"Graceless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite contrary; "for," said he, "what am I the better for this graceless buttock? 'Tis well known I took her out of a bawdy-house, and made her an honest woman, but now blown up like a frog she bespatters herself; a very block, no woman: But this poor boy born in a hovel, never ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... cool shadows lay across the lawn between their houses, he often discussed these matters of life. Nancy herself had not been spared the common fate. Being now a mere graceless rudiment of humanity, all spindling arms and legs, save for a puckered, freckled face, she was past the witless time of expecting to pick up a bird with a broken wing and find it a fairy godmother who would give her three wishes. It was more plausible ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... view of the coveted sight; "we know enough of his looks, let us hear something of hers. But you girls are ever the same: if a troop of sister angels came down from heaven, headed by the Virgin Mother herself, and a graceless cavalier appeared at the other side, you would turn your backs to the angels and your eyes upon Beatrice. Is she as handsome as the young Lady Beatrice, the count's sister, who married away a ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Phoebe was won over, and presently she and her husband made merry at prospect of the great thing contemplated. Will imitated Clement's short, glum, and graceless manner before the gift; Phoebe began to spend the money and plan the bee-keeper's cottage when Chris should enter it as a bride; and thus, having enjoyed an hour of delight the most pure and perfect that can fall to human ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... will own no other of all her num'rous brood But such as stand at Christ's right hand, acquitted through his Blood. The pious father had now much rather his graceless son should lie In hell with devils, for all his evils, ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... light of the sunny autumn noontide, the blacks and roans and smoked drabs of the low old brick front looked more dingy to his eye than ever. It spoke of antiquity, no doubt, but it was a dismal and graceless antiquity of narrow purposes and niggling thrift. It was so little like the antiquity, for example, of Hadlow House, that the two might have computed their age by the chronological systems of different planets. Although his sister's ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Latin, not one word could he understand. Instead, however, of bemoaning his fate, as the reader may be prepared to expect, the condemned betook himself to mourning the loss of his kingdom, and devising means to regain it. He was also not a little puzzled to know what road his graceless army had taken, for he knew in his heart, they would lose no time in getting safely out of the country. In truth he began to curse the day he took command of Glenmoregain's army; for though he might have been a good enough gentleman ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... crater below and threw a red light against the stars, until the earth shook and the sea heaved like a monster sighing. It had the voice of a god from that hour, and other gods obeyed it. The band fled to Oahu with the prize and there led a graceless life until the populace drove them out, and ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... lecher? O intemperate king! Wilt thou not see me? Come, come, show your face, Your grace's graceless, king's unkingly face. What, mute? hands folded, eyes fix'd on the earth? Whose turn is next now to be murdered? The famish'd Bruces are on yonder side, On this, another I will name anon; One for whose ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... an' heir, O bid him breed him up wi' care! An', if he live to be a beast, To pit some havins in his breast! [put, behavior] An' warn him, what I winna name, [will not] To stay content wi' yowes at hame; [ewes] An' no to rin an' wear his cloots, [hoofs] Like ither menseless graceless brutes. [unmannerly] 'An neist my yowie, silly thing, [next] Gude keep thee frae a tether string! O may thou ne'er forgather up [make friends] Wi' ony blastit moorland tup; But ay keep mind to moop an' mell, [nibble, meddle] Wi' sheep o' ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... Miss Edith's marriage; and I ne'er saw a man mair taen down wi' true love in my days,—I might say man or woman, only I mind how ill Miss Edith was when she first gat word that him and you (ye muckle graceless loon) were coming against Tillietudlem wi' the rebels.—But what's the matter wi' ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... slush, and starving loungers outside a soup kitchen; and on the other, Westbourne Grove, two streets further, a blazing array of crowded shops, a stirring traffic of cabs and carriages, and such a spate of spending that a tired student in leaky boots and graceless clothes hurrying home was continually impeded in the whirl of skirts and parcels and sweetly pretty womanliness. No doubt the tired student's own inglorious sensations pointed the moral. But that was only one of a perpetually recurring ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... London, where I have come, as a good profligate, graceless bachelor, for a day or two; leaving my wife and babbies at the seaside. . . . Heavens! if you were but here at this minute! A piece of salmon and a steak are cooking in the kitchen; it's a very wet ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... mass, since, in the last analysis, any considerable burden of taxation will distribute itself over the mass. The principle is therefore consonant with justice. What is not less important, the principle, systematically developed, would go far toward freeing the legislature from the graceless function of arbitrating between selfish interests, and the administration from the necessity of putting down powerful interests outlawed by legislative act. It would give us a State working smoothly, and therefore an efficient ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... sown seed is secret; secret also is its failure. It is quite true, there may be grace in the heart of a neighbour unseen, unsuspected by me; but the heart of my neighbour may be graceless while I am in its earlier stages ignorant of the fact. The gnawing of a worm at the root of one plant is for a time as secret as the healthful growth of another. "Lord, is it I?" I must not too lightly ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... the hall and the stork on the ridge-pole, witness both that peace dwells within? For it is well known that the stork will not abide with a divided house; and as for the swallow, a plague of boils awaits the graceless hand that disturbs its nest. When the Saviour hung upon the cross, did it not perch upon the beam and pour forth its song of love and pity to His dying ear, "Soothe Him! soothe Him"? The stork from the meadow cried, "Strength Him! strength Him!" but the wicked pewit, beholding ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... advanced, waving it and shouting, "A flag of truce!" The General ordered a halt and despatched himself to the flag. As he approached I beheld a stout, middle-aged, good natured looking man, dressed in the graceless costume of Uncle Sam's army; but I must say that he wore it with more grace than most of the Regulars I have seen. Our soldiers look unbecomingly in their clothes,—there is no denying it,—a good deal like sups in a procession ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... fairy children, their schoolmaster, and his wench. Some of the obscenity of this part may be elaborated from passages in the Maid's Metamorphosis. The piece has a prologue for representation at court, but it is most unlikely that it ever had that honour. It is from beginning to end a graceless and mirthless composition. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... simple in construction as its companion. The scene is laid in an inn, and the characters are four in number: the Host, whose leading trait is insatiable curiosity; his daughter Sophia, represented as of easy virtue; Soeller, her husband, a graceless scamp; and Alcestes, a former lover of Sophia, and for the time a guest in the inn. In the central scene of the play there come in succession to Alcestes' room in the course of one night Soeller, who steals Alcestes' gold; the Host, to possess ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... visit, to which Ned's indefensible delinquency gave the color of legitimate authority. Upon these occasions, Nancy, accompanied by two sturdy "servant-boys," would sally forth to the next market-town, for the purpose of bringing home "graceless Ned," as she called him. And then you might see Ned between the two servants, a few paces in advance of Nancy, having very much the appearance of a man performing a pilgrimage to the gallows, or of a deserter guarded back to his barrack, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... the ministry of the Church, the desire of his heart from the first. At school, his companions respected him heartily, and loved him for his unselfish kindness and sweetness, while a few of the more graceless were inclined to brand him as soft or slow, because he never consented to join in anything blameable, and was not devoted to boyish sports, though at times he would join in them with great vigour, and ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... were friends—and why not? Friends! I think you laugh, my lad. Clive it was gave England India, while your father gives—egad, England nothing but the graceless boy who lures him on to speak— "Well, Sir, you and Clive were comrades—" with a tongue thrust in your cheek! Very true: in my eyes, your eyes, all the world's eyes, Clive was man, I was, am and ever shall be—mouse, nay, mouse ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... gold. He then begged, as his last request, that he should be buried privately, and that neither his son, nor indeed any one, should know that he died rich. Louise was to have everything, and the graceless son nothing. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... tavern in the neighbourhood of the prison, disguising our names as too certain to betray our objects, and baiting our invitation with some hints which we had ascertained were likely to prove temptations under his immediate circumstances. He had a graceless young son whom he was most anxious to wean from his dissolute connections, and to steady, by placing him in some office of no great responsibility. Upon this knowledge we framed the terms of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... never tease Poor little Di, or prove that he's A graceless rover. She's happy now as Mrs. Smith— But less polite when walking with ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... bread, and greens, and everything you can imagine" in its particular style of romance. The hero, who begins as a falconer's son and ends as a rich enough colonel in the army and a Viscount by special grace of the Roi Soleil, is a sapeur, but far indeed from being one of those graceless comrades of his to whom nothing is sacred. At one time he does indeed succumb to the sorceries of a certain Genevieve de Chateaufort, a duchess aux narines fremissantes. But who could resist this combination? even if there were a marquise of the most ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Edith, that same graceless youth was in the habit of calling 'The Sentimental.' She was the darkest of the family, and the most beautiful also, where every one was more or less good-looking. She had soft brown hair, dark blue-gray eyes of the tenderest expression, and a beseeching innocent look. She was fond of ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... for me," she says, "Make never meen for me; Seek never grace frae a graceless face, For that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... cheek, Or pinched the arches of her tender mouth. She took me for a vision, and she lay With her sleep's smile unaltered, as in doubt Whether real life had stolen into her dreams, Or dreaming stretched into her outer life. I was not graceless to a woman's eyes. The girls of Damar paused to see me pass, I walking in my rags, yet beautiful. One maiden said, "He has a prince's air!" I am a prince; the air was all my own. So thought the lily on the Imam's breast; And lightly as a summer mist, that lifts Before the morning, so she floated ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Wild, graceless Carmen!—Though yet this be, Savour she hath of a world undreamt, Of a world of wonder, whose salt young sea Provoked a ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... be very, very glad of that, dear. I wish I had understood before. You see, just now, before Jack, I felt that you were hurt, displeased, by my inference from our talk this morning. You made me feel by your whole manner that you found me graceless, tasteless, to blame in some way—perhaps for speaking about it to Jack. Jack is very ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... we but only leave All things to our Father! Would we only cease to grieve, Wait His mercy rather! Meek resigning childish choice, Graceless, thankless pressing— Listen for His gentle voice, 'Child, receive this blessing!' Faithless, foolish hearts! see you Seeds' earth-hidden growing? What our God for us will do, He ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... his youth? Lissoy was no doubt a poor enough Irish village; and perhaps the farms were not too well cultivated; and perhaps the village preacher, who was so dear to all the country round, had to administer many a thrashing to a certain graceless son of his; and perhaps Paddy Byrne was something of a pedant; and no doubt pigs ran over the "nicely sanded floor" of the inn; and no doubt the village statesmen occasionally indulged in a free fight. But do you think that was the Lissoy that Goldsmith thought of in his dreary lodgings ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... Dame Dorothy had no idea of parting with the graceless brute, but continued to pet and pamper him. She was even secretly proud of Nero, because he was the biggest dog in the village, and by far the most terrible. Once she told the neighbours over the palings that he was a great protection ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... crow, whose frequent note Voiced the monotony of land and sky, Mocking with graceless wing and rusty coat His priestly presence as he trotted by. He would have cursed the bird by bell and rote, But other game just then was in his eye,— A savage camp, whose occupants preferred Their heathen darkness ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... a graceless person, of the world worldly, I feel the utmost interest, I assure you, in what you tell me. I cannot possibly be hard upon your brother. I understand and share the wise consideration with which you regard his errors. With all possible respect ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... smiling humor, and yet, in spite of himself, he could almost have smiled at the very consistency of the fellow. It was egotism still: aesthetic disgust at the graceless contour of his conduct, but never a hint of simple sorrow for the pain he had given. Rowland let him go, and for some moments stood watching him. Suddenly Mallet became conscious of a singular and most illogical impulse—a desire to stop him, to have another ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... and I mention it here, as it enables me to plead honourably 'not guilty' to one of the absurd charges of cruelty trumped up against me with respect to my stepson. Let my detractors apologise, if they dare, for the conduct of a graceless ruffian who trips up the heels of his own natural guardian and ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it came out on to the highroad! Oh, they bungled the thing villainously. My Marathon feat saved your life, Mr. Addison, but it looks like losing me the case! We have the Hawkins couple. But, although a graceless pair, they were more dupes than knaves. I am convinced, personally, that neither of them suspected that Lady Burnham Coverly was dead. Damar Greefe had represented to them that ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... one through wildernesses of beauty, after whirling one past nooks where one could gladly linger whole summers, it is strange at what commonplace and graceless termini these railroads contrive to land one. Lovely Wells River, where the road makes its sharp angle, and runs back again until it strikes out eastward through the valley of the Ammonoosuc; where the waters leap to each ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... like this. It is for the best. I must have a few days to myself, dear friend,—days for sober reflection uninfluenced by the presence of a natural enemy to composure. And so I am leaving you in this cowardly, graceless fashion. Do not think ill of me. I give you my solemn promise that in a few days I shall let you know where I may be found if you choose to come to me. Even then I may not be fully convinced in my own mind that our adventure has reached its climax. You ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... at our graceless junior; but it was clear that he viewed the matter in the light of a phenomenon rather than ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... But the graceless Henrietta stuck her tongue out and stole into the passage, whence she hoped to reach the workroom unobserved. Sarah's look grew anxious; she could not comprehend her unruly sister. She herself had never been like this. Such a worldly disposition must ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... facades which give such scope to the sculptor and architect, conferring, as at Pisa, distinction on a whole town. The churches of the Carmine, Santo Spirito and San Lorenzo are without facades at all, presenting graceless and unfinished masonry in place of what was intended by their founders. Elsewhere there are late and florid facades alien to the spirit of the main building, while it has been left to our own generation to complete Santa Croce and the Cathedral. The latter, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... new king, they made a general subscription, and bought him a fine cap ornamented with a white feather, and round it was engraved in letters of gold, "Peter Pippin, King of the Good Boys." A few days after Peter was chosen King, as George Graceless, Neddy Neverpray, and two or three other boys, as naughty as themselves, were playing at marbles in the church-yard, George Graceless's brother Jack, who was a very good-natured little boy, happened to stop his brother George's marble by ...
— The History of Little King Pippin • Thomas Bewick
... dollars on this account, which the State treasurer figured up with agonies of terror, and which the opposition roared at as if the administration could have helped it. The State-Houses were two mere deformities of patched plaster and leprous whitewash; they were such shapeless, graceless, dilapidated wigwams, that no sensitive patriot could look at them without wanting to fly to the uttermost parts of the earth; and yet it was not possible to build new ones, and hardly possible to obtain appropriations enough to shingle out the weather; for ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... am not blinded to the motive behind it. What do you care about those devils of Indian savages? What does Horace Spotswood care about them? Just as little! Enough, and too much, of my money has gone already to the prolonging of their worthless lives. If that graceless cub chooses to go on wasting money on them he can do it, but I take this occasion to inform you, Lady Hurdly—and I'd advise you to remember what I say—that I do not choose that any more of my money shall go in that direction. ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... your Reverence," said he, accosting the Abbe Piquot, "but if you will come and say grace over my graceless table, I will take it kindly of you. You owe me a visit, you know, and I owe you thanks for the way in which you looked reproof, without speaking it, upon my dispute with the Chevalier La Corne. It was better than words, and showed that you know the world we live in as well as the world ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the graceless Mark, But Vivien, into Camelot stealing, lodged Low in the city, and on a festal day When Guinevere was crossing the great hall Cast herself down, knelt to the ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... hero as he slept. Thy fate and mine the queen will know, And broken-hearted die of woe. For my unworthy sake, for mine, Rama, the glory of his line, Who bridged his way across the main, Is basely in a puddle slain; And I, the graceless wife he wed, Have brought this ruin on his head. Me, too, on him, O Ravan, slay: The wife beside her husband lay. By his dear body let me rest, Cheek close to cheek and breast to breast, My happy eyes I then will close, And ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... nice little stroll," continued the graceless Mr. Green, "and then I s'pose she found it was later than she thought, and she began to make ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... has been like the drawing up of a curtain. Of course I remember you very well, and the Skye terrier to which you refer—a heavy, dull, fatted, graceless creature he grew up to be—was my own particular pet. It may amuse you, perhaps, as much as "The Inn" amused me, if I tell you what made this dog particularly mine. My father was the natural god ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was her imperious way!—married him! He was heard in after years to aver that the whipping would have been the milder punishment, but, be that as it may, a child was born unto them who inherited the father's adventuresome and graceless character, deserted his home, joined hands with some ocean-rovers and sailed for that pasture-ground of buccaneers, the Caribbean sea. Of his subsequent history various stories may be found in the chronicles ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... let fall, this graceless jackanapes in nowise ceased his ribaldry; for while pretending to flap with his arms as if they were wings, he imitated with his mouth, mockingly, the wish! wish! of the wide wings of the Culloo. Yet ere ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... again lightened the horizon. In the foreground a lovely lake lay. On the shore of this lake stood a single Indian shack occupied by a half-dozen children and an old woman. They were all wretchedly clothed in graceless rags, and formed a bitter and depressing contrast to ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... grieved for his wayward son the members of his household knew it not, save as they might place their own constructions on the added sternness to his eyes and the deepening lines about his mouth. "Paul," when it designated the graceless runaway, was a forbidden word in the family, and even the Epistles in the sacred Book, bearing the prohibited name, came to be avoided by the head of the house in the daily readings. It was still music ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... and even ruin, of many a goodly piece of raiment, which at times he clipped and shaped in such wise as redounded but little to the credit of either wearer or artificer. Mike was more alive to a merry troll and graceless story, in the kitchen of mine host "at the inn," than to the detail of his own shopboard, with the implements of his craft about him, making and mending the oddly assorted adjuncts of the village churls. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... see those graceless recluses—those unnatural monks and nuns of the order of St. Beelzebub, (1) my hatred for Snobs, and their worship, and their idols, passes all continence. Let us hew down that man-eating Juggernaut, I say, that hideous Dagon; and I glow with the heroic ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you, but you must be eating fire, and I know not what—what have ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... fruit which, perhaps, formed the model of the war weapon of the time of the Crusaders. In whatever position it rests on the ground it presents an array of spikes to the bare foot. Though all its superficial qualities are graceless, it performs the admirable office of binding sand, and thus prepares the way for benign and ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... from the task of putting them on him, either from a sentiment of compassion at so great a reverse of fortune, or out of habitual reverence for his person. To fill the measure of ingratitude meted out to him, it was one of his own domestics, "a graceless and shameless cook," says Las Casas, "who, with unwashed front, riveted the fetters with as much readiness and alacrity, as though he were serving him with choice and savory viands. I knew the fellow," adds the venerable historian, "and I think his ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... mine was so fully persuaded of the truth of this proverb, that being in a great storm, and dreadfully afraid, espies in the ship a graceless rake whom he supposed destined to another sort of death, cries out, O Samuel, are you here? why then, we are all safe, and ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... curfews, and other birds are made. One call, which I do not think is made or used in England, is a Greek idea for decoying thrashes. It is a whistle formed from two discs of thin silver or silvered copper, each the size of, or a little smaller than, a "graceless" florin, or say an inch across; those discs are—one fully concave, and the other slightly convex, both have a hole in the centre and are soldered together by their edges in the manner shown in Fig. 10. [Footnote: Since writing this I find there are now sold to boys, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... however, ambitious, and disposed to make the most of any opportunities which fall in his way; and, for old Yorke's sake, I would like to help him. Yorke pinched and saved and denied himself, to give that boy's father an education, and illy he was repaid by the graceless scoundrel, who dissipated his father's hard-earned savings, and half broke his heart, and that of his poor mother. The captain is building on this boy's future, now; and, if he does not show himself ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... strong impulses. Murder is one, but people murder for two reasons only—for revenge and for gold. People don't do such acts as are to torture their minds here, and perhaps be punished hereafter—that is, if there be one, child. I say, people don't do such deeds as these, merely because a graceless son comes to them, and says, 'if you please, mother.' Do you understand that, child? I've blood enough on my hands already—good blood too—they are not defiled with the scum of a parish boy, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... what wealth of tenderness, sympathy, and kindliness existed! His affection for his graceless nephew Karl is a touching picture. With the rest of his family he had never been on very cordial terms. His feeling of contempt for snobbery and pretense is very happily illustrated in his relations with his brother Johann. The latter had acquired property, and he sent Ludwig his card, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... he falls into a graceless obscurity from compressing into a few words what he ought to have said in a more expanded form: his great fault is that he outdoes Tacitus in conciseness: hence he keeps his reader in ignorance of things which would have been known if he had only ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... Beardsley, an unscrupulous man, of some influence, who used, for amusement, to potter about in various antiquarian enterprises of no moment, but who had now been dead for some fifteen years. I then also recollected that he had an only child, a graceless gallows-bird of a son, who broke his father's heart, then wasted his substance in riotous living, and, after being long a disgrace and nuisance at home, had sunk out of sight amid the lowest strata of vice and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... faced the sea and the storm. Think of the deed, and its hardships, and its heroism; of the brave hearts who 'darkling faced the billows,' and the anxious women left behind, ye who live to kill time in graceless self-indulgence, and ere it be too late, learn to sacrifice ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... now felt comparatively safe. It was certain that the brig was too badly damaged to give chase even if she could keep afloat. Jeremy felt a momentary pang at the thought of leaving even that graceless crowd in such jeopardy, but he remembered that they had the brig's boats in which to leave the hulk, and his own present danger soon gave him ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... adhered to the shape similar to the present fashion; so that the shoemaker, in a doubtful case, would ask his customer whether he would have square-toed or peaked-toed. The distinction between young and old in this fashion was so general, that sometimes a graceless youth, who had been crossed by his father or guardian in some of his unreasonable humors, would speak of him with ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... by making dying a change for the better, and burial but the planting of a seed from which there will spring a new life. In the next place, behold me as I am—weak, weary, old, shrunken in body, and graceless; look at my wrinkled face, think of my failing senses, listen to my shrilled voice. Ah! what happiness to me in the promise that when the tomb opens, as soon it will, to receive the worn-out husk I call myself, the now viewless doors of the universe, which is but the palace of ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... much self-assertion or any strong opinions of his own. He was quite content to do as Verrio bid him, even imitating him and following him through his figurative mysteries, and floundering with him in the mire of graceless drawing and gaudy colour and ridiculous fable. He had at least as much talent as his master—probably even more. But he never sought to ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... malice and thine; but now am I overcome, and since I know that I must die, I have now no fear, and this is why I am bold to tell thee this that I have spoken, though I wot now I shall be presently slain. And now I tell thee I repent it, that I have asked grace of a graceless face." ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... watch that Ball, how high he goes,' The Bat exclaimed with glee, 'But yet he never says he owes His rise in life to me. No, no, that's not his way at all; And though I do my best, His graceless growls at every fall Are something ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... most graceless fellow, and it was his influence which had excluded Father Hennepin from the canoe. But Anthony Auguelle was much more devoutly inclined. He was ashamed of their conduct. In the evening he sought out Father Hennepin, and offered a poor excuse for not receiving him into their canoe, ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... With all her guests on a lovely spring day anxious to attend an entertainment not three miles off, what was there to be said? No possible pretext could be devised for preventing them. Why, oh, why had she persuaded that graceless dragoon to leave Aldershot and share the peace and tranquillity of home? She might have remembered how foreign peace and tranquillity were to Jim's mercurial disposition; and then, Lady Mary reflected ruefully, that ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... and attempted to slip an arm around his charmer's waist. To his astonishment, however, she lifted up her skirts and began to dance a "can-can" in the road. It then became apparent that her legs were clothed in trousers. The lady was at home in bed; she had been personated by a graceless young cub whose stature was about the ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... thrusting the idea of Rose from the dispute, it did seem such folly to Evan's common sense, that he spoke with pleasant bonhommie about it. That done, he entered into his acted part, and towered in his conceit considerably above these aristocratic boors, who were speechless and graceless, but tigers for their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to his supposed plight a glance of sympathetic concern, was in a hurry to get home and he was, again, spared the necessity of a graceless confession. He piloted them through the crowd, saw them—Miss Woodruff, Mrs. Forrester and Victor,—fitted into Mrs. Forrester's brougham, and then himself got into a hansom. It was still the atmosphere of the dream that hovered about him as he decided at what big fruit-shop ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... supersensitive godliness—the godless German cotillion—even forced itself into the gayeties of the winter. Great was the wrath of the elect against all amusements of the kind—but chiefest among outrages was this graceless German. But despite the denunciations, the ridicule, and even the active intervention of one or two ministers, the young soldiers and their chosen partners whirled away as though they had never heard a ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... rigid, considering his years, and it looks not well in the dear boy to shake his head at the follies of his uncle. And as to thy mother, Morton, I read her one of thy letters, and she said thou wert a graceless reprobate to think so much of this wicked world, and to write so familiarly to thine aged relative. Now, I am not a young man, Morton; but the word aged has a sharp sound with it when it comes ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... deprived himself and not me of the Mint, and that he will be doing the same with regard to those other things of which he speaks; and that if he wants to confer the post on me again, nothing will induce me to accept it." The graceless and unlucky fellow went off like an arrow to find the Pope and report this conversation; he added also something of his own invention. Eight days later, the Pope sent the same man to tell me that he did ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Warburton found a future state in Moses's saying nothing of the matter! I could go on with a chapter of severe interrogatories, but I think it more cruel to treat You as a hopeless reprobate; yes, you are graceless, and as I have a respect for my own scolding, I shall not throw ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Attwood, "'tis the Lord Admiral's own company—surely they are not all graceless! And," she continued with very quiet dignity, "since mine own cousin Anne Hathaway married Will Shakspere the play-actor, 'tis scarcely kind to call all ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... Progress ate up romance, and hundreds of acres of wretched, cheaply built, hideous, unsafe buildings sprang up like the unhealthy growth of a foul disease, between the Lateran gate and the old inhabited districts. They are destined to a graceless and ignoble ruin. Ugly cracks in the miserable stucco show where the masonry is already parting, as the hollow foundations subside, and walls on which the paint is still almost fresh are shored up with dusty beams lest they should fall and crush the few paupers who ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Taurus, and Capricorn. In the fourth house I find Jupiter in a decadence, as also in a tetragonal aspect to Saturn, associated with Mercury. Thou wilt be soundly peppered, my good, honest fellow, I warrant thee. I will be? answered Panurge. A plague rot thee, thou old fool and doting sot, how graceless and unpleasant thou art! When all cuckolds shall be at a general rendezvous, thou shouldst be their standard-bearer. But whence comes this ciron-worm betwixt these two fingers? This Panurge said, putting the forefinger of his left hand betwixt the fore and mid finger of the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... more rewarded; How wrong a taste prevails among us; How much our ancestors outsung us: Can personate an awkward scorn For those who are not poets born; And all their brother dunces lash, Who crowd the press with hourly trash. O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, Whose graceless children scorn to own thee! Their filial piety forgot, Deny their country, like a Scot; Though by their idiom and grimace, They soon betray their native place: Yet thou hast greater cause to be Ashamed of them, than they of thee, Degenerate from their ancient brood Since first the court allow'd ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... ornament it became her perfectly, and set off the beauties of a face which I had never before thought was more than pleasing and intelligent. Perhaps the anger which was excusable after Toddie's graceless caper had something to do with putting unusual color into her cheeks, and a brighter sparkle than usual in her eyes. Whatever was the cause, she looked queenly, and I half imagined that I detected in ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... mid clouds of scattered rice, through all the wedding whirl A laughing fellow hurries out a certain graceless girl, Unless my hand have lost its strength, unless my eye be dim, I'll lift the shoe, the contract too, and ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... be—but most impressive in his effigy by his master's wine vat, in the perpetual aroma that most inspired him, where, by a mechanical arrangement inside him, he still makes a joke of sorts, in somewhat graceless aspersion of the methods of the professional humorists. Emmeline found him very like her father, and confided her impression to Mrs. Malt. "But of course," she added condoningly, "poppa was different when ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... always a bit of a fish, and with no particular affection for his graceless kinsman, but I am his only relative; and—and he hardly knows one end of a pistol from the other, while your cousin is ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... heart of the worry, proving him only too likely a graceless jealous middle-age curmudgeon, a senile sentimentalist, thus did he upbraidingly mock himself—were there not signs of Damaris developing into a rather thorough paced coquette? She accepted the homage offered her with avidity, with many small airs ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Philadelphia Quaker said to his son, who, as he was once coming out of a house of ill-fame, spied old Broadbrim heaving in sight, and immediately wore ship. The old chap, however, who always kept his weather-eye open, had had a squint of young graceless, and so up helm and hard after he cracked, and following him in, hailed him with, "Ah, Obadiah, Obadiah, thee should never be ashamed of coming out—thee should always be ashamed of going in." ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... let fools contest; Whate'er is best administer'd is best. For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight; His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.[318-2] In faith and hope the world will disagree, But all mankind's concern ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... the castle, with a thick chain about his feet, (it is said that it was a silver chain, because he was of royal blood;) the king, as the story relates, sent his son Rhun to enquire into the demeanour of Elphin's wife. Now Rhun was the most graceless man in the world, and there was neither wife nor maiden with whom he had held converse, but was evil spoken of. While Rhun went in haste towards Elphin's dwelling, being fully minded to bring disgrace upon his wife, Taliesin ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... mother—O wretch! what has not your ungrateful folly cost my poor mother!—Had you been less a darling, you would not, perhaps, have been so graceless: But I never in my life saw a cockered ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... deemed it, was set up in high places of the land. It was increasingly hard for him to be a law to himself anywhere within the land's limits. He had retired further and further yet again into the fastnesses of the hill-country. Yet civilization had a graceless ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... to be found in Rhode Island, or in the Providence Plantations! Let him dare to keep his pitiful image out of my sight the lawful time, and then, when he returns, he shall find himself, as many a vagabond has been before him, without wife, as he will be without house to lay his graceless head in."[1] Then, catching a glimpse of the inquiring face of the old seaman, who by this time had worked his way to her very side, she abruptly added, "Here is a stranger in the place, and one who has lately ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... was not handsome. His features were angular and somewhat irregular, and upon every one of these individualities the graceless artist enlarged at will. He turned up the nose, and set the stray bits of whiskers, and dotted the cheeks, at war one with another. He even went further, and with a few clever strokes sketched a dwarfed body for the life-sized head. He worked rapidly and ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... emotion so new and so deep that the lawyer's world-worn soul was touched. He was overcome by shyness like a schoolboy's, lost his confidence, and his southern brain caught fire; he tried to talk, but his phrases struck him as graceless in comparison with Madame de Soulanges' bright and subtle replies. It was lucky for him that the quadrille was forming. Standing by his beautiful partner, he felt more at ease. To many men dancing is a phase ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... to the weather, we had the Missa to deal with, the humour of the proceedings did not strike any one—except the onlookers. For she rolled and pitched and plunged and dived as she lay there at her moorings. She was never still a moment, and, in a word, behaved like the graceless, mercurial baggage she was. But she ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... transplanted from their native receptacles, to contrast, with grotesque strangeness, the neat handiwork of Gillow and Seddon. It had a physiognomy and character of its own—this fantastic foreigner! Inlaid with mosaics, depicting landscapes and animals; graceless in form and fashion, but still picturesque, and winning admiration, when more closely observed, from the patient defiance of all rules of taste which had formed its cumbrous parts into one profusely ornamented and eccentric whole. It was the more ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the old folk know their children? Would they own the graceless town, With never a ranter to worry And never ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... lady in a choking voice. "You, a graceless baggage, a foolish lack-brain, with no thought above the hemming of shifts. And he so kindly and hendy and long-suffering! You would—ha, you ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... commentators of the day among the graceless subs were won't to call Colonel Stevens, was having his bad quarter of an hour. Leaving his team with the orderly, John Folsom had stamped into his presence unannounced, and after his own vigorous fashion opened the ball ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... I assimilated to these people only as they struck me poetically; their whimsical ways and a certain picturesqueness in their mode of life entertained me; but I was neither amused nor corrupted by their vices. In short, I mingled among them, as Prince Hal did among his graceless associates, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... mother's heart to her mouth, and became generally ungovernable. A visit to a house of poor reputation having been discovered, their father and Mr. Du Pre set upon them with horsewhips, whereupon the graceless but agile youths ran to a neighbouring house and swarmed to the top of a stack of chimneys, whence partly by word and partly by gesticulation they ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... mistress. 'Twas a chance I saw you, lady, so intent was I On chiding hence these graceless serving-men, Who cannot break their fast at morning meals Without debauch and mistimed riotings. This house hath been a scene of nothing else But atheist riot and profane excess, Since my old master quitted ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... shares the royal bed And wears upon her graceless head The good queen's crown without ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... was a great ruler; he never got less than forty-five dollars a month for the job, as he told me himself, and this amount had lately been raised, so that he could live on the fat of the land and not any longer be called "Tin-of-salmon Malietoa" by graceless beach-combers. ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... life agree together, and he is humbly confident that his hopes are well-founded. When they speak to him of Salvation by Faith and Conviction by Sin, he cannot understand what they mean. As he leaves them they are reminded of one Temporary, 'once a forward man in religion.' Temporary dwelt in Graceless, 'a town two miles from Honesty, next door to one Turnback.' He 'was going on pilgrimage, but became acquainted with one Save Self, and was never more ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... "Begone, thou graceless dog!" exclaimed Don Manuel. "Thy impertinence justly deserves most exemplary punishment from ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... really be richer in duty in some new position, are precisely those who borrow no excuses from the old one; who even esteem it full of privileges, plenteous in occasions of good, frequent in divine appeals, which they chide their graceless and unloving temper for not heeding more. Wretched and barren is the discontent that quarrels with its tools instead of with its skill; and, by criticising Providence, manages to keep up complacency with self. How gentle should we be, if we were not provoked; how pious, if we were not busy; the ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... ordered as he knows how, works up the dross from the silver, which dross, still as it riseth, he putteth by, or taketh away with an instrument. And thus deals God with his church; there is silver in his church, aye, and there is also dross: now the dross are the hypocrites and graceless ones that are got into the church, and these will God discover, and afterwards put away as dross. So that it will without doubt prove a truth of God, that many of their professors that shall put in claim for heaven, will not have it ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the life he led poor Juno, we often wondered why she did not turn grayer than ever, having to deal with this graceless young reprobate. If he found her trying to sleep a little, he would bite her ears and pull at her tail, bracing himself back on all four of his absurd little feet, and sometimes tumbling over in his excitement; and he rolled over her and growled ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... concerned for the salvation of his people, that when on his death-bed, he sent for them, and preached to them with such fervency, shewing them their miserable state by nature, and their need of a Saviour, expressing his sorrow to leave many of them as graceless as he got them, with so much vehemency as made many of ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie |
