"Intrusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... account for the interval of silence. It is hard to tell how long it would have lasted, but just then a lubberly intrusive boy threw a great stone, which convulsed the firmament, the one at their feet, I mean. The six Pleiads disappeared as if in search of their lost sister; the belt of Orion was broken asunder, and a hundred worlds dissolved back into chaos. They turned away and strayed off into one of the more open ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... goodness be pleased to answer, are you indeed the wife of one I name not? If it be true, I will utterly withdraw my intrusive presence. ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... youths with narrow birds' wings. The effect was supposed to be Pompeiian and Rita and I had often laughed at the delirious fancy of some enriched shopkeeper. But still it was a display of fancy, a sign of grace; but at that moment these figures appeared to me weird and intrusive and strangely alive in their attenuated grace of unearthly beings concealing a ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... of business, as he now complained. In his sixtieth year he had married a second time, a young Brunswick Princess, with whose foolish Brother, Eric, he had much trouble; and who at last herself took so ill with the insolence and violence of these intrusive Councillors and Theologians, that the household-life she led beside her old Husband and them became intolerable to her; and she withdrew to another residence,—a little Hunting-seat at Neuhausen, half a dozen miles from Konigsberg;—and there, or at Labiau still farther off, lived mostly, in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... left it behind them, the wide and spotless plain spread on all sides, its whiteness broken by myriads of flashing sparks and spangles of reflected light. Suddenly a rut caused the foremost sleigh to jolt violently, and then the others in succession; they fell away a little, their intrusive clatter breaking the supreme and ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... cordially for your most kind letter. For years I have read with interest every scrap which you have written in periodicals, and abstracted in MS. your book on Roses, and several times I thought I would write to you, but did not know whether you would think me too intrusive. I shall, indeed, be truly obliged for any information you can supply me on bud-variation or sports. When any extra difficult points occur to me in my present subject (which is a mass of difficulties), I will apply to you, but I will not be unreasonable. It is most true what you say ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... these Federal programs has—in the words of one intergovernmental commission—made the Federal Government "more pervasive, more intrusive, more unmanageable, more ineffective and costly, and above all, more (un) accountable." Let's solve this problem with a single, bold stroke: the return of some $47 billion in Federal programs to State and local government, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... some such law as blanches the fur-bearing animals of the North. They seemed proper to its desolation, while some houses of more modern taste, painted to a warmer tone, looked, with their mansard roofs and jig-sawed piazzas and balconies, intrusive ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... uncomfortable. We both felt intrusive and out of place, and we both thought that Mrs. Pardiggle would have got on infinitely better if she had not had such a mechanical way of taking possession of people. The children sulked and stared; the family took no notice of us whatever, except ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... like all things else; and soon Juan, who for an instant had been moved To such a sorrow by the intrusive tone Of one who dared to ask if 'he had loved,' Call'd back the stoic to his eyes, which shone Bright with the very weakness he reproved; And although sensitive to beauty, he Felt most indignant still ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... and the Fair Imogene and Southey's Old Woman of Berkeley fall into the category of the grotesque. Hogg intentionally mingles the comic and the terrible in his poem, The Witch of Fife, but his prose-stories reveal his power of creating an atmosphere of diablerie, undisturbed by intrusive mockery. In the poem Kilmeny, he handles an uncanny theme with ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... descends the slope of the glacis in a more attenuated form. Another but shorter valley is traceable at sunrise on the W. On the N.W., the rampart is visibly dislocated, and the gap occupied by an intrusive mountain mass. This dislocation is not confined to the wall, but, under favourable conditions, may be traced across the floor to the broken S.E. border. It is probably a true "fault." On the N.E., the inner slope of the wall is very broad, ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... supper viands, and proceeded with it upstairs to the apartment indicated. The accommodation of the Three Mariners was far from spacious, despite the fair area of ground it covered. The room demanded by intrusive beams and rafters, partitions, passages, staircases, disused ovens, settles, and four-posters, left comparatively small quarters for human beings. Moreover, this being at a time before home-brewing was abandoned ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... the water-bearing strata, so it is hopeless to bore profitably for water in the Colony till the districts are defined over which the water-bearing basins are spread. Nothing arrests the escape of water in its course through the rocks more efficiently than intrusive sheets of igneous rock which rise to the surface, but until the distribution of these dykes is systematically recorded it will not be possible to open out all the water which is preserved underground. ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... disposition of S. Thomas, who must push his hands against the scars of the Lord's Body; but the Lord has ever been patient towards the devout and warm-hearted men, who share with S. Thomas, not only his doubt, but that devotion which destroys intrusive impertinence. ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... duty, as well as an acceptable opening act in the life of penance to which she had resolved now to devote herself, an audible murmur of applause ran through the throng, who, in spite of their wish not to appear intrusive, had paused at a little distance, to listen to and witness the unexpected and singular scene. Among the voices which had been thus more distinctly raised was that of a stranger, who, having arrived ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... Clair, the spiritual sister of S. Francis, lies in Assisi. I have often asked myself, Who, then, was this nun? What history had she? And I think now of this girl as of a damsel of romance, a Sleeping Beauty in the wood of time, secluded from intrusive elements of fact, and folded in the love and faith of her own simple worshippers. Among the hollows of Arcadia, how many rustic shrines in ancient days held saints of Hellas, apocryphal, perhaps, like this, but hallowed ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... her, his roving eyes full of bold curiosity bent on her from time to time, his idle fingers plaiting a little wreath out of long-stemmed clover and boutons d'or, he appeared merely an intrusive, irresponsible young fellow willing to amuse himself with a few moments' rustic courtship here before he ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... companions of the witch's diabolical revels, and now continuing to rendezvous upon the same spot, as if still in attendance on their transformed mistress. Hobbie's natural hardihood, however, manfully combated with these intrusive sensations of awe. He summoned to his side the brace of large greyhounds, who were the companions of his sports, and who were wont, in his own phrase, to fear neither dog nor devil; he looked at the priming of his piece, and, like the clown in ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... widow of the late Sir William de Clare." The lady bowed. "You will excuse me, madam, but I have most important reasons for asking you a few questions, which otherwise may appear to be intrusive. Are you aware of the death of his ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... for this intrusive fellow, you would never have become aware of it," muttered the attorney. "Give ear to me, squire," he said, urging Flint close up to the other's side, and speaking in a low tone, "I do not like the fellow's looks ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... bound on a four-days' voyage. During these four days, you need fear nothing. We should have paid off our score in the Atlantic, and sent you and your fellows to join other intrusive friends of ours, if we had not wished to get this little account of yours. So don't disturb yourself unnecessarily until Captain Black puts the question to you. Then, if you are foolish, you had better feed your courage. I have seen stronger men than you who have cried out for death when we had ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... reality shattered them, one by one, like thin glass. He was a prey to the money-lenders and the lawyers, who had no mercy upon a poor wretch who had failed to "make good," and accomplish his ruin with mathematical indifference. The sheriffs, the attorneys, the usurers, the intrusive hordes of clerks and process-servers swooped down upon the printing house and the printer, eager to share the spoils. Honore de Balzac, alone in his "horrible struggle," stood at bay against the pack, using all the stratagems ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... interesting companion when the digging mood was upon him. It was, in fact, advisable to keep at a distance, for he created a miniature sand-storm in his immediate vicinity that spoiled the amusement of all except himself and successfully checked all intrusive sympathy. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... compels the study of his time; and Professor Masson's six volumes are not too much to enable us to understand that there were real causes for the intense passion which glows underneath the poet's words—a passion which unexplained would be thought to be intrusive. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... because their relatives will not support them in idleness at home. They feel no despair at the circumstance, for their pockets have been refilled, though (they are assured) for the last time; and they rejoice at the prospect of spending their capital far from the observation of intrusive guardians. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... and dignity about him, and a vivacious strength looking through him, which might have suited one of those old steel-gray markgrafs whom Henry the Fowler set up towards the 'marches' and do battle with the intrusive heathen in a stalwart and ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... odor blent of plant life and massed humanity hung thickly throughout the spacious rooms and corridors; the bower of palms and flowery brightness at the foot of the great staircase, which had fended the orchestra, and incidentally barred an intrusive if sovereign people from the private apartments, was jostled and awry, its blossoms half despoiled; here lay a trampled glove, there a shining shred of braid, beyond an embarrassed cigar stump—dumb emblems of social Albany, gold-laced officialdom, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... tell us all about the subconscious mind, the hidden loves and hates and longings which we believe are dead and long forgotten. When one of those emotions suddenly comes alive and stands, terribly real and intrusive, between our souls and our everyday lives, the strongest and the best of us may stumble and grope blindly after content, or reparation, or forgetfulness, or whatever seems ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... display or the charm of captivating oratory, but his calm and steady judgment won men's support and commanded their confidence by appealing to their best and noblest aspirations. And withal Washington was ever so modest that at no time in his career did his personality seem in the least intrusive. He was above the temptation of power. He spurned the suggested crown. He would have no honor which the people did ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... think it will be intrusive," he returned, rather anxiously; "but they are strangers in the place, and all ladies—there does not seem to be a man belonging to them—would it not be neighborly, as we live so close, just to call, not in a formal way, you know, but just ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... bear in mind how I have acted. When I found it amused you to play the part of Princess on this little stage, did I not immediately resign to you my box of toys, this Grunewald? And when I found I was distasteful as a husband, could any husband have been less intrusive? You will tell me that I have no feelings, no preference, and thus no credit; that I go before the wind; that all this was in my character. And indeed, one thing is true, that it is easy, too easy, to leave things undone. But Seraphina, I begin to learn it ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of good breeding and etiquette by my familiarity and audacity, but the fact is I am totally unacquainted in the city and know of no one else in whom I could put implicit faith and confidence with regard to so delicate a matter. Pardon me, therefore, dear sir, if I have been in any way intrusive or have unwillingly offended you. I have had scores of favourable opportunities to get married here, but, to tell the plain truth, I would sooner die than marry anybody not of my own nationality. She must have ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... question, the start of surprise. 'Twas all inevitable, so familiar—so distastefully intrusive, too. 'Twas a boredom hard to suffer, and never would have been borne had not the occasion of it been my uncle's delight. 'Twas always the same: Diamonds? ay, diamonds! and then the gasped "My God!" They would pry into this, by ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... sir, that it would not become me to carry on my little traffic under the windows of your mansion. I have already thought of that, and taken my measures. No need to be bought out, sir. Would Stepney Fields be considered intrusive? If not remote enough, I can go remoter. In the words of the poet's song, which ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... and dress at once; he must be nice if Miss Hall likes him, for she is certainly the least intrusive, and all that sort of thing. ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... disease affects him as dust does a careful housewife. It makes him angry and impatient. "Tut, tut, this will never do!" he cries, as he takes over a new case. He would shoo Death out of the room as though he were an intrusive hen. But when the intruder refuses to be dislodged, when the blood moves more slowly and the eyes grow dimmer, then it is that Dr. Winter is of more avail than all the drugs in his surgery. Dying folk cling to his hand as if the presence of his bulk and vigour gives them ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... jealousy of ALMORAN already enslaved him to the punctilios of state; and the most trifling circumstances involved him in perplexity, or fired him with resentment: the friendship and fidelity of OMAR stung him with rage, as insolent and intrusive; and though it determined him to an immediate interview with his brother, yet he was embarrassed how to procure it. At first he rose, and was about to go to him; but he stopped short with disdain, upon reflecting, that it was an ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... son, Alexander, succeeded him. He was of a quick and impetuous temper, and proudly tenacious of his hereditary rights and dignity. The intrusive policy and dictatorial conduct of the strangers excited his indignation, and he beheld with uneasiness their exterminating wars with the neighboring tribes. He was doomed soon to incur their hostility, being accused of plotting ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... upon a fete-day, when the household are scattered abroad in the gardens and shrubberies at their rejoicings, Captain Double-dick passes through the open porch into the lofty stone hall. There, being a total stranger, he is almost scared by the intrusive clanking of his boots. Suddenly he starts back, feeling his face turn white! For, in the gallery looking down at him, is the French officer whose picture he has carried in his mind so long and so far. The latter, disappearing in another instant ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... be," he contradicted earnestly. "You've been very hard hit over this business, and I happen to know he wants to meet you, only that he is afraid of appearing intrusive. At ten o'clock at the arrival platform. May I say good-bye now? God bless you. I haven't much influence with Him, but I—I hope He'll ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... in their growth Toledo, Chicago or St. Louis. The dream is to do nothing and get rich. Land sharks, speculators, usurers and politicians who aspire to a notoriety they will never win—a station they will never occupy—swarm over the West thicker than frogs in Egypt, and more intrusive than were these squatting, crawling, jumping pests, when evoked from the river's slime by the ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest presumption. Among the men who were the most learned of their time and country, he expressed himself with perfect firmness, but without the least intrusive forwardness; and when he differed an opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, yet at the same time with modesty.... I have only to add, that his dress corresponded with his manner. He was like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the laird. I do not speak in malam ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... orphan with warm demonstrations of interest. Curiosity, a liking to witness, or to experience, emotion, the pleasure of being able to tell what has been seen and heard, to find out new facts and repeat them again to others, joined to a sort of vague, commonplace, almost intrusive pity, are sentiments, which sometimes in hours of great disaster, produce what appears to wear the look of sympathy. A fortnight after M. de Nailles's death, between the acts of Scylla and Charybdis, the principal parts in which were ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... with this author you will find that there are a good many footnotes, which we have done our best to make available but not intrusive. There is a great deal of conversation in Elizabethan English, but this will not bother you if you are used to reading the plays of Shakespeare. Finally, there are a few short extracts from contemporary letters, in which the ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... coarse dainties, the leeks and the garlic, that the Devil offers him? Is there any surer way of delivering a man from the temptations of his own baser nature, and the solicitations of this busy intrusive world round about him, than to make him satisfied with the goodness of the Lord, and conscious in his daily experience of 'all joy and peace'? Fill the vessel with wine, and there is no room for baser liquors or for poison. I suppose ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Higginson's. I'm only a messenger—and besides, you aren't grateful at all, you know! You think we've all been extremely intrusive!" She smiled brightly, bowed, and then was suddenly checked by a new thought. "Oh—I wonder if you would tell me something before ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... were going to say something, and then he did not. He hung his head lower and lower in the silence which I had to break for him—"I hope I haven't been intrusive, my dear fellow. This is something I felt bound to speak of. You know we couldn't let it go on. Mrs. March and I have blamed ourselves a good deal, and we couldn't let it go on. But I'm afraid I haven't been ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... first joyous and headlong interest in the narrative of 'Huckleberry Finn', its rapid succession of continuously arresting incidents, its omnipresent yet never intrusive humour, the deeper significance of many a passage in that contemporary classic is likely to escape notice. Sir Walter Besant, who revelled in it as one of the most completely satisfying and delightful of books, speaks of it deliberately as ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... then," he went on in yet more biting tones. "At the risk of seeming intrusive, I at once knocked up two Irish gentlemen on the landing above who had been audibly making a night of it while I sat here endeavouring to compose my thoughts to the calmness proper for framing a testamentary ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is to be in the teaching at the village school, in the planning of the railway siding of the market town, in the mixing of the mortar at the building of the workman's house. It means that ultimately no effigy of intrusive king or emperor is to disfigure our coins and stamps any more; God himself and no delegate is to be represented wherever men buy or sell, on our letters and our receipts, a perpetual witness, a perpetual reminder. There is no act altogether ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... dervish patrols whilst scouting. The opposing troopers looked at each other from relatively open ground, and standing separated by only a few hundred yards. One Baggara horseman came within 150 yards of our men. The Lancers, keen to engage with steel, did not attempt to fire upon their intrusive foemen, but innocently tried instead to bag them. Several times our troopers advanced to the charge, but the enemy, when the Lancers sought to put hands upon them, were gone. That day the Baggara horsemen were met with in far greater ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... poor self-conceit in the framers of The Book Annexed, that should prompt them to resent as intrusive any criticism whatsoever. What we all have at heart is the bringing of our manual of worship as nearly as possible to such a pitch of perfectness as the nature of things human will allow. The thing we seek is a Liturgy which shall draw to itself everything that is best and most devout ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... alternative but to pass the night with these suspicious-looking creatures, who, feeling themselves beyond the control of their cruel masters, soon gave way to their own vile passions, and became most impertinent and intrusive—taking every advantage of my loneliness to indulge their ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... though we have met so recently, we may speak together as friends, or as brothers; you spoke a while ago of the faculty of perception; please credit me with possessing it in some degree myself, and while I do not wish to be personal or intrusive in my remarks, I am sure you will allow me to say, that if there is any degree of incongruity between my appearance and the position I hold, it certainly exists in a much greater degree in your own case. I, of course, know nothing of your past life; I wish to know nothing of it, except ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... humification. Many of these primary decomposers are larger, insect-like animals commonly known to gardeners, including the wood lice that we call pill bugs because they roll up defensively into hard armadillo-like shells, and the highly intrusive earwigs my daughter calls pinch bugs. There are also numerous types of insect larvae ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... experience from mere visionary dreaming, would almost entirely disappear. In proximity with such a lawless faculty of freedom, a system of nature is hardly cogitable; for the laws of the latter would be continually subject to the intrusive influences of the former, and the course of phenomena, which would otherwise proceed regularly and uniformly, would become thereby confused ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... only altogether fitting but as well altogether necessary. Our glass windows would only serve to increase heat and shut out air. As some barrier is necessary to keep passers, even Americans, from intrusive entrance by the windows whose bottoms are at floor level, the system of iron bars or elaborate grille work is adopted. Few Americans see much, if anything, of Cuban home life except as they see it through these barriers as they pass. It is not the custom of the country to invite promiscuous ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... are accustomed to evade, but a hybrid of these two. If you figure this owner of the Voice as sitting, a little nervously, a little modestly, on a stage, with table, glass of water and all complete, and myself as the intrusive chairman insisting with a bland ruthlessness upon his "few words" of introduction before he recedes into the wings, and if furthermore you figure a sheet behind our friend on which moving pictures intermittently ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... considerable, trade with private purchasers, in which they realize considerable profit. The inquiry into traders' profits was not prosecuted in a more searching way, by examining themselves and their knitters at length upon invoices and specimens of goods, because the sufficiently intrusive inquiry which was made, and which stands in various parts of the printed evidence, seemed clearly enough to show that the truth as to this collateral question is as I ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... herself up very haughtily, in part, I presume, to hide her tremor.—She was always a little haughty with me, I must acknowledge. Could there have been anything in my address, however unconscious of it I was, that made her fear I was ready to become intrusive? Or might it not be that, hearing of my footing with my parishioners generally, she was prepared to resent any assumption of clerical familiarity with her; and so, in my behaviour, any poor innocent "bush was supposed a bear." ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... emotion, and I paused fixing my earnest eyes on my father, after I had dashed away the intrusive tears that dimmed them. He did not raise his, but after a short silence he replied to me in a low voice: "You are indeed presumptuous, Mathilda, presumptuous and very rash. In the heart of one like me there are secret thoughts working, and ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... modesty: he crept into my dirtiest corners. This most prying, over-intrusive, over-pitiful ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... horjin, in cloth, in sacking, in expensive leather, in carpeting, of all prices, with an ingenious device of a succession of loops fastening the one into the other, the last with a padlock, to secure the contents of the bag from intrusive hands. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Notya's sake, wept in the heather. It was impossible to help this woman whose curling hair mocked her sternness, whose sternness so easily collapsed and as easily recovered at a word; it was, perhaps, intrusive to attempt it, yet the desire was as ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... comfortless, and tenanted by misery, or poverty, or sin, or, very likely, all together. Possibly some miserly old wretch lived there, needing only a little light to count up his hoard, and caring little for any intrusive wind, if it did not blow away his treasure. I fancied I could see him running over the tale of his coin by a feeble rushlight—squat, perhaps, on the dirty tile-floor—then locking his box, and placing it carefully under the pillow of his straw pallet, then tip-toeing to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... but I am very much interested by the name on your bag. Not that I think you are even acquainted with him, and there are probably a great many of them there; but your coming from the same city and all does seem a little queer, and I hope you won't think me intrusive in speaking to you, because if you should happen, by the thousandth of a chance, to be the right one, I should ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells
... sex; but few women, even of that sort, could have so promptly relegated Louise to the outside of their interest, or so frankly devoted themselves to Maxwell. The impartial spectator might easily have imagined that it was his ankle which had been strained, and that Louise was at best an intrusive sympathizer. Sometimes Mrs. Harley did not hear what she said; at other times, if she began a response to her, she ended it in a question to him; even when she talked to Louise, her eyes were smouldering upon Maxwell. If this had ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... proper and even a duty here to suggest to the young novel reader that the Ten Commandments and all governmental statutes authorize the instant killing, without pity or remorse, of any heavy-headed and intrusive person who presumes to map out for him a symmetrical and well-digested course of novel reading. The murder of such folks is universally excused as self-defense and secretly applauded as a public service. The born novel reader needs no guide, counsellor or friend. He is his own "master." He can ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... looked at the bookcases. The violent order characteristic of the household had polished the glass doors so brightly that between her and the books there floated those intrusive clouds, the aggressive marshes. She went and stood by ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... said Bettina, laughing, while Pauline ran to fetch the water, "I am dying of something else-of hunger, to tell the truth. Monsieur le Cure—I know that I am going to be dreadfully intrusive; I see your cloth is laid—could you not ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... then from what they had been before we received the news brought by Mr. Finch, however innocent these people might be of the murder of his men. I did not therefore invite their approach, and they were too cautious to be intrusive. The wheels being repaired at three P.M. we turned our faces homewards, and exactly at sunset we reached the ponds where I had ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... young men with a heart to satisfy and the battle of life to fight. Society, summoning all her children to one banquet, arouses ambition in the very morning of life. Youth is robbed of its charm, and generous thoughts are corrupted by mercenary scheming. The idealist would fain have it otherwise, but intrusive fact too often gives the lie to the fiction which we should like to believe, making it impossible to paint the young man of the nineteenth century other than he is. Lucien imagined that his scheming was entirely prompted by good feeling, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... ornament is more abused than the bow. In order not to appear intrusive, ribbons require the most delicate handling. The only excuse for a ribbon as an ornament is when it makes a pretense of tying. When used as a sash where folds or gathers are confined, the tone of the ribbon should, in general, ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... strengthening of national government, and the prevailing view of the proper functions of government, almost all economic conditions were regulated by the government to a degree quite unknown before. In the early part of the period this regulation was more minute, more intrusive, more evidently directed to the immediate advantage of government; but by the close of Elizabeth's reign a systematic regulation was established, which, while not controlling every detail of industrial life, yet laid down the general lines ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... face, now on one side of us, now on the other, and always coming nearer; it was evidently anxious to find out what our night work might be. Then it dived over and over again, probably to see how the dragging was getting on. Was it afraid of our finding the rifle? At last it became too intrusive. I took Peter's rifle, and put a ball through its head; but it sank before we could reach it, and we gave up the whole business in despair. The loss of that rifle saved the life of many a seal; and, alas! it had cost ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... scene Th' intrusive gaze prophanes the tears that flow: Drop, Pity! there thy hallowed veil between; Guard, Silence! there ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... dread being intrusive, you need only commission me. I shall see him to-night; I can put in ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... gray eyes, and you have features not easily described. Nevertheless, there are moments when his countenance wears an expression of mildness-one in which the quick eye may read a character more inoffensive than intrusive. A swallow-tail blue coat, of ample skirts, and brass buttons; a bright-colored waistcoat, opening an avalanche of shirt-bosom, blossoming with cheap jewelry; a broad, rolling shirt-collar, tied carelessly with a blue ribbon; a steeple-crowned ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... natures so inactive that they cannot even enjoy the sight of activity around them: men with schemes and desires are in their presence intrusive. Their existence is a sleepy lake, which would not be troubled even with the wind of far-off labour. Such lord Morven was not by nature; up to manhood he had led even a stormy life. But when his passions began to yield, his self-indulgence began ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... restrain them by absolute authority when their reason is, or ought to be, a sufficient guide for their conduct. The contrary practice will make parents much more beloved, and will make children both wiser and happier. Let no idle visiter, no intrusive, injudicious friend, for one moment interfere to lessen the authority necessary for the purposes of education. Let no weak jealousy, no unseasonable love of command, restrain young people after they are sufficiently reasonable to judge for themselves. In ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... with wrought-iron railing rises to the second floor, where there is a library about fifteen feet square with built-in bookcases, two connecting bedrooms, one with an alcove and secret door where the owner might shut himself away from intrusive visitors, and a staircase leading to more bedrooms on the third floor. The cellar is deep and roomy, with provision for wine storage, and an underground passage communicates with the kitchen located in a separate building about twenty-five ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... her more than she had ever known before of her husband's affairs, and spoke to her of her future life, and mixed for her a small glass of brandy-and-water warm, and told her that Frisco would be the fittest place for her future residence, she certainly did not find him to be intrusive. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend; Eternity mourns that. 'Tis an ill cure For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them. Where sorrow's held intrusive, and turned out, There wisdom, will not enter, nor true power, Nor ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... to work with people than to work for them. They think that one of the inalienable rights of man is the right to make his own mistakes and to learn the lesson from them without too much prompting. So they are a little shy of many of the more intrusive forms of philanthropy. But you should see what ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... its food by means of its mouth, either when on the wing, or when suspended within reach of it, the flying-fox is always more or less liable to have the spoil wrested from it by its intrusive companions, before it can make good its way to some secure retreat in which to devour it unmolested. In such conflicts they bite viciously, tear each other with their hooks, and scream incessantly, till, taking to flight, the persecuted one reaches some place of safety, where he hangs by one ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... barrier rising from the earth, and shutting in Father Corraine like a prison wall. And this shadow crept stealthily on and invaded the whole circle, until, where the radiance had been, there was one continuous wall of gloom, rising are upon are to invasion of the zenith, and pierced only by some intrusive wandering stars. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... almost motionless state. At some instants she felt exultant at the idea of announcing her marriage and defying general opinion. At another her heart misgave her, and she was tormented by a fear lest Swithin should some day accuse her of having hampered his deliberately-shaped plan of life by her intrusive romanticism. That was often the trick of men who had sealed by marriage, in their inexperienced youth, a love for those whom their maturer judgment would have rejected as too obviously ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... may trust you will not regard this letter as intrusive. I should never have entertained an idea of writing it, had you not opened the correspondence. If you think any thing in it harsh, review your own—which I regret that I lost soon after it was received—and you will probably find that you have taken your revenge ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... quid nimis" to every form of practical scepticism, and to religion at the same time, and were above all intent on preserving the state and society, and on fostering the existing arrangements which appeared to be threatened far more by an intrusive religious than by a nihilistic philosophy.[130] Yet men whose interest was ultimately practical and political, became ever more rare, especially as from the death of Marcus Aurelius, the maintenance of the state had to be left more and more to the sword of the Generals. The general conditions from ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... excuse me," she said, blushing again. "I did not mean to wound your feelings as a Catholic. I have been very bold and intrusive. I ought to have remembered that people of your church ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... positions as these, where one gifted artist follows nature with so delicate an appreciation of its most subtile truths, it is not easy for a character occupying the background of the stage picture to maintain (although by gesture only) a constant commentary upon the words of others without becoming intrusive or attracting an undue share of attention. Yet Cruvelli does this throughout the first scene (especially during the duet betwixt Rocco and Pizarro, in which Fidelio overhears the plan to assassinate ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... lump of sugar in it. He hears of him first from his London friend, Francis Ardry, then from an Armenian merchant whom he met in London, and then again from a brother-author, who describes a silly and intrusive Anglican parson, called Platitude, as a puppet in the hands of "the man in black." The latter he characterises as a sharking priest, who has come over from Italy to proselytize and plunder; he has "some powers of conversation and some learning, but he carries the countenance of ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... egoism, not a passive, but an active and intrusive egoism, proportional to the energy and extension of his faculties developed by his education and circumstances, exaggerated by his success and his omnipotence to such a degree that a monstrous colossal I has been erected in society. It expands unceasingly the circle of a tenacious and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of things was puzzling to Bob, and threw more obscurity than ever over what could possibly have happened between Stephen and Maggie. But further questions would have been too intrusive, even if he could have framed them suitably, and he was obliged to carry baby away again ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... neutralises the toxin; (2) the production in the blood of the attacked animal of a "germicidal" poison which repels and kills the attacking microbes themselves (not merely neutralising their poisonous products); (3) the extermination of the intrusive, disease-producing microbes by a kind of police, which scour the blood channels and tissues and "eat up"—actually engulf and digest—the hostile intruders. These latter agents, actual particles of the living animal in which ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... of close examination of other berg faces. There seemed to be a distinct difference of origin between the upper and lower portions of the berg, as though a land glacier had been covered by layer after layer of seasonal snow. Then again, what I have described as 'intrusive layers of blue ice' was a remarkable feature; one could imagine that these layers represent surfaces which have been transformed by regelation under ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... the insertion of a sound which facilitates pronunciation, such as that of b in Fr. chambre, from Lat. camera. The intrusive sound may be a vowel or a consonant, as in the names Henery, Hendry, perversions of Henry. [Footnote: On the usual fate of this name in English, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... could talk. He found himself performing acts of gallantry which astounded him after the performance: he found himself looking blankly in the glass at the crow's-feet round his eyes, and at some streaks of white in his hair, and some intrusive silver bristles in his grim, blue beard. He found himself looking at the young bucks at the bath—at the blond, tight-waisted Germans—at the capering Frenchmen, with their lackered mustaches and trim varnished boots—at ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their unconscious egotism, that the reader cares only for the narrative, and nothing for the narrator. Stories told to interested listeners by "grandma," an "old hunter," or some loquacious "stranger," usually need to be so revised that the intrusive relater will disappear, merged in the unobtrusive author. Indeed, it is policy so to revise them, for the editor usually considers the author who begins thus ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... Fissure and rent, where the intrusive dike's Creative and destructive agency Leaves many an enduring monument Of metamorphic and eruptive power; Of molten deluge, and volcanic flood; Fracture and break, the silent stories tell Of dire convulsion in the ages ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... friend of the murdered merchant in a fashion which startled the court-room, for he suddenly brought out the fact that the dead man had once struck a woman in the face in the open street. This fact, sharply stated by the prisoner's counsel, with no explanation and no comment, seemed uselessly intrusive and malicious. His ironical smile merely irritated all concerned. The thin, clean-shaven face of the prisoner grew more pinched and downcast, and he turned almost pleadingly towards the judge. The judge pulled his long side-whiskers nervously, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rudeness or uncourteousness. They may upon occasion be frigidly polite, but polite they will always be. But customs vary so much that some things which would be considered polite in one country would be looked upon in another as rude or intrusive. Take, for instance, one illustration among many which might be cited. A foreigner sent on a diplomatic mission to this country brought with him letters of introduction to several members of a large family. Having ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... Spurius, a man whom no slight can chill nor, even insult, cause to abate the least of his intrusive familiarity—a familiarity which he covets, too, only for the sake of disputation and satire. To me, however, he is never other than a source of amusement. He is a variety of the species ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... returned, with the new residence announced; but a call is due to the parents or relatives who have given the reception. When no wedding cards are sent you, nor the card of the bridegroom, you cannot call without being considered intrusive. One month after the birth of a child the call of ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... herself to her sister's relief, and Ratcliffe had even the delicacy to withdraw to the other end of the room to render his official attendance as little intrusive as possible; while Jeannie commenced her narrative of all that had passed between her and Robertson. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... "I am sure, Mrs. Schuyler, there can be no objection to your doing exactly as you please. This house is entirely your own, half Mr. Schuyler's fortune is yours, and you are responsible to nobody for your actions. If not intrusive, I will offer to look you up a suitable secretary. I have a young woman in mind, whom I ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... stoutly planted with right foot in advance as one who was bent upon holding her ground. Her tiny head was thrown back, and her large blue eyes were full of mingled wonder and defiance. As we entered the little witch flapped her kerchief at us, and shooed as though we were two of the intrusive fowl whom she was wont to chevy out of the house. Reuben and I stood on the threshold, uncertain, and awkward, like a pair of overgrown school lads, looking down at this fairy queen whose realms we had invaded, in two minds whether to beat a retreat or to appease her wrath ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... found the care of them burdensome. It was easy to see that she had naturally all those particular habits, those minute pertinacities in respect to her daily movements and the arrangement of all her belongings, which would make the meddling, intrusive demands of infancy and childhood peculiarly hard for her to meet. Yet never was there a pair of toddling feet that did not make free with Aunt Esther's room, never a curly head that did not look up, in confiding assurance of a welcome smile, to her bright eyes. The inconsiderate and never ceasing ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Tahawus or "cloud-splitter''), is near the eastern part of the group and attains an elevation of 5344 ft. Other noted peaks are M'Intyre (5210 ft,), Haystack (4918), Dix (4916) and Whiteface (4871). These mountains, consisting of various sorts of gneiss, intrusive granite and gabbro, have been formed partly by faulting but mainly by erosion, the lines of which have been determined by the presence of faults or the presence of relatively soft rocks. Lower Palaeozoic strata ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... as Literature was written for them, addressed to them, ought to find in it, all their lives through, a retirement from mean occupations, a well of refreshment, sustainment in the daily drudgery of life, solace in calamity, an inmate by the hearth, ever sociable, never intrusive—to be sought and found, to be found ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... things, and this without considering time or season. When I remember the circumstance which happened to Sancho Pancha when he was governor of the island of Barataria, one day after eating [146] with an importunate and intrusive farmer, who said that he was from Miguel Turra, I am reminded of the Indians when they beg. [147] And we shall say that if they bring four eggs, they think that with justice they ought to be given a price of one hundred pesos. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... the adage advises us to choose the lesser. I would, therefore, prefer to appear intrusive rather than ungrateful; so excuse me if I trespass on your time or your patience. After the generous devotion you displayed last night, and after what Adele moreover has told me, I feel I am bound to inform you whom you have thus befriended; for, as you have already learned, Albert Pride ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sentiments—because she is fully sensible of her own situation, and the value of all she concedes—the concession is not made with less entireness and devotion of heart, less confidence in the truth and worth of her lover, than when Juliet, in a similar moment, but without any such intrusive reflections—any check but the instinctive delicacy of her sex, flings herself and her fortunes at the ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... first pang of his disappointment, a kind of anger seized him. After all, what right had she to receive him in this fashion?—as if he were an intrusive stranger. In common civility, in common justice, she owed it to him to suppose that he would not be ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... His steady helm amid the struggling tides, 205 Braves with broad sail the immeasurable sea, Cleaves the dark air, and asks no star but Thee.— By thee the plowshare rends the matted plain, Inhumes in level rows the living grain; Intrusive forests quit the cultured ground, 210 And Ceres laughs with golden fillets crown'd.— O'er restless realms when scowling Discord flings Her snakes, and loud the din of battle rings; Expiring Strength, and vanquish'd Courage feel ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... empire, a crusade against the Turks, a war in Italy, some grand means of making the Diet value the sword of a free baron, without chaining him down to gratify the greed of hungry Austria. If only Wildschloss could be shaken off! But he only became constantly more friendly and intrusive, almost paternal. No wonder, when the mother and her uncle made him so welcome, and were so intolerably grateful for his impertinent interference, while even Friedel confessed the reasonableness of his counsels, as if that were not the very ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wearing yellow breeches, and dispensing with the luxury of a neckcloth. He shakes his shoulders, according to his rather iniquitous custom, at being told that he is suspected of adultery and incest! A pleasant subject of merriment, no doubt, it is—though somewhat embittered by the intrusive remembrance of that unsparing castigator of vice, Mr. Gifford, and clouded over by the melancholy breathed from the shin-bone of his own poor old deceased grandmother. What a mixture of the horrible and absurd! And the man who thus writes is—not a Christian, for that he denies—but, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... (mistakenly derived above), stands for old French mal-heingre (maliciously or falsely ill, feigning sickness), which is from Latin male aeger, with an intrusive n—Scheler.] ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... brilliancy immediately on removal from the water. Another has a centre of coral pink. The black spines, 10 inches or so long, are exquisitely sharp, and brittle in the extreme. Some believe that the animals are endowed with the power of thrusting these weapons forward to meet the intrusive hand, for unless approached with caution they prick the fingers while yet seemingly out of reach. Admitting that I have never yet attempted rudely to grasp this creature (which certainly is capable of presenting its array of spines whither it wills) while ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... which had led her down the lane, which had caused her to pause at the gate and speak to him, all at once seemed to her perfectly idiotic, and, worse still, intrusive and impertinent. What possible excuse was she going to give for it, in the face of her behaviour to him that afternoon on the moorland? Merely to have asked for shelter on account of the heat, appeared to her now as the flimsiest of excuses, and would appear to him as ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... in the districts of Taru, Nandi and throughout Ukamba. A course gneiss is the predominant rock, but is associated with garnetiferous mica-schists and much intrusive granite. Hornblende schists and beds of metamorphic limestone are rare. Cherty quartzites interbedded with mylonites occur on the flanks of the Nandi hills, but their age is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... longer. His voice, so suddenly heard, showed how much the Mayor's nerves were still alarmed, far he started and jumped aside with an alacrity of which no one would at first sight suppose a man of his portly dignity to have been capable. Everard imposed silence on his intrusive attendant; and, desirous to hear the conclusion of this strange story, requested the Mayor to tell him how the matter ended, and whether they stopped ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... a Southern race. As each man and woman stepped forward in turn, with the right hand raised to heaven before the pen was grasped, every one there present knew that there would be no flinching amongst that band of brothers till their religion was safe from intrusive violence. ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... run only from my pride and joy! Princes have bestowed knighthood on the worthy and unworthy; thou hast called forth those princes from their ranks, pushing back the arrogant and presumptuous of them like intrusive varlets, and conferring on the bettermost crowns and ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... black rows, Cally picked her way after Hugo and Mr. MacQueen. Considering that all this was her father's, she felt abashingly out of place, most intrusive; when she caught a dusky face turned upon her she hastily looked another way. Still, she felt within her an increasing sense of cheerfulness. Washington Street sensibilities were offended, naturally. The busy colored stemmers were scarcely inviting to the eye; the odor ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... they came up to speak to her with more or less seriousness, as befitted the occasion. She looked at me with great curiosity, but Mrs. Down told her who I was, and I had a sudden instinct to say how sorry I was for her, but I was afraid it might appear intrusive on so short an acquaintance. She was a thin old soul who looked as if she had had a good deal of trouble in her day, and as if she had been very poor and very anxious. "Yes," said she to some one who had come from a distance, "it does come hard to ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... Fireside, and as loafing lazily in its warm glow. Then, in the crack of the door, appeared the appealing nose of a Camel—might he warm that nose? The lazy Peasant wouldn't take the trouble to get up and shut him out. The appealing nose became an insinuating neck, then intrusive shoulders, and presently we have a whole camel lying by the fire, and the peasant, now alarmed and enraged, vainly belaboring the tough hind quarters of the huge beast ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... consider you intrusive, Mr. Denton, and I appreciate your sympathy and friendship. But I am resigning from the corps for ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... action was to make Sneeshing resent the caressing of the intrusive paw, which twice over scraped him, and he snapped at, ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... to me now." And he held out both his hands. She looked round, fearing intrusive eyes, but seeing none, she allowed him to embrace her. "My own,—at last my own. How well you understood me in those old days. And yet it was all without a word,—almost without a sign." She bowed her head before she had escaped from his arms. "Now ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... of his familiar rheumatism, as he put his foot out of bed, taught him that he must not reckon too confidently upon even a day's respite from the intrusive family of aches and infirmities, which, with their proverbial fidelity to attachments once formed, had long been the closest acquaintances that the poor old gentleman had in the world. Nevertheless, he fancied the twinge a little less poignant than those of yesterday; and, moreover, ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... secondly, their appearance; thirdly, a simple mode of testing. With respect to occurrence, the older sandy and clay slates, chlorite slates, micaceous, and hornblendic schists, particularly at or near their junction with the intrusive granite and diorite, generally form the most likely geological country for the finding of mineral lodes, particularly gold, silver and tin. But those who have been engaged in practical mining for long, finding by experience that no two mineral fields are exactly alike in all ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... he is intrusive. Did he not, on his arrival here, almost succeed in creating a disturbance between the English and ourselves; and, had it not been for you, for your admirable prudence, for your singular decision of character, swords would have been drawn in the very streets ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... quarrelsome neighbours, given to reckless assertion; rapacious, envious, and disaffected. Government was unpopular, and all governors so in succession. The police, if not corrupt, was irksome and intrusive. Labor was wasted, emigration discouraged. Crime and drunkenness multiplied, and what a hundred and fifty is to one thousand, or thirteen hundred, such was the crime of Van Diemen's Land to that of England and Scotland. Drunkenness had risen, in ten years, from three ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... alabaster was, as we now think, rather too late, but the interment certainly proved that one Libyan died when a tomb of the early Old Kingdom had already been plundered, and lay open, affording an easy means of burial. But not only was this intrusive burial found in one stairway tomb; green paint and stone vases with horizontally-pierced handles, were found in others of the same group. These Libyan traces were also interpreted as the remains of secondary interments, but when at El Kab, I saw the same Libyan ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell
... sent Laura's letter—she did write—to Lindsay. "I cannot allow you to be in the dark about what I am doing in the matter," he explained; "though if I had not this necessity for writing you might reasonably complain of an intrusive and impertinent letter. But I must let you know that she has appealed to me, and that as far as I can I ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... away Sorrow the Undesired—that intrusive creature, that bastard gift of shameless Nature, who respects not the social law; a waif to whom eternal Time had been a matter of days merely, who knew not that such things as years and centuries ever were; to whom the cottage interior was the universe, the week's weather ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... what was implied, for Mr. Tennyson had the reputation of not being always gracious. However, we had learned from himself that nothing short of rudeness could keep his intrusive admirers at a distance, so as to allow him some privacy. He told us of a man who so dogged his steps that he was afraid of going out of his own garden gates, for even in front of those locked gates the man would stand and pry for hours together, till the poet's son was sent to him with ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... broth the cook offered her. She was restless, like a leopard, and seemed full of electrical currents which found no discharge except in the flicker of her eyes. Leaving the group of settles by the fireplace where these simple families felt more at home and least intrusive on the grandeur of the hall, she put herself on a distant chair with her face turned from them. This gave the women a chance to backbite her, to note her roused mood, and to accuse her among themselves of wishing evil to the fort and consequently to ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Arthur." I gasped. That a girl should look as pretty as that and at the same time have the rare intelligence to read Me ... well, it seemed an almost superhuman combination of the excellencies. And more devoutly than ever I cursed in my heart these intrusive outsiders who had charged in at the last moment and destroyed for ever my chance of making this wonderful girl's acquaintance. But for them, we might have become intimate in the first half hour. As it was, what were we? ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... the hunter. He is fierce or good natured, sullen or playful, lazy or energetic, bold or cowardly, "all by turns and nothing long." He is the clown of the menagerie, the laughing stock rather than the dread of the hunter, and the abhorrence of border house-wives, owing to his intrusive manners, his fondness for overturning beehives, and his playful familiarity with the contents of their larders ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... to say in a hushed, confidential tone that Mrs. Baxter would be down in a moment. He lighted the reception room brilliantly for Susan, and retired decorously. Susan sat nervously on the edge of a chair. Suddenly her call seemed a very bold and intrusive thing to do, even an indelicate thing, everything considered. Suppose Peter should come in; what could he think but that she was clinging to the association with which he had so clearly indicated that he ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... he had no fear of intrusive neighbours, or other interruptions to his studies. The news from London seldom reached his ears, and he was enabled to devote himself entirely to his experiments. Like many other learned men of his age, it was to chemistry that he chiefly turned his ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... place, the Japanese language is pleasingly destitute of personal pronouns. Not only is the obnoxious "I" conspicuous only by its absence; the objectionable antagonistic "you" is also entirely suppressed, while the intrusive "he" is evidently too much of a third person to be wanted. Such invidious distinctions of identity apparently never thrust their presence upon the simple early Tartar minds. I, you, and he, not being differences due to nature, demanded, to their thinking, ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... to be rather intrusive for my taste," said the old oak. "You should try to grow a bit thicker and stop this shooting into the air. Just look how your branches stick out. Bend them decently, as you see us do. How will you manage when a regular storm comes? Take ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... her great love for the little chap had crowded everything else out of her mind; that living up there in those snowy acres of trees away from the world, she was so calmly contented and happy that she feared an intrusive breath of any sort. And she ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... to compass this obstacle, the Fly at last decides in favor of other points, but not on the breast, belly or back, where the hide would seem too tough and the light too intrusive. She needs dark hiding places, corners where the skin is very delicate. The spots chosen are the cavity of the axilla, corresponding with our armpit, and the crease where the thigh joins the belly. Eggs are laid in both places, but ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... quit of his odious presence I bid him an unceremonious good- night, and marched down the glen with the air not of one who has parted with a friend, but who rather has shaken off an intrusive companion. On the road I pondered the whole matter over with an anxiety which did not in the smallest degree tend to relieve me. Had I felt adequate to the exertion, I might, of course, have supplanted this spurious edition (of which the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott |
