"Tactless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wild, stormy morning of January, that a letter at length arrived for Antoine from Cherbourg. The news was blurted out with tactless plainness. 'La pauvre petite' was no more. In proportion as she grew calmer in mind, it appeared, Marie had grown weaker in body: and a cold she had contracted soon after her arrival in Cherbourg, had settled on her lungs, which were always delicate. For ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... they seemed an expression of Tante's desire to make amends. And Mr. Drew, with his vague, impenetrable regard, helped her to bear them. It was as if, a clumsy child, she were continually pushed forward by a fond, tactless mother, and as if, mildly shaking her hand, the guest before whom she was displayed showed her, by kind, inattentive eyes, that he was paying very little attention to her. Mr. Drew put her at her ease and Tante embarrassed her. She became, even, a little ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... crossed the Jordan, I met him. He came lumbering down upon me, and I thought my days in Canaan were numbered. It was only after I made some blunder or said some tactless thing that Mistake bothered me, but at such times he gave me untold trouble. One time a pilgrim named Slow was standing by the way. As I was passing him, I, not being as careful as I should be, bumped into him and nearly knocked him off the road. Poor fellow, ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... charity and reverence. Hence, impulsively, unscrupulously, yet with ingenious unkindness, she struck—her tongue a sword—to the wounding of poor Miss Felicia. And she felt no necessity for apology. She liked to be unkind. She liked to strike. Aunt Felicia should not have been so self-assertive, so tactless. She had brought chastisement upon herself. It wasn't like her to behave thus. Her enthusiasms abounded; but she possessed a delicate appreciation of relative positions. She never poached. This came perilously near poaching.—And everything ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... his tactless expression of awe—and she rarely missed anything so obvious—it probably did nothing to raise the young man in her esteem. She ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... had time to put their "opinion of what ought to be the relations" between the two countries into definite form, there was presented to them, in a manner as needless as it was tactless, a statement of what the American authorities thought those relations should be. The Cubans, who were faithfully observing their earlier instructions, were deeply offended by this interference, and by the way in which the interference came. The measures known as the Platt ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... to waste, and I always make mine myself. I was most careful to keep them hidden. You are very tactless." ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... "CHOCOLATES" excused themselves as they do today. "Who could abide such a fanatical, fiery fool? such an uncompromising character? Nobody could work with him, or he with them!" (What a lie! Jesus did, and they got on well together.) A tactless enthusiast, who considered it his business to tell every man the unvarnished truth regardless of consequences. He won his degree hands down, and without a touch of the spur. A first-class one, too—that of the headman's axe—next best to that ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd
... over his forehead again and gazed as if he could never gaze enough. His hand shook and his mouth shook and his voice shook. He was an ignorant old man and a tactless old man and he could only remember the things ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... respectfulness to his mother was enlarged upon. Various virtues were discovered in him. People talked with approbation of the learning he had acquired in the four years he had spent in German universities. Gaganov's conduct was declared utterly tactless: "not knowing friend from foe." Yulia Mihailovna's keen insight ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... everything that was agreeable. We talked of generalities, as well as "War," in four languages (Russian, French, English and German) with much the same sang-froid as the juggler who tosses knives and, when the meal was done, thanked Heaven that nobody had launched a tactless bomb which might have plunged us into a boiling sea. There was nothing particularly boastful in their conversation, though at times a certain assured reference to "Paris in a fortnight" crept in, ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... husbands than widows do wives. The presence of the dead wife may be a taunting memory, but seldom more. It is not often that she is spoken of, unless it is to praise her cooking. If she made incomparable biscuits and her coffee was fit to be the nectar of the gods, there are apt to be frequent and tactless comparisons, until painful experience teaches the sinner ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... little letter has come from you! It is warmly and eloquently written, and every thought in it is true. To talk now of laziness and drunkenness, and so on, is as strange and tactless as to lecture a man on the conduct of life at a moment when he is being sick or lying ill of typhus. There is always a certain element of insolence in being well-fed, as in every kind of force, and that element finds expression chiefly in the well-fed man preaching ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... doctrine of original sin. "We know of its truth," said Dr. MacBride, "from the severe troubles and distresses to which infants are liable, and from death passing upon them before they are capable of sinning." Yet I knew he was a good man; and I also knew that if a missionary is to be tactless, he might almost as well ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... deal with had something excessive about him; he was headstrong, tactless, impractical, enormously energetic, a prodigious worker, a conceiver of grandiose projects, and a relentless hunter of patrons. He was at home with his social superiors and had some pretentions to literary culture, he had a coarse gift for the vivid phrase ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... stopped in the middle of her sentence; she knew Michael's old sensitiveness about these physical disabilities, and she had a moment's cold horror at the thought of Falbe having said so miserably tactless a thing to him. But the horror was of infinitesimal duration, for she heard Michael's laugh as they leaned over the top ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... beside your bedroom window, sir,—they look pretty fresh!" interpolated the Padre, a sincere but somewhat tactless Christian. ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... her face to look at the soldier beside her. She had been tactless as usual in thus expressing her feelings about peace to a man who was a great warrior. But General Alexis did not appear angry. Indeed, there was no disagreement in the expression of his eyes, it was almost as if he too felt as Mildred ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... find the Age of Pericles in full swing; with all made anew, or in the making; and the time definitely set on its downward course. 'Reform' was busy at abolishing institutions once held sacred; was the rage;—that funeral speech of Pericles, with its tactless vaunting of Athenian superiority to all other possible men and nations, should tell us something. When folk get to feel like that, God pity and forgive them!—it is hard enough for mere men to. Aeschylus ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the wiles of the villain Britisher. One has it all on the best of authority—his own—in My Three Years in America (SKEFFINGTON). Of course awkward incidents did occur, which have to be explained away or placidly ignored, but really, if the warlords at home had not been so invincibly tactless in the matter of drowning citizens of the United States, this simple and ingenuous diplomat might very well have succeeded, he would have us believe, in persuading President WILSON to declare in favour of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... a sigh from the abyss following her as she went down the hall. Her comforting words meant nothing pleasant to her son, who felt that her optimism was out of place and tactless. He had no intention to be "all right," and he desired nobody to interfere with ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... "Tactless!" thought Mrs. Allison, with vexation, but she did not know how to stop the stream. In truth, since she had given Lord Fontenoy leave to invite Harding Watton she had had time to forget the invitation, and she was sorry now to think of his housing with the Maxwells. For Watton had ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not come right out and say a thing so utterly tactless. What he did say, in a worried tone, was that he was sorry now he had not fetched along a much more powerful horse for me to ride on. He had a good big chunky work animal, not fast but very strong in the back, he said, which would have answered ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... much affected by this speech, and so, I fear, was Mamie. I admit it was a tactless performance. "When you know our friend a little better," was not happily said; and even "keep him in good order, for he needs it" might be construed into matter of offence; but I lay it before you in all confidence ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... The amiable but tactless Snavely saw a happy solution of the problem. "Never mind, Mrs. Pipkin," he said, "there shall be no lawsuit. You pay me the six dollars, and I will write Cadge a receipt for the seven dollars he owes me. I lose a dollar that way, to be sure, but then it is ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... honest basis for all mankind. With our minds freed from pretence and falsehood we could enter into the heritage of all the faiths. China would share her sages with Spain, and Spain her saints with China. The Ulster man who now gives his son an unmerciful thrashing if the boy is so tactless as to ask how the evening and the morning could be the first day before the sun was created, or to betray an innocent calf-love for the Virgin Mary, would buy him a bookful of legends of the creation and of mothers of God from all parts of the world, and be very glad to find his laddie as interested ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Adjutants and Company Commanders, Private Wamphray, whose acquaintance we made a few pages back, was ultimately relieved of his position as a Company Signaller, and returned ignominiously to duty, for tactless if justifiable interposition in one ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... said indulgently, "you needn't look so worried. I won't be tactless with Morgan again. After this I'll just keep out of ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... to some of his sentiments, which the German was tactless enough to keep thrusting in our faces. He was as offensive to our English friends on the subject of England as he was to us concerning America, but one of the Englishmen sang and couldn't play a note, so Jimmie let the German stay, because ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... gave the girl a glance of apology; he was a tactless individual in shading facts. "Of course, all that Three C's bunch is liars, and Craig worst of all. But I did hear him say that Latisan is loafing in New York and is prob'ly in jail by ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... on the formidable Church party. It would be certain to cause displeasure among the priesthood; and in those days it was a ticklish business to offend the priesthood, even for a monarch. And, if Merolchazzar had a fault, it was a tendency to be a little tactless in his dealings with that powerful body. Only a few mornings back the High Priest of Hec had taken the Vizier aside to complain about the quality of the meat which the King had been using lately for his sacrifices. He might be a child in worldly ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... Tactless, blunt, and direct, Annixter was quite capable of calling even Magnus a fool to his face. But before he could proceed, S. Behrman in his single buggy turned into the gate, and driving leisurely up to the porch halted on the other side ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... majority was approaching, the Regent's power seemed on the point of slipping from him; Marshal Villeroy, aged, witless, and tactless, irritated at the elevation of Dubois, always suspicious of the Regent's intentions towards the young king, burst out violently against the minister, and displayed towards the Regent an offensive distrust. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... concluding, a tactless man sitting next to George, with whom he had progressed very slowly in acquaintance during the lunch, leaned towards him and murmured ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... that you love the Count?" inquired Schmidt, surprised beyond measure by the girl's words and rendered thereby even more tactless than usual. ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... it as bad as that? My dear Woodville, I'm so sorry! What a tactless idiot I am! But Lady Chetwode, now. Her great friend, Vera Ogilvie, I know very well indeed. I met her last Tuesday, so she's quite an old friend. Mrs. Ogilvie's the pretty woman who thinks she has a Byzantine profile. She's all over strange jewels and scarabs, ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... cushions in the bows, pensively twirling a Japanese parasol, one arm flung round the shoulders of her companion—a fellow-student; fair and stolid and good-humoured. Broome summed her up mentally: "Tactless but trustworthy. Anglo-Saxon to the last button on her ready-made Shantung coat and the blunted toe of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... character are so well known that one needs not say much about them. Good sense, good humour, and imagination keep her scheme of things sane and beautiful. No attempt is made by those around her either to preserve or to break her illusions. When she was a little girl, a good many unwise and tactless things that were said for her benefit were not repeated to her, thanks to the wise watchfulness of Miss Sullivan. Now that she has grown up, nobody thinks of being less frank with her than with any other intelligent young woman. What her good ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... him delightedly round the pictures, expounding their merits and their little histories. He found that Oliver, although unlearned, had a true sense of light and colour and tone. He was just beginning to like him, when the tactless fellow, stopping before the collection of little dogs, ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... his teeth set hard, his powers concentrated on one point, that of winning Madame Hanska, was at times hardly master of himself. There was indeed some excuse for his irritation, when his family wrote something tactless, or involved themselves in fresh misfortunes, just as matters perhaps seemed progressing a little less unfavourably than usual. Their letters were always read aloud at the lunch table at Wierzchownia, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... paper found that he could write: Never young Civilian's prospects were so dark, When the wretched Blitzen wrote to make his mark. Certainly he scored it, bold, and black, and firm, In that Indian paper—made his seniors squirm, Quoted office scandals, wrote the tactless truth— Was there ever known a more misguided youth? When the Rag he wrote for praised his plucky game, Boanerges Blitzen felt that this was Fame; When the men he wrote of shook their heads and swore, Boanerges ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... the exact opposite of Brent, in that he looked to be exactly what he was; a figure rigidly type-cast to the role of a blustering, tactless servant of the people. Which, in Crane's case, meant that he was a servant of Crane's career and any faction of his supporters that could further it. Still, the Senator could not be called dishonest. He was merely a flexible rationalizer. He sincerely believed that what was good ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... which they called "l'anti-chambre," all three officers coached Father Beckett and me in trench manners. As for Brian, it was clear to them that he was no stranger to trench life, and their treatment of him was perfect. They made no fuss, as tactless folk do over blind men; but, while feigning to regard him as one of themselves, they slily watched and protected his movements as a proud mother might the first steps of ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... whole, Prometheus has been over-praised, perhaps because the beauty of the interspersed songs has dazzled the critics. Not only are the personages too transparently allegorical, but the allegory is insipid; especially tactless is the treatment of the marriage between Prometheus, the Spirit of Humanity, and Asia, the Spirit of Nature, as a romantic love affair. When, in the last of his more important poems, Shelley returned to the struggle between the good ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... did not change, though she was perfectly well aware that Gouache had intended to correct her manner of addressing the young man. The latter was slightly annoyed. What difference could it make? It was tactless of Gouache, he thought, for the lady ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... too, apparently, for she found no words in which to tell him that it was his affair. Her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her eyes downcast, she seemed shrunken together, overcome by his tactless intrusion. ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... reason that marks the loafer's gravitation toward a lighted groggery. Moreover, in the beetle phase, it is sure to appear at the most inopportune times and unsuitable places, creating the inevitable commotion which the blunder and tactless are born to make. As it whisks aimlessly around, it may hit the clergyman's nose in the most pathetic sentence of his sermon, or drop into the soprano's mouth at the supreme climax of her trill. Satan himself could scarcely produce a more complete absence of ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... settling on the Eastern borders of the colony, and from that time onwards there was a slow but steady influx of English-speaking colonists. The Government had the historical faults and the historical virtues of British rule. It was mild, clean, honest, tactless, and inconsistent. On the whole, it might have done very well had it been content to leave things as it found them. But to change the habits of the most conservative of Teutonic races was a dangerous venture, and one which has led to ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... by this, had disappeared in various directions, puzzled and exceedingly uncertain what to do. Indeed, to congratulate Billy in the Colonel's presence would have been tactless; and, on the other hand, to condole with the Colonel without seeming to affront the wealthy Mr. Woods was almost impossible. So they temporised and ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... Smithers was pluckily doing up his bootlace several yards away; a tactless grin seemed to desolate his features. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... feelings of Admetus himself? First, mere indignation and disgust at the utterly tactless proposal: then, I think, in 1061 ff. ("I must walk with care" ... end of speech), a strange discovery about himself which amazes and humiliates him. As he looks at the woman he finds himself feeling how exactly like Alcestis she is, and then yearning towards her, almost ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... appearance excluding the suspicion of mere sly malice, I came to the conclusion that he was simply the most tactless idiot on earth. I almost despised myself for the weakness of attempting to enlighten his common understanding. I started to explain that I did not think anything whatever. Hamilton was not worth a thought. What such an offensive loafer . . . "Aye! that he is," interjected Captain Giles . ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... English society, it appears, with the splendour of a full-blown ambassador, and at whose expense? Certainly not at his own, and neither the late ambassador, de Nivernais, nor the coming ambassador, de Guerchy, a man far from wealthy, had the faintest desire to pay the bills. Angry and tactless letters, therefore, passed between d'Eon in London and de Guerchy, de Nivernais, and de Praslin in Paris. De Guerchy was dull and clumsy; d'Eon used him as the whetstone of his wit, with a reckless abandonment which ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... united in giving Vogt the very best possible character. Wegstetten had had a violent altercation with Brettschneider, not only from personal feeling for the bombardier, but also from annoyance that his best candidate for a non-commissioned officer's post was lost to him through a piece of such tactless mismanagement. Brettschneider had complained about this reprimand, but no notice had been taken of his complaint, and that in itself spoke volumes for the accused. Guentz and Reimers were very warm in their praise of Vogt, and even ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... him. Since SHE had said nothing, He said nothing, and Clara's words in the hall seemed to him singularly tactless: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... blameless life. It must all be worked off to-day. He skirted the school by a field path in case any of those narrow souls paid to employ so aimlessly the precious hours of his youth might be there. They would certainly be tactless enough to question him as he passed the door. Then ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... thumb of my little squirrel here, and then KROGSTAD and I knew each other in early youth; and when two people knew each other in early youth—(a short pause)—h'm! Besides, he will address me as, "I say, TORVALD"—which causes me most painful emotion! He is tactless, dishonest, familiar, and morally ruined—altogether not at all the kind of person to be a Cashier in a Bank ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... come, Mr Savoyard, could you give me any hints about them that would help me to make a little conversation with them? I am, as you said, rather out of it in England; and I might unwittingly say something tactless. ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... am very curious to know all about you—who you are, and how you came to the Astons, and who was your mother, and when and where Aymer met her. You see," he added confidentially, "I used to be about with Aymer a good bit and I thought I knew all——" He stopped abruptly. If he were being purposely tactless he realised he had ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... those who said that they believed had as much fear of death as though there had been no faith in them. No: religion was not a strong enough support.... And in addition there were certain personal experiences, feelings of revolt and disgust, a tactless confessor who had hurt her.... She went on practising, but without faith, just as she paid calls, because she had been well brought up. Religion, like the world, seemed to her to be utterly empty. Her only stay was the memory of the dead ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... As though deploring such tactless persistency, Penny pursed up his mouth, laid his head on one side, shrugged his shoulders, and ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... don't say he isn't attracted by the pretty face of her, as much as his cousin was; privately I think he is, but I don't really know. Anyhow, it certainly would be a very good solution; but it was tactless of him to suggest it with David at the foot of the ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... it?" she said. "Why, when they were all laughing about it just now" ("I was right, then," thought Miss Mapp, "and what a tactless woman!"), "I said I believed it. And ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... all over and changed colour. Of course it was horribly tactless of me, but it's odd he should be so sensitive. I wonder if he has ever suffered from any cruel jokes ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... memory for facts, names and faces. Over him men went "insane in pairs," either devotedly admiring or completely distrusting him. Cleveland was almost devoid of personal charm except to his most intimate associates. He was brusque and tactless, unimaginative, plodding, commonplace in his tastes and in the elements of his character. Men threw their hats in the air and cheered themselves hoarse at the name of Blaine; to Cleveland's courage, earnestness and honesty, they gave a tribute of admiration. When the campaign ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... was the distinctness with which the Union separation shone as the goal. This was shown in the Cabinet meeting by the very tactless, but very Norwegian expressions when the break-down of the negotiations was officially announced. The old King was pleased to express his hearty wishes, "that the two Kingdoms which could soon celebrate the centenary of their Union, ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... Englishness of accent was less an imitation or an affectation than a certain form of politeness and modesty. When an Englishwoman said, "Cahn't you?" it seemed tactless to answer, "No, I cann't." To respond to "Good mawning" with "Good morrning" had the effect of a contradiction or a correction. She had none of the shibboleth spirit that leads certain people to die or slay for ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... pause after he had spoken his tactless words. It was broken by a thrice-repeated ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... left him. He set down his cup hastily. "Oh, my dear!" he exclaimed. "I was tactless! Forgive me!" Again he looked about the room and back at Lydia's face above the meager dress fashioned the year before from a cheap remnant. Could a mother's death, he wondered, have put the look into her eyes and lips ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... but the meetings were all orderly and calm. The police had taken extensive precautionary measures. The speakers were mostly members of the Reichstag or the Berlin Town Council. Throughout they were guilty of the most fiery and tactless attacks on Austria, to whom alone they ascribed the guilt for the warlike developments. Each meeting adopted a resolution against war. The chief of police had forbidden all processions or demonstrations to take place after the day before. In spite of this, many of the Socialists who had attended ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... and Laura formed no exception. Pin, her most frequent companion, had to bear the brunt of her acrimony: hence the two were soon at war again. For Pin was tactless, and took small heed of her sister's grumpy moods, save to cavil at them. Laura's buttoned-upness, for instance, and her love of solitude, were perverse leanings to Pin's mind; and she spoke out against ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... was due to pride. After Miss Willoughby's tactless remark he may have thought there was no use saying anything when his sweetheart believed him guilty." Colwyn spoke without conviction; the memory of Penreath's demeanour to him after his arrest was too fresh ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... flash the other life he spoke of. I was a student, it seemed, at some university, where there was a boy of my own age, a curious, wilful, perverse, tactless creature, always saying and doing the wrong thing, for whom I had felt a curious and unreasonable responsibility. I had always tried to explain him to other people, to justify him; and he had turned to me fop help and companionship ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... some extent as regards the iniquity of freezing on to a decent share of the doubloons. And that, you see, is where the dim and rusty past begins to get mixed up with the live, vivid present. If any tactless person were to publish those very able speeches made by Comrade Bickersdyke when a bulwark of the Tulse Hill Parliament, our revered chief would be more or less caught bending, if I may employ the expression, as regards his chances of getting in as Unionist candidate ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... silence and like an automaton. That old man's chatter brought down around his head, like a swarm of pestering mosquitoes, all the provoking, irritating obligations of his life. He felt like a man rudely awakened by a tactless servant in the middle of a sweet dream. His lips were still tingling with Leonora's kisses! His whole body was aglow with her gentle warmth! And here was this old curmudgeon coming along with a sermon on "duty," "family," "what they would say"—as if love amounted ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... It would be tactless, if not positively dangerous, if we children's librarians openly expressed our views when certain people point boastfully to themselves as shining products of mediocre story book childhoods. So I would hastily suppress this thought, and instead remind these people that, as ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... faintly resembling a liberty. She answered what he said, and made a remark in her turn; but, without waiting for his reply, she looked round at Gianluca and spoke to him, interrupting something which he was trying to say to Veronica. In almost any situation, such a proceeding would have been tactless; but Bianca had seen the result of the meeting between Gianluca and Veronica on the former occasion, and she guessed rightly that if they were forced into the necessity of exchanging commonplaces, there would be an even more complete failure now ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... making capital out of the pension vetoes. Toward the end of the canvass Sir Lionel Sackville-West, the British Minister, fell into a Republican trap and wrote to a pretended naturalized Englishman, who called himself Murchison, that a vote for Cleveland would best serve Great Britain. His tactless blunder caused his summary dismissal from Washington and aided the Republican cause much as the Burchard affair had injured ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... manifestly refused her old friend. It was but a small object of ambition, but we must do what we can, thought Edgar; and it is the best wisdom to content ourselves with mice when we have no lions to destroy. He did not, however, rush up to her with Alick's tactless precipitancy. He waited just long enough for her to desire, and not so long as to disappoint; then, speaking to Adelaide by the way, and giving her and Josephine each a helping hand, he came in a series of clean, showy curves to where Leam and her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... not so much tactless as envious. As she and Catia were well aware, Scott Brenton was the one really personable man upon the horizon of their village life, the only man who seemed to have it in him to translate a wife out of that humdrum village into the seething world beyond. Of course, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... houses with progressive methods not only guard against inexcusable blunders and tactless letters but they are studying the classes and the individuals with whom they are dealing. A mail may bring in two letters—one, from a farmer, laboriously scrawled on a bit of wrapping paper; the other, from a lady in town, written on the finest stationery. Both may request ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... sympathy, these people were just as offensive to him as to the whites in the other end of the train. Surely, if a classification of passengers on trains was at all desirable, it might be made upon some more logical and considerate basis than a mere arbitrary, tactless, and, by the very nature of things, brutal drawing of a color line. It was a veritable bed of Procrustes, this standard which the whites had set for the negroes. Those who grew above it must have their heads cut off, figuratively speaking,—must be forced ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... a good fellow—so kind, and brave, and upright, and generous, so fine a mind, and so high a soul—is tactless and imprudent; he even condescends to the thought of intrigue; and though he rejects his plots at last, his nature has once harbored deceit. Don Inocencio, the priest, whose control of Dona Perfecta's conscience has vitiated the very springs of goodness in her, is by no means bad, aside ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... State, but the man who directed the national policy in shipping matters was Robert Lansing, then counsellor of the Department. It is somewhat difficult to appraise Mr. Lansing justly, for in his conduct of his office there was not the slightest taint of malice. His methods were tactless, the phrasing of his notes lacked deftness and courtesy, his literary style was crude and irritating; but Mr. Lansing was not anti-British, he was not pro-German; he was nothing more nor less than a lawyer. The protection of American rights at sea was to him ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... his bride would often say, "See how gracefully he skims along without having to flop heavy wings as we do," and she gave her brothers a side glance which made them feel that she was contrasting their clumsiness with his ease. After that tactless remark, the four brothers-in-law began to ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... measure a natural gift, but it can be cultivated, and is well worth the trouble. Nothing can be so utterly painful in society as the tactless person who is perpetually "doing those things which he ought not to have done, and leaving undone those things which he ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... a gorgeous Japanese dressing-gown, purple brocade embroidered with gold, that he had surreptitiously bought in the harbor of Nagasaki. To Rezanov it was like a red rag to a bull; but the professor was oblivious at the moment of the tactless garment. His eyes were glaring and the extended tip of his nose worked like a knife trying to leap from its sheath. But although he occasionally ventured upon a retort when goaded too far in conversation, he was able to curb his just indignation when the Chamberlain was in a bad ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... focused upon her, Libbie crawled from under the seat where she had dived, following an ostrich-like impulse to hide her head from coming danger. Her confusion was increased by the tactless comment of the operator who, seeing her "full view" for the ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... I shall have to fight For the love of a bounding Balkanite; But O what a tactless choice of time, When the bathing season is at its prime! And how I should hate to miss my chance Of wallowing off the coast ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... prudence or discretion. Both had the best of intentions, and took honest pains to bring up their children to a capable and worthy maturity; but both unintelligently interfered with the sound development of the childish souls. The mother was so tactless as to make the children, even at a tender age, the confidants of her annoyances and intrigues. The undignified parsimony of the king, the blows which he distributed so freely in his rooms, and the monotonous daily routine which he forced upon her, were the subject of no end of ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... versatility of intellect, the charm or assurance or magnetism of manner, the weight of social position, all of which tend to secure to an inferior man a pre-eminence in the circle in which he moves, are equally evanescent, and the shy, rugged, and tactless recluse often emerges on the strength of his genuine and abiding performances to a position in the eyes of the world which he ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... a way, the Chinese felt a revulsion against non-Chinese, such as the Salars, who were of Turkish race. Here there were always possibilities of friction, which might have been removed with a little consideration but which swelled to importance through the tactless behaviour of Chinese officials. Finally there came divisions among the Mohammedans of China which led ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... was the least interested or deferential in talking that I have ever met with in a man of his class. He certainly thought this particular woman of singularly small account, or else the brusque and tactless allusion to his books may perhaps have annoyed him as it did me; but whatever the cause, when he promptly left me at the first approach of a mutual acquaintance, I felt distinctly snubbed. Of the two men, Mr. Gladstone was infinitely more agreeable in his manner, he left one with the pleasant ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... fear. You're all descended from the ancient kings: I know that. [Complacently] I'm not so tactless as you think, my boy. [Earnest again] I expect to find Miss Reilly a perfect lady; and I strongly advise you to come and have another look at her before you make up your mind about her. By the way, have you a photograph ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... and alone to that. Now what I want you to do is to marry someone else. I have an idea who I should like it to be, but I won't talk about it now. It's the most charming girl in the world. I shan't tell you her name, that would be tactless. It's that lovely Miss Verney, of course. She's much too good for you—an heiress, a beauty, and an orphan! But she's wonderful; and she ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... emotions with a little smile, and the lady who was called "Ma" explained to people in general why they had "cut it so close" at the station. The two daughters called her "Ma" several times, toned her down in a tactless, effective way, and drove her at last to the muttered inventory of a basket of travelling requisites. Presently she looked up. "Lor!" she said, "I didn't bring them!" Both the daughters said "Oh, Ma!" But what "them" ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... he said reproachfully, "was mighty tactless. I don't know how. But I know I'm not going to stick my head over the ramparts for 'em to shoot at. I'm no African Dodger—I'm an impresario. Maybe they'll hit me in the eye, all right, but I'm not going to give 'em a good cigar ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... of the territory which had been conquered and occupied at such cost, and those who noticed it were astonished at the evacuation by it of the sandjak of Novi-Pazar. At the same time Baron Achrenthal little foresaw what a hornet's nest he would bring about his ears by the tactless method in which the annexation was carried out. The first effect was to provoke a complete boycott of Austro-Hungarian goods and trading vessels throughout the Ottoman Empire, which was so harmful to the Austrian export trade that in January 1909 Count Achrenthal had to indemnify Turkey with ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... whose remarkable mental alacrity, self-esteem, and love of sharp repartee occasionally betrayed him into tactless sallies and epigrammatic retorts, deeply wounded the pride of more than one delegate of the lesser Powers in a way which they deemed incompatible alike with circumspect statesmanship and the proverbial hospitality of his country. For he is incapable of resisting the temptation ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... pleasant things would one day be his own. His mind was occupied at the moment, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, by the recollection of that painful scene in Bow Street Police Court. The magistrate's remarks, which had been tactless and unsympathetic, still echoed in his ears. And that infernal night in Vine Street police station . . . The darkness . . . The hard bed. . . The discordant vocalising of the drunk and disorderly ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... parts. She may even have flattered herself that she was showing tact—keeping an unconscious Gerry out of the way, who might else interfere with the stars in their courses, in the manner of the tactless. Rosalind suspected this of Sally, that whatever she might think she thought, and whatever parade she made of an even mind no sentiments whatever prevailed in, there was in her inmost heart another Sally, locked in and unconfessed, that had strong views on ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... And while the tactless Gammire went on, "walking" a circle round him, Mr. Atwater's eye furiously searched the borders of the path, the lawn, and otherwheres, for anything that might serve as missile. He had never kicked ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... continents and the Western Hemisphere. Great Britain might discharge her financial obligations by transferring to the United States the whole of British America! And Sumner seems actually to have believed that he was promoting the cause of international good will by this tactless proposal. ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... mediator would meet with success in such a task. Of the luckless Princess, however, Mrs Stanhope was for long a distinct partisan; and on March 19th of that same year she wrote a description of the tactless Caroline which shows that, on occasions, the Princess could assume a dignity foreign to the usual ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... attention to the scene. He was chatting with Montresor and the gentlemen of Monsieur, all sworn enemies of the Cardinal, because, out of the throng he avoided, he had found none but these to speak to. This conduct would have seemed extremely tactless in one less known; but although he lived in the midst of the court, he was ever ignorant of its intrigues. It was said of him that he returned from a battle he had gained, like the King's hunting-horse, leaving the dogs to caress their master ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... some would have it, unscrupulous. Grandier, on the contrary, was frank and ardent and generous, and was idolized by the people of Loudun. But he had serious failings. He was most unclerically gallant, was tactless, was overready to take offense, and, his wrath once fully roused, was unrelenting. Accordingly, little surprise was felt when the choice ultimately fell, not on ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... in the Zemstvo hut, how tactless!" said the doctor. "If one does want to put a bullet through one's brains, one ought to do it at ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... his celebrated manifesto, "To my noble and heroic Serbian people," FERDINAND in the Sobranje was publicly denouncing the Serbians as obstinate, treacherous, and tyrannical. The KAISER considers this conduct extremely tactless, and threatens, if it continues, to spell Bulgarian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... Queen and Prince Albert took place amid great splendour and general rejoicings on the 10th of February; the general satisfaction being unaffected by the tactless conduct of Ministers who, by not acting in conjunction with the Opposition, had been defeated on the question of the amount of the Prince's annuity, the House of Commons reducing it from ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria |
