"Obtrusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fill the air, yet not with an obtrusive clangor. The sound was of a murmurous character, soft, attractive, persuasive, friendly. The sculptor fancied that such might have been the original voice and utterance of the natural man, before the sophistication of the human intellect formed what we now ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Poltons Park, he was due at his aunt's place, in Kent, on Saturday evening, and must therefore make his arrangements to leave by noon on that day. The significance was apparent. Had he come down to breakfast with "Now or Never!" stamped in fiery letters across his brow, it would have been more obtrusive, indeed, but not a whit plainer. We all looked down at our plates, except Jack Ives. He flung one glance (I saw it out of the corner of my left eye) at Newhaven, another at Trix; then he ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... to himself this way. There are birds—for instance, jays, kingfishers, goldfinches—which are, taken absolutely, extremely brilliant in colouring. Yet they do not jar, are not obtrusive. So it was with her. Her dress was, perhaps, taken absolutely, indecorous. Upon her it looked at once seemly and beautiful. Upon Bessie Prawle it would have been glaring; but one had to dissect it before one could discover any fault with it upon its wearer. She was very pale, even ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... great, big, thumping, obtrusive, uncompromising lie—that's what meets us on the threshold! There is our starting point. The whole story told by Barker is a lie. But Barker's story is corroborated by Mrs. Douglas. Therefore she is lying also. They are both lying, and in a conspiracy. So now we have the clear problem. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was courteous to all, in his homely way; but he showed no anxiety to become further acquainted with these obtrusive persons. The simplicity of his manners and the plainness of his dress caused much surprise; and the public interest concerning him sensibly quickened when whispers floated forth of the giving up of his berth to the invalid passenger, ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... the window-seat very quietly. Even when we were alone I was slow to disturb her. To sit with her in sight was happiness, and the proper happiness, for early morning—serene, incomplete, but progressive. Had I been obtrusive, I knew I should have encountered rebuff. 'Not at home to suitors' was written on her brow. Therefore I read on, stole now and then a look, watched her countenance soften and open as she felt I respected her mood, and enjoyed the gentle content of ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... stating that the King had succeeded in carrying off a thousand dozen bottles of this wine out of the royal cellars when he fled from his subjects in Megalia. The bottles in which Vino Regalis was sold had yards of gold foil wrapped round their necks. They were in their way quite as splendid and obtrusive as Madame Corinne was in hers. I always think that Gorman must have had the lady before his eyes when he arranged the get-up ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... a virtuous and an accomplished female, on the first interview with a young man, to whom she had never given one thought before; but it was very flattering to me to find that those attentions were not considered obtrusive or disagreeable. I perceived that my father sat upon thorns, and that he was very much pleased to find that the young ladies declined the invitation of my sister to remain all night, although I added my intreaties to those of my sister, and this too in so earnest a manner, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... experience, that when men are to be turned from evils, and brought to repent and reform, those only should interfere who are most loved and respected, and who have the best right to approach the offender. While on the other hand, rebuke from those who are deemed obtrusive and inimical, or even indifferent, will do ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... some readers who are blind to his merits. There is a false air of hardness (quite in contradiction to the sentiment in his tales of childish life); there is a knowing air; there are mannerisms, such as "But that is another story"; there is a display of slang; there is the too obtrusive knocking of the nail on the head. Everybody can mark these errors; a few cannot overcome their antipathy, and so lose a great ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... in which climbing plants may not be used to advantage. Sometimes it may be to conceal obtrusive objects, again to relieve the monotony of rigid lines. They may also be used to run over the ground and to conceal its nakedness where other plants could not succeed. The shrubby kinds are often useful ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... gathered that morning; and, what seemed still more remarkable, the pitchers and ewers were freshly filled with water. This obliged Miss Milly to notice another singular fact, namely, that the house was free from dust, the one most obtrusive and penetrating visitor of Five Forks. The floors and carpets had been recently swept, the chairs and furniture carefully wiped and dusted. If the house WAS haunted, it was possessed by a spirit who had none of the usual indifference to decay and mould. And yet the beds had ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... gave them depth by glazing over with the same; and we are pretty much of Wilson's mind, who, when told of a new brown, said "I am sorry for it." Very many of our modern pictures are ruined by the violent contrasts of the asphaltum and similar browns with less obtrusive pigments. The very transparency is, in our eyes, an objection. Asphaltum, for instance, besides that it is a changeable and never thoroughly drying pigment, is too transparent for depth. It was a mistake of Gainsborough when he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... then sincerely for your generous review; and it is with the sense of double content I express my gratitude, because I am now sure the tribute is not superfluous or obtrusive. You were not severe on Jane Eyre; you were very lenient. I am glad you told me my faults plainly in private, for in your public notice you touch on them so lightly, I should perhaps have passed them over, thus indicated, with ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... mean source contributary of his charm in verse. It is perhaps not always quite so charming in prose, and especially in letters. You do not want self-criticism of an obviously second-thought kind in them. But you do want that less obtrusive variety which prevents them from appearing unkempt, "down-at-heel" etc. Perhaps there is, at any rate in the earlier letters, something of this unkemptness in ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... sin in future. This, it is obvious, is nothing more than a practical answer to the above question, forced upon the child by the directness of the circumstances, but which would not have so readily made its appearance, or produced its effect, in cases of a less obtrusive kind, or in one of more remote application; and every person must see, that the beneficial effects desired would have been more definite, more effectual, and much more permanent, had this faint indication of Nature's intention been followed up by orally asking the ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... music that Dennis held, but played it so out of time that no one could sing it. Dennis laid down his sheets on the piano and said quietly, though with flushed face: "I did not mean to be obtrusive. You all seemed greatly disappointed at Mr. Archer's absence and the results, and I thought that in view of the emergency it would not be presumption to offer my services. But it ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the bedrock on which it rests. This principle, the Catholic doctrine possesses; we know it, we are sure of it. Why not then have that aggressiveness of militant Catholics who take advantage of every opportunity, without being obtrusive? Are we not too apologetic in our Public life? We would not suggest in the least to be discourteously aggressive, although at times we are tempted to do so and seem justified in our retaliation. But there is no reason ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... repetition of principles, of which the truth is so generally known and acknowledged, the only plea he can urge in his justification is a hope that the reiteration of them will not be deemed unnecessary and obtrusive, so long as their application is incomplete; so long as vice and misery prevail in any part of the world, from the want of ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... there were two ministers in Sanquhar of the name of Thomson, one of whom was father of the late Dr. Andrew Thomson of Edinburgh, the other was father of Dr. Thomson of Balfron. The domestic in the family of the latter was rather obtrusive with her secret devotions, sometimes kneeling on the stairs at night, and talking loud enough to be heard. On a communion season she was praying devoutly and exclusively for her minister: "Remember Mr. Tamson, no him at the Green, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... public expence. But though Monthault took on himself the merit of this lenient treatment, the prejudices of the whole family against him formed an insuperable bar to his designs. His change of conduct was too pointedly obtrusive; his piety and penance too ostentatious to pass on a man who was thoroughly conversant with the marks of genuine repentance. Dr. Beaumont did not approve of an elaborate and unnecessary disclosure of the secret enormities of his early life, which seemed to him more like the wantonness ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... had seen—what studios he had visited." Riding, for riding's sake, he disliked. "It bores me so," he said. It was for real service that Prince Albert devoted his life; and for this end he gave himself to the very diligent study of the English Constitution. Never obtrusive, he yet did the work, kept the wheels moving; but in the background, sinking his individuality in that of the Queen, and leaving her all ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... contemplating my likeness in the mirror, I could have wished my knees had not been quite so prominently conspicuous, and that the projection of the thyroid cartilage of the larynx, called vulgarly Adam's apple, had been perhaps a trifle less obtrusive. ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... bring Him back. The discipline and education of the disciples are recorded with a plain revelation of their mistakes and their spiritual dulness. When they had settled in Capernaum Christ shows them that He must find a wider sphere of work (i. 38); He meets with a significant silence their obtrusive remonstrance when the woman with the issue of blood caused Him to ask, "Who touched My clothes?" (v. 30, 31); He tells them with affectionate care "to rest a while," when they had been too busy even to eat (vi. 31); He rebukes them gravely when they ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... yes. I should not have ventured to say it first and alone. You might have considered it rude and selfish. You cannot think so in Thiel. When he says to you: Stop!—it is not obtrusive. Since I am merely repeating his view, I have the courage to confess that it has been for a long time ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... differences within sharply-marked and easily-noted limits. In Germany the schools are two—one of so-called historical painting at Munich, one of what we may name domestic painting at Duesseldorf. This last may be put on one side as having no specially obtrusive characteristics, and by German pictures will be meant those of the Munich and Vienna type, whether actually from the studios of Munich and Vienna or not. In English contemporary art can one pretend to find a school at all in any true sense of the word? What we do find ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... indirectly the Norman conquest influenced Scotland only less profoundly than England itself. In the case of Scotland it was less immediate and obtrusive, but in its totality it is a fact of the first importance in ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... seventh is given to Dendrobes. But facing us as we enter stands a Lycaste Skinneri, which illustrates in a manner almost startling the infinite variety of the orchid. I positively dislike this species, obtrusive, pretentious, vague in colour, and stiff in form. But what a royal glorification of it we have here!—what exquisite veining and edging of purple or rose; what a velvet lip of crimson darkening to claret! It is merely a sport of Nature, but she allows herself such glorious freaks in no other realm ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... "that's a compatriot of mine named Hazlet; a very good fellow, I believe, though rather obtrusive perhaps." ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... enough to find at home several gentlemen who had been out on previous occasions, and who now graciously permitted Kitty to present them with a resplendent portrait of what at first sight appeared to be a hairdresser's assistant in gala costume, but which an obtrusive inscription below proclaimed to be "Inglethwaite! The Man You Know, and Who ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... prodding the near ox lightly in the ribs. And the team lurched to the right to avoid a markedly obtrusive boulder. "Haw, Bright!" he ejaculated a minute later, flicking with his whip the off shoulder of the farther ox. And with sprawling legs and swaying of hind-quarters the team swerved obediently to the left, shunning a mire-hole that would have taken in the wheel to ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... concealing her curiosity. But his face betrayed nothing. It always seemed to her that his very dark and straight eyebrows, so obtrusive and unusual as compared with the delicacy of the features, of the fair skin and light brown curls, made it easy for him to wear any mask he pleased. By their mere physical emphasis they drew attention away from the subtler and ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... glanced back to the childish days when, with their present opinions reversed, he thought Owen a muff, and Owen thought him a reprobate. To his own blunt and reserved nature, the expressions, so charming to poor Miss Charlecote, had been painfully distasteful. Sentiment, profession, obtrusive reverence, and fault-finding scruples had revolted him, even when he thought it a proof of his own irreligion to be provoked. Afterwards, when both were schoolboys, Robert had yearly increased in conscientiousness ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are very bright and gaudy, contrasting unfavourably with the older tiles elsewhere in the building. The arrangement of the tiles on the risers of the steps is very monotonous and unpleasing. Plain stone steps would have been far less obtrusive. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... other well; Howard knew them only as he had seen their names in the "fashionable intelligence" columns of the newspapers. Mrs. Carnarvon was a small thin woman in a black velvet gown which made her thinness obtrusive and attractive or the reverse according as one's taste is toward or away from attenuation. Her eyes were a dull, greenish grey, her skin brown and smooth and tough from much exposure in the hunting ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... and then there rose in the stillness the unearthly howling of the baron's hounds, a cheerful sound which only their owner's somewhat loud converse of the evening had kept from becoming excessively obtrusive. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... of a liberty which she does not possess, in order to clear you of the wrong which you have done in denying that liberty. The deafening rattle which your wife shakes will follow you everywhere with its obtrusive din. Your darling will stun you, will torture you, meanwhile arming herself by making you feel only the thorns of married life. She will greet you with a radiant smile in public, and will be sullen at home. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... invincible loyalty of principle, and that, asking no sentimental affection, and indeed yielding none, he was, without presuming on his relationship, devoted to his cousin's interest. It seemed that from being a glancing ray of sunshine in the house, evasive but never obtrusive, he had become a daily necessity of comfort and ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... extreme reluctance with which I go at all into 'company', and the unceasing depression which I am struggling up against during the whole time I am in it, which too often makes me drink more 'during dinner' than I ought to do, and as often forces me into efforts of almost obtrusive conversation, 'acting' the opposite of my real state of mind in order to arrive at a medium, as we roll paper the opposite way in order ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... most shadowy material, to the patient experiment and investigation necessary for the procuring of the real substance; and Hippocrates, not knowing how to advance to a theory by rational experiment, and too honest to invent one, assumes the traditional theories, founded on the vaguest and most obtrusive generalizations. Those which his experience taught him to reject, were adopted and maintained by Galen and all who followed him for centuries, the chief instance of progress being only the substitution by the Arabians of some of the milder medicines ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... drawn into the unity of a continuous whole by the introduction of the old Shepherd and his son at the close of the one and the opening of the other. This natural arrangement saves the imagination from being disturbed by any yawning or obtrusive gap of time, notwithstanding the lapse of so many years in the interval. On this point, Gervinus remarks that, "while Shakespeare has in other dramas permitted a twofold action united by a common idea, he could not in this instance have entirely concentrated ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... down the historic slope, now as slippery as a child's mud-slide, and was half-way across the open space before I received my first shock. Some queer sixth sense pulled me up in mid-stride. I had heard nothing, I had seen nothing; but for all that I knew that a strange and obtrusive presence was very close to me. The New Guinea native can at times tell the presence of an enemy simply by his sense of smell, and I suppose I've lived so long amongst them that I have acquired something of this kind. Be this as it may, I was aware of the other man's proximity ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... of your being at that hospital;' and a burning blush spread over the pale cheek, and made Tom shrink, start, and feel guilty of having touched the chord of obligation, connected with that obtrusive pledge of his. Above all, however, to repress emotion was his prime object; and he calmly answered, 'It was a good Providence that brought any one there who ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... curiously soothing and subduing effect on the small man. Sometimes, when his snarls were too obtrusive, she would put out her hand, her small, perfect hand, and touch his sleeve, and he would cease snarling and begin to peck feebly at the things before him, or at the things before her, as the case might be. Thesiger actually saw her transferring the entree she had just tasted from her own plate ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... denunciation of men in general and their luxurious ways. He set at defiance all the conventions of courtesy and of decency; spoke his mind on everything without fear or remorse; and delighted in his antagonism to public opinion. He followed the public and obtrusive life of Sokrates, but instead of dialectic skill, his force lay in vituperation, sarcasm, and repartee. 'To Sokrates,' says Epiktetus, 'Zeus assigned the cross-examining function; to Diogenes, the magisterial and chastising function; to Zeno (the Stoic), the didactic ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... help it, I don't see how you can. I may have been a poor actor, but I know I've not been obtrusive." ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... spirit of adventure hangs about the story; something interesting happens in every chapter. The admirable ease of style, the smooth and natural dialogue, the perfect adjustment of events and sequences conceal all the usual obtrusive mechanism, and hold the curiosity of the reader throughout the development of an excellent plot and ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... the narrow deeps. To towns, whose shades of no rude sound complain, To ringing team unknown and grating wain, 85 To flat-roof'd towns, that touch the water's bound, Or lurk in woody sunless glens profound, Or from the bending rocks obtrusive cling, And o'er the whiten'd wave their shadows fling; Wild round the steeps the little [G] pathway twines, 90 And Silence loves it's purple roof of vines. The viewless lingerer hence, at evening, sees From rock-hewn steps the sail between the trees; Or marks, mid opening cliffs, fair ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... a last desperate effort, swung out her right hand, seized the confronting spectre by its obtrusive left arm, and whirled it backward to the floor, starting up herself as she did so ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... interest. Every stranger, who was introduced to him, tried to draw him out; and it was an easy matter; for he loved to oblige people, and it is always pleasant for an old soldier to fight his battles over again. In this readiness to recount his own exploits, there was nothing that seemed like silly or obtrusive vanity. It often reminded me of the following just remark in the Westminster Review, applied to Jeremy Bentham: "The very egotism in which he occasionally indulged was a manifestation of a want ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... and wheeze without emitting a sound. She has, however, frequently produced great effect in society, and drawn tears with this performance: it is her favorite piece. Let us abandon this singing for parties, this melancholy dilettantismus, everywhere so obtrusive! The girl is only eighteen years old: is she beyond salvation? I endeavor to build her voice up again, gradually, by gentle practice. She succeeds very well in it, and after six lessons her natural docility arouses hope. The head-tones again ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... the frightful appetite for the hideous that disgraces the Church in our day been so resolutely displayed as on this spot; and if the soul suffered in the presence of the obtrusive outrage of this degrading work—perpetrated by one Barreme of Angers and cast in the steam foundries of Le Creusot—the body too had something to endure on this plateau under the crushing mass of hills that shut in ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... British maiden bowed a pleased assent, Her two long ringlets swinging as she bent; The glistening eyes her eager soul looked through Betrayed her lineage in their Saxon blue. Backward she flung each too obtrusive curl And ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... half curse, half gasp, travelled round the crowded room and out of the open doors to the swarms buzzing and chirping in the paddocks and the trees, and Gleeson, with obtrusive calm, paused to chalk ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... of establishing a permanent international tribunal, the delegation of the United States was not unmindful of the inconveniences which might arise from an obtrusive exercise of mediation, and in signing the convention carefully guarded the historic position of the United States by the ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... one of the least obtrusive, was almost the worthiest of all the Greek patriots. During five years he had never ceased to do the best that it was possible for him to do with the bad materials at his disposal. When the Greek Revolution was at its height, he had contributed largely to its ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... minds with other faculties. Or, if you please, life is a gymnasium. Take which figure you choose. Because of this, good talk, following the principle of life, is always directed with a general desire for learning rather than teaching. No good talker is obtrusive, thrusting forward his observation on men and things. He is rather receptive, trying to get at other people's observations; and what he says himself falls from him, as it were, by accident, he unconscious that he is saying anything that ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... four o'clock next morning before continuing the trip. He made a landing at daylight at a frame house over the door of which was painted the word "confectionery" and he thought he could get some breakfast. He was given a room, but it was soon filled with obtrusive questioners. A farmer, seeing the look of hunger in his eyes, volunteered to procure some breakfast. The Captain was prepared to do justice to the kind of a meal he had been wishing for, when the farmer returned with a genuine country breakfast ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... that disuse would maintain or develop the projecting chin, increase its perpendicular height till the jaw is deepest and strongest at its extremity, evolve a side flange, and enlarge the upper jaw-bone to form part of a more prominent nose, while drawing back the savagely obtrusive teeth and lips to a more pleasing and subdued position of retirement and of humanized beauty. If human preference and natural selection caused some of these differences, why are they incompetent to effect changes in the direction of a diminution ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... at this point that Marget gave way and scandalized Drumtochty, which held that obtrusive prosperity was an irresistible provocation to the higher powers, and that a skilful depreciation of our children ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... her, necessarily placed her in embarrassment which was very likely to produce the opposite effect. The young Virginian girl could not do otherwise than receive those attentions with gratitude, and yet her very desire not to be obtrusive and not to seem to demand more attention than was necessary, placed her in an equally anomalous position. The two girls consequently became much less intimately acquainted within the first few days, than they might have done if thrown together under ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... internal as well as external, has been universally considered the most perfect which human genius ever planned and executed. Its dimensions were sufficiently large to produce an impression of grandeur and sublimity, which was not disturbed by any obtrusive subdivision of parts; and, whether viewed at a small or greater distance, there was nothing to divert the mind of the spectator from contemplating the unity as well as majesty of mass and outline; circumstances which ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... He wasn't obtrusive about his heart. You wouldn't have known he had one. He only left it to the physical laboratory at Waterbury for the benefit of science, since he considered it to be quite an extraordinary kind of heart. And the joke of the matter was that, when, at ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... misled his unsophisticated sister by making no special effort to seek Mildred's society. After one or two rather futile attempts he saw that he would alienate the sad-hearted girl by obtrusive advances, and he contented himself by trying to understand her, in the hope that at some future time he might learn to approach her more acceptably. The thought that she would soon leave the farmhouse depressed him greatly. ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... who loves the picturesque. "Towns are generally so obtrusive; isn't it nice to know that Clovelly is here and that all we have to do is to walk 'down-along' and find it? Come, Tommy. Ho, ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wet and soiled, once even immediately after she had been taken to the closet, on which occasion she did not urinate. Her face was usually dull, vacant and immobile, but sometimes, when questioned or when something obtrusive happened, a little puzzled. Occasionally she looked slowly about or followed people with her eyes. There was no evidence of any affect as a rule, but not infrequently she smiled, even quite freely at ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... of the three central courts in which everything is in harmony. There is nothing obtrusive about it. The effect is that of a perfect whole, simple, complete. The round pool, smooth, level with the ground, unadorned, gives its note. The colors are warm, the massive pillars softly smooth. The trees press close to the walls, the shrubbery is dense. Birds make happy sounds among the branches. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... Six generations of stalwart freemen has she reared beneath her shielding care to people her own vast territory and that of many other States, no one of which has ever failed in truthfulness to the great principles in which she was born. Always more solid than noisy, and more reserved than obtrusive, she has ever served as the great balance-wheel in the mighty engine of our national organization. Her life, commingled with other lives attempered to her own, now pulsates from ocean to ocean and from the frozen lakes to ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... and there was no confusion, no excitement, no disaster. The careless, traffic of the streets which seemed so likely to end in disorder never ended otherwise than satisfactorily. There was control over it, but the control was not obtrusive. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... angular. They disappear entirely when he expatiates in the regions of exalted fancy, as in the introductory discourse of the Spirit, and the invocation to Sabrina. They recur when he moralizes; and his morality is too interwoven with the texture of his piece to be other than obtrusive. He fatigues with virtue, as Lucan fatigues with liberty; in both instances the scarcely avoidable error of a young preacher. What glorious morality it is no one need be told; nor is there any poem in the language where beauties of thought, diction, and description spring ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... one heart, one soul. She heard me thus; and though divinely brought, Yet innocence, and virgin modesty, Her virtue, and the conscience of her worth, That would be wooed, and not unsought be won, Not obvious, not obtrusive, but, retired, The more desirable; or, to say all, Nature herself, though pure of sinful thought, Wrought in her so, that, seeing me, she turned: I followed her; she what was honour knew, And with obsequious majesty approved My pleaded reason. ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... passionate disposition. Unless you overcome this dangerous tendency of character, you may expect only wretchedness and humiliation in coming years. I am sincerely sorry for you, but I tell you unhesitatingly, that I find it difficult to tolerate your grave and obtrusive faults." ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... disgusting reality, and would have given kingdoms to have once more renewed my trance. The friends of Hector, though not all of them his equals in turbulence profaneness and folly, were of the same school. Their language, though less coarse, was equally insipid. Their manners, when not so obtrusive, were more bald. They all cursed blustered and behaved with insolence in proportion to the money they spent, or the time they had been at the university. The chief difference was that those who were less rich and less hardened than he had less spirit: that is, had less noise, nonsense and swagger. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... rich, around whose footsteps avarice had gathered an eager and jostling crowd. Rude contact with, and unsavoury odours from, the unclean multitude shocked their nervous sensibility, as they made their way to their hotels amidst obtrusive obsequiousness, while the lone outlaw's pathway lay free through the open street and uncontaminated air. But a wretched exterior has its disadvantages also. I dared not present myself at a hotel, and many of the humbler hostelries refused me admittance, believing, no doubt, either that ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... a weakness but too common, and which few have strength of mind to resist or sufficient pride to overcome. The intuitive watchfulness of affection, however, led Adelheid to a different conclusion; she saw that he never affected to conceal, while with equal good taste he abstained from obtrusive allusions to the humble nature of his origin, but she also perceived that there were points of his previous history on which he was acutely sensitive, and which at first she feared must be attributed to the consciousness ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... of whom?" Mr. Quayle asked, with the utmost suavity. "Of the nameless, obtrusive, alien element, or of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... lips, in August, 1882, she learnt that I was sick of her presence, tired of her company, and weary of the sound of her voice. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have wearied of me as I wearied of them; seventy-five of that number would have promptly avenged themselves by active and obtrusive flirtation with other men. Mrs. Wessington was the hundredth. On her neither my openly-expressed aversion, nor the cutting brutalities with which I garnished our interviews had the ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... months; perhaps one or two years. Suppose—only suppose, of course—your triumph to be postponed for even one year; your daughter will then be one year older, and less fitted to acquire the accomplishments which you desire her to possess, than she now is. Pardon the suggestion, if it is an obtrusive one. I plead the sincere interest which I take in you and her ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... space Judge Menefee felt crushed, humiliated, relegated. Second place galled him. Why had this blatant, obtrusive, unpolished man of windmills been selected by Fate instead of himself to discover the sensational apple? He could have made of the act a scene, a function, a setting for some impromptu, fanciful discourse or piece of comedy—and have retained the role of cynosure. Actually, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... the Duomo, in our new friend's custody, and we saw the things which it was well to see. There was mass, or some other ceremony, transacting; but as usual it was made as little obtrusive as possible, and there was not much to weaken the sense of proprietorship with which travellers view objects of interest. Then we ascended the Leaning Tower, skillfully preserving its equilibrium as we went by an inclination of our persons in a direction ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... collar; it was for him, in the last analysis, that they cared much the most. They cared far more about Charlie than about the ballot. Olive Chancellor wondered how Mrs. Farrinder would treat that branch of the question. In her researches among her young townswomen she had always found this obtrusive swain planted in her path, and she grew at last to dislike him extremely. It filled her with exasperation to think that he should be necessary to the happiness of his victims (she had learned that whatever they might talk about with her, it was of him and him ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... following. And I told myself that in a few minutes' walking, Bow-street runner or not, I should have him at my mercy. And then reflection came to me in time. Of all things, one was out of the question. Upon no account must this obtrusive fellow see the cart. Until I had killed or shook him off, I was quite divorced from my companions—alone, in the midst of England, on a frosty by-way leading whither I knew not, with a sleuth-hound at my heels, and never a friend but ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an inn, are very natural and tender—as most of his compositions are, when he was at all in earnest. For our own part, we cannot complain of ever meeting any other welcome than a warm one, go where we may; for we are not obtrusive, and where we are not either liked, or loved, or esteemed, or admired (that last is a strong word, yet we all have our admirers), we are exceeding chary of the light of our countenance. But at an inn, the only ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... much power and delicacy, and a certain confident but not obtrusive manner, which will go far, with his abilities, to place him in a high rank among our pianists. He gave much satisfaction; his performance of Liszt's fantasie on themes from Verdi's 'Rigoletto' showing great skill in mastering the ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... the door, it was not until she had passed him and flung herself into a chair, that I thought to look in his direction. Then it was too late, for he had turned his face aside and was gazing with rather an obtrusive curiosity at the old-fashioned room, murmuring, as he did so, some such commonplaces ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... your beautiful collection of irises produces a pitiful pennyworth of bloom to an intolerable quantity of leaves. But the petunias and the sweet-williams, and the balsams, and all the other ill-bred and obtrusive flowers leap promptly into life and vigor, and fight each other for the ownership of the beds. And the ever-faithful and friendly nasturtium comes early and stays late, and the limp morning-glory may always be counted upon to slouch familiarly over everything ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... leaving the room, returned with a bottle of wine which was port to the look and red-currant to the taste, and a seedcake of formidable appearance. The visitors attacked these refreshments mildly, Mr. Piper sipping his wine with an obtrusive carefulness which his niece rightly regarded as a reflection upon ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... millionnaire of him; but strike away the first, the rest are wind. Which signifies, that if you do not take his estimate of himself, you will think little of his: negative virtues. He is not eminently, that is to say, not saliently, selfish; not rancorous, not obtrusive—tata-ta-ta. But dull!—dull as a woollen nightcap over eyes and ears and mouth. Oh! an executioner's black cap to me. Dull, and suddenly staring awake to the idea of his honour. I "rendered" him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... glance at my mother, and saw the pallor of her face,—but to me the world held now only two realities, Winifred and Wilderspin; all other people were dreams, obtrusive and irritating dreams. 'Go on, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... purple cone-flower, having several blossoms. He worked at the lump deftly, delicately, so that the earth, pinched, powdered and shaken out, fell between his fingers, leaving the knotty yellow roots in his hand. I marked how firm, slow, brown, the old man was, how little obtrusive in my field. One foot rested in a furrow, the other was set among the grass of the margin, near the ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... and tested it; all supplies were on board, and the chronometers had been checked. All that remained was to get rid of the importunate bumboat — men who swarmed round the vessel in their little craft, each looking like a small floating shop. These obtrusive fellows were quickly sent off down the gangway: besides ourselves only my brother was left on board. Now that we were thus completely isolated from the outer world, the long-expected moment had arrived when I could proceed to ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... Hawthorne, has commented on the extent to which the nobler qualities and conquering energy of the English character are hidden, not only from foreigners, but from ourselves, by the "detestable lay figure" of John Bull. In like manner, the obtrusive type of the "canny Scot" is apt to make critics forget the hot heart that has marked the early annals of the country, from the Hebrides to the Borders, with so much violence, and at the same time has ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... and admirers kept him busy. Their delight seemed to be to seize on all the youngsters they could by any pretext lay hands on and hale them to appear before him. By this means they imagined they were making his authority known and dealing a serious blow at the less obtrusive ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... insupportable than his futile attempts. But, nevertheless, something must be done. It could not be that Colonel Osborne should have gone down to the close neighbourhood of Nuncombe Putney without the intention of seeing the lady whom his obtrusive pertinacity had driven to that seclusion. It was terrible to Trevelyan that Colonel Osborne should be there, and not the less terrible because such a one as Mr. Bozzle was watching the Colonel on his behalf. Should he go to Nuncombe Putney himself? And if so, when he got to Nuncombe Putney ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... a dead silence in the room, a stillness in which the quiet ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece became maddeningly obtrusive. For seconds that dragged out interminably neither of the two men stirred. It was as if they were mutely listening to that eternal ticking, as one listens to the tramp of a watchman ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... meeting and discussing subjects connected with their own interests, in their own fields, and 'under their own fig-trees', with their landlords and Government functionaries of all kinds and degrees, prevents their ever feeling or appearing impudent or obtrusive; though it certainly tends to give them stentorian voices, that often startle us when they come into our houses to discuss ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... for Pinto was somehow less alarming to her than he had been. Perhaps she was conscious that at the corner of the street stood a quietly dressed man doing nothing particular, who was relieved at the eighth hour by an even less obtrusive-looking gentleman from Scotland Yard. ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... of independent sovereignty, that the violence and injustice of the Napoleonic commercial system was seen in its most repulsive form; in the greater part of the Empire it was felt more in the general decline of trade and in a multitude of annoying privations than in acts of obtrusive cruelty. [166] The French were themselves compelled to extract sugar from beetroot, and to substitute chicory for coffee; the Germans, less favoured by nature, and less rapid in adaptation, thirsted and sulked. Even in such torpid communities as Saxony political discontent was at length ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... irritated the local Cabalists who refused to have their "divine science" reduced to "reason." And so, disillusioned, he had rebounded to "human study," setting off on a pilgrimage in the depth of winter to borrow out-of-date books on optics and physics, and making more enemies by his obtrusive knowledge of how dew came and how lightning. It was not till—on the strength of a volume of Anatomical tables and a Medical dictionary—he undertook cures, that he had discovered the depths of his ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... o'clock my short servitude ended. As soon as a bend in the road hid us from the house I opened my portmanteau, got out my own clothes, and, sub there, changed my raiment, putting on a quiet suit of blue, and presenting George Sampson's rather obtrusive garments (which I took the liberty of regarding as a perquisite) to Jean, who received them gladly. I felt at once a different being—so true it is that the tailor makes ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... chatty, and her countenance fresh and blooming. But I missed something—something the absence of which awakened a sigh of regret. Ralph was very lover-like in his deportment, fluttering about Delia, complimenting her, and showing her many obtrusive attentions. But eyes that were in the habit of looking below the surface of things, saw no ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... liberty of addressing you in behalf of an American prisoner of war now in the Stapleton depot, and I address you, sir, under the conviction that a petition in the cause of humanity will not be considered by you as obtrusive. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... and granted with all alacrity his three demands of a supper, a surgeon, and a bed. I stood back, ill at ease, aching at the mention of supper, and wondering whether I were to be driven off like an obtrusive puppy. But when M. le Comte, without glancing at me, said to the drawer, "Take care of my serving-man," I knew my ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... almost as long at his window. The Irish yew came to his mind again as he was on the point of drawing his curtains: but either he had been misled by a shadow the night before, or else the shrub was not really so obtrusive as he had fancied. Anyhow, he saw no reason for interfering with it. What he would do away with, however, was a clump of dark growth which had usurped a place against the house wall, and was threatening to obscure one of the lower range ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... had recently permitted me to show; but I recoiled from the effects of my own attentions. I was vexed to perceive that my approaches occasioned a start, a flutter—a shrinking inward—as if my advance had been obtrusive, and ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... food [25] was washed down with huge draughts of milk. The feasters resembled Wordsworth's cows, "forty feeding like one:" in the left hand they held the meat to their teeth, and cut off the slice in possession with long daggers perilously close, were their noses longer and their mouths less obtrusive. During the dinner I escaped from the place of flies, and retired to a favourite tree. Here the End of Time, seeing me still in pain, insisted upon trying a Somali medicine. He cut two pieces of dry wood, scooped a hole in the shorter, and sharpened the longer, applied point to socket, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... encouragement out would come my manuscript book, unabashed. I need hardly state that my cousin was not a severe critic; in point of fact the opinions he expressed would have done splendidly as advertisements. None the less, when in any of my poetry my childishness became too obtrusive, he could not restrain ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... deems her only possible destiny, she becomes Forward and assuming. She regards it as necessary to force attention toward herself. She is not of those who "to be won, must be wooed." Her aims are obtrusive; instead of waiting for the approach of another, she makes constant advances toward him. This fault is still more repulsive to most gentlemen than the other. They esteem it an indication of great vanity ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... upon the calm, stately beauty and her white flowers. Ronald saw them. He could not help remarking the exquisite toilet, marred by no obtrusive colors, the pretty lily wreath and fragrant bouquet. It never occurred to him that Valentine had chosen those delicate blossoms in compliment to him. He thought he had never seen a fairer picture than this magnificent blonde; then she faded ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... faculty to inspire confidence in the new Administration. Mrs. Davis herself was not the least of the factors that made the President's policy the creed of the land. There was no elaboration of costume—no obtrusive jewels. The most richly dressed dame in the company was a Madame Gannat, the deity of the most charming drawing-room at the capital. At her house society was always sure to meet the European noblemen traveling in the country, the quasi official agents of France, England, and Austria, accredited ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... engagement, for some trifling reason, was broken off, and he married the heiress. At the end of five years he returned to England, discharged every liability, and in two years more was the owner of his birthplace. The marriage, alas! was unhappy. There was no obtrusive fault in his wife, but he did not love her. She could not understand his resolution to take upon himself his brother's debts, and she thought the price he paid for the house was excessive, as indeed it was. She was a good manager, but without imagination. He was rejoicing, ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... mother ought to be shown: such respectful homage will secure for him many advantages in his present position. He must not, however, presume to take his stand yet as a member of the family, nor exhibit an obtrusive familiarity in manner and conversation. Should a disruption of the engagement from some unexpected cause ensue, it is obvious that any such premature assumption would lead to very embarrassing results. In short, his conduct should be such as to win for himself the esteem and affection of ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... so much to anything as to her own superiority; it really wanted a great deal of courage for an average mortal to propose to her. Her unconscious egotism had something rather grand in it; it was rarely obtrusive, but it was always there. Her mind was naturally a vigorous one, but it had moved in a narrow channel, and whatever was out of her own groove, she ignored. She appreciated whatever Jane Melville knew that she ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... both to the general and to his secretary, that the Relation does not differ substantially from other contemporary accounts, and that the attempt to varnish over the exceptionable passages in the conduct of the Conquerors is not obtrusive. ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... Sylvie was too pretty and too womanly to be quarrelled with for the sake of a subject that did not in the least interest him. Beside, he meant to come in; so he opened the gate for her, and followed in a well-bred, gentlemanly way, that had nothing obtrusive in it. Miss Barry welcomed him with the quaint formality, the subtile air of education, refinement, and morality, so much a part of herself. It pleased him extremely, and settled ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... naturally, with no obtrusive kindness; she was at a necessitous task—putting a broad gray patch, the best available from the resources at home, on Jimmy Kirtland's brown jacket, doing it deftly with her ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Occasionally he succeeded, but I am told that as a consequence he had so severe a wigging from the Home Secretary and the Chief Commissioner of Police that he was at last compelled to abandon his efforts to secure his unfettered liberty of action. Forster managed to obtain exemption from the obtrusive services of a bodyguard, but a policeman kept watch and ward by day and night in front of his house in Eccleston Square, not only to his disgust, but to that of one of his neighbours, who quitted his abode rather than continue to live near so dangerous a character. ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... features of our friends, are always distracting, especially during illness, when restfulness is so essential. The plain cartridge-papered wall with frieze and ceiling either flowered or of a light shade of the same or a contrasting color is never obtrusive and always in good taste. With a flowered wall a plain ceiling is a relief, and vice versa. Figures in both walls and ceiling are tiring, besides having none of the effect resulting from contrast. Walls in plain stripes need to be livened ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... that places Americans preeminent over the men of every other nation in their courtesy to women; and Miselle would fain most gratefully acknowledge the constant attention and kindness everywhere offered to her, while never once was she annoyed by obtrusive or unwelcome approach; and not the vast resources of her country, not the grandeur of Niagara, give her such pride and satisfaction as does the new knowledge she has gained of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... critic who attempts to speak of Titian. To seize the salient characteristics of an artist whose glory it is to offer nothing over-prominent, and who keeps the middle path of perfection, is impossible. As complete health may be termed the absence of obtrusive sensation, as virtue has been called the just proportion between two opposite extravagances, so is Titian's art a golden mean of joy unbroken by brusque movements of the passions—a well-tempered harmony in which no thrilling note suggests the ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... reason of a round and somewhat battered object which, from its general conformation, he took to be the end of a formidable bludgeon or staff. But, applying his eye to the aperture, he saw that this very obtrusive object was nothing more or less than a leg (that is to say, a wooden one), which was attached to the person of a burly, broad-shouldered, fiercely bewhiskered man in clothes of navy-blue, a man whose hairy, good-natured visage was appropriately ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... that stretched to the edge of the sea. There was a summer-house built on—and partly from—a crumbling bastion, and here, under the shade of tropical creepers, the melancholy captive was comfortably writing, with her portable desk on her knee, and a traveling-bag at her feet. A Saratoga trunk of obtrusive proportions stood in the centre of the peaceful vegetation, like a newly raised altar to an unknown deity. The only suggestion of martial surveillance was an Indian soldier, whose musket, reposing on the ground near Mrs. Markham, he had exchanged for the rude mattock ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... who corresponded with Buonaparte, and consoled the prisoner of St. Helena with black currant jam, was no ordinary personage. Most people, I fancy, were afraid of her. Her stature, her voice, her beard, were obtrusive marks of her masculine attributes. It is questionable whether her amity or her enmity was most to be dreaded. She liked those best whom she could most easily tyrannise over. Those in the other category might possibly keep aloof. For my part I feared ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... wind. Joan watched her spreading the butter a quarter of an inch thick upon her toast and restrained with difficulty the impulse to take it away from her. And her clothes! Joan had seen guys carried through the streets on the fifth of November that were less obtrusive. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... every rake exerts his art T' ensnare the unsuspecting heart. The prostitute, with faithless smiles, Remorseless plays her tricks and wiles. Her gesture bold and ogling eye, Obtrusive speech and pert reply, And brazen front and stubborn tone, Show all her native virtue's flown. By her the thoughtless youth is ta'en, Impoverished, disgraced, or slain: Through her the marriage vows are broke, And Hymen proves a galling yoke. Diseases come, destruction's ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... was about Calico's markings which stuck in one's mind, as does a haunting memory, intangible but unforgotten. Surely the pattern was obtrusive enough to halt attention; yet its vagaries were so unexpected, so surprising that, even as you looked, you might hesitate at declaring whether it was his withers or his flanks which were carrot-red and if ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... age have carried me far beyond the point where I could any longer be in sympathy with this crude, thin-skinned, impulsive girl. And then—four or five children! Decidedly, I will give her a wide berth. And Courtney himself, with his big beard, small brain, and obtrusive laugh! I shall step across to California ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... left me, while I reluctantly directed my steps towards the college, which now appeared unwelcome and obtrusive. She was so different to everything I had hitherto experienced!—so gentle and kind—so unassuming, and yet so lovely—and now to be torn away and severed from such a person! That night I attempted to console myself in the following effusion; and as they are the first and ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... hurriedly despatched to Milovka to organize a local self-defence corps. He carried as many pistols as could be stowed away in a violin-case, which, with a music-roll holding cartridges, was an obtrusive feature of his luggage. The winter was just beginning, but mildly. The sun shone over the broad plains, and as David's train carried him towards Milovka, his heart swelled with thoughts of the Maccabean deeds to be wrought there by a regenerated Young Israel. But the journey was long. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... development of the dragon-myth astronomical factors played a very obtrusive part: but I have deliberately refrained from entering into a detailed discussion of them, because they were not primarily the real causal agents in the origin of the myth. When the conception of a sky-world ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... pottery. Joseph-Marie was not in evidence at Vallauris: but we found the potters glad to show us their work, seemingly for the pride they had in it. Of course you did have a chance to buy: but salesmanship was not obtrusive. ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... stone. After a few attempts, she managed quite well and found a curious pleasure in the manual labor of fitting stone to stone and properly bedding the whole in cement. She learned to select the right pieces with a rapid glance and to chip an obtrusive corner or face a rock with a few taps of the heavy hammer. It gave her a pleasure akin to her experiments in jewelry, and it must be said the results were better. She used to show her visitors proudly the bit of wall ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... broken. 'Yes, the heap to be cleaned is rather obtrusive,' he said, 'but I suppose it is a ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... amazement, then cried. "Death of my life, young fellow!—" But at that instant his servant brought in his supper, and he went no further. My own meal was before me a minute later, and we both devoted ourselves in angry silence to our food. I was still full of resentment at his obtrusive scorn of myself and my religious party, and I could see that he felt himself mightily outraged at my retorts. From the rapid, heedless way in which he ate, I fancied his mind was busy with all sorts of revenge ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... may draw the knot of logic, yet for the ear he still leaves the tissue of the sentence floating somewhat loose. In prose, the sentence turns upon a pivot, nicely balanced, and fits into itself with an obtrusive neatness like a puzzle. The ear remarks and is singly gratified by this return and balance; while in verse it is all diverted to the measure. To find comparable passages is hard; for either the versifier is hugely the superior of the rival, or, if he be not, and still persist in his more delicate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whole play to memory by attending ten performances, much as Mozart had pirated the ancient exclusive music of St. Peter's in Rome. He was at this period a thriving literary craftsman, and the author of a series of popular plays in which the critics of the time had just begun to note and resent an obtrusive democratic tendency. ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... came. She had seen the world—its glories without being dazzled; its vices and follies without being infected by them. She had suffered often and severely from fits of long and painful sickness, always with calmness and resignation. She had a profound, but not an obtrusive sensibility. She was always cheerful, never frivolous; she had neither ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... golden hue, lustrous and luminous, it resembles a brilliant and somewhat opaque Indian yellow. A gorgeous and durable substitute for that fugitive pigment is produced by compounding the orient with aureolin, or by using the latter as a glaze. Being more transparent than cadmiums and less obtrusive, the new yellow is adapted for mellow sunset and sunrise clouds, or for sunshine on distant mountains. With French blue it affords a beautiful sea green; and, mixed with aureolin, gives fine foliage tints. It is also eligible for draperies and illumination. For enamelling it is inadmissible, ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... St. Dominic leaves her cell to sing the praises of the Lord, and offer Him the day with its duties consecrated without reserve to His glory. When heavy curtains screen her restless slumber from the sun's obtrusive light, the pious daughter of St. Vincent de Paul descends into the folds of her own heart in meditation, and enkindles in the fire of divine love the charity with which she must cheer the poor or sick whom she is destined to visit during ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... the allegorical form, in the obtrusive, untempered predominance of the qualities represented, so overdone as to wear the air of a caricature, though the historical combination is still here. These diagrams are alive evidently; they are men, and not allegorical ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... M. Vinteuil had used to my parents in apologising for an obtrusive sheet of music. This photograph was, of course, in common use in their ritual observances, was subjected to daily profanation, for the friend replied in words which were evidently a liturgical response: "Let ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... with his life-guards in Hampton Court Park. It was on one of them, most probably Friday the 20th, that George Fox had that final meeting with him which he describes in his Journal. The good but obtrusive Quaker had been writing letters of condolence and mystical religious advice to Lady Claypole in her illness, and had recently sent one of mixed condolence and rebuke to Cromwell himself; and now, not knowing of Cromwell's own illness, he had come to have a talk with him about the sufferings of the ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the pods, or estimates the yield of oats to the acre by counting the sheaves that he stacks, or examines the lawn to see what kinds of grass are thriving. About all such matters his talk is the talk of an experienced man habitually interested in his subject, and yet it is never obtrusive. The remarks fall from him casually; you feel, too, that while he is telling you something that he noticed yesterday or years ago his eyes are alert to seize any new detail that may seem worthy of attention. Details are always really his subject, for the generalizations ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt |
