with Richard to relearn that life could be lived easily and with grace. But it would be just like the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... John Harvey are as unconvincing as those to belittle Bacon. Certainly the Sackville Papers, recently made available to historians, contain nothing to warrant any change in the conclusion, long accepted by Virginia historians, that Harvey's ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... models. His tactics were ably seconded by Doctor Pestovitch, his chief minister. Failing to establish his claims to complete independence, King Ferdinand Charles annoyed the conference by a proposal to be treated as a protected state. Finally he professed an unconvincing submission, and put a mass of obstacles in the way of the transfer of his national officials to the new government. In these things he was enthusiastically supported by his subjects, still for the most part an illiterate peasantry, passionately if confusedly patriotic, and so far with no ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... Dave's determination to force himself to obey her wish, and the struggle nearly kept him from recalling the original object of his visit. Remembering, he tried to tell Alaire what he had learned from Phil Strange; but so broken and so unconvincing was his recital that he doubted if she understood in the least what ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... was following Doctor Mandelet's advice, and letting her do as she liked. The Colonel reproached his daughter for her lack of filial kindness and respect, her want of sisterly affection and womanly consideration. His arguments were labored and unconvincing. He doubted if Janet would accept any excuse—forgetting that Edna had offered none. He doubted if Janet would ever speak to her again, and he was sure ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... aching from fatigue, Eric tried to reconstruct the fantastic evening. Little detached pictures jostled their unconvincing way through his brain—Lady Poynter's formal dining-room and the barren, self-conscious literary discussion; Lord Poynter's wheezing confidences about the wood port which should properly be taken as a liqueur. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... continue to place its brand upon the forehead of the seducer, the whining hypocrite, the sniveling rogue, the confidence man, the fakir and the fool. It is proposed to show this country that the pistol is unconvincing as an argument and useless as a brake upon reform. Brann is dead; but there are men alive who lack his phenomenal ability, perhaps, but who share his deathless hatred of the rotten in morals and in politics. The mission for the ICONOCLAST is unchanged and unended. ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... fact was nothing but mind-play? Even Wells, whose literary style he admired as one of the beauties as well as one of the wonders of the world, had been a disappointment. He had seemed singularly halting and unconvincing. ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... breeding and vulgarity, cheerfully rub shoulders; the descriptions of the wistful beautiful West of Ireland in autumn and winter; and above all the horses. Added to all this there are Sinn Fein raids, real and imaginary, to bring things up to date. A rather unconvincing plot, with a dash of Great Expectations in it, yet offers a situation which has plenty of amusing possibilities. Honor and Evie Nutting, two middle-aged spinsters, find themselves the possessors of eight thousand a year, on condition that they spend it all. That sounds, of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... sympathetic, authoritative, dignified, direct, impressive, vivid, convincing, persuasive, zealous, enthusiastic, and inspiring. Avoid that which is timid, familiar, violent, cold, indifferent, unreal, artificial, dull, sing-song, hesitating, feeble, unconvincing, apathetic, monotonous, pompous, formal, arbitrary, ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... pages of a new chapter whose familiar title, so long meaningless to her, had taken on a sudden troubling significance. And for the first time in her life she glanced uneasily at the new page in the book of self, numbered according to her years with the figures 23, and headed with the unconvincing chapter ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... 'at the very instant at which it should triumph. It is vague, unconvincing, wrong. You leave me unanswered for six whole weeks, and at the end you send me this incoherent sandheap, when your promises had given me the right to expect a solid piece of well-worked marble. I do not know whether you are well or ill, whether you desire ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... of the elder and the incompetence of the younger. As leader, as teacher, and as writer he was alike unsurpassed. It may be mentioned in passing that, not only the Hidden Words and the Seven Valleys, but the fine though unconvincing apologetic arguments of the Book of Ighan flowed from Baha-'ullah's pen at the Baghdad period. But we must now make good a great omission. Let us turn back to ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... department is represented, evolves naturally the "editorial attitude" upon which every line of future publicity and every sentence of salesman's talk will be based. Without a complete understanding throughout the establishment of the "editorial attitude" the entire publicity will be aimless and unconvincing. ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... restricted distribution of the nightingale, indeed, within the limits of its summer home is among the most remarkable of the many problems confronting the student of distribution, and successive ingenious but unconvincing attempts to explain its seeming eccentricity, or at any rate caprice, in the choice of its nesting range only make the confusion worse. Briefly, in spite of a number of doubtful and even suspicious reports of the bird's occurrence outside ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... experimenter, using all his means of investigation, can have the subject under his hand at the exact moment of inspiration—of the sudden, fertile, brief creative impulse—would not the experiment itself be a disturbing cause, so that the result would be ipso facto vitiated, or at least unconvincing? ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... well-written number in conventional form, but it is obviously foreign to MacDowell's temperament, which was only at its best in subjects having some definite poetical basis. The work was later revised by the composer, and while quite a good example of its form, as a MacDowell work it is unconvincing. ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... I say 'yes' then," he said, with an affected laugh. "That is, if you think I can manage to do the work; it is not exactly in my line, you know." Yet he somehow felt that his laugh was feeble and unconvincing. ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... soundless night ride to the hotel seemed unreal; the lights in the cafe, the noise and movement, the pretty face of his aunt with the pink reflection from the candle shades on her cheeks—all seemed as unconvincing as himself and this thing that he could not grasp—could not understand—could not realise had ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... a Person, or at least as nothing less than a Person—though possibly more. It is contended by many authorities that we cannot regard any collective being, such as a college or a regiment—and Nature is a collective being—as a true person. But their arguments are unconvincing. They allow that "I" am a person because "I" possess rationality and self-consciousness. But "I" am a system or organisation of innumerable beings—electrons, groupings of electrons, groups of groupings in rising complexity. "I"—the body and soul which makes up "me"—am ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... Liberal Republicans in 1872 sincerely desired reform and made it the subject of a definite plank in their platform, but the wing of the Democratic party that refused to ally with them was silent on the civil service, and the "straight" Republicans advocated reform in doubtful and unconvincing terms. In 1876 both party platforms were even more vague, although Hayes himself was openly committed to ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... a sense of being at a disadvantage, for the idea of Una's frank admission had never entered Marcia's pretty intriguing head. She was hoist with her own petard and covered her confusion by a light laugh which was most unconvincing. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... was ordered to appear before the United States inspectors, and he went and told his story as best he could. But his best was an unconvincing tale, after all. He left the hearing after his testimony and walked down to the little hotel by the water-front ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... on indifferent subjects will divert as well as instruct, and if either in these, or in the relation of Father Lobo, any argument shall appear unconvincing, or description obscure, they are defects incident to all mankind, which, however, are not too rashly to be imputed to the authors, being sometimes, perhaps, more justly chargeable on ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... affair to-day, Mr. Brent," he whispered, "most unsatisfactory, sir, most unsatisfactory—unconvincing, inconclusive, Mr. Brent! The thing's getting no farther, sir, no farther, except, of course, for the very pertinent fact about Mrs. Bunning's absence from her quarters that fateful evening. My own impression, sir, is that Hawthwaite and all the rest of 'em don't know the right way ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... region safely comprehended as lying within the confines of northeastern France, the Netherlands, and the northern Rhine Provinces. Much has been written on this debatable subject and doubtless will continue to be, either as an arrow shot into the air by some wary pedant, or an equally unconvincing statement, without proof, of some mere follower in the footsteps of an illustrious, but behind the times, expert. It matters not, as a mere detail, whether it was brought from the East in imperfect form by the Crusaders, and only received its development at the hands of some ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... am looking at them. But I find them unconvincing. There are a few, however, of whom what you say is true. You may be one of ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay |
