"Unobtrusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the house the Dachshund has perhaps no compeer. He is a perfect gentleman; cleanly in his habits, obedient, unobtrusive, incapable of smallness, affectionate, very sensitive to rebuke or to unkindness, and amusingly jealous. As a watch he is excellent, quick to detect a strange footstep, valiant to defend the threshold, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... under similar circumstances in London. Differences of dress and feature there are, of course—but how trifling! Difference of manners there is none, unless it lie in the general good-nature and unobtrusive politeness of the American crowd, upon which I have already remarked. We all know that there is a distinctively American physical type, recognisable especially in the sex which aims at self-development, instead of self-suppression, in its attire. When one ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... with us nearly a month, and won our regard by his quiet, intelligent, and unobtrusive manners. Although dressed in skins, he was perfectly the gentleman, moreover an enlightened and sincere Christian, for he had thrown aside all heathen customs and superstitions. His great object appeared to ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... the gorgeous orange California poppies, and then he looked up and about, and saw that the rich colour carpeted the landscape as far as his eye could reach, so that it seemed as though he could ride on and on through them to the distant Chiricahuas. Only, close under the hills, lay, unobtrusive, a narrow streak of grey. And in a few hours he had reached the streak of grey, and ridden out into it to find himself the centre of a limitless alkali plain, so that again it seemed the valley could contain ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... systems that are a part of the Consolidated, to be sure. But the men who promoted those plants and were unable to complete them came to us and begged us to step in and take the burden off their hands." While Colonel Dodd talked he kept glancing, but in an extremely unobtrusive manner, at a huge and magnificent Japanese screen that occupied one corner of his office. "It is easy enough to start ventures in this world, Mr. Davis. An inexperienced man can do that. But it most often takes experience and a lot of money to install ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... down on the bare-headed wispy, unobtrusive Lilly with good-humoured suspicion and incredulity. Lilly could not have borne it if the policeman had uttered any of this cockney suspicion, so he watched him. There was a great gulf between the public official and the odd, quiet little ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... and blush to find it fame [Pope], hide one's light under a bushel, cast a sheep's eye. Adj. modest, diffident; humble &c 879; timid, timorous, bashful; shy, nervous, skittish, coy, sheepish, shamefaced, blushing, overmodest. unpretending^, unpretentious; unobtrusive, unassuming, unostentatious, unboastful^, unaspiring; poor in spirit. out of countenance &c (humbled) 879. reserved, constrained, demure. Adv. humbly &c adj.; quietly, privately; without ceremony, without beat of drum; sans fa Phr. not stepping o'er the bounds of modesty [Romeo and Juliet]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the Dahlias. These should be painted some unobtrusive color. If this is done, and they are taken proper care of in fall, they will last for years. This is true ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... said at last, "there's something needed in the way of unobtrusive inspection if the rest of the world is to have any kind of breathing spell. If you've no objection we'll leave Bombay to-night ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... came flooding back—her eyes, her kisses, her attentions, her passionate love for him, so pervasive yet so unobtrusive; the feeling of her smooth, round arm about his neck; her way of pressing close up to him and locking her fingers in his; the music of her voice, singing her heartsong to him yet never ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... new world, with whose discovery it was nearly contemporaneous! But perhaps our Jeremiad may be premature; for in some obscure corner in Virginia, (the garden of this weed,) a copy of the poem may at this very moment exist, like unobtrusive merit, disregarded and despised. For the honour of our country, we hope this may prove true; since it may lessen the odium with which men habitually load poor republics, a name which has long been the ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... consider themselves happiest when others share their happiness with them. Our pastor lent us this little sum of money at a time when it was of the utmost value to us; but it was done in a way so hearty, and so unobtrusive, as to add immeasurably to the obligation. Indeed, I sometimes think that a pecuniary favor which is granted grudgingly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... for instance, shaken up with water. A fine, impalpable, yet very dense mist formed the ground mass. But in it there floated myriads of droplets, like the droplets of oil in water. These droplets would sometimes sparkle in a mild, unobtrusive way as they were nearing the light; and then they would dash against the pane and keep it ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... its hopeless impracticability, were things to dream of, not to tell. Picotee was quite an unreasoning animal. Her sister arranged situations for her, told her how to conduct herself in them, how to make up anew, in unobtrusive shapes, the valuable wearing apparel she sent from time to time—so as to provoke neither exasperation in the little gentry, nor superciliousness in the great. Ethelberta did everything for her, in short; and Picotee obeyed orders with ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... always addressed his friends by their Christian names, more especially when those friends were of higher standing than himself. There was a depth of pride, which few understood, lurking beneath his quiet and unobtrusive manner; and he had a way of his own by which he let people know that he considered himself in every respect their equal, and in some ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... themselves with Diane or her affairs! Her place in the hurrying, scrambling social throng had been so unobtrusive that, now that she no longer filled it, she was easily forgotten. Among the few who paid her the tribute of recollection there was the generally received impression that Derek Pruyn, having discovered her relations with the Marquis de Bienville—relations which, so they said, had been well known ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... of the cabin. We never once catch them admiring the scenery or taking any interest in the wonders we pass. Then there is a Swiss, a gentle-mannered bronzed man with a brown beard; he speaks only French, and in an unobtrusive way seems to have seen a great deal of the world; we discover, for one thing, that he has lived out in the desert near Tunis for many years. There are three Russians, mother, father, and daughter, who speak practically nothing but Russian, with a few words ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... complained, nor did she seem to have any disease, but just pined quietly away. Susan scolded and petted and doctored her, and made her wear flannel on her chest, but all to no avail. Miss Arabella, in her gentle, unobtrusive fashion, grew steadily worse. She seemed to have lost not only the power, but ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... his great height, a physical advantage enjoyed by many aristocratic Russian families. His hair was fair and inclined to curl, and there the foreign suggestion suddenly ceased. His face had the quiet concentration, the unobtrusive self-absorption which one sees more strongly marked in English faces than in any others. His manner of moving through the well-dressed crowd somewhat belied the tan of his skin. Here was an out-of-door, athletic youth, who knew ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... be a tall, unobtrusive-looking man of some five-and-forty, who had lived in London for some years and spoke as good English as Willis himself. He listened quietly and without much apparent interest to what his visitor had to tell him, then said he would be glad to take ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... world from the scientific side have habitually sought isolation. Faraday, at a certain period of his career, formally renounced dining out. Darwin lives apart from the bustle of the world in his quiet home in Kent. Mayer and Joule dealt in unobtrusive retirement with the weightiest scientific questions. There is, however, one motive power in the world which no man, be he a scientific student or otherwise, can afford to treat with indifference; and that is, the cultivation of right relations with his fellow-men—the performance of his duty, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... art of painting. Some call him the Apelles of our time. But I think that did Apelles live now, he, as an honourable man, would give the palm to Duerer. Apelles, it is true, made use of few and unobtrusive colours, but still he used colours; while Duerer,—admirable as he is, too, in other respects,—what can he not express with a single colour—that is to say, with black lines? He can give the effect of light and shade, brightness, foreground ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... toilette, pretty Nancy Lammeter, by the time she was three-and-twenty, had her unalterable little code, and had formed every one of her habits in strict accordance with that code. She carried these decided judgments within her in the most unobtrusive way: they rooted themselves in her mind, and grew there as quietly as grass. Years ago, we know, she insisted on dressing like Priscilla, because "it was right for sisters to dress alike", and because "she would do what was right if she wore a gown dyed with cheese-colouring". That was a trivial ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... has All Souls. Here no noisy undergraduate is allowed to disturb the calm. There are, indeed, four Bible Clerks who are undergraduate members and reside within its walls, but their very name is enough to guarantee their unobtrusive respectability—if indeed they exist in the flesh at all, for it is said that none except the Fellows of the College have ever seen one! The foundation is rich both in money and in fine buildings. ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... eighteen inches at about twenty inches; a small miniature of six inches, at about eight inches. If the work should have no detail, this rule will not hold good; but if there is a faithful transcript of Nature; and she ever delights in unobtrusive beauties, which are particularly obvious in the fore-ground, for she strews them at your feet; then if you approach the artist's effort, a work of patient diligence, you can hold converse with her through the medium ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... Mary dressed in this style. On the contrary, she generally wore dark or unobtrusive colors. Decked as she now was in pure white, she had the appearance of a bride. It was, of course, by her father's request; but what did it mean? Did he intend by this to make it known that Mary was betrothed, and would soon ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... men. They recommend those whom they have found most active and intelligent, and believe to be the best; but their opportunities of learning the characters of the men have been few. They have seen and observed the young, active, and forward; but they often know nothing of the steady, unobtrusive old soldier, who has done his duty ably in all situations, without placing himself prominently forward in any. The commanding officers seldom remain long with the same regiment, and, consequently, seldom know enough of the men to be able to judge of the justice of the selections for promotion. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... however, without venturing in the slightest degree to anticipate the expression of his ulterior views—though we believe that we can trace their extent and direction in a few suggestive sentences, as pregnant as they are unobtrusive—we must yet, in giving a rapid sketch of the facts established, assume the privilege of directing the reader to one or two of their most obvious consequences, and, like honest 'prentices, not suffer the abstracted retirement of our master in ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... a book as this. Popular literature was not made for classification, but for higher purposes, and anything that draws attention from the pleasure-giving and spirit-invigorating qualities of the literature itself should be avoided. Hence, the classifications adopted are as simple and unobtrusive as possible. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... saw the brothers as soon as they appeared on deck, and if they nodded to him he was quick to respond, but he never forced his company upon them; and it was so too in the cabin, for he was quiet and unobtrusive, speaking readily when spoken to, but only to subside at once when the ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... personality of the mistress was so completely overshadowed by the stronger personality of the master the latter's secretary was a more important personage to the servants than the unobtrusive wife. ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... character would in real life have a "monicker," or the naming of the character in the old way would serve to relate the act more closely to its form and awaken pleasing reminiscences. [1] The method today is to select a name that shall fit a character in a general way and yet be so unobtrusive that ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... Bell's, Miss Hart, proved herself a most unobtrusive and retiring person. She was strangely reserved, no doubt, and would reveal none of the secret which she had dimly alluded to on the night of her arrival to Mrs. Bell, but she was chatty and pleasant enough to the girls when quite alone with them. She put them up to many ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... graduate, or, to speak more definitely, a graduate of Harvard; for he had that jaunty walk and general trimness of attire which are the traditional attributes of the academical denizens of Cambridge. He swung his arms rather more than was needed to assist locomotion, and betrayed in an unobtrusive manner a consciousness of being well dressed. His face, which was not without fine possibilities, had an air of well-bred neutrality; you could see that he assumed a defensive attitude against aesthetic impressions,—that even the Sistine Madonna or the Venus of Milo would not have surprised ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... comfortable arm-chair by the fireside, holding a book which he scarcely looked at, and watching the long rolls of smoke from his pipe. He disliked new acquaintances; nevertheless, the friends to whom Hermann introduced him found in him a quiet, unobtrusive, and well-informed companion. He pleased everybody. There was something strange and yet attractive in his person; there was a "charm" about him, people said. Hermann felt the attraction without being able to define in what it consisted. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... present site of the Baths of Caracalla, and that from time to time she gave him directions as to what rites would be acceptable to the gods. Another nymph, whom Numa commended to the special veneration of the Romans, was named Tacita, or the silent. This was appropriate for one of such quiet and unobtrusive manners as this ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... life was all sturdy simplicity and generous friendship. He shines in no merely reflected light, but in his own native nobility. I think there are a few lovers of England and of books who will be glad not to forget his unobtrusive services to literature. If only John Loder had kept a journal it would be one of the minor treasures of the Victorian Age. He had a racy, original turn of speech, full of the Suffolk lingo that so delighted his friend FitzGerald; ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... trunk and the parrot are confided to you from the window—bailiffs, who will hunt you up and down their bailiwick, even to the church-door, though an heiress is depending upon your character for weekly payments—all are rendered powerless and unobtrusive by this inexplicable palmistry. Candidates, save your money; mesmerise your opponents instead of bribing them, and you may become a patriot by a show ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... disturbance, no claim from the world, no importunate chatter, only religious services in their quietest, most unobtrusive form; and Dr. Easterby's low tender tones, leading his silent listeners to deep heart-searchings, earnest thoughts, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... things. A true gentleman must regard the rights and feelings of others, even in matters the most trivial. He respects the individuality of others, just as he wishes others to respect his own. In society he is quiet, easy, unobtrusive, putting on no airs, nor hinting by word or manner that he deems himself better, or wiser, or richer than any one about him. He never boasts of his achievements, or fishes for compliments by affecting to underrate ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... themselves diagonally opposite to me. Something in the woman's light footsteps, her free movements, and the graceful carriage of her head, struck me instantly as being familiar. She was dressed very plainly, and she was closely veiled. Their entrance, too, had been unobtrusive, almost furtive. But when she raised her veil and took the carte-du-jour in her hand, I knew her at ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... interest to prefects who have made remarkable catches in the long field and look forward to establishing their manhood among the salmon and the grouse. So far as he had thought of Priscilla at all he had placed her in the background, a trim, unobtrusive maiden, who came down to dessert after dinner and was kept under proper control at other times by a governess. It shocked him a little to see a girl in a tousled blue cotton frock, with a green stain on the front of it, with a tangle of damp fair hair hanging round her head in shining strings, ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... technique. Played with the Mozart technique it would be simply insipid, and with a Beethoven technique it would still be dry and harsh. It is only by the combination of the arm touch for the melody, the very obscure, unobtrusive finger touch for the accompaniment, and the constant use of the pedal for promoting blending of tones, that the vague and poetic atmosphere of this ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... conversation respecting the line he was then taking up for the purpose of helping me. At other times, in periods of inactivity, I saw but little of him. He impressed me, now as he did in the cedars, his quiet, unobtrusive: demeanor communicating a gloomy rather than a hopeful view of the situation. This apparent depression was due no doubt to the severe trial through which he had gone in the last forty-eight hours, which, strain had exhausted him very much both physically and mentally. His success in maintaining ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... for a day or two—on business connected with that scapegrace cousin of his, Roland Yorke proclaimed; though whether Mr. Roland had any foundation for the assertion, except his own fancy, may be doubted—and Jenkins had it all upon his own shoulders. Jenkins, unobtrusive and meek though he was, was perfectly competent to manage, and Mr. Galloway left him with entire trust. But it is one thing to be competent to manage, and another thing to be able to do two persons' work in one person's time; and, that, Jenkins was finding this afternoon. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... agree with you. Cetoxa, though a gambler and a rake, is a nobleman of birth and high repute for courage and honour. Besides, this stranger, with his noble presence and lofty air,—so calm, so unobtrusive,—has nothing in common with the forward ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... quiet and unobtrusive as a rule, Max could suddenly assume an air of hauteur and overbearing which was really very annoying. Geoffrey always fumed under it. But Ciccio it put into unholy, ungovernable tempers. For Max, suddenly, would reveal ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... the Indians called Hairy Moccasin, a scout under Gibbon, Miles, Howard, and Custer. His frame is small and wiry, and like his brother scout, Goes-Ahead, he too will soon be numbered with the great army of the dead. Silent, unobtrusive, carrying no mark of distinction, his moccasined feet move slowly along the path made by others. It must be noted that however unprepossessing his personality he wears an untarnished badge for bravery and faithful service as a scout. White-Man-Runs-Him ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... intoxicated existence in public, for the safe self-approbation, the sober, the permanent happiness of domestic life. In England Count Altenberg hoped to find a woman raised by "divine philosophy" [Footnote: Milton.] far above all illiberal prejudice, but preserving a just and becoming sense of religion; unobtrusive, mild, and yet firm. Every thing that he had seen of Caroline had confirmed his first hope, and exalted his future expectation; but, by what he had just heard, his imagination was checked in full career, suddenly, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... he may have looked like a commissioner of lunacy, but he did not look like a poet; he was rather undersized, with a compact head and a solemn face, and the quietest, most unobtrusive bearing imaginable. He was a well-made little man, and he lived to a great age, dying some time in the seventies, at the age of eighty-seven. He told my father that after leaving Harrow School he was distinguished in ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... upper part of his dress, thrown open from the heat, partly disclosed the fine statuesque formation of his neck and chest. His ears, hands, and feet were of that smallness and delicacy which is held to denote the aristocracy of birth; and there was in his manner that indescribable combination of unobtrusive dignity and unaffected elegance, which in all ages and countries, and through all changes of manners and customs, has rendered the demeanour of its few favoured possessors the instantaneous interpreter ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Denham in any but a dark travelling-dress, or in such unobtrusive costume as a modest girl may wear at a hotel table. He stood motionless an instant, seeing her in a trailing robe of some fleecy, maize-colored material, with a cluster of moss-roses at her corsage and a cross of diamonds at her throat. She was without other ornament. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... crowded carriages cleared, and the platform became a scene of bustle and animation. But he had no difficulty in distinguishing Gabriel's stiffly erect figure as it made its way towards the hall of the station, and his sharp eyes were quick to notice a quietly dressed, unobtrusive sort of man who sauntered along, caught sight of the banker, and swung round to follow him. Starmidge watched both pass along towards the waiting lines of vehicles—then he turned on his heel and went to the refreshment ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... and did not leave the subject of Lucia Catherwood, but praised her, though now and then with slight reservations, letting fall the inference that she was her good friend and would be a better one if she could. Such use did she make of her gentle and unobtrusive sympathy that Prescott felt his heart warming once more to this ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... what to make of Mr. Champneys's niece. She was abnormally silent, unbelievably unobtrusive, singularly still. Watching her, he found himself wishing she would smile, at least occasionally: he longed to see what her mouth would look like if it should curve into laughter. She had exquisite teeth, and ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... district in Congress from 1817 to 1825. He was a "Jeffersonian Democrat" and a personal friend and political supporter of John Quincy Adams. He married Margaret, the daughter of Major Peter Crane. Mrs. Fuller was as gentle and unobtrusive as her stalwart husband was forceful and uncompliant. She effaced herself even in her own home, was seen and not heard, though apparently not very conspicuously seen. She had eight children, of whom Margaret was the first, and when this busy mother escaped from the care of ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... meal finally came to an end, on account of Winn's inability to eat any more, the boy was surprised to find how much at home he had been made to feel by the unaffected simplicity and unobtrusive kindness ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... gain. Moliere's Avare I thought he would have acted wonderfully; Ben Jonson's Volpone, in "The Fox," he would surely have understood, and powerfully rendered. In the devoted father of "The Porter's Knot" he was likewise most excellent: quiet, unaffected, unobtrusive, never forcing sentiment upon you, never obtaining tears by false pretences, but throughout solid, sterling, natural, admirable. I came at last, however, to the conviction, that, marked as was the distinction gained by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... near the studio." She waved Peyton away unceremoniously, "Come, everybody has had enough drinks, and show it to me." They passed through the hall, and into the quiet of the space beyond, lighted by a single unobtrusive lamp. "What a satisfactory fireplace!" she exclaimed in her faint key, as though, Lee thought, her silent acting were depriving her of voice. She sank onto the cushioned bench against the partition. "How did they feel, do you suppose—the people, the men and women, who belonged to such ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... on air. It was remarkable that with all this her look was almost natural, and her features were hardly sharpened so as to suggest that her life was burning away. He did not like this, nor various other unobtrusive signs of danger which his practised eye detected. A very small matter might turn the balance which held life and death poised against each other. He surrounded her with precautions, that Nature might have every opportunity of cunningly shifting the weights ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that each successive architect carried on faithfully the ideas of his predecessors. The whole work has been continued, as it were, in the spirit of one design; and the differences in details, while quite observable when once pointed out, are yet so unobtrusive that they seldom attract notice. To mention one such instance, Mr Paley calls attention to the different ornamentation on the windows of the south transept when compared with those in the north transept, as well as to the fact that on the south ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... at O—— that Talbot discovered Johnson. Johnson was one of his orderlies. Although it did not lie in the path of his duty, he took the greatest delight in doing all sorts of little odd jobs for Talbot. So unobtrusive he was about it all, that for some time Talbot hardly noticed that some one was trying to make him comfortable. When he did, by mutual agreement Johnson became his servant and faithful follower through ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... Miss Sabina Incledon, a cousin of Mr. Smith's, who, until within a few days, had been a stranger to her. She was a plainly dressed person of middle age, with an agreeable though not striking countenance, and unobtrusive, lady-like manners. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... that way, did he? There are the horses, there is the smithy. Yes, it is an interesting place, this Fighting Cock. I think we shall have another look at it in an unobtrusive way." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to himself as he felt Margaret Hutchins's startled and questioning eyes attempting to read his mind. He shook hands with the engine-driver without further comment, however, and walked out into the commonplace little street under Parkinson's unobtrusive guidance. ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... attributes which he decided his shop should possess, and by means of which he succeeded. To enter Brunt's, with its silently swinging doors, its broad, easy staircases, its long floors covered with warm, red linoleum, its partitioned walls, its smooth mahogany counters, its unobtrusive mirrors, its rows of youths and virgins in black, and its pervading atmosphere of quietude and discretion, was like entering a temple before the act of oblation has commenced. You were conscious of some supreme administrative ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... improvement. He comes from his den half-frozen, with his teeth chattering, and nothing but bad words for his wife and her inconvenient brother who wants his help. His wife puts him to bed, and he comes to think better of himself and the world; the change of his mind being represented in the unobtrusive manner which the Sagas employ in ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... no first-hand evidence recorded in the trials except the confessions of the victims themselves; and these, of course, are presumptively due to either torture or hallucination. This statement, made in an unobtrusive note, is only one instance of the care displayed throughout the volumes. In the course of these, Gurney discusses about seven hundred cases of apparitions which he collected. A large number of these were 'veridical,' ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... Coxeter, with a quick, unobtrusive movement, released Mrs. Archdale. He turned and stared, not pleasantly, at the man who was making him so odd an offer. Damn the fellow's impudence! "The life-saver is not for sale," he ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... liked a house where something had happened. I should have liked, myself, a blood-stain—not a fussy blood-stain, a neat unobtrusive blood-stain that would have been content, most of its time, to remain hidden under the mat, shown only occasionally as a treat to visitors. I had hopes even of a ghost. I don't mean one of those noisy ghosts that doesn't seem to know it is dead. A lady ghost would have ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... had led him from the beginning of the voyage to take a keen interest in whatever he might do or say; but until to-night he had found him a most unobtrusive and taciturn man. He had a feeling that this man, who before to-night had barely said more than good morning and good night to him, understood him much better than did Meade, the professional observer, who was forever ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... Tempest is all that can be reasonably attempted or desired. Plays which are wrought of purest imaginative texture call solely for a scenic setting which should convey effective suggestion. The machinery to be employed for the purpose of effective suggestion should be simple and unobtrusive. If it be complex and obtrusive, it defeats "the purpose of playing" by exaggerating for the spectator the inevitable interval between the visionary and indeterminate limits of the scene which the poet imagines, and the cramped and narrow bounds, which the ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... by. Somehow Bernice and her schoolmates had not made so much progress in getting acquainted as one would have thought. The new girl was unobtrusive, attended strictly to her studies, and made few demands on those about her; yet it was true that there was among them at least an unacknowledged conspiracy to taboo her, or an understanding that she was to be ignored almost completely. This Bernice attributed to her looks. Ever since ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... a remarkably idle and unobtrusive shop and yet money flowed into it without stint, mysteriously and unostentatiously, the conduits of its flow being certain modest and retiring Arab visitors in long brown or white haiks, with check cotton head-dresses girt with ropes of camel-hair, who collogued ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... cause to complain of his reception by those whose messmate he was about to become. They, with one exception, came forward and cordially shook him by the hand, and when he entered the berth they all seemed to vie who should pay him the most unobtrusive attention as forthwith to place him at his ease. So surely will true bravery and worth be rightly esteemed by the generous-hearted officers of the British Navy. Pearce had gained the respect of his messmates; he soon won their regard by his readiness to oblige, his good temper, ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... with general consent, upon English society; and which, with a ludicrous perversity, we have denominated by that sacred word of Home, which has so long connected itself with scenes of tranquil and unobtrusive enjoyment. ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... irrepressible explosion of Union feeling—even to an outburst of cheers, according to one statement—occurred. Nor is such a state of feeling surprising, when we remember that not even in Kentucky is the memory of Henry Clay more a fireside treasure of the people. In this respect, the quiet, unobtrusive 'North' State was in striking contrast to its immediate neighbors—South Carolina in one direction, and Atlantic Virginia in the other. Politically, when the pennons of Clay and Calhoun rode the gale, the vote and ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... volume attracted the attention of John Black, who was then the distinguished editor of the Morning Chronicle. Ever ready to recognise genius wherever it could be found, and always prepared to lend a hand to lift into light the unobtrusive author who laboured in the shade, he offered young Mackay a place on the paper, which was accepted, and filled with such ability that he was rapidly promoted to the responsible position of sub-editor. He soon became one of the marked men of the time in connexion with the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... landscape, in which, as often elsewhere, the golden radiance of the setting sun is seen battling with masses of azure cloud, has not been exceeded by Titian himself. With all the daring yet perfectly unobtrusive and unconscious realism of certain details, the conception is one of the loftiest, one of the most penetrating in its very simplicity, of Venetian art at its apogee. The divine mansuetude, the human and brotherly sympathy of the Christ, have not been equalled since the early ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... woods, which serves also as a riding-stick (with which he hits the horse "between the ears," say authors);—and for royal robes, a mere soldier's blue coat with red facings, coat likely to be old, and sure to have a good deal of Spanish snuff on the breast of it; rest of the apparel dim, unobtrusive in color or out, ending in high over-knee military boots, which may be brushed (and, I hope, kept soft with an underhand suspicion of oil), but are not permitted to be blackened or varnished; Day and Martin with ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... and found beauties in books which his friends thought dull, but which appealed tenderly to his innate love of tenderness. He had probably lost many illusions, but the sweetest of them all was still fresh in him, for he loved nature unaffectedly. In an unobtrusive way he was something of an artist, and was fond of going out by himself, when in the country, to sketch and dream all day. Veronica did not understand how with such tastes he could bear the life in the Palazzo Macomer, for months ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... notwithstanding he wields so sharp a pen against England's snobs; and he may naturally have looked for more display of greatness at the residence of an ex-ambassador. But he could scarcely appreciate that simple dignity and solid comfort, that unobtrusive fitness, which belonged to Mr. Irving's home-arrangements. There were no flunkies in gold and scarlet; but there were four or five good horses in the stable, and as many suitable carriages. Everything in the cottage was peculiarly and comfortably elegant, without the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... dinner, so that every guest has what he requires. This necessitates both activity and intelligence, and should be done without bustle, without asking any questions, except where it is the custom of the house to hand round dishes or wine, when it will be necessary to mention, in a quiet and unobtrusive manner, the dish ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... attentive, nothing could abstract him from his object; the sagacity and knowledge he displayed in traversing the trackless wilderness were astonishing; when he found the places he went in search of, he was never flushed with success, but invariably maintained his quiet, unobtrusive behaviour; he was much concerned at not being able to find the remains of his late unfortunate master, to whom he was sincerely attached; his two companions* also conducted themselves well, and ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... your heart to remorse, the sad and poignant echo that sin, traversing life, leaves everywhere upon its passage. Shut your ear to no sound, however unobtrusive, however sad, it may be. There are voices that issue from the tombs, others that call to you from out the abyss of past ages; repel them not, listen! One and all, they have something ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... would be discovered lounging by them on the sea, without seeking to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance. Like some poor devils ashore that happen to know an irascible great man, they make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the street, lest if they pursued the acquaintance further, they might receive a ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... kindness from humans, while its first experience of a pack of hounds had left a bad impression. The hounds looked more than ever embarrassed as their quarry paraded its sudden intimacy with us, and the faint toot of a horn in the distance was seized on as a welcome signal for unobtrusive departure. Constance and I and the hyaena were left ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... life was in no perceptible way changed. Maurice Gordon saw no difference. She had never been an hilarious person. Now she went about her household, her kindnesses, and unobtrusive good works with a quieter mien; but, when occasion or social duty demanded, she seemed perhaps a little readier than before to talk of indifferent topics, to laugh at indifferent wit. Those who have ears to hear and eyes wherewith to see learn to distrust the laugh that is too ready, the ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... the colors of Heligoland. In case the unforgettable fact should escape the tourist, the government have worked the colors into the ingenious and pretty island postage-stamp, and many of our German friends wear bathing-pants of the same unobtrusive tints. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... earlier they might have left everything on such a night to take care of itself, but now they knew far better. Captain Colden, with the terrible lesson of the battle in the bush, had become a strict disciplinarian, and Willet was always at his elbow with unobtrusive but valuable advice which the young Philadelphian had the ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the haughty, imperious Josephine and her mild, unobtrusive sister. Their natures were too dissimilar to admit of it; and yet Sophia loved the other, and at the same time feared her—she was so cold, so distant, so formal, so reserved. Josephine, on her part, viewed her sister as a mere child—not absolutely as an inferior, ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... and white. She was terribly alone, for her mother was gone, and the man she loved was gone, hurriedly, without a word to her. There remained the Margerisons; Peter, with his friendly smile and gentle companionableness; Hilary, worried and weary and hardly noticing her unobtrusive presence; Silvio, Caterina, and Illuminato sucking gingerbread and tumbling off the rack, and Peggy, on whose broad shoulder Rhoda suddenly laid her head and wept, all through the ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... say—and the fish had expressed their opinion of it by the eloquent silence of absence. Therefore, as the whole place lives on fish, whether in the fishy or the fiscal form, goodly apparel was becoming very rare, even upon high Sundays; and stomachs that might have looked well beneath it, sank into unobtrusive grief. But it is a long lane that has no turning; and turns are the essence ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... at a brisk pace that brought the blood to Phoebe's cheeks and made her prettier than ever. Phoebe, of course, had done her best to make her prettiness entirely unobtrusive. She wore a muslin skirt and a tie, and a sailor hat that was not specially becoming to her small head, and her serge skirt had to be both wide and short because of pushing the bath-chair about through all kinds of weather. But the sea wind caught ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... creating a tribe, almost a nation. With the collapse of the Sikh state, the old hatred of Mohammedanism remained, but the Sikhs differed from normal Hindus hardly more than such sects as the Lingayats, and, as happened with decadent Buddhism, the unobtrusive pressure of Hindu beliefs and observances tended to obliterate those differences. The Census of India,[678] 1901, enumerated three degrees of Sikhism. The first comprises a few zealots called Akalis who observe all the precepts of Govind. The second class are the ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... but as compared with that which preceded it. Still, there existed nothing but melody: harmony was unknown. It was not until Christian church-music had reached some development, that music in parts was evolved; and then it came into existence through a very unobtrusive differentiation. Difficult as it may be to conceive a priori how the advance from melody to harmony could take place without a sudden leap, it is none the less true that it did so. The circumstance which prepared the way for ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Virginia (with his coach), by the Randolphs, the Careys, the Harrisons, the Washingtons, and many others, for the whole county esteemed the departed gentleman, whose goodness, whose high talents, whose benevolence and unobtrusive urbanity had earned for him the just respect of his neighbours. When informed of the event, the family of Colonel Esmond's stepson, the Lord Castlewood of Hampshire in England, asked to be at the charges ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a sister of Aunt Debie's, some ten years younger than herself, Phoebe Barrett by name. She was attended by her husband, whom she addressed as Enoch. He certainly was not the predominant spirit of the family; for he was so quiet and unobtrusive as to scarcely ever utter a word, except it might be to make a remark in regard to the weather or answer a question. There was also a young Quakeress by the name of Rachel Stebbins, a distant relative of the others, and they were all related ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... manner, impressed you indescribably. Her slightest words and her commonest actions interested and delighted you, you knew not why. There was a beauty about her unassuming simplicity, her natural—exquisitely natural—kindness of heart, and word, and manner, which preserved its own unobtrusive influence over you, in spite of all other rival influences, be they what they might. You missed and thought of her, when you were fresh from the society of the most beautiful and the most brilliant women. You remembered a few kind, pleasant words of hers when you forgot the wit of the wittiest ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... likely to incur disgrace by wild and incompetent riding, for, having been accustomed to keep her mount under thorough control, she will carefully avoid spoiling the sport of others, while seeing as much of it as she can in a quiet, unobtrusive manner. A lady should remember that strangers are not hailed with delight in any English hunting field; but when they are found to be competent to take care of themselves and their horses, they are far more kindly received, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... uninviting is calm and practical religion, that religious persons are ever exposed to the temptation of looking out for excitements of one sort or other, to make it pleasurable to them. The spirit of the Gospel is a meek, humble, gentle, unobtrusive spirit. It doth not cry nor lift up its voice in the streets, unless called upon by duty so to do, and then it does it with pain. Display, pretension, conflict, are unpleasant to it. What then is to be thought of persons who are ever ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... streets and private chambers of the village. The principal grocery store, coal-yard, sail-loft, hotel and other institutions were conducted in its interests. His opinion was always foremost in the decision of the local authorities. He was still, reticent, unobtrusive. Once I saw him most considerately helping a cripple up the lane ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... things had slid along as well as could be expected. Elinor's manners in the first place and her genuine liking for him in the second had come to his help as he knew they would—she was too concerned now with trying to comfort him in small unobtrusive ways to be on her guard herself about her own troubles. All he had to do, he knew, was to sit there and look ostentatiously brokenhearted to have the conversation move in just the directions he wished ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... to rest, Nellie?' asked the father at last. He was an unobtrusive, obscure man, whose sympathy was very delicate, whose ordinary attitude was ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... but one which carries the most optimistic of messages. The unobtrusive moral of the story is that the way to find consolation for one's own trouble is to consider those of others and to ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... was drunk. The officers treated him with much consideration, but to no liquor. Willett, knowing nothing of his past, had been doing the opposite, and Mr. Case's monthly spree was apparently starting four days ahead of time. Moreover, Mr. Case seemed inspired by some further agent, for though unobtrusive, almost, as ever, he was possessed with a strange, feverish impulse to pit himself against Willett, and almost to ignore all others in the game. A fifth player was a stranded prospector whom Craney knew, and presumably vouched for. Luck must have been ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... ideals of girlhood as advocated by the foremost organizations of America form the background for these stories and while unobtrusive there is a message in ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... the signature of Elia, form the most delightful section amongst Lamb's works. They traverse a peculiar field of observation, sequestered from general interest; and they are composed in a spirit too delicate and unobtrusive to catch the ear of the noisy crowd, clamoring for strong sensations. But this retiring delicacy itself, the pensiveness chequered by gleams of the fanciful, and the humor that is touched with cross-lights ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... she took her station in the wings—silent, unobtrusive, eager to keep out of everybody's way, eager not to miss a word of the play. The man over her head, busy with his lights; the one or two shirt-sleeved, elderly men who invariably stood dispassionately watching the performance; the stage-hands; the various members of the ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... a varying cadence of clatter and laughter, which increased with the noise and din of the king's own board; a clamor always just subservient to the deeper chorus of the royal party; an accompaniment, as it were, full yet unobtrusive, to the hubbub from the more exalted company. But the princely uproar growing louder, the grand-masters, grand-chamberlain, gentlemen of the chamber and lesser lights of the church were enabled to carol and make merry with less restraint. The pungent ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... troubled to think about the nation or the race or any of the deeper mysteries of life, was bound to go down before him. He dealt privately with every appetite—until his marriage no human being could have suspected him of any appetite but business—he disposed of every distracting impulse with unobtrusive decision; and even his political inclination towards Radicalism sprang chiefly from an irritation with the legal advantages of landlordism natural to a man who ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... pleasant mirth when he is alone with his few closest friends, such as Walter and Power, his manner is, for the most part, very quiet and reserved. Yet Eden has a position of his own in the school; and unobtrusive as he is, his opinion is always listened to with kindness and respect. When he came into school again after his recovery he was received, as I have said already, with almost brotherly affection by all the boys, who felt how much he had been wronged. He became ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... good auto was found in the town of his destination, to speed him to the stone gateway of The Retreat. The guardian, always on duty there, passed him with a civil word, and a sober-liveried flunkey at the clubhouse door, after a swift, unobtrusive consideration of his clothes and bearing, took him readily for granted, and said that Mr. Densmore would be just about going on the polo field for practice. Did the gentleman know his way to the field? ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... relic of modern St. Dunstan's is that unobtrusive figure of Queen Elizabeth at the east end. This figure from the old church came from Ludgate when the City gates were destroyed in 1786. It was bought for L16 10s. when the old church came to the ground, and was re-erected over the vestry entrance. The companion statues ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... unobtrusive sorrow, for I fear it sometimes reached that intensity of feeling, my excellent and indefatigable ancestor appeared to have no suspicion. He pursued his ordinary occupations with his ordinary single-minded devotion, and ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... than did the house when inhabited, and out of its curl papers. Nothing could speak more of law and order and care, and the "proper" condition of things, and the self-respect of housemaids, the passing effectiveness of sweeps, and the unobtrusive attentiveness of carpenters! But to the child there had been a glorious sense of loneliness and licence as she danced up and down the broad vacant spaces and jumped over ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... England. The native of Connecticut or Massachusetts who wanders about rural England to-day finds no part of it so homelike as the cosy villages and smiling fields and quaint market towns as he fares leisurely and in not too straight a line from Ipswich toward Hull. Countless little unobtrusive features remind him of home. The very names on the sign-boards over the sleepy shops have an unwontedly familiar look. In many instances the homestead which his forefathers left, when they followed Winthrop or Hooker to America, is still to be found, well-kept and comfortable; the ancient manor-house ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... soon make it do so," laughingly remarked the professor, rising from his seat and approaching one of the walls of the apartment, whilst the baronet and the lieutenant stared in dismay at their own watch-faces. The German began to manipulate a couple of tiny knobs which occupied unobtrusive positions in the base of one of the pilasters, and the sunlight gradually deepened into a rich orange hue, then changed to a soft pearly grey, which gradually deepened into a dim delicious twilight in which little was visible save ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... attempted mediation with Lady Byron, his last link with home was severed: while, notwithstanding the quiet and unobtrusive life which he led at Geneva, there was as yet, he found, no cessation of the slanderous warfare against his character; the same busy and misrepresenting spirit which had tracked his every step at home, having, with no less malicious watchfulness, ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for people of five-feet-nine-and-a-half. But he has one advantage over the small man. He does not have to ask for notice. The result is that while the little man often seems vain and pushful, the giant usually is very tame, and modest, and unobtrusive. The little man wants to be seen: the giant wants not ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... "Frank, loyal, unobtrusive, simple-hearted, Loving his book, his pipe, his song, his friend; Peaceful he lived and peacefully departed, A gentle life-course with ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... for a special study, and then to have restored and readjusted the hero to the play, touching and modulating, here and there, character and incident in harmony with the new expression. In this way a new direction and significance would be given to the plot, but in a latent and unobtrusive way, so as not to weaken the popular interest. This leads to the ambiguity of which I have spoken. The new thought is often not earnestly but ironically related to the old material, and the spiritual hero ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... gentle spirit came down from heaven to teach his parent a true religion, her fierce and vindictive nature was softened by the same griefs which had once irritated it. When the course of years had made the features of the unobtrusive mourner familiar in the settlement, she became a subject of not deep but general interest—a being on whom the otherwise superfluous sympathies of all might be bestowed. Every one spoke of her with that degree of pity which it is pleasant ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... man who should attempt to run through an old timber-yard blindfold would be to escape with unbroken neck and shins. Of shoals there are the East and West Barrows, the Nob, the Knock, the John, the Sunk, the Girdler, and the Long sands, all lying like so many ground-sharks, quiet, unobtrusive, but very deadly, waiting for ships to devour, and getting them too, very frequently, despite the precautions taken to rob them of ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... on deck watching the green little island as it sunk astern, and thinking of the kindly-hearted old trader who had so cheered her by his simple piety and unobtrusive goodness. Then her thoughts turned joyfully to home—for the Raymonds' house was home to her—and she sighed contentedly as the gallant Esmeralda, with every stitch of canvas that could be set, slipped gracefully ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... freshness and originality about it quite charming, and there is a certain nobleness in the treatment, both of sentiment and incident, which is not often found. We imagine that few can read it without deriving some comfort or profit from the quiet good sense and unobtrusive words of ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... can make it now lies before us of the first twenty years of the Revolt of the United Provinces; of the period in which those provinces finally conquered their independence and established the Republic of Holland. It has been the result of many years of silent, thoughtful, unobtrusive labor, and unless we are strangely mistaken, unless we are ourselves altogether unfit for this office of criticising which we have here undertaken, the book is one which will take its place among the finest histories in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... attack," says Stevenson again; and, more than on any quality of force, business success depends upon that same nicety in the use of words which selects the tactful expression, the modest and simple phrase, in the drawing-room; the sort of nicety which is unobtrusive exactness and delicacy; an artistry which in no way labels itself skilful. But underneath all, the woof of the process is social skill—that skill which is the ability to go back to unadorned first principles with the dexterity of one who has acquired the power to do the simple thing perfectly ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... watched Sally with close and what he fancied was unobtrusive attention while she ate, and though he was sensible of the indelicacy of this, he was once more relieved to find that she did nothing that was actually repugnant to him. After all, there was a certain daintiness about the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... native contrariety, that I felt I could have spoken of the catastrophe to this very boy with less reluctance than to any other creature whom I had encountered since my deliverance. He seemed so full of silent sympathy: his consideration for my feelings was so marked and yet so unobtrusive. I have called him a boy. I am apt to write as the old man I have grown, though I do believe I felt older then than now. In any case my young friend was some years my junior. I afterwards found out that ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... catchword among them, and that for the next few mornings he had a large audience of early breakfasters, who fondly hoped for a repetition of his performance. I think that Johnnyboy for the time enjoyed this companionship, yet without the least affectation or self-consciousness—so long as it was unobtrusive. It so chanced, however, that the Rev. Mr. Belcher, a gentleman with bovine lightness of touch, and a singular misunderstanding of childhood, chose to presume upon his paternal functions. Approaching ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... suffered pangs when Thomas made new friends; he monopolized him jealously. The knowledge that he had a pal was new and thrilling; it gave Bill constant food for thought and speculation. Thomas was always gentle and considerate, but his little services, his unobtrusive sacrifices never went unnoticed, and they awoke in the bandit an ever-increasing wonderment. Also, they awoke a fierce ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... placed beyond the reach of scorn or neglect, wherein from beginning to end the author discourses concerning himself individually. Had this been done in any other way than the consummately simple, delicate, and unobtrusive one which he has adopted, the whole would have been insufferable egotism, disgusting coxcombry, or oppressive dulness. Whereas, this personal identity is the charm, the strength, the soul of the book; he lives, he breathes, he moves through it; his pulse beats or stands ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... sitting next to a shy English lawyer, a man who won upon him by his quiet, unobtrusive simplicity, and who, in some well-chosen words, rather made light of dinner-speaking and its terrors. When Hawthorne finally got up and made his speech, his "voice, meantime, having a far-off and remote echo," and when, as we learn from others, a burst of applause greeted the few well-chosen ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... clergyman or he might have been Dr. Knapp, but he would not have been George Borrow. "What is truth?" he asked. "Would that I had never been born!" he said to himself. And it was an open air ranter, not a clergyman or unobtrusive godly man, that made him exclaim: "Would that my life had been like his—even like that man's." Then the Gypsy reminded him of "the wind on the heath" and ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... William Bain in those circumstances, he might have travelled about for a while till he was strong again, and then he might have turned his face homeward. If he had found the lad well, and doing well, he might have contented himself with leaving him to the kindly care, or the unobtrusive supervision of Mr Hadden, who had known his family, and who had promised to befriend him. But John could not quite free himself from a sense of responsibility with regard to Willie Bain. He must keep sight of him for a while. He liked the lad from the first and soon he loved him. He would not be ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... historic style should first of all aim, namely, a lucidity which leaves nothing obscure, impartially avoiding abstruse out-of-the-way expressions, and the illiberal jargon of the market; we wish the vulgar to comprehend, the cultivated to commend us. Ornament should be unobtrusive, and never smack of elaboration, if it is not to remind us ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... activity and splendour: we go into the country and see there a healthful and happy appearance as we pass briskly along: and we naturally think that there must be great exaggeration in what we have heard about the distressed condition of the people. But we forget that Misery is a most shrinking unobtrusive creature. It cowers out of sight. We may walk along the great thoroughfares of life without seeing more than the distorted shadow of it which mendicancy indicates. A little thought, however, will soon bring the matter home to ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... she, with a placid smile. "Methinks it is like water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst, that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My earthly senses are closing over my spirit, like the leaves around the heart of a ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... be the result. Sir John was not aware however, of the minute and scientific observations then making at the very moment when Mr. Garnier was entertaining the commissioners with his witty and instructive conversation—by the unobtrusive menial who had accompanied the Secretary to Ostend. In order that those observations might be as thorough as possible, rather than with any view to ostensible business, the envoy of Parma now declared that—on account of the unfavourable ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... rest, of the younger Cicero and of Horace. Few characters in history are more pathetically interesting than his. High born, yet disdainful of ambitious aims, irreproachable in an age of almost universal profligacy, the one pure member of a grossly licentious family, modest and unobtrusive although steeped in all the learning of old Greece, strong of will yet tolerant and gentle, his austerity so tempered by humanism that he won not only respect but love; he had been adored by the gay young patricians, who paid homage to ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... part" which he had chosen. Thinking of it now, still with some sense of puzzlement, I believe his love for human creatures, and especially within the family relation, were of that deep, still, yearning kind we feel towards the woods and hills of home; the silent, unobtrusive presence fills us with rest and certainty, and we are all unease when we miss it; yet we take it for granted, and seldom dwell upon it in our active thoughts, or realize the part it plays in us; it belongs to ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... learned to think of it as a strange thing. Perhaps a dozen times I had seen little Hope Gibbs (they still said "Gibbs") playing quietly among the lilacs in the back yard. It was always at dusk when the shadows were long there, and she a shadow among them, so unobtrusive and far away. As for her mother, no one ever saw ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... transition, and they were at dinner—where each plate was of two almost imperceptible layers of solid diamond between which was curiously worked a filigree of emerald design, a shaving sliced from green air. Music, plangent and unobtrusive, drifted down through far corridors—his chair, feathered and curved insidiously to his back, seemed to engulf and overpower him as he drank his first glass of port. He tried drowsily to answer a question that had been asked him, but the ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... thought the widest possibilities of victory.... A specially Germanic way of feeling, a Germanic modesty and distinction of thought, was here powerfully promoted by means of the Gospel. True distinction is always modest, in the sense of being unobtrusive and not bragging of ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... were not united as a body, and consequently there was no test of character nor rules of discipline for those who assumed that name. They were very dissimilar men to their quiet and unobtrusive descendants. The markets, fairs, and every public concourse were attended by them, denouncing false weights and measures, drunkenness and villany, with the curses of the Almighty, calling upon the people, frequently with furious and fearful energy and powerful eloquence, to repent, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... come home as well. In times of war peoples may hate abroad and with some unanimity. But after the war, with no war going on or any prospect of a fresh war, with every exploiter and every industrial tyrant who has made his unobtrusive profits while the country scowled and spat at England, stripped of the cover of that excitement, then it is inevitable that much of this noble hate of England will be seen for the cant it is. The ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... died a "Professor of German" in the Lycee de Rouen, who had held her post since 1882. There had lived Camille Selden, in a quiet seclusion, from which she published the "Memoires de la Mouche." Universally beloved for her sweetness, her simplicity, her gentle nobility of soul, she was the unobtrusive friend of all the best spirits of the day. Upon her there seemed to have fallen some few mild rays from the genius of Heine, whom she loved so well. Her last days were spent in studying the correspondence of two great citizens of the town which ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... Mary and the fat lady became aware for the first time of a subtle, silent force in the domestic economy. But so unobtrusive was this influence that one had to scrutinize very closely, indeed, to detect the evanescent personality of Mrs. Dax's husband. Leander was his name, but it is safe to say that he swam no Hellesponts for the masterful ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... quiet and unobtrusive that few persons paid any great attention to him. It was indeed entirely by chance that the Intellectual Society secured his services. The secretary wrote to an artist friend in Melbourne, suggesting a lecture; the answer was short and concise: "Sorry ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... construction, a remarkable evidence of the capacity of man to overcome almost insurmountable difficulties, and his marvellous power of adapting means to ends. They also stand forth as a grand army of sentinels, who, with unobtrusive regularity, open their brilliant eyes on the great deep, night after night—from year to year—from age to age, and gaze— Argus-like—all around our shores, to guard our shipping from the dangers of the sea, perhaps I should rather ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... He took long solitary walks on side streets and byways; but it was noted that, reaching the farther outskirts, he invariably turned back. In all those dragging years it is doubtful if once he set foot past the corporate limits into the open country. Dun hued, unobtrusive, withdrawn, he aged slowly, almost imperceptibly. Men and women of his own generation used to say that save for the wrinkles ever multiplying in close cross-hatchings about his puckered eyes, and save for the enhancing of that dead gray pallor—the wasp's-nest overcasting ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... how easily the problem had been solved. She would take Mrs. Phillips in hand at once. At all events she should be wholesome and unobtrusive. It would be a delicate mission, but Joan felt sure of her own tact. She could see his boyish eyes turned upon her ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... silent, unobtrusive man of humble birth and little education with the keenest interest. He felt instinctively that he was a man of genius. From to-day he knew that as a leader of cavalry he had few equals. He had pointed out to his superiors in their council of war a possible path ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... popularity of his house to his wife. Mrs. Page certainly embodied the traits most desirable in the Ambassadress of a great Republic. A woman of cultivation, a tireless reader, a close observer of people and events and a shrewd commentator upon them, she also had an unobtrusive dignity, a penetrating sympathy, and a capacity for human association, which, while more restrained and more placid than that of her husband, made her a helpful companion for a sorely burdened man. The ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... ABOUT the East, this is the East itself. And yet in his company we are always ENGLISHMEN in the East: behind Servian, Egyptian, Syrian, desert realities, is a background of English scenery, faint and unobtrusive yet persistent and horizoning. In the Danubian forest we talk of past school- days. The Balkan plain suggests an English park, its trees planted as if to shut out "some infernal fellow creature in the shape of a new-made squire"; Jordan recalls the Thames; ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... from this, there is an odor from the evergreens, the hedges, the various plants and vines, that is only expressed and set afloat at a high temperature, which is delicious; and, hot as it may be, a little breeze will come at intervals, which can be heard in the treetops, and which is an unobtrusive benediction. I hear a quail or two whistling in the ravine; and there is a good deal of fragmentary conversation going on among the birds, even on the warmest days. The companionship of Calvin, also, counts for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner |
