"Uninviting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Washington. Mrs. McCall herself was eating a slice of Health Bread and nut butter. For she practised as well as preached the doctrines which she had striven for so many years to inculcate in an unthinking populace. Her day always began with a light but nutritious breakfast, at which a peculiarly uninviting cereal, which looked and tasted like an old straw hat that had been run through a meat chopper, competed for first place in the dislike of her husband and son with a more than usually offensive brand of imitation coffee. Mr. McCall was inclined to think that he loathed the imitation coffee ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... down the scenery, as we steam on, changes each moment. In the twilight the granite cliffs stand out black and uninviting, and the country looks cold and grey. It may be that we are tired of the long journey, for with the growing darkness comes the feeling that something to eat and bed would be pleasant things. Then the steamer's whistle makes us ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... him that bare feet would make any thought of flight through that cactus country extremely uninviting. The men surrendered their boots. Roosevelt gave them a buffalo robe in return and the prisoners crawled under it, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... a bright sun was shining. According to their calculation, they had hitherto succeeded in keeping the course they had intended. The country to the east, however, looked so barren and uninviting, that they agreed to travel northward, where there appeared to be a better prospect of obtaining water, without which they could not hope to get on. As the sun rose in the sky, the heat became more and more excessive. Not a breath ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... and all, as before. This fierce wind, usual to the Magellan country, continued on through the day, and swept the sloop by several miles of steep bluffs and precipices overhanging a bold shore of wild and uninviting appearance. I was not sorry to get away from it, though in doing so it was no Elysian shore to which I shaped my course. I kept on sailing in hope, since I had no choice but to go on, heading across for St. Nicholas Bay, where I had ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... his dismal little study, with curtains closely drawn to exclude the light, a cup of strong tea, and the Bible open at 'The Lamentations of Jeremiah'. His room was lined with books, but they had not that friendly look books generally have, but, bound in dingy brown calf, looked as grim and uninviting as their contents, which were mostly sermons and cheerful anticipations of the bottomless pit. It was against Marchurst's principles to gratify his senses by having nice things around him, and his whole house was furnished in ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... for some six miles the road is very fair wheeling; after this comes a gradual inclination toward a jutting spur of hills; the following twenty miles being the toughest kind of a trundle through mud, snow-fields, and drifts. This is a most uninviting piece of country to wheel through, and it would seem but little less so to traverse at this time of the year with a caravan of camels, two or three of these animals being found exhausted by the roadside, and a couple of charvadars ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... stature above the middle size, and "more fat than bard beseems," of a dull countenance, and a gross, unanimated, uninviting appearance; silent in mingled company, but cheerful among select friends, and by his friends very tenderly ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... rough, dilapidated hut far down on the mountain side, built of odds and ends of lumber and pieced out with empty oil cans, rusted red with the rains of many winters. Made without windows or openings of any sort, except a narrow door on one side, it must have presented a very dreary, uninviting appearance to its one occupant, who was the only person who had ever seen its interior, for owing to his peculiar habits, people regarded him as crazy and left him severely alone. He had never been known to molest anyone, but sought ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... was admirably adapted for the arduous and uninviting task of planting a negro colony. His very deficiencies stood him in good stead; for, in presence of the elements with which he had to deal, it was well for him that nature had denied him any sense of the ridiculous. Unconscious ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... vigorous intellect, varied talents, and accurate scholarship, Lockhart was impatient of contradiction, and was prone to censure keenly those who had offended him. To strangers his manners were somewhat uninviting, and in society he was liable to periods of taciturnity. He loved the ironical and facetious; and did not scruple to indulge in ridicule even at the expense of his intimate associates. With many peculiarities of manner, and a temper somewhat fretful and impulsive, we have good authority ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... said, but less pleasantly, because he was mortified by the awareness of himself as an uninviting sight, with his old dressing-gown, neglected beard, and the unpicturesque ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... vast stretch of lonely plain. As we journeyed through it, viewing the trackless hills and rockribbed mountains not far away on either side, mostly barren and uninviting, it was difficult to conceive of that territory ever becoming the permanent homes of men. Yet it is possible, and probable, that the grave of Dr. Kidd's little boy is today within the limits of a populous community, or even beneath a noisy ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... is empty. It is glowing triumphantly and joyously in the glare of the summer sun. But in the parlor all the window curtains are lowered, and for that reason it is dark within, cool, and as peculiarly uninviting as the interiors of empty theatres, riding academies and court buildings usually are in the ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... to travel along, and finally reached the last Dayak kampong, Bayumbong, consisting of the balei and a small house. The balei was of limited proportions, dark, and uninviting, so I put up my tent, which was easily done as the pumbakal and men were friendly and helpful. All the carriers were, of course, anxious to return, but as they were engaged to go to Kandangan I told them they would ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... forbidding, but uninviting, turned the scale; and the Klosking, who was not a forward woman, did not yield to her inclination and speak to Zoe. She took Ashmead's ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... woman, far more capable than even General Bartholomew realised. Clever and capable, kindly and generous of nature, and the girl interested her. It was only interest at first. Joan was not one to invite a warm affection in another woman at the outset. Her manner was too cold, too uninviting, and yet there was nothing repellent about it. It was as if, wounded by contact with the world, she had withdrawn behind her own defences. She, who had suffered insult and indignity, looked on all the world with suspicious, ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... the trout stream, which at other seasons of the year is a never failing attraction, running as it does for the most part through the woods, in mid winter seldom reflects the light of the sun, and looks cold and uninviting. One may learn much, it is true, of the wonders of nature in the dead time of the year by watching the great trout on the spawn beds as they pile up the gravel day by day, and store up beautiful, transparent ova, of which but a ten-thousandth part will live ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... become red. It is so called because of the dingy reddish color of the entire plant, and also because when the plant is handled or bruised it quickly changes to a reddish color. It is often a large bulky plant and rather uninviting. ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... people wished to get rid of.[3] We will admit, then, without hesitation, that acts which would now be considered as acts of illusion or folly, held a large place in the life of Jesus. Must we sacrifice to these uninviting features the sublimer aspect of such a life? God forbid. A mere sorcerer, after the manner of Simon the magician, would not have brought about a moral revolution like that effected by Jesus. If the thaumaturgus had ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... approaching train, but immediately they returned to their places without taking a nibble. The voice of the shepherd and an occasional well aimed lump of earth only being required to bring them back to their uninviting pastures. ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... of sight of the village church, almost out of hearing of its little bell, stood the house of La Corriveau, a square, heavy structure of stone, inconvenient and gloomy, with narrow windows and an uninviting door. The pine forest touched it on one side, a brawling stream twisted itself like a live snake half round it on the other. A plot of green grass, ill kept and deformed, with noxious weeds, dock, fennel, thistle, and foul stramonium, was surrounded by a rough wall of loose ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... badly wounded, and the rest scared out of their wits. What the airman doubtless did not know was that they were a party of Boche prisoners! Only about six British soldiers were killed. It made a ghastly mess at the cross-roads, which was a most uninviting spot to pass ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... the country, he immediately resigned his seat, and went to look for another. When the lady took her seat by me I involuntarily drew my chair to a more respectful distance, there being something so particularly uninviting in her ladyship's appearance. On our arrival at Maysville, this lady, with her gentleman, told the captain that they were sorry they had not a cent wherewith to defray the expenses of their passage. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... finished his cigar, and had as leisurely glanced through all the three-day-old London papers. He had even puzzled, for another half-hour, over the pages of a Tribuna. Then, after gazing in an idle and listless manner about the empty and uninviting hotel reading-room, he decided that it was time for him to go up to his room. He made his leisurely way to the lift, ascended to the fourth floor, stepped out, and drew his room-key from his pocket, as he walked down the hall, in the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... in wet, not damp, blankets for days at a time; and to return from your guard about two in the morning and get into such an uninviting couch was trying to one's temper, of course. Even one's "goose haar piller," as the boys called their feather pillow, might be sodden. To make your bed in snow or be snowed over is ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... round me as I approached that dismal terminus. Then, when too late, I began to regret my folly. I seemed to wake as if from a dream, from a state of helpless infatuation, in which my acts were scarcely the effect of my own volition. The general out-look became decidedly uninviting. ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... I resolved to heed the impartial needle. I was a little weary of the rough tramping: but it was necessary to be moving; for, with wet clothes and the night air, I was decidedly chilly. I turned towards the north, and slipped and stumbled along. A more uninviting forest to pass the night in I never saw. Every-thing was soaked. If I became exhausted, it would be necessary to build a fire; and, as I walked on, I couldn't find a dry bit of wood. Even if a little punk ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... records of the year, in which we began to perceive that the reduction of all subjects of importance was not compatible within a few pages, and sooner than allow many papers of value to every member of society to be locked under the uninviting denomination of philosophy, we undertook the abridgement and arrangement of such papers, upon the plan of an "Annual Register," intending our volume specially to represent the progress of discovery just as the general "Register" is a contribution to history. The cost of the journals ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... parsnips, and sometimes suet dumplings, accompany this dish; and these may all be boiled with the beef. The pot-liquor should be saved, and converted into pea-soup; and the outside slices, which are generally hard, and of an uninviting appearance, may be out off before being sent to table, and potted. These make an excellent relish for the breakfast or ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... on the purple cloudlands of heather dotted with the white spots of grazing sheep in the Scottish Highlands under changing skies, with headlands stretching out into the misty reaches of the North Sea, forbidding in the chill air after the warmth of France and suggestive of the uninviting theatre where, in approaching winter, patrols and trawlers and mine-sweepers carried on their work to within range of the guns of Heligoland. A people who lived in such a chill land, in sight of such a chill sea, and who spoke of their "Bonnie Scotland forever," were worthy ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... struck out into the adjacent fields. There was nothing for a considerable distance to repay me for this detour, except that I thus was rid of the sand. The country was barren and uninteresting, the cottages little better than hovels, and the whole scene uninviting. But I pushed on, not a whit discouraged; indeed my spirits rose as the prospect darkened, and like a valiant general invading a country for the purpose of conquering a peace, I resolved in some way to ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... he looked at with distaste. It was a typical frontier meal—stereotyped, uninviting. There were meat and eggs and coffee, and various heavy little dishes containing dabs of things which were never eaten. He drank the coffee and realized that he had been almost perishing from thirst. He called for a second cup; and then ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... Gen. John A. Sutter The Donner Party's Benefactor The Least and Most that Earth Can Bestow The Survivors' Request His Birth and Parentage Efforts to Reach California New Helvetia A Puny Army Uninviting Isolation Ross and Bodega Unbounded Generosity Sutter's Wealth Effect of the Gold Fever Wholesale Robbery The Sobrante Decision A "Genuine and Meritorious" Grant Utter Ruin Hock Farm Gen. Sutter's Death Mrs. E. P. ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... eyesores are mercifully hidden by the roofed surface. The very factory chimneys have a certain air of impressiveness, in common with church towers and the higher buildings. Once, on flying over the pottery town of Coalport—the most uninviting place I have ever visited—I found that the altered perspective ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... natural leaning to the study of political economy. Instead, she had always imagined any question relating to the government of her country to be inherently dry-as-dust and uninviting. But had John Hammond devoted his days to the study of Coptic manuscripts, or the arrow headed inscriptions upon Assyrian tablets, she would have toiled her hardest in the endeavour to make herself a Coptic scholar, or an adept in the cuneiform characters. If he had been a student of Chinese, she ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... served out to each of them the next morning at daybreak, when work would commence, but that now they were expected to turn in for the night, according to the rules governing this little convict settlement. The iron-roofed shed looked even more uninviting inside than outside. Down each side were ranged narrow platforms, which were divided into "beds" by narrow strips of wood about three inches in height, and all the covering allowed was a pair of very old dirty blankets; of mattresses ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... often enough to begin with, and a little special study of such shots at the outset will prove a very valuable investment of time. The ball should be thrown down carelessly at different places, and should be played from the spot at which it settles, however uninviting that spot ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... as mysteriously opened, leading into a room. A couple of candles were burning at a table, round which some rough-looking men were seated, drinking and playing cards, but keeping silence. It looked suspicious and uninviting. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... for, from the point of view in which he sees it, the neighbouring mountains lessen its effect very considerably. Excepting the Peak, the eye receives little pleasure from the general face of the country, which is sterile and uninviting to the last degree. The town, however, from its cheerful white appearance, contrasted with the dreary brownness of the back ground, makes not an unpleasing coup d'oeil. It is neither irregular in its plan, nor despicable in its style of building; and the churches and religious ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... many and wonderful adventures befall them. To escape from being kidnapped by some superb scoundrels they were hustled off to Milt Dale's home in the forest, and there they had for a long time to remain. Milt was one of nature's gentlemen, but as his boon companion was a cougar (whose uninviting picture is to be seen upon the paper cover), this forest home had its slight inconveniences. Mr. GREY, however, writes of it so admirably that he almost persuades me to be a camper-out, provided always that I may live in a cavern and not in a caravan. Cowboys, bandits, Mormons and other ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... quite everywhere, some higher than others, but all of a rough appearance, and uninviting in the extreme. The narrow path, moreover, became more and more difficult, and seemed altogether quite insane with its twistings and fearsome declivities. One's first thought was that at least a bit of road-metal might have been put upon it. But there was no ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... headlong into the room to pull up with a crash against the floor. The entrance was rendered additionally dangerous to myself because I stumbled over the legs of several sleeping soldiers. I felt inclined to remonstrate with the officer-in-charge of the escort at the treatment I was receiving, but the uninviting armed sentry at the door frustrated my efforts ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... Whitefriars—that dull, narrow, uninviting lane sloping from Fleet Street to the river, with gas works at its foot and mean shops on either side—was once the centre of a district full of noblemen's mansions; but Time's harlequin wand by-and-by turned ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... may be, it is fitting that I should first attend to one whose manners and accomplishments betray him to be of the Royal House," replied Lin Yi, with extreme affability. "Precede me, therefore, to my mean and uninviting hovel, while I gain more honour than I can reasonably bear by following closely in your elegant footsteps, and guarding your Imperial person with this ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... speculation. It turned out well. I entered into partnership with a man of considerable property. It seemed as if I had a talent of always guessing and foreboding where gain and profit were lying hid in distant countries, in uninviting, or hazardous undertakings; something like what is said of the divining rod, that it will hit upon metals and upon water. As many gardeners have a lucky hand, so in trade I prospered in every, even the most unpromising speculation. It was neither strength ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... St. Mark's is, perhaps, a little greener in the early spring, less dusty in the summer heat, less bare and uninviting in the winter snow. It is more restful, too, than the others, a place in which to sit and muse—even to read. Out from its shade and sunshine run queer side streets, with still queerer houses, rising two stories and an attic, each with a dormer and ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... with my burden on my back I turned to gaze awhile, First at the uninviting track, ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... city; by Cintra must be understood the entire region, town, palace, quintas, forests, crags, Moorish ruin, which suddenly burst on the view on rounding the side of a bleak, savage, and sterile-looking mountain. Nothing is more sullen and uninviting than the south- western aspect of the stony wall which, on the side of Lisbon, seems to shield Cintra from the eye of the world, but the other side is a mingled scene of fairy beauty, artificial elegance, savage grandeur, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... cuisine electric lights are everywhere, but the up-to-dateness here stops abruptly; the salle a manger is bare and uninviting, and the rooms above equally so, and the electric light has not penetrated beyond the ground floor. Instead one finds ranged on the mantel, above the cook-stove in the kitchen, a regiment of candlesticks, ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... narrow, sluggish stream, and it did not look to me worthy of its famous name. But often, that spring, its slow-moving waters had been flecked by a bloody froth, and the bodies of brave men had been hidden by them, and washed clean of the trench mud. Now, uninviting as its aspect was, and sinister as were the memories it must have evoked in other hearts beside my own, it was water. And on so hot a day water was a precious thing to men who had been working as the laddies hereabout ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... form of buildings,... but simply large quantities of large bricks, which for a long time have been carried away and used for modern buildings.... After rain coins are found on the surface.... There can be no doubt of a very large extent of ground, of very irregular and uninviting character, having been covered at some time with buildings. The position on the Jelam would answer well for the Dilawar which the Mongol invaders took and held.... The strange thing is that the name should not be mentioned (I believe it is not) by any of the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... near it, and upon the floor, were a number of canvases of different sizes. A cot bed, unmade, its covers dirty and in disorder, occupied the wall space opposite the door. In the centre of the mean and uninviting apartment stood a table, its top littered with odds and ends, amongst which the remains of a meal, dishes and food, fraternised gregariously with a painter's palette, brushes and paint tubes. A chair or two, long since disabled, and a rickety ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... marvelous picturesqueness of every point of view, combined with the clear balmy atmosphere and the transparency of the ocean depths, must have delighted and deeply impressed" the early explorers. "If the rock-bound coasts, sullen, defiant, and lowering, seemed uninviting, these were occasionally broken into charmingly alluring coves floored with golden sand, clad with evergreen shrubbery, and adorned with every variety of indigenous wattle, she-oak, wild flower, and fern, from the delicately graceful 'maiden-hair' ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... answer and they scrambled in silence up the uninviting hillside, till old Melotte's shack could be seen far below with the ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... while the Puncher quartered those indecent seas and heated up her bearings. It was almost too much to have to come back empty-handed. It was quite too much to have to run for shelter under the lee of Adra's uninviting coral reef. And to be told by an acting engineer that he would have to stay a week was utterly beyond the scope of ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... paid his respects to the pump and refreshed himself for supper. Then he strolled around the long, rambling ranch house. Across the front, which faced southwest, had been built a low apology for a veranda on which a couple of uninviting chairs stood. He appropriated one of these ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... The narrow bed looked uninviting, the bureau-washstand was of the cheapest, and the reflection Michael saw in its warped mirror would have made any boy with a particle of vanity actually suffer. Michael, however, was not vain. He thought little about himself, but this room was depressing. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... "unconstitutional;" and, for the first time since we left England, we experienced a sensation which strongly reminded us of sea-sickness. The general appearance of the coast from the lake was somewhat uninviting. The land appeared to be covered everywhere with the dense unbroken forest, and though there were some gently sloping hills and slight elevations, showing the margin of extensive clearings, there was a general want of a background of high ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... her betrothed had made Frantz's love more endurable to her at first; and, just as we place statues on tombstones to make them appear less sad, Desiree's pretty, little, pale face at the threshold of that uninviting future had made it seem ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... came in sight. But it was a barren, unfriendly coast, "nothing but hideous rocks and mountains, bare of trees, and void of any green herbs," says one who went with the expedition. And seeing it so uninviting they sailed southward along the coast, looking for ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... the well he sloshed himself thoroughly in the horse-trough and went to the house. He found breakfast ready, but his wife was not in sight. The older children were clamoring around the uninviting breakfast table, spread with cheap ware and with boiled potatoes and fried salt pork as the ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... which we were to get some breakfast, was a somewhat lurid dwelling in an uninviting back lane. But the ready and smiling good-humour with which the hostess prepared her coffee and bread, and eggs and bacon, availed much to make up for deficiencies, especially for guests far more interested in observing every minute specialty of the place, the persons, and ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... of adulterated white wine. The men working with them looked even worse fed and more degraded than the women. In the poor quarters of Pesth, and more especially those inhabited by the Jews, the tenements are exceedingly filthy, and the aroma is so uninviting that one hastens away from the streets where these rookeries abound. The utmost civility, not to say servility, may always be expected of the lower classes: some of them seize one's hand and kiss it as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... mouth, her 'dazzling' complexion, and the extraordinary youth by which 'she kept to the last the . . . freshness of a young girl.' Many of the 'famous writers' seem to have been very ugly. Thomson, the poet, was of a dull countenance, and a gross, unanimated, uninviting appearance; Richardson looked 'like a plump white mouse in a wig.' Pope is described in the Guardian, in 1713, as 'a lively little creature, with long arms and legs: a spider is no ill emblem of him. He has been taken at a ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... his own street and his heart sank. Something had indeed touched his eyes and he saw new and terrible things. The row of houses looked as though they had come out of a child's playbox. They were all untrue, shoddy, uninviting. The waste space on the other side of the unmade street, a repository for all the rubbish of the neighborhood, brought a groan to his lips. He stopped before the gate of his own little dwelling. There were yellow curtains in the window, tied ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at Mecca and Medina in barren and uninviting Arabia. When it started on that expansion, whereby it overspread half of the known world, Syria, from its situation, was naturally the first country to tempt its restless and devoted Arab warriors. Within ten years of the Hegira, ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... most successful merchant; but his tastes were intellectual; he determined to study law—at that period, in this country, when Blackstone's 'Commentaries' had not appeared, before Chancellor Kent had written, or a law school had been established, a discipline so arduous and uninviting as to be conscientiously adopted only by the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... path extended only a part of the way, to a place perhaps two hundred feet beyond the road, where what we would call a cyclone cellar in America had been dug out of the hillside. Like the others of the sort I had seen, it was muddy and uninviting, practically a cave with a ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... personage, scouted the idea, and thought the matter settled, by pointing to two or three young camels and asking the editor if he thought any man, Turk or Christian, would think of eating one so lank, meagre, and uninviting, as himself, when they had so much capital food of another sort at their elbow. "Take your share of the liquor while it is passing, man, and set your heart at ease as to the dinner, which I make no doubt will be substantial and decent. Had ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... and explained that, with Lumley's help, he had made some preparations, since any suitable place, with water near, from which there was a fine outlook, would have seemed very rough and uninviting to the ladies unless more work was done than could be accomplished in the ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... The untidy, uninviting remains of their midday meal were still on the table, pushed aside to make room for the papers they had been reading; it gave the place a dishevelled, comfortless air, which made its dull ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... o'clock, Len." There was an uninviting coolness in the quality of Loraine's tone—almost a protest. "Won't tomorrow do?" She stood still, holding the door only ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... ugly uninviting place to look at, with but few visible signs of wealth. The earth, which had been burrowed out by these human rabbits in their search after tin, lay around in huge ungainly heaps; the overground buildings of the establishment consisted of a few ill-arranged sheds, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Wales together cannot show. The town is well laid out, the streets are broad and straight, and Lord Sligo's splendid range of lake and woodland, free to all, adjoins the very centre. And yet the shops are small and mean, the houses are dirty and uninviting, and dunghills front the cottages first seen by the visitor. A breezy street leads upward to the heights, and all along it are dustheaps, with cocks and hens galore, scratching for buried treasure. At the top a stone railway bridge, the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... wool-filled pillow, but without success. It remained as hard and as uninviting as ever. "I've thought it over, Arthur. I'd have done the same as Breitmann," as if reluctant to give his due to the ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... you to dance?' she murmured. 'There—she is appropriated.' A young gentleman had at that moment approached the uninviting Miss Deverell, claimed her hand and ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... This uninviting picture had the effect of making Lisbeth hurry into the courtyard of the house in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, where she found a man smoking a pipe colored in a style that showed him ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... other side of the building passed the King's Highway, which, at this point, was exceedingly rough and uninviting ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... us to give capital and credit to take the place of the European supply which has failed. One need not fear that the returns will be uninviting, for Europe would hardly have been supplying credit and capital to Latin America as a mere matter of amiability. Thus our capital must regenerate Latin-American prosperity, while our bankers, merchants, and manufacturers are engaged in making solid, permanent arrangements, not ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... leader, as they all reined up in front of the village tavern, which now looked dark and uninviting; "those three spies, if spies they are, can go to Guinea for all I care. I ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... ventilation of the classroom is bad, and the foul air breathed on one Sunday is carefully shut in for use the next. Basement rooms are not seldom damp, or they have a bad odor, or the lighting is unsatisfactory, or the walls are streaked, dim and uninviting. If such things seem relatively unimportant, we must remember that the child's spiritual life is closely tied up with the whole range of his experiences, and that such things as lack of oxygen in the classroom, tired legs whose ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... which he had not studied from the life with minute care, and whenever he did for a moment wander out of his limits, he made an egregious failure. But this task of his, to cast the sunshine of pathos and of genial mirth over the humblest, dullest, and most uninviting of our fellow-creatures, was a great social mission to which his whole genius was devoted. No waif and stray was so repulsive, no drudge was so mean, no criminal was so atrocious, but what Charles Dickens could feel for him some ray of sympathy, or ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Delawares. Nor did he fail to perceive the distinction that existed between the appearances on the different sides of the bed, the head of which stood against the wall. On that opposite to the one just described, everything was homely and uninviting, except through its perfect neatness. The few garments that were hanging from the pegs were of the coarsest materials and of the commonest forms, while nothing seemed made for show. Of ribbons there was not one; nor was there either cap or kerchief beyond those which Hutter's daughters might ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... than living, and the larger portion of them miserably failing. Their mistakes arose, as it seemed to Spinoza, from inadequate knowledge; things which at one time looked desirable, disappointed expectation when obtained, and the wiser course concealed itself often under an uninviting exterior. He desired to substitute certainty for conjecture, and to endeavour to find, by some surer method, where the real good of man actually lay. We must remember that he had been brought up a Jew, and had been driven out of the Jews' communion; his ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Etexts don't have to be austere and typographically uninviting. Most literature (as opposed to scientific publications, for example), is typographically simple and can be rendered beautifully into type without encoding it into proprietary word processor file ...
— People of Africa • Edith A. How
... house, a half-mile beyond, they fared no better. The woman's voice was curter, and the uninviting muzzle of a bull-terrier was thrust out between the door and the woman's skirts. As they turned away Patsy's teeth were chattering; the chill and wet had crept into her bones and blood, turning her lips blue and her cheeks ashen; even the cutting wind failed ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... productive of some of the desired results, though these may have been due to forces quite other than those which were supposed to be operative. Indeed, it may be said that there has been no widely held superstition which does not embody some truth, like some small specks of gold hidden in an uninviting mass of quartz. As the poet BLAKE put it: "Everything possible to be believ'd is an image of truth";(1) and the attempt may here be made to extract the gold of truth from the quartz of superstition concerning talismanic magic. For this purpose the ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... reception-room for patients. Looking about, Esther wondered why physicians' reception-rooms were invariably so uninviting, so lacking in personality. This one was particularly drab and cold, though she could not say that it was shabby or in more than usual bad taste. It was furnished in nondescript French style, a mixture of periods, with heavy olive-green curtains at the windows shutting ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... it looked uninviting enough: so small, furnished with only one window, a single bed, one chair, bureau and wash-stand of very plain, cheap material, somewhat the worse for wear, and just a strip or two of carpet both ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... and greasy pavement. There was a crinkle on her smooth broad forehead, and an uneasy expression in her eyes—as though some troublesome thought had obtruded itself—presently the crinkle deepened and widened into a frown, and she walked impatiently to the fireplace, where a black, uninviting fire smouldered in a cheerless sort of way, and took up the poker in rather an aggressive manner, then shook her head, as she glanced at ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... bewildered, still incredulous, he stared around the empty room. Before him yawned an open door, showing an uninviting vista of dingy hall. He stepped across its threshold, and looked down the winding passage of the night before. But why hadn't he seen the door? He moved back into the empty room. A glance explained the little mystery. The room had been freshly ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... coast,—this loftiest hill did not much exceed the height of the ship's masthead! And where the shores are not of this exceedingly level character, they are usually sterile, sandy, and broken, so as to offer rather an uninviting aspect to the stranger. It is obvious that, in either case, whether the coast be flat or barren, there may be many beautiful and lovely districts within a day's journey inland; and nothing is more absurd than to take exception ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... uninviting aspect which a serious study of architecture presents to some minds is such that it is too often avoided as both useless and wearisome. Much of this diffidence is due to a misconception of the aims which should govern the student of decorative design in ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... say that they are not at times desirable. But they do not of themselves generate earnest thought. The vacant mind, that has not yet learned to think, is when thus left to solitude and stillness, quite as likely to go a wool-gathering, or to fall asleep, as to wrestle with some hard uninviting train of thought. The appliances and the invitations to mental application, if we have really learned to study, must be mainly in ourselves, not in our surroundings. Besides, the greater part of the ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... away from the University, and admirably adapted to an encounter such as this. The trees in the background sheltered the combatants from observation in one direction, but for the rest the common lay open and uninviting, and the chill morning air blowing across it made the onlookers think ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... apparently to shorten the journey; and Soames found himself proceeding along Globe Road—a dark and uninviting highway—almost before he realized that London Bridge had been traversed. It was now long past one o'clock; and that part of the east-end showed dreary and deserted. Public houses had long since ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... travel parallel to the Gold Coast which looks hot and uninviting, for there are but few patches of green or trees until Cape Coast Castle is reached. Here is a fort which must have impressed natives and slave dealers greatly in the past, a few houses and an imposing looking church dotted in the red sand. ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... design are they that treat of manners and rules of our life. But boldly to confess the truth (for since one has passed the barriers of impudence, there is no bridle), his way of writing appears to me negligent and uninviting: for his prefaces, definitions, divisions, and etymologies take up the greatest part of his work: whatever there is of life and marrow is smothered and lost in the long preparation. When I have spent an hour in reading him, which is a great deal for me, and try to recollect ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... worked soil with never a weed in an acre. But children were kept from school because their parents could not get along without their help. Many of the school teachers seemed as poor as the farmers. As I passed the farm-houses in the evening they seemed bleak and uninviting. In the fire hole[214] of every house, however, there was a generous blaze and the bath tub out-of-doors was steaming for the customary evening hot dip ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... worked steadily on, for he had no mind to lose his midday meal, uninviting as he knew it would prove to be. Moreover, he was one who did with his might what his hand found to do. His body was weary, and his heart sick within him, but the green ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... little marsh, but though there was plenty of water, it all appeared thick and uninviting. Being scouts, the boys were very careful of what water they drank, and they looked ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... sighed through the naked branches of the trees, just as if anybody cared what nature was doing when human nature held the stage! And yet so marvellous is the fascination of Greece, so captivating the scenes which meet the eye from the uninviting window of a plain little foreign railroad train, that I cannot forbear to risk similar maledictions by saying that it is too heavenly for common words ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... he crossed the road, hurried down a by-street, and, by what seemed a round-about route, led me into a most uninviting part of ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... young soldier explaining the subject to a little group. There were also many family parties, and some blue blouses. How delightful such a place of resort-not so much in July weather, on this 9th of April one might fancy it harvest time!—but on bleak, rainy, uninviting days! One of the officials advised me to visit the recently erected Ecole des Beaux Arts at the other end of the town, which I did. I would here note the pride taken in their public collections by all concerned. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... established itself. The discovery of Australia and New Zealand came much later than that of America; but within one century from the first European settlement in Australia (A.D. 1787) the whole continent, though its interior is uninviting, had been traversed along many lines, and five prosperous European colonies had grown to importance. The slow progress of exploration and settlement in South Africa during so long a period is therefore a noteworthy phenomenon which deserves a ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... turn with pleasure from this uninviting and uncongenial subject, to one more elevating,—to the all but unlimited private charity which was called forth by the Irish Famine. I have already endeavoured to give some idea of it, but of course an imperfect one. The feelings evoked, and the almost unasked alms ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... cultivated plant of any description, but only some large corrales, or enclosures, for the cattle, of which there were six or seven thousand head on the land. The absence of shade and greenery gave the place a desolate, uninviting aspect, but if I was ever to have any authority here this would soon be changed. The Mayordomo, or manager, Don Policarpo Santierra de Penalosa, which, roughly done into English, means Polycarp of the Holy Land abounding in Slippery Rocks, proved to be a very pleasant, affable person. ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... mysteriously suspended upon nothing; where all the warm and felt accompaniments which give such an expression of strength, and life, and colour to our present habitation, are attenuated into a sort of spiritual element, that is meagre, and imperceptible, and wholly uninviting to the eye of mortals here below; where every vestige of materialism is done away with, and nothing left but certain unearthly scenes that have no power of allurement, and certain unearthly ecstasies with which it is impossible to sympathise," The sensitiveness ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... Barrens, the bad lands of the Arctic, the deserts of the Circle, the bleak and bitter home of the musk-ox and the lean plains wolf. So Avery Van Brunt found them, treeless and cheerless, sparsely clothed with moss and lichens, and altogether uninviting. At least so he found them till he penetrated to the white blank spaces on the map, and came upon undreamed-of rich spruce forests and unrecorded Eskimo tribes. It had been his intention, (and his bid for fame), ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... likewise going to perform oratorios here. Mr. Linley and his whole family, down to the seven year olds, are to support one set at the new rooms, and a band of singers from London another at the old. Our weather here, or the effects of it, have been so uninviting to all kinds of birds, that there has not been the smallest excuse to take a gun into the fields this winter;—a point more to the regret of Charles ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... but see yourself and your playmates scrambling up a canal bank, running along the towpath, careful to keep on the land side of the towline that stretches from mules to boat, lest you be swept into the green, uninviting waters of the Erie. On you run with slate and books; you smell the fresh wood as you go through the lumber yard. Or, read another of his boyish excursions, and you find yourself on that first spring outing to a distant, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... the clouds were gorgeous with his livery of red and gold, and the stars had shrunk from sight before the ardor of his beams. The level "bench" through which the stream meandered, the billowing slopes to the north and south, were bare of foliage and uninviting to the eye, yet keen and wary eyes were scanning their bald expanse, studying every crest and curve and ridge in search of moving objects. Only at the very brink of the flowing waters, and only in far-scattered places along the stream, little clumps of cottonwood-trees gave ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... back up the slight acclivity beneath the archway to the street, leaving the ruinous gates as we had found them. Into the uninviting little alley immediately opposite we plunged, and where the faint yellow luminance showed upon the muddy path before us, Fletcher paused a moment, whispering to ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... the rear the land sloped away till the basement-floor rose above-ground. Its unpainted walls were scorched to a rusty brown, and its sunken doors and low windows, filled here and there with a dusky pane, were cobwebbed and weather-stained, giving the whole building a most uninviting and desolate appearance. A flaxen-haired boy, in ragged "butternuts" and a Union cap, and an old man, in gray regimentals, with a bent body and a limping gait, were pacing to and fro before it, with muskets on their shoulders; but no other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... light, washed up at the tap, then foraged for breakfast. Persistence turned up a spirit-stove, a half-bottle of methylated, a packet of tea, a tin or two of biscuit, as many more of potted meats: left-overs from the artist's stock, dismally scant and uninviting in array. With these he made the discovery that he was half-famished, and found no reason to believe that the girl would be in any better case. An expedition to the nearest charcuterie was indicated; but after he had searched for and found an old raincoat ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... told you," the latter continued, after a few moments' pause, "must not, during these days, pass beyond the four walls of this singularly uninviting-looking apartment. I have nothing to add or to take from what I have said. The subject is closed. If you have more questions on any other subject, I ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... suits me in a way, though sometimes it's a bit lonely. That's, at any rate, the gist of the whole business. We see each other sometimes; but her continual efforts to get me to don the uncomfortable garments of social respectability make the meetings as uninviting as when you go to be fitted at a tailor's. I suppose that's a sort of thing you like—you're a woman—but I'm hanged if I do. I'd buy all my clothes ready made if I could be sure that nobody else had worn 'em before. Anyhow, I won't be fitted for social respectability any more often than I can ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... became easy victims to the industrial organizer. The great mass of unskilled workers in the factory towns proved quite as tempting to the propagandist. Among laborers of this class, wages are the lowest and living conditions the most uninviting. Moreover, this group forms the industrial reservoir which receives the settlings of the most recent European and Asiatic immigration. These people have a standard of living and conceptions of political and individual freedom which are at variance ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... through which we passed was a dense pine forest, sandy soil, and quite desolate, very uninviting to an invading army. ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... Leah first found her husband in the prison, and observed the coarse, uninviting fare that was served to the prisoners, she had daily prepared his food herself, and supplied it, too, from her scanty purse. By the permission of the jailer, this food was received twice a day from the hands of a trusty negro woman, ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... setting by the time he found his villa and recognized it. The old servant told him that her mistress was not at home, but that most likely she would soon be in. The villa, very uninviting in appearance, with low ceilings papered with writing-paper and with uneven floors full of crevices, consisted only of three rooms. In one there was a bed, in the second there were canvases, brushes, greasy papers, and men's overcoats and hats lying about on the chairs and in the windows, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... he has become accustomed, if he is still sound, than one unbroken and new. Nor has habit this power merely as to the movements of an animal, it prevails no less as to inanimate objects. We are charmed with the places though mountainous and woody, [Footnote: Therefore uninviting, for mountain and forest had not in early time the charm which we find in them. Indeed the love of nature uncultivated and unadorned is for the most part, of modern growth.] where we have made a long sojourn. But what is most remarkable in friendship ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... imagined. The teacher usually had or had access to a copy, though even a teacher's books in that day were few in number (R. 78). Pupils had no books at all. These "great" texts were composed of brief extracts, bits of miscellaneous information, and lists of names. Their style was uninviting. They were at best a mere shell, compared with the Greek and Roman knowledge which had been lost. Some of these books were in question-and-answer (catechetical) form. Their purpose was not to stimulate ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... that are universally visible, and are only occasionally so to some persons,—no less than the myths or words in which those who had entered that kingdom related what they had seen, had become, the one uninviting, and the other useless, to men dealing with the immediate business of our day; so that the historian of the last of European kings might most reasonably mourn that "the Berlin Galleries, which are made up, like other ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the farm-yards around the dung-heaps, the youngest children of the cottagers kept company with the sow and her grunting pigs. Before the slovenly entrances of the huts here and there sat dirty, unseemly old men and women, who stared at the three strangers as they surveyed the uninviting picture before them. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... said the father, in a moment of ecstatic admiration, "wherever man may go, around this globe—however uninviting his lateral surroundings may be, the heavens are ever over his head, and I am glad to find the stars your favorite ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... we slept we called Mussel Bend, from our finding several there: they appeared similar to those found by Oxley in the Macquarie. The country over which we travelled the first part of the day was exceedingly stony, and wore a most uninviting appearance. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... hardly a village in the plain; and the only buildings we see for miles are the herdsmen's houses of stone, flat-roofed, dark inside, and uninviting in their appearance, and the great cattle-pens, the corrals, which seem absurdly too large for the herds that we have yet seen; but in two or three months there will be rain, the ground will be covered ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Swamp is so uninviting, it is one of the healthiest places in the United States. Death from disease has never been known in that place, and it is impossible to tell what age one would attain if they would take up their abode in it. I have been told that instances were known where persons ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... limbs in the wrong place scarcely matters so far as he and my taste are concerned. Yet I always leave my work, George, when that begins, and walk about the room. I try to persuade myself that I need fresh air, but the autumnal day, the damp shiny street, has all the uninviting harshness of truth—I admit I do not. Tito flops about, is riddled with dropped notes and racked with hesitations, and presently becomes still. The ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... Clubs full of people who want low taxes and orderly bookkeeping. He does things which have to be done. He humanizes a strange country; he is a friend at court; he represents the legitimate kindliness of government, standing between the poor and the impersonal, uninviting majesty of the law. Let no man wonder that Lorimer's people do not prefer an efficiency expert, that a Tim Sullivan has power, or that men are loyal to Hinky Dink. The cry raised against these men by the average reformer is a piece of cold, unreal, preposterous idealism compared to the solid warm ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... advertisement in the births column of The Times, I called on my way home from the City to congratulate him. He was pacing up and down the passage with his hat on, pausing at intervals to partake of an uninviting-looking meal, consisting of a cold mutton chop and a glass of lemonade, spread out upon a chair. Seeing that the cook and the housemaid were wandering about the house evidently bored for want of something to do, and that the dining- room, where he would ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... others followed to look at a rather uninviting room, appealing to them far less than to Win, already on the trail for local history. The attendant proved obliging and after supplying Win with several books brought out a shabby ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... to show me a chamber where we might pass the night, with a most ungracious air she pointed to a door which opened into a mere closet, in which was a bed divested of curtains, one chair, and an apology for a wash-stand. Seeing me in some dismay at the sight of this uninviting domicile, she laconically observed there was that or none, unless I chose to sleep in a four-bedded room, which had three tenants in it,—and those gentlemen. This alternative I somewhat indignantly declined, and in no very good humour retired to my cabin, ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... town. The houses, including shops and stores, would not exceed one hundred. I walked to the tavern, and delivered my satchel to the custody of a rough-looking animal, whom I subsequently found to be landlord, hostler, bar-tender, table-waiter, and general manager-at-all-work. He was a very uninviting subject; but, being myself courteously inclined, and having also a brisk eye to business, I inquired if there was a public hall or lecture-room ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... greasy—napkins and table-cloths were not to be mentioned, else would the brethren suspect the presence of an aristocrat. At the upper end, beyond the little black bar, there was a platform, upon it a table, a pianoforte, and a stool. Still he managed to conceal his repugnance to all these uninviting things and he sipped his diluted Rhine wine, ate his sandwich—an unpalatable one—under the watchful eyes of his companion. By eight o'clock the room was jammed with working-people, all talking and in a half dozen tongues. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... of men on a sort of throne, with his ceremonial spear leaning against a tree beside him. His subjects approached him crouching, but he shook hands with us and smiled kindly at us. A noble gesture of the hand gave us leave to taste a meal prepared to welcome us, which looked most uninviting, but turned out to be beautifully cooked sago and cocoa-nut cream. We could not finish the generous portions, and presently signed that we were satisfied; the chief seemed to regret that we did not do more honour to his hospitality, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... fresh line of scent which, though particularly strong and uninviting, he took to be that of a weasel. It was mingled with the faint odour of a field-vole that, doubtless, had been pursued and carried away by its persistent enemy. The cub followed the trail, hoping to secure both hunter and victim, but it soon ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... found himself shrinking unaccountably, warned again by Diana's chaff. He knew quite well she was right. He was a man, or a bear if she preferred it, with two faces; but the trouble was that she should so thoroughly have grasped the fact. He had only intended to show one face, the uninviting, frigid one; and yet unconsciously she had won from him more than ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... has been woven by the superstitious natives—not the Kabogo whose sullen thunder and awful roar were heard when crossing the Rugufu on our flight from the Wahha—-but a point in Ukaranga, on whose hard and uninviting rocks many a canoe has been wrecked. We passed close to its forbidding walls, thankful for the calm of the Tanganika. Near Kabogo are some very fine mvule trees, well adapted for canoe building, and there are no loud-mouthed natives ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... of the next day was spent in rowing around Lake Narsac. They did not linger around the north shore, for it was wild and uninviting, and they had no desire to make the acquaintance of the snakes said to swarm there. They spent two hours inspecting a large cove to the westward, and finally concluded that this spot offered the best place for a permanent camp. There was a sandy ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... city was revealed to the eyes of the weary soldiers with the suddenness of a mirage in the desert. Throughout that day an interminable outreach of level country had seemed to spread before them, dreary, uninviting, disheartening. Now, from the summit of a hill, their triumphant eyes gazed suddenly upon the roofs and spires of a mighty city, splendid, far-reaching, stretching far across the plain that lay revealed before their eyes. It seemed to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... and uninviting," I declared; "but beyond that, I do not know of any especial claim it has upon ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... tomb-like portal of the Princess Ziska's residence was the most conspicuous object. Lady Chetwynd Lyle, remarkable for bad taste in her dress and the disposal of her diamonds, stared in haughty amazement at the Nubian, who saluted her and her daughters with the grin peculiar to his uninviting cast of countenance, and swept into the courtyard attended by her husband with an air as though she imagined her presence gave the necessary flavor of "good style" to the proceedings. She was followed by Lady Fulkeward, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... master. My condition is as unfortunate as yours is pleasant. They yoke me to a plow the whole day, while the laborer urges me on with his goad. The weight and force of the plow, too, chafes all the skin from my neck. When I have worked from morning till night, they give me unwholesome and uninviting food. Have I not, then, reason to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... stiffness and formality and discomfort. No wonder it was used only for weddings and funerals! The modern drawing-room is intended, primarily, as a place where a hostess may entertain her friends, and it must not be chill and uninviting, whatever else it may be. It should not be littered up with personal things—magazines, books and work-baskets and objects that belong in the living-room—but it welcomes flowers and objets d'art, collections of fans, or miniatures, or graceful mirrors, or old French prints, or enamels, ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... forbidding about the dark, gloomy entrance—the stale, smoky smell, and the damp dripping from the roof, all tending to give it a very uninviting aspect. ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... from eight till twelve to keep the house in what she calls order? She is so good a woman, so untiring, so unselfish, so conscientious, so irritating. Her rooms are so clean, her servants so well managed, her children so well dressed, her dinners so well cooked; the whole house so uninviting. Everything about her is in ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... combinations and unnatural restrictions are essential if those engaged would show a gross profit of even fifteen per cent. on their gross output. If more than fair or going returns are earned, then new capital flows into competition and the surplus again shrinks to an uninviting point. The same is true in wheat, corn, and cotton—big prices invite fresh investments and the planting of broader acreage. Hence the sorry spectacle of the cotton planter who, in 1905, will receive no more for his twenty per cent. increased crop, coming from over two millions ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... and out into the canal he flung them, then headlong he plunged into the dark and uninviting water and struck out to the right, in the same direction in which the canoe was going, keeping carefully in the shadow of the bank, on ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Crescent, and many others underwent similar transmutations. But if the physical aspect of the place holds out few or no attractions to the antiquary, the moral one of its inhabitants, in so far as his favourite subject is concerned, is equally uninviting; for, taken as a whole, it would be difficult to find a population less influenced by, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... district it is somewhat neglected by visitors, a remark that applies to the whole of this portion of the coast as far as St. Ives, the great exception being Gurnards' Head. The inland country is bleak and barren, with a number of mining shafts capping the hillocks, with the result that the uninviting hinterland has inspired few people with the desire to explore a really grand and ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... curious and uninviting pets, I'm bound to admit, those great juicy-looking creatures. Nobody could say that any form of spider is precisely what our Italian friends prettily describe in their liquid way as simpatico. At times, indeed, the conduct of Lucy and Eliza was so peculiarly ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen |
