"Unattractive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jean growled. "You do not know what you are doing. I do. She is young and lonely. You are young and not unattractive to women. Already she turns pale when I so much as ask if she has ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... store for them,—the universe must not be allowed to fool them so cruelly. What infinite pathos in the small, half-unconscious artifices by which unattractive young persons seek to recommend themselves to the favor of those towards whom our dear sisters, the unloved, like the rest, are impelled by their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... open the fourth volume, which is emblazoned with the title of Physique Social. And here we will at once extract a passage, which, if our own remarks have been hitherto of an unattractive character, shall reward the reader for his patience. It is taken from that portion of the work—perhaps the most lucid and powerful of the whole—where, in order to demonstrate the necessity of his new science of Sociology, M. Comte ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... chap you are! Am I so unattractive that you really want to rush off after those horses?" He said nothing, and she went on after a moment of hesitation: "I have known men who would have thought it a privilege to be left alone ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... melancholy, often slept in a low inn or in the hill-top windmill after long hunts in the forest of St. Leger. It occurred to him that it would be convenient for him to have a pavilion or hunting-lodge in this unattractive place, and accordingly he ordered one erected at Versailles, on the road that led to the forest of St. Leger. In 1627, concluding that in no other domain of its limited acreage could he find so great variety of land ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... elegant person; and a complexion rather pale. She thought he had quite a careless, if not a slightly rakish look; but I believe a man, even in that light, would have seen in him something manly and far from unattractive. He had a rather gruff but not unmusical voice, with what some might have thought a thread of pathos in it. He always reminded certain of his friends of the portrait of Jean Paul in the Paris edition of his works. He was hardly above the middle height, and, I am sorry to say, wore ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... friend we entered a house on one of the strange streets. Like most of the old houses its front was plain and unattractive. We went through a court and on to a balcony overlooking an enclosed garden. Such a garden I had never seen! It seemed a picture transported from the 'Thousand and One Nights.' In the center was a fountain of extraordinary ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... a long, low building, unattractive in itself, but its gardens with every beautiful device of native art, fountains, bridges, shrines, fantastically trimmed trees, flowers, ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... servants, sympathisers with him in his religion, were told all the story, and before nightfall were on their march to Joppa. Swift obedience to whatever God points out as our path towards the light, even if it seem somewhat unattractive, will always mark our conduct if we really long for the light, and believe that He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... legends in "Stories of Gods and Heroes" are derived from Ovid and Virgil. They are not literally translated, for, in the author's opinion, poetry translated into literal prose is very unattractive reading. Neither are they in verse, as well for other reasons as from a conviction that to translate faithfully under all the embarrassments of rhyme and measure is impossible. The attempt has been made to tell the stories in prose, preserving so much of the poetry as resides in the thoughts ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Philadelphia. As he walks along he flings one at every passenger. An Englishman, when he is first introduced to this manner of trade, becomes much astonished. He is probably reading, and on a sudden he finds a fat, fluffy magazine, very unattractive in its exterior, dropped on to the page he is perusing. I thought at first that it was a present from some crazed philanthropist, who was thus endeavoring to disseminate literature. But I was soon undeceived. The bookseller, having gone down the whole car and the ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... Merton did not like. She was not unattractive in appearance, though her features were far off the screen-heroine model, her nose being too short, her mouth too large, her cheekbones too prominent, and her chin too square. Indeed, she resembled too closely her father, who, as a man, could carry such things more ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... was too hideous to be thinkable. In his anger he had accused her of flirting with Bivens, but in his heart he didn't believe it. The personality of the little money-grubber made the idea preposterous. He was not only frail, insignificant, and unattractive physically, but he had personal habits which were offensive to Nan's feelings of refinement. His excessive use of tobacco was one thing he knew she could not tolerate. Tobacco ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... and then spend the long evenings at the corner saloons or fishing in the upper bay, or sometimes taking the car down to St. Marys, and walking about surveying the comfortable old houses and carefully kept lawns. And of Ironville, St. Marys did not think very much, save that it was dirty and unattractive and, ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... marvelous! instead of the meager and unattractive stew, brought every morning to these young people by the departed housekeeper, Madame Seraphin, an enormous cold turkey, served up on an old paper box, ornamented the middle of one of the tables of the ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... landed, to take possession of the bluff. Ascending, with proper precautions, the wooded hill, we soon found ourselves in the deserted camp of a light battery, amid scattered equipments and suggestions of a very unattractive breakfast. As soon as possible, skirmishers were thrown out through the woods to the farther edge of the bluff, while a party searched the houses, finding the usual large supply of furniture and pictures,—brought up for safety from below,—but no soldiers. Captain Trowbridge then got the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... the Just. He was an amorist for whom platonic dalliance had no charm, and there are gruesome tales of ladies burned alive because they would not quench the flame of his desires, of others, fiercely virtuous, who poured boiling oil on face and bosom to make themselves unattractive in his sight. But the head that wears a crown apparently has fascinations which few women can resist, and legend tells more frequently of Pedro's conquests than of his rebuffs. He was an ardent lover to whom marriage vows were of no importance; that ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... of matrimonial or other yokes, and it was quite certain that, as soon as he could do so without serious risk, he would repudiate his unattractive wife, and probably other things besides. For Anne's defects were only the last straw added to the burden which Henry bore. He had not only been forced by circumstances into marriage with a wife who was repugnant to him, but into a religious and secular ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... pleased with the result of her visit. The books, it is true, seemed unattractive: but they would please Robert, no doubt. If that packet had been lost we should not have had "Pauline": we might have had a different Browning. It contained most of Shelley's writings, all in their ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... nondescript nationality for the most part. One or two there were in a distant corner who were unmistakably Chinamen; but my slight acquaintance with the races of the East did not enable me to classify the greater number of those whom I now saw about me. There were several unattractive-looking women present. ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... ineffective or worthless, e.g., a "dud" egg; a "dud of a girl" is one who is unattractive; and a dud joke ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... than that. You don't know what an advantage it is to be as I am, rather cold and unresponsive to women and unattractive and negligible—negligible, that is the exact word—to them. YOU can't look at a woman for five minutes without losing sight of her in a mist of imaginative excitement. Because she looks back at you. I have the privilege of the negligible—which is a cool head. Miss Grammont ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... think," a gruff man was beginning—an unattractive person this, with a week-old beard and a frowning brow, when an old fellow, who had been sitting disconsolately in the corner of ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... have been different if she had been able to doubt, even a little, of his unreconciled state, as she doubted of Lord Warburton's; unfortunately it was beyond question, and this aggressive, uncompromising look of it was just what made it unattractive. She could never say to herself that here was a sufferer who had compensations, as she was able to say in the case of her English suitor. She had no faith in Mr. Goodwood's compensations and no esteem for them. A cotton factory was not a compensation for anything—least of all ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... rows of inscriptions, telling year for year through centuries the history of the kings who built them, are so many invaluable pages, while the sculptures which accompany these annals are the illustrations, lending life and reality to what would otherwise be a string of dry and unattractive records. But a greater wonder has been brought to light from amidst the rubbish and dust of twenty-five centuries: a collection of literary and scientific works, of religious treatises, of private and public ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... foliage of the trees, and bend from his direct path hither and thither to catch the effects of distant buildings, and make for his eye half-rural landscapes in the middle of the metropolis. No landscapes had beauty for him now; the gambols even of his own baby were unattractive to him; leaves might bud forth and nourish and fall without his notice. How went the share-market? that was the only question that had an interest for him. The dallyings of Capel Court were the only courtships that he now cared ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... civilisation—a society to which (let me add, by way of footnote) Prussia today is firmly, though with great difficulty, being tamed. There are, and have been, other civilisations in the world —the Chinese, for instance; a huge civilisation, stationary, morose, to us unattractive; 'but this civilisation,' says Newman, 'together with the society which is its creation and its home, is so distinctive and luminous in its character, so imperial in its extent, so imposing in its duration, and so utterly without rival upon the face of the earth, ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... protected the village of Belton. The house itself was an ugly residence, three stories high, built in the time of George II, with low rooms and long passages, and an immense number of doors. It was a large unattractive house—unattractive that is, as regarded its own attributes but made interesting by the beauty of the small park in which it stood. Belton Park did not, perhaps, contain much above a hundred acres, but the land was so broken into knolls and valleys, ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... in his seat, staring at his daughter with incredulous eyes. Could it be possible that the girl was in earnest after all, that she was really attached to this most heavy and unattractive young man? He looked appealingly at his old friend, who, so far, had taken no part in the conversation, and she took pity on his embarrassment and came to the rescue. Two years' constant companionship with Lettice had shown her that there was a large ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... his master, was dour, morose, forbidding, and a confirmed solitary. He was also a singularly ugly and unattractive creature, whom no man had ever seen at play. But prior to Jan's arrival he had been the unquestioned chief and master ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... 'Observations on the Comparative Merits of Locomotive and Fixed Engines.' Robert Stephenson, speaking of the authorship many years after, said, "I believe I furnished the facts and the arguments, and Locke put them into shape. Locke was a very flowery writer, whereas my style was rather bald and unattractive; so he was the editor of the pamphlet, which excited a good deal of attention amongst engineers ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... violinist to get at first hand some of his opinions with regard to his art, he had already met him under particularly interesting circumstances. The question had come up of writing text-poems for two song-adaptations of Viennese folk-themes, airs not unattractive in themselves; but which Kreisler's personal touch, his individual gift of harmonization had lifted from a lower plane to the level of the art song. Together with the mss. of his own beautiful transcript, Mr. Kreisler in the one instance had given me the printed original which suggested it—frankly ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... extremes already indicated. Our share in the Exhibition was creditable to us as a nation not yet a century old, situated three to five thousand miles from London; it embraced many articles of great practical value though uncouth in form and utterly unattractive to the mere sight-seer; other nations will profit by it and we shall lose no credit; but it fell far short of what it might have been, and did not fairly exhibit the progress and present condition of the Useful Arts ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... my conversation with this unattractive child I was in my brougham, with the windows up, and I sat back, a paper before my face lest any one should look in. Naturally, I was afraid of being seen in company of William's wife and Jenny, for men about town are uncharitable, and, despite the explanation I had ready, might have ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... abroad in the early hours of the morning, but it does seek at times to hover on the edge of disrespectability with something of the roguish curiosity of childhood. And now the respectables and the unrespectables, a motley gathering in that garish room, amid the ugly debris of their feasting, made an unattractive picture from which I turned with a sense of relief to the quieter place ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... I placed him on a low branch, as a hint that it was safer there, he declined to accept my advice, but flew off and came to the ground again. He was a scraggy looking, rusty black little fellow, the most unattractive young bird I ever saw. Shortly after this he clambered up on a pile of brush about a foot high, without so much as a leaf to screen him, and there he stayed all day, motionless, being fed at long intervals; and there I left him at night, never expecting ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... Picton, the Guildhall, the two gaols, a fish and butter market-place, over which is the town fire-bell; the slaughter-house, similar to the abattoir at Paris, and excellent shambles, with poultry and potato market-places annexed. The church, which is an ancient one, has an unattractive exterior; but when you enter it, I think you will say it can compete with any church for ancient beauty and ornament. Amongst the tombs in the chancel are those of Sir Rhys ap Thomas, with the effigies of him and his lady, affording ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... and meek ways, you'd come to grief. You could always fool everybody but me, though mother's pet, must have the best of everything to show off her good looks, and no matter what fell to my share. I was so homely and unattractive it did not make any difference what I wore. But the tables are turned now, eh, Jane! The old folks didn't know, when they thought they'd made you for this world and the next, by putting you ahead of me, and sounding ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... had considered Winslow an unattractive man, of a harsh visage, but now, as he looked at his little ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... of which are amusingly described in his book "Crotchets and Quavers." More than twenty years later he attempted to continue the story in a musical journal, and gathering the disconnected chapters together, issued them in an unattractive form under the title "Flats and Sharps." The first book is, to some extent, a contribution to musical history, though its strong personal equation and its effort to be entertaining mar its value and influence. The ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... complex, artificial, unsatisfying amusements, and its hosts of frantic people. He grew older in a moment; he was forty again now; an instant ago, just on the further side of those blue woods, he had been fifteen. Life shrank and dwindled in him to a little, ugly, unattractive thing. He was returning to a flat in the dolorous edifice of civilisation. A great practical Scheme, rising in sombre bricks and mortar through a disfiguring fog, blocked all the avenues of ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... CENTURION (an unattractive man of fifty, short in his speech and manners, with a vine wood cudgel in his hand). How now? What ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... than her brother, and, at the time of our story, was just over thirty. She was not an unattractive young woman, though by no means beautiful. Her great merit was the kindliness of her disposition. She was not very clever, nor very animated, nor had she apparently the energy of her brother; but she was guided by a high principle of right and wrong; her temper was sweet, and her faults were ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... the influenza, as interfering in less degree with my comfort,—I have, of course, neglected no opportunity of finding out what we may reasonably look forward to. I fear the worst, Agatha. For I repeat, the girl's face is, to me, absolutely unattractive!" ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... the batsman to devote his whole energies to defending himself from the severe and often fatal injuries following his being hit by the pitched ball. Fortunately, the change in the distance between the pitcher and batsman has decreased the opportunity for this class of unattractive games. But it will not do to go over to the other side and by too much weakening of the box work give the "line-'em-out" class of "fungo" hitters a chance to revel in over-the-fence hits, and give the batsman undue preponderance ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... of Lord Fairfax, and of other members of the Fairfax family, had discovered beneath the unattractive appearance of George Washington a sterling character. Their neighbourhood, on the upper Potomac, was much less civilised and refined than Fredericksburg, and this young gentleman, so well instructed in right rules of behaviour and conduct, won their hearts and their confidence. It had been necessary ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... invaluable during Clara Fawn's long illness. She knew every rule at croquet, and could play piquet. When the girls got up charades they had to acknowledge that everything depended on Miss Morris. They were good-natured, plain, unattractive girls, who spoke of her to her face as one who could easily do anything to which she might put her hand. Lady Fawn did really love her. Lord Fawn, the eldest son, a young man of about thirty-five, a Peer of Parliament and ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... It looks grey and unattractive, and unfortunately the unprepossessing but valuable outer coat is polished away. This is done in a mortar hollowed out of a section of a tree trunk or out of a large stone. One may see a young man or a young woman pounding the rice in the mortar ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... One purpose stands paramount over every other. It is the "ideal making factory" of the life. From transforming sticks and chairs, the soul will one day pass to transforming memories and thoughts, putting away the unattractive features and investing the attractive with even more charm, through dreams of what might be. From constructing houses out of blocks, the soul will begin to construct ideals out of its experiences and visions, according to a pattern shown on ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... Skinner chose to assume, the unattractive figure of "red-hot" Barstow, and the obvious swindle which was being perpetrated on Walter Hine, had the opposite effect to that which Skinner expected. Chayne, instead of turning his back upon so distasteful a company, frequented it in the resolve to take Sylvia out of its grasp. ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... help for criminals—to remove the causes which led them to crime, to convince them of our good faith and good will, and to disabuse them of their suspicion that we distrust them, condescend to them, and despise them. For this prodigal brother of ours has become a very unsightly and unattractive object during these thousands of years of his sojourn among the pigsties and corn husks. He does not speak in our language or observe our manners or contemplate our ideals, or care for our refinements. We shall have to read again the fairy stories where the prince has been changed by evil enchantment ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Miss Norsham seized upon Dean Alder, to whom she had been lately introduced, and played with the artillery of her eyes on that unattractive churchman. Mr Dean was old and wizen, but he was unmarried and rich, so Miss Norsham thought it might be worth her while to play Vivien to this clerical Merlin. His weak point,—speedily discovered,—was archaeology, and she was soon ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... them, are much more interesting. Nothing is so unattractive as goodness, except, perhaps, a sane mind in a sane body. Even the children find the fairies monotonous, I believe. An eternal smile is much more wearisome than a perpetual frown. The one sweeps away all possibilities, the other suggests ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of similar temples are excavated in another rock. They are much more simple, with unattractive portals and plain columns; therefore, not to be compared with those at Adjunta. This task would have been impossible if the rock had been granite or a similar primitive foundation; unfortunately, I could not ascertain what the rock was, I only examined the pieces which were here and there ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... could call Rudham a pretty village: it was too straggling, too bare of trees, which had been planted sparsely and attained no luxuriance of growth; but it was not wholly unattractive this evening, with the setting sun turning to gold the varying bends of the river which ran through the valley, and the cottages and farmhouses dotted here and there with a not unpleasing irregularity, and in the distance ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... table to receive it. Reginald's copy on this occasion consisted of a number of advertisements, a class of work not nearly as easy and far less interesting than the paragraphs of news which generally fell to his share. However, he attacked them boldly, and, unattractive as they were, contrived to get some occupation from them for his mind as well ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Fox-Wiltons' house, owned now, since the recent death of its master, Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton, by his widow, the sister of the lady with the cat and the embroidery, and mother of many children, for the most part an unattractive brood, peevish and slow-minded like their father. Hester was the bright, particular star in that house, as Stephen Barron ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... name of everything that is eccentric should you go there for? The most uninteresting, out-of-the-way, altogether unattractive little hole in all Germany? What can have put Silberbach ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... Holden. He was a coarse, rough-looking boy, his reddish face one mass of freckles, and about as unattractive as a person could be, without absolute deformity. This, however, was not the ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... bit of it. Here I am, and here I shall stay. I take comfort in the fact that no one connects Ian Verity with an elderly and unattractive spinster hidden in a hermitage on Bessmoor. You will not betray me, I know, and it is good of you to come and visit me in my solitude. I am growing old and you have all your life before you. I have crossed to the shady side of the road while you walk still in the sunshine. ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... by an awkward figure, with a sullen, serious countenance. The poets always represent Venus as attended by the three Graces, to intimate that even beauty will not do without: I think they should have given Minerva three also; for without them, I am sure learning is very unattractive. Invoke them, then, DISTINCTLY, to accompany all your words ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... labour of a life time to make one's true self known and honoured. Therefore I have come to thy door, thou world-vanquishing Love, and thou, Vasanta, youthful Lord of the Seasons, take from my young body this primal injustice, an unattractive plainness. For a single day make me superbly beautiful, even as beautiful as was the sudden blooming of love in my heart. Give me but one brief day of perfect beauty, and I will answer for the days ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore
... fine fellow?" asked Murray, as he eyed the unattractive personage. The governor had certainly not belied him when he described him as destitute of good looks. On the top of his grisly head he wore a large white turban. His colour might once have been brown, but it was now as black as that ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... him pause. Events in Central Italy had gone farther than he looked for, and his private map of the kingdom of Upper Italy was growing smaller every day. Why was this? He cannot have been seized with a warm interest in the unattractive despotism of the Duke of Modena, or the chronic anarchy kept down by Austrian bayonets at Bologna. But it was becoming apparent that if Modena and Romagna were joined to the new Italian kingdom, Tuscany would ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... say. I had to wait some time, though during that silence she gave no sign of distress or agitation. It was for her obviously a moment of reflection. Her lips were compressed a little in a characteristic, capable manner. I looked at her with a friendliness I really felt towards her slight, unattractive, ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... station we sipped a dreary, faded reminiscence of former joys and sparkling brilliancy long dead, in cups of Congress-water, brought by unattractive Ganymedes and sold in the train,—draughts flat, flabby, and utterly bubbleless, lukewarm heel-taps with a flavor of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... domain had first been declared "public," the government had been indifferent to the type of occupier which served it by squatting on this territory and reclaiming land that had not been divided or sold chiefly because its condition was too unattractive to invite either of these processes.[209] It had probably extended its invitation even to Latin allies,[210] and looked with approval on any member of the burgess body who showed his enterprise and patriotism by the performance of this ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... retained. Doubtless, much of the interest we have felt in the work is due to our personal acquaintance with the writers who put on paper for us these simple tales, yet we hope that they will not be wholly unattractive to those for whose sake ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... expected. He was a gentleman, and he behaved like a gentleman, with the added punctilio, I think, of being sorry for his betrothed. But it was difficult to see what, in the long run, he could expect to make of such a position. If a man marries an ugly, unattractive woman for reasons of state, the thing is comparatively simple; it is understood between them, and he need have no remorse at not offering her a sentiment of which there has been no question. But when he picks out a charming creature ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... Gregory, "that he is not meek. Ah, how little he knows himself! His words are, indeed, extravagant; his appearance is ferocious, and even (to an ordinary taste) unattractive. But only the eye of a friendship as deep and delicate as mine can perceive the deep foundation of solid meekness which lies at the base of him, too deep even for himself to see. I repeat, we are the true early Christians, only that we come too late. We are simple, as ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... could not stop that if we would, and we would not stop it if we could. The danger comes when a girl thinks of little else. The girl who begins by devoting all her thought to boys is apt to end by being a very unattractive and unpopular sort of woman. Every girl ought to get along well with the girls of her own age as well as with the boys. There is something wrong with the girl who cannot get along with her girl friends. ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... spelling book in hand, to begin the foundation of my education, are so many and great that it is difficult to realize the state of things that existed, or that men of intelligence should have selected such a dry and unattractive method of imparting instruction to children of tender years. It is to be feared that there are many of our Canadian youth who do not appreciate the vantage ground they occupy, nor the inviting opportunities that lie within the reach of all to obtain a generous education. There is ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... interrupted the young man thoughtfully, "there are other things worth living for—duty. An unattractive nose would not interfere with that. Some people think it is rather more important than love. I admit your ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... weakness and distress. Quick prostration follows all effort, excepting when she is fired by excitement. All ability to reason in the face of desire is gone; she is dominated by emotions which become each year more unattractive; even the air- castles are tumbled into ruins. Her husband is a slave—used as a convenience. Her waning best is for those who attract her, her growing worst for those who offend. One child's life is maimed ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... Cleopatra had looked on, wistfully it is true, but not enviously at her sister's astonishingly successful career: for was not Baby only a child after all? And, from the age of eleven to fourteen, Leonetta had been so outrageously gawky and unattractive, no matter how beautifully she happened to be clad, that Cleopatra's feelings of uneasiness about her sister were laid to rest as if ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... and jaws, showing the bluish grain of the strong beard and moustache that Owen kept closely shaven. The heavy forehead, the smutty brows overshadowing eyes of clear, vivid, startling Alpine blue, the close small ears, the thick white throat, were very, very unattractive in Mildred's eyes—at least, in comparison with the three-volume-novel charms of the grey-eyed, golden-moustached, classically-featured, swaggering young military dandy in the coloured photograph. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... answering the letter received but yesterday from Miss Winthrop. It needs no telling—the fact that there had never been a love-affair in their engagement; and no one can greatly blame a woman who is dissatisfied with a loveless match. Viva Winthrop was not so unattractive as to be destitute of all possibility of winning adorers. Indeed, there was strong ground for believing that she fully realized the bliss of having at least one man's entire devotion. Whatsoever evil traits may have cropped out in Mr. Hollins's army career, she had seen nothing of ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... beneath the sand which he had with such care spread back upon the little scar which he had made there in the earth. With trembling fingers she pushed back the yellow earth, and found—nothing but black rock, uncouth, and unattractive. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... cadets and conscripts (Memnon, p. 26). A soldier who had left the army told a friend of mine that he and many of his comrades had taken to homosexual indulgences when abroad on foreign service in a lonely station. He kept the practice up in England 'because the women of his class were so unattractive.' The captain of an English man-of-war said that he was always glad to send his men on shore after a long cruise at sea, never feeling sure how far they might not all go if left without women for a certain space of time." I may add that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of all these superstitious beliefs attached itself to the crapaudine, or toad-stone. It is most unattractive to sight, of an opaque dirty-brown tint, and known to mineralogists as a variety of trap-rock. It was believed to have most sovereign virtues against poison if pounded and drank, and, like the turquoise, to give warning of its presence ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... present, but a condition in the spiritual sphere that is largely a product of a long past. The really inexcusable thing is our willingness, in a day of greater light and knowledge, to close our eyes to the true nature of the unattractive, anaemic thing we call faith, which would be seen as powerless to achieve at all, if taken out of the soil of material means in ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... was impenetrable. Learn this, ye prigs of morality, that no work of genius ever yet demoralised a dolt or ignoramus. Even the Old Testament, with all its stores of the "shocking," really does very little harm. It requires mind for mind in reading, and vice becomes unattractive even to the vicious when they cannot understand it. I did understand Rabelais, and the Moyen de Parvenir, and the Cymbalum Mundi, and Boccaccio (I owned these books), and laughed over them, yet was withal as pure-minded a youth as could well be imagined without being a simpleton. For, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... and Mr. Franklin took his seat at the fireside. Benjamin was reading, the unattractive tallow candle ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... the wild regions of Tierra del Fuego and the unattractive Falklands, Valparaiso appeared to us a very beautiful place. It is very irregularly built—at the bottoms of valleys, on the tops of hills, and on their steep and sometimes rugged sides, rising directly out of the blue ocean, with ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... exterior. Wines and spirits could be ordered through agents in Basra from Bombay at reasonable rates. Bombay is about five days by steamer from Basra. It was almost a universal experience to find alcohol necessary in the evening. The mind was exhausted, food was unattractive, conversation was impossible, the passage of time immeasurably slow, and a restless irritation pervaded one until a dose of alcohol was taken. Its effect was humanising. Still, it is worth remembering that the Prophet forbade alcohol to the ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... miles north-west of Manchester. It has, so far as I have been able to observe in my repeated visits, but one main street, a very dirty one, Deansgate, which serves as a market, and is even in the finest weather a dark, unattractive hole in spite of the fact that, except for the factories, its sides are formed by low one and two-storied houses. Here, as everywhere, the older part of the town is especially ruinous and miserable. A dark-coloured body of water, which leaves the beholder ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... adventures as a prisoner of the Turks, first in Damascus and Asia Minor and finally in Constantinople. The narrative, which is purely one of action, the action being supplied by the efforts, finally successful, of the author and various brother-officers to escape from their most unattractive captivity, nevertheless offers a most vivid picture of the social fabric of the Near East and in particular of the attitude of the melange of Oriental peoples that comprised the Turkish Empire towards the War in which they found ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... afterwards went and killed his mother. They infer that he killed his mother because he had read Penny Dreadfuls (post hoc ergo propter hoc) and they conclude very naturally that Penny Dreadfuls should be suppressed. But before roundly pronouncing the doom of this—to me unattractive—branch of fiction, would it not be well to inquire a trifle more deeply into cause and effect? In the first place matricide is so utterly unnatural a crime that there must be something abominably peculiar in a form of literature that ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... always seemed inexplicable to me: they had been married thirteen years; I had a glimpse of her once, and, honestly, I couldn't conceive a man abandoned enough to plunge into sin for the sake of such an unattractive person. I don't know whether I have not done wrong by refraining from putting that view before poor Selvin: the man made a little hell on earth for himself, and I also suffered indirectly, but some sort of, no doubt, false delicacy ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... wall, a course of bricks is laid on one face and a course of half-bricks on the other, and they are bedded to the line on each face. The walls are bonded by alternate courses of the two different kinds, and as the bricks are always laid so as to break joints, this lends strength and a not unattractive appearance to both sides ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... were beggared, and as I heard afterwards, driven to such extremities that one of them died of her misery and the other became a lodging-house keeper. The details do not matter, but I may explain that these ladies were unattractive in appearance and manner and broke down beneath my cross-examination which made them appear to be telling falsehoods, whereas they were only completely confused. Further, I invented an ingenious theory of the facts which, although the judge regarded ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... with the stuff he found that it was not only highly magnetic, but also possessed polarity in a marked degree; and was entirely different from the true meteorite. Here was a curiosity, indeed; a small, insignificant and unattractive stone possessed of strong magnetic polarity, a property of electricity that is as mysterious and incomprehensible as is ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... a bright, clear morning when a rather rough-looking, yet not unattractive person, entered a large jewelry establishment located on one of the ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... His residence was upon an island formed by the confluence of two rivers, a place which before he commenced his improvements presented no very promising subject, being a dreary, waste, and uncultivated plain, equally worthless and unattractive. On this spot, however, he erected a splendid palace, laid out gardens around it of extraordinary extent and magnificence; salubrity, seclusion, horticultural ornament were all studiously and tastefully combined ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... up, giving an intense light in that awful darkness. By this light, for one moment only, we saw a strange, and not unattractive spectacle. I think I forgot to say that in the centre of this vault stood a kind of altar, which until that moment, indeed, I had not seen. This altar, which, doubtless, had been used for ceremonial purposes at the funerals of the ancient Kings, consisted of a plain block of basalt ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... or perhaps for that very reason, it was dreamland, unreality, which would one day elude me and vanish; reality was the Round Tower in Copenhagen and all that lay about it. It was ugly, and altogether unattractive, but it was reality. That ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... being now only a drag upon them, it was broken up and burnt for the sake of the ironwork. On account of the damage to the salt pork caused by the sinking of this boat, the strictest economy of diet had to be exercised, and though an abundance of fish was caught, they had become unattractive to their palates. The continuation of the voyage down the course of the Murray was henceforth a monotonous repetition of severe daily toil at the oar. The natives whom they encountered, though friendly, became a nuisance from the constant handling and embracing that the voyagers had, ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... small silence. Charmian knew now that she was making the wrong impression, that she was obstinately doing, being, all that was unattractive to Heath. But she was governed by the demon that often takes possession of girls who love and feel themselves unloved. The demon forced her to show a moral unattractiveness that did not really express her character. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... o'clock, as I was sauntering slowly through a seemingly unattractive street, by which there ran a stream as black as the ink called "Eau de Robec," my attention, fixed for the moment on the quaint, antique appearance of some of the houses, was suddenly attracted by the view of a series of second-hand ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... of a mile from the village, and is built, like so many houses of the last century, as near as possible to the road—a narrow lane winding away to the Westerham high-road. In 1842, it was dull and unattractive enough: a square brick building of three storeys, covered with shabby whitewash and hanging tiles. The garden had none of the shrubberies or walls that now give shelter; it was overlooked from the lane, and was open, bleak, and desolate. One ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... her position the more difficult because of her grandmother's graciousness. She so evidently thought herself conferring a favour on a portionless and unattractive girl, that it became hard to say ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... hire in addition, "to dig, plough and do all the hard work." On learning that the college units do everything on a farm, she queried anxiously, "But how about their corsets?" To the explanation, "They don't wear any," came the regret, "What a pity to make themselves so unattractive!" ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... been deceived, that now, at the age of eighteen, she had learned to distrust her fellow creatures, and oftentimes in secret would she weep bitterly over her lonely condition, lamenting the plain face and unattractive manners, which she fancied rendered her an object of dislike. Still there was about her a depth of feeling of which none had ever dreamed, and it only required a skillful hand to mold her into an altogether different being. She ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... passengers were dirty-looking, handed by dirtier hands, coming out of filthy receptacles and weighed in equally unattractive scales. These were previously sampled by millions of flies. I asked some of the passengers who went in for these dainties to give their opinion. Many of them used choice expressions as to the quality but were satisfied ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
... de Medecine did little credit to the school after which it was named, and it was a most unattractive crowd that usually thronged its ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of forest, and inferior groups only are particularly interesting in landscape. An unbroken forest of wide extent makes but a dreary picture and an unattractive journey, on account of its gloomy uniformity. Hence the primitive state of the earth, before it was modified by human hands, must have been sadly wanting in those romantic features that render a scene the most attractive. Nature ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... grey-green eyes to this hour, her white starched shirt and her sharp steel belt buckle—ugh! It should be illegal, in a Republic where there are so many less sensible laws, for any woman to be so ostentatiously unattractive.... ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... human race was a very ugly and unattractive mammal. He was quite small, much smaller than the people of today. The heat of the sun and the biting wind of the cold winter had coloured his skin a dark brown. His head and most of his body, his arms and legs too, were covered with long, coarse hair. He had very thin but strong fingers which made ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... popular favor to the self-seeking. This results in a certain repellent manner, commonly regarded as the apparel of righteousness, and is further responsible for the fatal mistake of making the surroundings of "good influences" singularly unattractive; a mistake which really deserves a reprimand quite as severe as the equally reprehensible deed of making the surroundings of "evil influences" so beguiling. Both are akin to that state of mind which narrows the entrance into a wider ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... had nothing more to teach him, and could not help him in the only search which passionately interested him. And his entanglement became irksome. Here was nine years that this sharing of bed and board had lasted. His son was at that unattractive age which rather bores a young father than it revives an affection already old. No doubt he did not want to abandon him. He did not intend to break altogether with his mistress. But he felt the need of a change of air, to take himself off somewhere else, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... much of quiet civilisation and tolerance. The women were never employed in the fields; and they took equal part with the men in social matters. They were modest and not unattractive, traits which remain to this day among the peasant class of Mexico. The menage of Aztec homes, method of feasting, foods, napery, ablutions, and other matters, as recorded by the historians show a marked stage of refinement, except for the abominable practice ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... had no such luck as that!" muttered the unattractive maidens who had not been fortunate enough to ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... moderate amounts of methaqualone, small amounts of heroin, and cocaine bound for Southern Africa and possibly Europe; a poorly developed financial infrastructure coupled with a government commitment to combating money laundering make it an unattractive venue for money launderers ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... wanted to be a boy and put his head on the shoulder of the woman. He did not look at Clara but at himself. In the dim light his hands, nervously fumbling about, his long, loosely-put-together body, everything connected with his person, seemed ugly and altogether unattractive. He could see the woman's small firm hands that lay on the railing of the bridge. They were, he thought, like everything connected with her person, shapely and beautiful, just as everything connected with his own person was unshapely ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... by his officers, certainly looked every inch a king. Although my predecessors, on occasions of this kind, had worn a sort of fancy diplomatic uniform designed by themselves, I decided to abandon this and return to the democratic, if unattractive and uncomfortable, dress-suit, simply because the newspapers of America and certain congressmen, while they have had no objection to the wearing of uniforms by the army and navy, police and postmen, and do not expect officers to lead their troops into battle ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... constituted that they can only take their leisure in the shape of a change of work. To this fairly numerous class belonged Mr. J. Preston Peters, father of Freddie's Aline. And to this merit—or defect—is to be attributed his almost maniacal devotion to that rather unattractive species of curio, the ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... we find Mr. Adams on his way to Washington, the raw and unattractive village which then constituted the national capital, wherein there was not, as the pious New Englander instantly noted, a church of any denomination; but those who were religiously disposed were obliged to attend services "usually performed on Sundays at the Treasury ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... drawing-room early, she started up to dress, and was delighted to find herself feeling suddenly brave and strong. Curiosity to see Miss Assher—the thought that Anthony was in the house—the wish not to look unattractive, were feelings that brought some colour to her lips, and made it easy to attend to her toilette. They would ask her to sing this evening, and she would sing well. Miss Assher should not think her utterly insignificant. So she put on her grey ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... years seem to have been more cheerful, except at the time of his wife's death. He is seen at "The Star and Garter" in 1861 entertaining Murray and two others at dinner, in a heavy and expensive style. He is still an uncomfortable, unattractive figure in a drawing- room, especially with accurate and intelligent ladies, like Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who would not humour his inaccurate dictatorship. Miss Cobbe was his neighbour in Hereford Square. ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... I take my rest, assured from every ill. Wherefore, my children, here is the pastime upon which I settled long since, after having in vain sought contentment of spirit in all the rest.... For he that knows God sees everything beautiful in Him, and without Him everything unattractive." Prologue, 13-15. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... decorated with red velvet and mussed artificial flowers, was tipped over her forehead. Her features were not bad, but her nose was blotched, her face strongly freckled and her red hair very untidy. Only the mild blue eyes redeemed the unattractive face—eyes very like those of Mary Louise in expression, mused Mr. Conant, as ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... events, whate'er his race, The pretty girl who owned him Caressed his unattractive face And petted and cologned him, While, watching her with mournful eye, A patient ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... pretty fashion is, up in the air, suspended on quickly vibrating wings like a great black and white moth. But he was in no singing mood, and at last, in desperation, I fled to Salisbury to wait for loitering spring in that unattractive town. ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... his best years in seeking preferment in it. Preferment had not come, and the only means of building up the family fortunes in his own person, was now a moneyed wife. He was poor, fifty years old, and personally unattractive. A contemporary chronicle describes him as short, thin, and pale, and with a projecting nose. He had nothing to offer but his rank; but in the case of a very obscure heiress, this might suffice, and such a one seemed to present herself in Pompilia ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... answers I have given, but it is no answer to ask me how the law can be administered without barristers. I do not know; nor do I know how the roads can be swept without getting somebody to sweep them. But that would not disqualify me from saying that road- sweeping was an unattractive profession. So also I am entitled to my opinion about the Bar, which is this. That because it offers material victories only and never spiritual ones, that because there can be no standard by which its disciples are judged save the ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... unattractive!" said Harold, smiling. "I'm sorry she's not good-looking, but it can't be helped. No doubt she makes up for it in ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... no place would have looked very attractive to me when I came out from that hospital; but London and my lodging in it did seem past all bearing unattractive. The Dorking lodging had been definitely relinquished, and in any case I had no wish now to see Dorking, Leith ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... is artificially stained, so that stones naturally unattractive by their dull grey tints come to be valuable for ornamental purposes. The art of staining the stone is believed to be very ancient. Possibly referred to by Pliny (bk. xxxvii. cap. 75), it was certainly practised at an early date ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... philosophic calm of M. Fabre, however; there was no magnifying glass between him and this spined and spiky face. Indeed, Duke was not in a position to think the matter over quietly. If he had been able to do that, he would have said to himself: "We have here an animal of most peculiar and unattractive appearance, though, upon examination, it seems to be only a cat stealing a fishbone. Nevertheless, as the thief is large beyond all my recollection of cats and has an unpleasant stare, I will ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... burnt; his plantations are ravaged, his coco-nut palms felled with the axe. The motive for this destruction of the property of the deceased is not mentioned, but the custom points to a fear of the ghost; the people probably make his old home as unattractive as possible in order to offer him no temptation to return and haunt them. The same fear of the ghost, or at all events of the infection of death, is revealed by the stringent seclusion and ceremonial pollution of the grave-diggers. They are two in number; no other persons may handle the corpse. ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... was long, and when he came to a halt the sun was far down the western horizon. The summit of the mountain was covered with rocks and boulders, with here and there a few scrubby pines. Nothing could be more unattractive than the broken, stony soil, but the view which was spread out before him who climbed to the top was enough to kindle the eye of a stoic, and make the heart overflow with love and awe toward the great Being ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... a labyrinth, you will find yourself entangled in intricate and perplexing business conditions, and your wife will make the home environment intolerable; children and sweethearts will prove ill-tempered and unattractive. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... a roof, covered by reeds lightly fastened together. The inside was lined with dried leaves, grass, and the coarser feathers of the ostrich. When they saw that we were encamped, the three hunters lighted a fire and sat themselves down before it to enjoy a sumptuous repast of ostrich flesh. Though unattractive in appearance, they were honest little fellows, and we slept in perfect security, knowing that they would give us timely notice of the approach ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... a quick glance. She was not ill-looking, as to features and colouring, but her whole effect was unattractive,—even repelling. ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... passed not one human habitation after the first five miles were behind them. There had been a ranch, back there against a reddish-yellow bluff. Val had gazed upon it, and then turned her head away, distressed because human beings could consent to live in such unattractive surroundings. It was bad in its way as Hope, she thought, but did not say, because Manley was talking about his cattle, and she did not want to ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... was living among people of her own class. Her measure of a man or of a woman was, Were they of her class? If they were, she gladly accepted them and appeared to find considerable pleasure in their society. Whether they had attractive qualities or unattractive qualities or no qualities at all did not affect her. The only quality that mattered was the quality of being well-bred. She called the classes beneath her own standard of breeding "the lower classes", and so long as they ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Revolution, no Bolsheviki, no Emperor.... But no; Fate has to put a drop of tar in a barrel of honey. However, perhaps I would have hated to see a cook around here: as soon as a woman gets too domestic—she infallibly becomes unattractive. As for Lucie—enclosed in a cage as we are—I never saw her unwashed, uncombed, frivolous or unladylike. So let her be a plotter. I must be grateful as we never quarrel.... She sends ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... at the entrance to the theatre by the appearance of Appleton. He was coming from within the building, and with him were two women, one elderly and unattractive, the other a plump young person with bright blue eyes in a saucy face that had more claim to piquant effrontery than to beauty. She was simply dressed and was all smiles ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... heroine of Fetters on the Feet (ARNOLD), she is living with some Quaker cousins and spending most of her time in mending stockings. So many people make stockings who refuse absolutely to mend them that I imagine there must be something peculiarly unattractive in this work of restoration, and it was a fortunate day for Margaret when the pedantic young man of the house proposed to marry her. After this we discover that she has both a history and a will of her own. She leaves the Quakers, and goes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... Hester. She looked at Miss Bucher again. The glory of being editor of the "Mirror" cast a halo about the head of the otherwise unattractive girl. ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... Pope speaks of him with the utmost freedom as "wretched Withers." It is true that he lived too long and wrote too much—a great deal too much. Mr. Hazlitt gives the titles of more than one hundred of his publications, and some of them are wonderfully unattractive. I should not like to be shut up on a rainy day with his Salt upon Salt, which seems to have lost its savour, nor do I yearn to blow upon his Tuba Pacifica, although it was "disposed of rather for love than money." The truth is that good George Wither lost ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... indeed good for all of us to think of Him there in that primitive and unattractive house of God, listening to the rude Galilean accents, and bowing His head in the habitual ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... of the corn bread which is most unattractive and repellant to the eye and to the taste. All of these witnesses say that the white bread apparently is of good quality, but the diet in every case is the cause of constipation, except in the case of pea soup, ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... sappan) (Tagalog, Sibucao, or Sapang), of an inferior quality compared with the Pernambuco wood, is a Philippine product found in most of the large islands. It is a short, unattractive tree, with epigeous branches spreading out in a straggling manner. The leaves are small and sparse. The wood is hard, heavy, crooked, and full of knots. It sinks in water, and is susceptible of a fine polish. It is whitish when fresh cut, but assumes a deep red colour on exposure ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman |
