"Unpleasing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shifted me from my birth, or first looked on me in a mood as splenetic as that of nature, when she produced that most sombre and unpleasing of trees, the olive; to pursue the simile; I may have conduced to the comfort of others, nay, even to their convenience and luxury, but it never availed aught to my own appearance or circumstances; I went on, like that unhappy-looking ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... were well provided with dried meat, the prospect of fresh buffalo steak was not unpleasing, and a hunt was ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... these things accurately will be very tiresome. Let me simply say that piety or holiness is learning how to please the gods in word and deed, by prayers and sacrifices. Such piety is the salvation of families and states, just as the impious, which is unpleasing to the gods, is their ruin ...
— Euthyphro • Plato
... was born in London and educated at Harrow and Caius College, Cambridge. His relations with Pope give him a more prominent position among men of letters than he would otherwise deserve, and mark with unpleasing distinctness the coarse methods of literary warfare adopted in Pope's day. The poet began the attack in his Essay on Criticism. Dennis had written a tragedy called Appius and Virginia, and Pope, who had a grudge against him for not admiring his Pastorals, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... beautiful; the pebbles seemed crushed upon the beach, the stream but added to their lifelessness by heaping on them its dull green slime; the lark, indeed, was singing—Juliet was right—its notes were nothing but "harsh discords and unpleasing sharps"—a rainbow threw its varied arch across the heavens—sadness had robbed it of its charm—it seemed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... dubbing—he had no armour of his own to wake; but, on the very threshold of chivalry, which is the perfection of justice, had unjustly purloined the arms of another knight. That this was a mere mockery of a religious institution, and therefore unpleasing in the sight of Heaven; witness the demons and hobgoblins that were permitted to disturb and torment him ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... generous of impulses, which he put into practice. But he also had a normal person's impulse to less admirable behavior, and he simply could not understand that there was any difference between impulses. He put the unpleasing ones into practice too. He'd been on the moon to avoid extradition because of past impulses which society called murderous. On this ship it was yet to be discovered what he would do—but because he was technically sane his lawyers could have prevented ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... been misconduct in any of the commanders of armed vessels under the American flag. Every authentic information of that kind will be strictly attended to, and every means be taken to punish the offenders and make reparation to the sufferers. The chief consolation we find in this unpleasing business is, that the most experienced States have not been able to restrain the vices and irregularities of individuals altogether. Congress has published a proclamation for the more effectually suppressing and punishing such malpractices. But we are rather inclined ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... a breath whether this lady had yet had the small-pox? whether her hair were her own? how tall she stood without high heels to her shoon? whether her breath were sweet or her language unpleasing in the Lincolnshire jargon? whether the King had sent her ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... newspapers, he died in 1867. He was a zealous collector of plants and animals, but apparently cared little for the study of his captures, either in life, in relation to their surroundings, like Darwin, or for the structure of their bodies, like Huxley. The somewhat unpleasing nature of his regard for animals appears in the following story which he ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... emerged at last from the cover of the woods at the head of the island, and glanced up the broad swift stream to the point where it ran smooth before breaking into the rapids; and as a soft pastoral feature in the foreground of that magnificent landscape, they found them far from unpleasing. Some such pair is in the foreground of every famous American landscape; and when I think of the amount of public love-making in the season of pleasure-travel, from Mount Desert to the Yosemite, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... put to his lips a golden whistle, and presently there stood in the cabin a slight man of not unpleasing countenance—blue eyes, brown hair, unfurrowed brow, and beneath a scant and silky beard a chin as softly rounded as a woman's.—His name and estate? Francis Sark, gentleman.—English? So born and bred, cousin and sometime servant ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... make way continually for other passers-by, lost herself in a maze of fancies, to which the misty afternoon atmosphere, and the twinkling lights, and the quickly passing crowds lent a confused but not unpleasing background. She was glad that the noise made all talk impossible, and that she could dream on quietly as they glided and pressed their way through the current of people in Oxford Street and Regent Street, as undisturbed ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... to the examination of those more important mythical legends which appropriately belong to the Master's degree, it will not, I think, be unpleasing or uninstructive to consider the only one which is attached to the Fellow Craft's degree—that, namely, which refers to the allegorical ascent of the Winding Stairs to the Middle Chamber, and the symbolic payment ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... uncomfortable costumes. The raiment which he prescribed consisted of three pieces of cloth of the colour called kasava. This was probably dull orange, selected as being unornamental. It would appear that in mediaeval India the colour in use was reddish: at present a rather bright and not unpleasing yellow is worn in Burma, Ceylon, Siam and Camboja. Originally the robes were made of rags collected and sewed together but it soon became the practice for pious laymen to supply the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... self-restraint in his colouring which corresponds to the reserve of his emotion; and though a regret sometimes rises in our mind that he should have modelled the light and shade upon his faces with a brusque, unpleasing hardness, their pallor dwells within our memory as something delicately sought if not consummately attained. In a word, Borgognone was a true Lombard of the best time. The very imperfection of his flesh-painting ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... much as the soldiers that sack a city go off with all the precious things they can snatch up, huddled into clothes-bags and pillow-cases. I am reminded, too, of Mr. Galton's composite portraits; a thousand glimpses, as one passes through the long halls lined with paintings, all blending in one not unpleasing general effect, out of which emerges from time to ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... unreconciled to the colloquial phrases, or the imitations of them, that are, more or less, scattered through the class last mentioned; yet even from the small number of the latter, they would have deemed them but an inconsiderable subtraction from the merit of the whole work; or, what is sometimes not unpleasing in the publication of a new writer, as serving to ascertain the natural tendency, and consequently the proper direction of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Rogers cites Dryden's "sadly pleasing thought" (Virgil's Aen. x.); and Mitford compares Thomson's "lenient, not unpleasing tear." ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... kinds of uselessness, that of we godlike human beings is the most utterly obvious when our working day is past. Mental decay and bodily corruption as the ultimate. And, this side of it, a few years of increasing degradation, a mere senseless killing of time until the very unpleasing goal is reached—along with a growing selfishness, and narrowness of outlook; along, possibly, with some development of senile sensuality, the more detestable because it lacks the provocations of hot blood. Oh! Dominic Iglesias, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... extract from a letter written by Lady Mary from Florence in 1740 this unpleasing ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... absolutely alike that, except when they laughed, I could scarce tell which was which. Hector, the elder, had had the whole of his front teeth so stopped and plated with gold dentistry that there was but little ivory to be seen, and when he laughed this gave him a strange and rather unpleasing appearance. ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... advice, and cut down this tree. Daily experience convinces us, that the same thing happens frequently in the commerce of this world, which has in this instance misled you. When we see a child badly clothed, and of an unpleasing external appearance, we are too apt to despise him, and grow conceited on comparing ourselves with him; and sometimes even go so far as cruelly to address him in haughty and insulting language. But beware, ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... to defeat its rival with the help of Assyrian support, but also the manner in which the life and activities of the nation as a whole were unavoidably affected by their action. Other Hittite-Aramaean and Phoenician monuments, as yet undocumented with literary records, exhibit a strange but not unpleasing mixture of foreign motifs, such as we see on the stele from Amrith(1) in the inland district of Arvad. But perhaps the most remarkable example of Syrian art we possess is the king's gate recently discovered at Carchemish.(2) ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... lightly to the Brownie's heels, enough to annoy without hurting him. The Brownie showed signs of uneasiness, quitted his quiet pace, and took to little starts and springs and whiskey motions, most unpleasing to his rider. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... been thought tactless, but Penrod, not analytical, found his spirits somewhat elevated. No mirror was in his range of vision and, though he had submitted to cursory measurements of his person a week earlier, he had no previous acquaintance with the costume. He began to form a not unpleasing mental picture of his appearance, something somewhere between the portraits of George Washington and a vivid memory of Miss Julia Marlowe at a ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... Recent events had filled him with a sure and certain hope. Not allowing for the value of the good manners which he lacked, he failed to see that he excited any hostility or any distaste. Unless a man were downright rude to him, he counted him an adherent; this streak of a not unpleasing simplicity ran across his varied nature. He was far from being alive to his disadvantages; every hour assured him of his superiority. Most especially he counted on the aid and favour of women; the future might prove him right or wrong in his expectation; but he relied for its realisation ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... of the audience were not in appearance different from newly arrived and respectable Irish immigrants. They wore a white cap with long frills over the forehead, and a black handkerchief thrown over it and hanging down the neck,—a quaint and not unpleasing disguise. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... jabot, with a great red jewel fastened in the knot. A soft hat, trimmed with gold lace and an ostrich-feather, covered his dark curls, while yellow gauntlets and high riding-boots of polished leather completed his outward attire. Not an unpleasing picture as he sat there in the sunshine astride the big blood-bay, but Constans, looking upon him, knew that neither now nor hereafter could there be any verity of peace between them. There is such a thing as hate at first sight even as there ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... to the feeble, we are taught by divine precept and example to make no concession to the supercilious and uncharitable Pharisee. Was every thing which was not of the essence of religion to be given up as soon as it became unpleasing to a knot of zealots whose heads had been turned by conceit and the love of novelty? Painted glass, music, holidays, fast days, were not of the essence of religion. Were the windows of King's College Chapel to be broken at the demand of one set of fanatics? Was the organ of Exeter to be silenced ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... uncommon indeed amongst these orators. His voice, however, is greatly in his disfavour ; for he forces it so violently, either from earnestness or a fear of not being heard, that, though it answered the purpose of giving the most perfect distinctness to what he uttered, its sound had an unpleasing and crude quality that amazed and disappointed me. The command of his language and fluency of his delivery, joined to the compact style of his reasoning and conciseness of his arguments, were all that could answer my expectations: but his manner—whether from energy ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... nearly one in the morning when my train from Badajoz drew into the Rocio station at Lisbon; yet I had no sooner passed the barrier than I heard a band in the great hall of the station strike up an unfamiliar but not unpleasing air, the rhythm of which plainly announced it to be a national anthem—a conjecture confirmed by a wild burst of cheering at the close. The reason of this midnight demonstration I never ascertained; but, indeed, no one ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... perhaps, occurred to the minds of all, that upon the right position and arrangement of the teeth the beauty and expression of the countenance much depends. But so it is; for however regular and perfect the general features, if the teeth are irregular or deficient, an unpleasing expression, proportionate to the extent of the displacement, is inevitably produced. Now every mother should be alive to this fact, that she may early apply to the dentist to have any error of the above nature rectified, ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... characteristic prose, or that in which no regularity (coincidence) is easily appreciable; (2) cadenced prose, or that in which the regularity is perceptible, but unobtrusive, and (3) metrical prose, or that in which the regularity is so noticeable as to be unpleasing. No very clear lines can be drawn; nor should one try to classify more than brief passages in one group or another. And, obviously, longer selections will combine two or more sorts in succession. A few examples will serve to show what ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... colored object, say red, and then transferring the gaze to a white or gray expanse. The image of the object appears thereon in the complementary green. Per contra, the most complete lack of contrast makes the most unpleasing combination, because instead of a refreshing alternation of processes in the retina, a fatiguing repetition results. Red and orange (red-yellow), or red and purple (red-blue), successively stimulate the red- process with ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... for only me, And couldst no heart but mine allure!— To all men else unpleasing be, So shall I ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... abundance of water that these Gafsa gardens have a character different from most African plantations. They are more artlessly furnished, with rough, park-like districts and a not unpleasing impression of riot and waste—waste ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... pistol would certainly have startled King James more, but could (setting apart the fright) hardly have been more unpleasing to ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... her toilet she entered the sitting-room. Mrs. Warren, in her morning deshabille, looked a more unpleasing object than ever. Her hair was in tight curl-papers, and she wore a very loose and very dirty dressing-gown, which was made of a sort of pattern chintz, and gave her the effect of being a huge pyramid ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... afterward the young prince appeared at some of the court festivities, and I had many opportunities to observe him. He seemed sprightly, with a certain exuberance of manner in meeting his friends which was not unpleasing; but it was noticeable that his hearty salutations were by no means confined to men and women of his own age; he was respectful to old men, and that is always a good sign; it could be easily seen, too, that while ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... age was exactly thirty-five years and a half. He was a short, compact figure, and a little inclined to a localised embonpoint. His face was not unpleasing; the features fine, but a trifle too pointed about the nose to be classically perfect. The corners of his sensitive mouth were depressed. His eyes were ruddy brown and troubled, and the left one was round with more of wonder in it than its fellow. His complexion ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... means of coming by it, and the aged widower, blase on the point of literary reputation, deprived of the social comforts of a married state, and looking back to regret instead of looking forward to hope. This brought bad sleep and unpleasing dreams. But if I cannot hope to be what I have been, I will not, if I can help it, suffer vain repining to make me ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... may each domestic joy be thine, Be no unpleasing melancholy mine. As rolling years disclose the will of Fate, I see you wedded to some equal mate; Thronged by a crowd of growing girls and boys, A heap of troubles, but a host of joys. On sights like these, should length of days attend, Still may good luck pursue ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... pleasure in all the little cares and details which the well-being of a house really requires, nor that I have memory for these things; more especially is the daily caring for dinner irksome to me. I myself have but little appetite; and it is so unpleasing to me to go to sleep at night, and to get up in the morning with my head full of schemes for cooking. By this means, it happens that sometimes my husband's domestic comforts are not such as he has a right to demand. Hitherto my weak ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... outlines of the others, was Albino, with transparent skin mantling with colour that contrasted with his snowy hair, eyebrows, and the lashes, veiling eyes of a curious coral hue, really not unpleasing under their thick white fringes, but most inconveniently short of sight, although capable of much work; in fact, he was a curiously perfect pink-and-white edition of his dark ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mention of Massetti's name the blush upon Zuleika's cheek deepened. She trembled slightly, but said nothing; her heart fluttered painfully, but the pain was not altogether disagreeable. The young Viscount was evidently not unpleasing ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... on the events of the preceding day, was, to Isabella, a very unpleasing retrospect. She owed her life, and that of her father, to the very person by whom, of all others, she wished least to be obliged, because she could hardly even express common gratitude towards him without encouraging hopes ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... always using division, the principal reason being that most things are better received when seemingly of extempore invention and not suggestive of study, but arising in the pleading from the nature of the thing itself. Whence such figures are not unpleasing as, "I had almost forgotten to say"; "It escaped my memory to acquaint you"; and "You have given me a good hint." For if the proofs should be proposed without something of a reputation of this kind, they would lose, in the sequel, all the ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... our night animals are guttural and unpleasing. The 'possum has a throaty half-stifled squeak, the native cat a deep chest-note ending with a hiss ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... all sorts of elegant superfluities, most of which have descended to the merchants of the Temple through the hands of ladies-maids and valets. Yonder lies the district called the 'Foret Noire'—a land of unpleasing atmosphere inhabited by cobblers and clothes-menders. Down to the left you see nothing but rag and bottle-shops, old iron stores, and lumber of every kind. Here you find chiefly household articles, bedding, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... the black burnt stems of the stringy bark were agreeably relieved by the white stems of the red and blue gum, growing in the moister and more open space near the creek. In front of them was a slab hut of rich mahogany colour, by no means an unpleasing object among the dull unbroken green of the forest. In front of it was a trodden space littered with the chips of firewood. A pile of the last article lay a few yards in front of the door. And against ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... my knowledge will not prejudice me in your eyes, members as you are—privileged members I may say—of this seat of learning. In an age when so many persons think they know everything, it may afford a not unpleasing variety to meet with some who know that they ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... little as a bundle, to contain so many great virtues,—rather below the medium stature, slender, and bent with age, rather than with burdens; for she had had no heartless master to lay heavy packs upon her. Her face, far from unpleasing in its lines, was lovely in its blended expression of intelligence, modesty, the sweetest guilelessness, an almost heroic truthfulness, devoted fidelity, a dove-like tranquillity of mind, and that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... answer me about H.'s book; I want to write to him, and not to say anything unpleasing. If you direct to Post Office, Portsmouth, till called for, I will send and receive your letter. You never told me of the forthcoming critique on 'Columbus' [1] which is not too fair; and I do not think justice quite done to the 'Pleasures', which surely entitles the author to a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... thought nothing of first impressions, and was prepared to offer a hearty welcome to any friend of his uncle, even of the most unprepossessing type. Mr. Barker was not exactly unprepossessing; he was certainly not handsome, but there was a look of action about him that was not unpleasing. Claudius felt at once, however, that the American belonged to a type of humanity of which he knew nothing as yet. But they shook hands cordially, and the Doctor resumed ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... Somme flickered out, quenched by the everlasting rain, was spent by us in a variety of places, mainly well behind the lines, but far from comfortable. Such was Sombrin, 9 miles south-west of Arras, where officers were faced with the unpleasing alternative of sleeping in barns or in dripping and unboarded tents. Then we revisited Souastre after thirteen months, overlooking the ruins of Fonquevillers and the splintered remnants of Gommecourt ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... idea that Major Benjy was feeling lonely and missing the quarrelsome society of his debauched friend was not entirely unpleasing to her. It was odd that there should be anybody who missed Captain Puffin. Who would not sooner play golf all alone (if that was possible) than with him, or spend an evening alone rather than with his companionship? But if Captain Puffin had to be missed, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... My cousin, she says, and she means any mode of relationship in the wide, wide world. Nos neveux, says a French writer, and means not our nephews, but our grandchildren, or more generally our descendants.] translated as "the bloom of young desire, and PURPLE light of love." It was not unpleasing, and gave a lustre to the eyes, but it added to the eccentricity of the face; and by all strangers it was presumed to be an artificial color, resulting from some mode of applying a preparation more brilliant than rouge. But to us children, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the Venus and Adonis is unpleasing; but the poem itself is for that very reason the more illustrative of Shakespeare. There are men who can write passages of deepest pathos and even sublimity on circumstances personal to themselves and stimulative of their own passions; but they are not, therefore, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... this standard, we must admit that Miss Ingelow's prose, though possessing many merits, has not quite the charm of her verses. With a good deal of skill in depicting character, and with a style that is not unpleasing, though rather formal and old-fashioned, she has no serious drawback except a very prominent and unpleasant moral tendency, which is, indeed, made so conspicuous that one rather resents it, and feels a slight reaction in favor of vice. One is disposed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... to say it sings most part of the night; its notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative of several birds; as the sparrow, swallow, skylark. When it happens to be silent in the night, by throwing a stone or clod into the bushes where it sits you immediately set it a-singing; or, in other words, though it slumbers sometimes, yet as soon ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... old person of Bromley, Whose ways were not cheerful or comely; He sate in the dust, eating spiders and crust, That unpleasing old person of Bromley. ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... foresaw has come to pass: The greatest happiness that ever sweetened my daily life is gone out of it! To love Plato is a noble rule, but greater than Plato is the truth; and yet, those who preach it must be prepared to find that truth scares away friends from the unpleasing vicinity of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the bell at ten minutes past five. Billy was there. She greeted me with a little tremor of embarrassment, which sat oddly upon her, but which was not altogether unpleasing. She said it was kind of me to come so early. I stayed for about half an hour, but conversation flagged, and some of my cleverest remarks ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... melody on four notes only, and all the four women joined, one end of the boat answering the other. They sang through their noses, and high up in the falsetto. By shutting one's eyes one could imagine a great ox waggon drawn uphill by four bullocks and one of the wheels ungreased. Yet it was not unpleasing, this queer shrill, recurrent rhythm, the monotonous creak and splash of the oars, the mystery of feeling one's way in the blue gloom, through reed and water-lily beds, up this cliff-bound river, and far ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... mismanaged by our opponents. Add to this, that they are all quarrelling amongst themselves, and that we were never so united as at this moment. With all these reflections you will own that the prospect before us is not an unpleasing one. The opinion of Willis ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... introduced should be of the simplest kind. A slight darkening of parts of the wood to gain a certain suggestion of roundness is quite admissible, but the expedient should be used with discretion, lavish employment of it leading to heaviness of effect and a monotony of tone which are most unpleasing. If ivory or metals are introduced the greatest care is necessary to prevent them from giving a spotty and uneven effect to the design, for neither these two materials nor mother-of-pearl marry quite with the tone of the wood; ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... His prospect of obtaining these, however, seemed each day to diminish. The favour with which the Count regarded him had lasted but during the first days of their acquaintance, and had since been materially impaired by the discovery of various unpleasing traits in Don Baltasar's character, and particularly by his endeavours to urge the death of Herrera in opposition to the wishes of his kinsman. Moreover, there could be little sympathy or durable friendship ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... year, his uncle took him to the Opera for the first time, where he heard the Mercato di Malmantile. The music produced a most extraordinary effect upon him, and for several weeks afterwards he remained immersed in a strange but not unpleasing melancholy, followed by an absolute loathing of his usual studies. Music all through life affected him most powerfully, and he states that his tragedies were almost invariably planned by him when under its influence. It was about this time that he composed ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... poems on which much praise has been bestowed, is "Lycidas"; of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing. What beauty there is we must therefore seek in the sentiments and images. It is not to be considered as the effusion of real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arthur and Mincius, nor tells ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... more and more annoying, and we daily strengthened ourselves in our aversion from him. He could never have done with degrading religion and the sacred books for the sake of injuring priestcraft, as he called it; and thus produced in me many an unpleasing sensation. But when I now learned, that to weaken the tradition of a Deluge, he had denied all petrified shells, and only admitted them as lusus naturae, he entirely lost my confidence; for my own eyes had on the Baschberg plainly enough shown me that I stood on the bottom ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... inferred from the foregoing description that Miss Tyler was a young and ardent damsel in her teens; whereas she was considerably nearer forty than thirty, and possessed an uncomely aspect unpleasing to male eyes. Her own were of a cold grey, her lips were thin, her waist pinched in, and—as the natural consequence of tight lacing—her nose was red. Her scanty hair was drawn off her high forehead very tightly, and screwed into a cast-iron knob at the nape of her long neck; and she smiled occasionally ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... have not thorough acquaintance with him; for he is best abroad; near home, he is ugly enough. Your saying that he is a pretty man, brings to my mind what I have observed in the work of the painter, whose pictures show best at a distance, but, very near, more unpleasing. ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... accomplishments or mere graces of manner, or even by personal favour. Melbourne thinks highly of her sense, discretion, and good feeling; but what seem to distinguish her above everything are caution and prudence, the former to a degree which is almost unnatural in one so young, and unpleasing, because it suppresses the youthful impulses which are ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... mothers or other, are to become economically independent, instead of being "parasitic on the male," our author's unpleasing way of recognizing that fatherhood has reached high and responsible estate amongst mankind. Now if Mrs. Gilman's solution be feasible, we must return to our fundamentals and see whether they are compatible with it. She has ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... swiftly away, and the widow, by her free and unostentatious charities and her angel-ministering to the poor, the afflicted and the bereaved, had almost eradicated the first unpleasing impression made upon the simple-hearted people of Aberdeen; so that, although the Misses Simpkins still held their nightly confabulations, they did not venture as at first, so openly to propagate their animadversions concerning the "mysterious ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... pathetic only that it was impossible that so much egotism and bitterness should not choke the sympathy of the listener. But as the story came to Molly's twenty-first year, the strange, bitter self-defence (she had not yet explained why she should defend herself at all to Father Molyneux), all the unpleasing moral side of the story became merged in the sense of ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... triplets and alexandrines without scruple. In his preface to "Solomon" he proposes some improvements by extending the sense from one couplet to another with variety of pauses. This he has attempted, but without success; his interrupted lines are unpleasing, and his sense, as less distinct, is less striking. He has altered the stanza of Spenser as a house is altered by building another in its place of a different form. With how little resemblance he has formed his new stanza ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... take his work in detail. The purely humorous prints commence as early as 1781 ("The Village Doctor," published in June of that year by Humphrey), and are followed up (November 27, same year and publisher) by "Charity Covereth a Multitude of Sins," and that unpleasing subject (published by Fores, 1783) of "The Amputation"; but it is in his political cartoons of 1784—such as "Britannia roused, or the Coalition Monster destroyed"—that we begin to recognise the distinctive touch of Thomas Rowlandson. This vigorous ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... hospital. One I tied to the bottom of a post of the standards; but, eager to escape, and ignorant of the qualities of cord, she flew up over the top rail, and, the next time I entered the barn, presented the unpleasing spectacle of a dignified and deliberate fowl hanging in mid-air by one leg. Greatly alarmed, I hurried her down. Life was not extinct, except in that leg. I rubbed it tenderly till warmth was restored, and then it grew so hot that I feared inflammation would set in, and made local ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... men either because they durst not at once shock the universal prejudices of their age, or because they themselves were not altogether freed from the contagious influence of a prevailing superstition. Yet the result of his calculations in these two instances left so unpleasing an impression on his mind that, like Prospero, he mentally relinquished his art, and resolved, neither in jest nor earnest, ever again to practise ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... country if these green hedgerows were in general use! It would take from the savage barrenness given to it by these crooked wooden lines, that cross and recross the country in all directions: no object can be less picturesque or more unpleasing to the eye. A new clearing reminds one of a large turnip field, divided by hurdles into different compartments for the feeding of sheep and cattle. Often, for miles on a stretch, there is scarcely a tree or bush to relieve the blank monotony of these ugly, uncouth partitions ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... she seemed to be at least thirty-five years of age, and her features, though not unpleasing, were coarse and large, especially the nose. Her hair was black, her complexion dark, and the hands, which lay folded upon her bosom, showed marks of toil, for they were rough and unshapely, though smaller in proportion than the other members of her ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... of all these high-sounding titles was hunched up on his cushions in the State Pavilion. 'On State occasions, among which it is evident that he included this Quaker audience, he delighted to deck his unpleasing person in a vest of cloth of gold, lined with sable of the richest contrasting blackness. Around him were ranged the servants of the Seraglio—the highest rank of lacqueys standing nearest the royal person, the "Paicks" in their embroidered coats and ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... and soundly with open mouth. A thick mass of hair escaped from beneath her cap, upon her brow; the moonlight fell, through the window-pane in the roof, upon her face. Otto bowed himself over her and examined the coarse, unpleasing features. The thick, black eyebrows appeared ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... hat, and took his seat timidly at the bar of justice beside Mr. Tutt, who smiled down at him affectionately and put his arm about the threadbare shoulders as if to protect him from the evils of the world. They made a quaint and far from unpleasing picture, thought Bently Gibson, the ideal juror, and he wondered what the poor old ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... is, it is, hie hence, begone away; It is the lark that sings so out of tune, Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps. Some say the lark makes sweet division; This doth not so, for she divideth us; Some say, the lark and lothed toad change eyes; O, now I would they had changed voices too; Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray, Hunting thee hence with hunts up to the day. O, now ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... outer door, heralded by a great barking of dogs without, caused one of the men to start to his feet; whilst Joan turned red and pale, as she had had a trick of doing of late; and the farmer looked a trifle uneasy, as a man may do who is half afraid of some domestic visitation of an unpleasing kind. ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a former occasion, declined giving the real source from which he drew the tragic subject of this history, because, though occurring at a distant period, it might possibly be unpleasing to the feelings of the descendants of the parties. But as he finds an account of the circumstances given in the Notes to Law's Memorials, by his ingenious friend, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., and also indicated ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... air prepossessing and distinguished rather than dignified. His years—for his countenance, though handsome, was deeply marked, and evinced the tokens of dissipation—seemed more numerous than they really were; and though not actually past middle age, Lord Mauleverer might fairly have received the unpleasing epithet of elderly. However, his step was firm, his gait upright, and his figure was considerably more youthful than his physiognomy. The first compliments of the day having passed, and Lord Mauleverer ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... think that was the exact date, there was a man distinguished in a certain kingdom as the ugliest person in the realm. According to a blithe romancer, he was so distinctively unpleasing in form and feature that he challenged the attention of the king who, in whimsical mood, made him a royal retainer. The man so conspicuously lacking in beauty enjoyed his eminent position and privileges for some time. But even ugliness, if it attain distinction, will excite envy ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... celebrity, predicted the fortunes of Tasmania. The picture he drew, is no unpleasing prospect ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... its absence is marvellous to those possessed by it. Its presence is its justification, its being its sole explanation, itself its highest reason. Surely on those who cherish it, the shadow of the love-creative God must rest more than on some other women! Unpleasing as was the infant, to know him her own would have made the world a paradise to Jane. Her heart burned with divine indignation at the wrongs already heaped upon him. Hardly born, he was persecuted! Ugly! he was not ugly! Was he not come straight from the fountain ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... observer and a calm critic of both home and foreign folk. That he was stirred to strong words by unpleasing comments on his country appears in his "Notions of Americans: Picked up by a Traveling Bachelor." This book of facts, showing wide and accurate knowledge, was intended to enlighten and clear away mistakes. Instead of this, it drew upon ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... It is the current rumour of the neighbourhood, Else I should ne'er have dar'd to wound your ear; But friendship urges the unpleasing task— You tell me, you ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... a little painted frame house, back from the street, fronted by a precise bit of lawn, with a willow bush at one corner. A white picket fence effectually separated it from a broad, shaded, not unpleasing street. An osage hedge and a board fence respectively bounded ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... amiable; the selfishness may soften and eager restless activity find a definite direction for itself. And therefore, as a mother, Charlotte was able to endure the appearance of symptoms which for others might perhaps have been unpleasing, from a sense that where strangers only desire to enjoy, or at least not to have their taste offended, the business of parents ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... ambitious for "racial equality," only is entitled to reference in these pages for the purpose of according it the contempt due it. That the whites of the country have not a complete monopoly of those unpleasing creatures known as "tuft hunters" and "social climbers," is no doubt true, but that the Negro, as represented by intelligence and race pride, ever worries over it; cares a rap ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... rose, waiting for the woman to come forward. This she did with a quick, natural step which insensibly prepared the mind for the brisk, assertive woman who now presented herself. Mr. Hammersmith, at sight of her open, not unpleasing face, understood for the first time the decided attitude of the coroner. If this woman corroborated her husband's account, the poor young girl, with her incongruous beauty and emotional temperament, would not have much show. He looked to see her quailing now. But instead ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Antonio opened his eyes, looked steadfastly at Leocadia, and recognising her rather by the tone of her voice than by her face, said with a feeble voice, like one in pain, "Say on, senor, what you please, for I am not so far gone but that I can listen to you; nor is that voice of yours so harsh and unpleasing that I should dislike to ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... but grinning joy upon the mother's face is a miracle of truth; I have seen the expression more than once; doctors see it often, in the sudden revulsion from terror and agony to certainty and peace; I only marvel where he ever met it: but the general effect is unpleasing, marred by patches of sheer ugliness, like that child's foot. There is the same mistake in all his pictures. Whatever they are, they are not beautiful; and no magnificence of surface-colouring will make up, in my eyes, for wilful ugliness of form. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... meanings even if remaining knee-deep in the kingdom of the nebulous. It must be confessed modern composers have retaliated. Musical impressionism is having its vogue, while poets are desperately pictorial. Soul landscapes and etched sonnets are not unpleasing to the ear. What if they do not mean much? There was a time when to say a "sweet voice" would arouse a smile. What has sugar to do with sound? It may be erratic symbolism, this confusing of terminologies; yet, once in a while, it strikes sparks. There ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... spirits, prey on the spirits; bring one's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave; add a nail to one's coffin. Adj. causing pain, hurting &c. v.; hurtful &c. (bad) 649; painful; dolorific[obs3], dolorous; unpleasant; unpleasing, displeasing; disagreeable, unpalatable, bitter, distasteful; uninviting; unwelcome; undesirable, undesired; obnoxious; unacceptable, unpopular, thankless. unsatisfactory, untoward, unlucky, uncomfortable. distressing; afflicting, afflictive; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... as she lay curled in an ungraceful heap, with her eyes closed. It was a hard, disagreeable face. Dotty did not know why it was unpleasing. She only compared it with the child's usual standard, and thought, "She is not so handsome as my mamma," and went on making ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... parties on the Committee, which had been evident throughout the enquiry, was very much intensified—Lord Robert Cecil and the Conservatives courteously but tenaciously trying to get at the truth, the Ministerialists determined to shield their man. There is a most unpleasing contrast between the earlier bullying of the journalists (who after all were not on trial) and the deference the majority now showed to ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... man, on the footpath, was a young girl of about fifteen years of age, fashionably dressed, with crinoline, mantle, and gloves, and a straw hat trimmed with gaudy feathers, but all old and terribly worn out, who, in a loud and cracked though not altogether unpleasing voice, was singing before a shop in expectation of a couple of kopecks. Raskolnikoff stopped and joined one or two listeners, took out a five-kopeck piece, and gave it to the girl. The latter at once stopped on a very high note which she had just reached, and cried to the ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... Government at reviews and public ceremonials, and to our diplomatic officials upon the termination of their missions, or upon occasions of rejoicing, jubilees of sovereigns, etc. While the practice of exchanging such graceful souvenirs is not unpleasing among the nations which recognize and reciprocate the courtesy, it is entirely inappropriate that officials of this Government should accept, or ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... (according to the common Acceptation of the Word Great) are Lewis King of France, and Peter Emperor of Russia. As it is certain that all Fame does not arise from the Practice of Virtue, it is, methinks, no unpleasing Amusement to examine the Glory of these Potentates, and distinguish that which is empty, perishing, and frivolous, from what is solid, lasting, and important. Lewis of France had his Infancy attended by Crafty and Worldly Men, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the admission of Roman Catholics to office, and the repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act. On these three objects his heart was set; and he was by no means disposed to accept as a substitute for them a penal law against Exclusionists. Such a law, indeed, would have been positively unpleasing to him; for one class of Exclusionists stood high in his favour, that class of which Sunderland was the representative, that class which had joined the Whigs in the days of the plot, merely because the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... embroidery; the other was dressed in black, with several stars and orders on his breast. Both were in the middle period of life: the one in uniform was the youngest and most agreeable looking; the dark features of the other were of a sombre and unpleasing cast. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... floor was made of "daga", that is, ant-heap earth mixed with cow-dung, into which thousands of peach-stones had been thrown while it was still soft, in order to resist footwear—a rude but fairly efficient expedient, and one not unpleasing to the eye. For the rest, there was one window opening on to the veranda, which, in that bright climate, admitted a shaded but sufficient light, especially as it always stood open; the ceiling was of unplastered ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... had profited by the magnificent grants conferred on him by the Crown. The argument of the Royal Counsellor was not without its effect.] Pizarro's person has been already described. He was tall in stature, well-proportioned, and with a countenance not unpleasing. Bred in camps, with nothing of the polish of a court, he had a soldier-like bearing, and the air of one accustomed to command. But though not polished, there was no embarrassment or rusticity in his ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... Michael Delgrado,—he could acknowledge that now without the twinge of conscience that had always accompanied the unpleasing thought in the past,—yet, despite the gulf already yawning wide between them, his soul revolted against the notion of laying a hand on ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the Star Chamber; that the most judicious tax which a financier could devise would excite murmurs if it were called the Shipmoney; and that the words Standing Army then had to English ears a sound as unpleasing as either Shipmoney or Star Chamber. He declared therefore that he abhorred the thought of a standing army. What he recommended was, not a standing, but a temporary army, an army of which Parliament would annually ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Highlands, it unhappily was used as a single belting in exposed places near farm houses and steadings. The consequence, as every one who travels through the Highlands must be painfully conscious of, has been trees shapeless and crooked, giving no shelter, and unpleasing in view. A ludicrous illustration of this may be seen from the Highland Railway between Forres and Dunphail, the larches having grown up zig-zag, according as the several winds happened to prevail. It is well known that no regular plantation can in beauty equal a natural ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver-white And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then on every tree Mocks married men, for thus sings he, Cuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo: O, word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear! ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... showing desert, 17. For this scene, select an extremely barren and unpleasing bit ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... did not hesitate a moment in obeying the voice of his heart; and the young lady, who soon observed what havoc she had made with the glance designed for the old soldier, felt the situation piquant and not unpleasing. ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... should have been the lightest; while the middle part, where the hand holds the door, wants strength and consistence. It may be added too, that the four heads, in the form of a diamond, make an unpleasing shape. All regular figures should be studiously avoided.—The light had been well distributed, if the bailiff holding the arrest, and the chairman, had been a little lighter, and the woman darker. The glare of the ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... at finding herself in such close proximity to a huge loose carnivore is, perhaps, pardonable. Landseer is, of course, no longer in fashion as a painter. I quite own that at times his colour is unpleasing, owing to the bluish tint overlaying it; but surely no one will question his draughtsmanship? And has there ever been a finer animal-painter? Perhaps he was really a black-and-white man. My family possess ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... M. Le Clerc, (Sentimens de quelques Theologiens de Hollande, dix-septieme Lettre) defends Grotius with great ability against the charge of Socinianism: he justly observes, that, his abstaining from unpleasing propositions, his silence on offensive doctrines, and his conciliating expressions, should not too easily be accounted proofs, of belief of his precise sentiments of any particular tenets. Grotius, says Le Clerc, ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... of a knight and a gentleman, reverend lady," said the Constable, "I had not then the slightest thought that I should be called upon to take a step no less distressing to me, than, as I see with pain, it is unpleasing ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... The man spoke with a slight, and not unpleasing, accent. "Can you tell me something about your work?" he asked. "I am very much interested. I would like ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... the garden at the old grey bastions of the fortress, where all these troubles had begun. I cocked my hat, set my hand on my hip, and swaggered on the pavement, confronting detection. And I found I could do all this with a sense of exhilaration that was not unpleasing, and with a certain cranerie of manner that raised me in my own esteem. And yet there was one thing I could not bring my mind to face up to, or my limbs to execute; and that was to cross the valley into the Old Town. It seemed to me I must be arrested immediately ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... true. For to me the sojourn there would be admirable, when I should meet with Palamedes, and Ajax, son of Telamon, and any other of the ancients who has died by an unjust sentence. The comparing my sufferings with theirs would, I think, be no unpleasing occupation. But the greatest pleasure would be to spend my time in questioning and examining the people there as I have done those here, and discovering who among them is wise, and who fancies himself to be so, but ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... confessed, with modified enthusiasm. Each held in his hand a smoking lump of flesh from some favored portion of the mammoth and each rent away an occasional mouthful with much content. Suddenly Ab ceased mastication and stood silent, gazing intently at a not unpleasing object ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... in this world's unpleasing youth Our god-like race began, The longest arm, the sharpest tooth, Gave ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... have frequently mentioned Grotius, the short account of so great a man, which is inserted in Langbaine, will not be unpleasing to the reader. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... add that I know very little of the girl who is going to become my wife to-morrow; I have only seen her four or five times. I know that there is nothing unpleasing about her, and that is enough for my purpose. She is small, fair, and stout; so, of course, the day after to-morrow I shall ardently wish for a tall, dark, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... by his new brother in arms. The most offensive part of his deportment, however, was a blunt, bold disregard to the title of those whom he addressed, adhering thereby to the manners of the Saxons, from whom he drew his descent, and which was likely to be at least unpleasing to the Franks as well as Normans, who had already received and become very tenacious of the privileges of the feudal system, the mummery of heraldry, and the warlike claims assumed by knights, as belonging only ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... remained there for a few days, hoping for a change in the weather, as the heat was now very great and the country in the neighbourhood of the most forbidding and formidable nature to penetrate. It consisted of very high and scrubby red sandhills, and it was altogether so unpleasing a locality that I abandoned the idea of pushing to the north, to discover whether any other waters could be found in that direction, for the present, and postponed the attempt until I should return to this ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... it not been for the vast proportions of the nose, and the nose would have been thought preposterous, had it not been for the horrible dimensions of the mouth. Yet the expression of all these anomalies, though very grotesque, was not unpleasing. You smiled with satisfaction when you saw how great the improvement was that baboonery had made toward manhood. You might call him, in a word, a queer, little, ugly-looking box of yellow mortality, that contained some amiable qualities, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... to him. Mam'zelle Beauce stretched out a spidery hand clad in a black kid glove—she had been in the best families—and the rather sad eyes of her lean yellowish face seemed to ask: "Are you well-brrred?" Whenever Holly or Jolly did anything unpleasing to her—a not uncommon occurrence—she would say to them: "The little Tayleurs never did that—they were such well-brrred little children." Jolly hated the little Tayleurs; Holly wondered dreadfully how it was she fell so short of them. 'A ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Antwerp, so frequently copied by contemporary painters, is a specimen of masterly modelling and vigorous colour. He is less successful with his life-size Adam and Eve, of which there are repetitions at Brussels, Hatfield, Hampton Court and Berlin. But his most unpleasing efforts are the mythological subjects such as the Danae at Munich, and the Neptune and Amphitrite at Berlin. On the other hand, his portraits are attractive both from being more original, and less influenced by his acquired mannerisms of style Four of these are in the National Gallery, and the ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... Socialism, or against any theory embodied in the government of the day, would certainly not be recognized as work. No more would the painting of pictures in a different style from that of the Royal Academy, or producing plays unpleasing to the censor. Any new line of thought would be banned, unless by influence or corruption the thinker could crawl into the good graces of the pundits. These results are not foreseen by Socialists, ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... I'd love to," rejoiced the boy. And in the fascination of the marvel of finding one fantastic bit that fitted another, David apparently forgot all about Mr. Jack—which seemed not unpleasing to ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... storied stream of the Bacchiglione sweeps through the grounds, and now, swollen by the rainfall, it roared, a yellow torrent, under a corner of the prisons. The towers rise from masses of foliage, and form no unpleasing feature of what must be, in spite of Signor P——, a delightful Italian garden in sunny weather. The ground is not so flat as elsewhere in Padua, and this inequality gives an additional picturesqueness to the place. But as we were come in search of horrors, we scorned these merely lovely things, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... was deeply lined. His hair was black and curly; he had thick lips and beautiful white teeth, which he was fond of showing. His eyes were large and black but deeply sunken; now bright and sparkling, again dull and glassy. His features, to me at least, were harsh and unpleasing; but he was evidently a man of great energy, to whom action was as ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... or so I thought, when I made my first bow to her stern but not unpleasing presence. Seated in a great chair, with a silver tray before her containing such little matters as she stood in hourly need of, she confronted me with a piercing gaze startling to behold in eyes so colourless. Then she smiled, and ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... 1056, in the presence of Duke William, afterwards William I. of England. The two western towers of the present cathedral are not exactly similar, and owing to their curious formation of clustered spires they are not symmetrical. It is for this reason that they are often described as being unpleasing. I am unable to echo such criticism, for in looking at the original ideas that are most plainly manifest in this most astonishing cathedral one seems to be in close touch with the long forgotten builders and architects whose notions ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... he put it into the carriage at Mercy's feet, "what sort of women are these I've taken under my roof! I expect they'll be very unpleasing sights to my eyes. I did hope she'd be good-looking." How many times in after years did Stephen recall with laughter his first impressions of Mercy Philbrick, and wonder how he could have argued so unhesitatingly that a woman who travelled with only ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... so frank and yet profound, and straight became a rebel. "Mademoiselle Olivia," said he, indifferently (oh, Cecile! oh, Cecile!), "they are considered not unpleasing; but for myself, perhaps acquaintance has spoiled ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... my guardianship, but to make over all my estate to my children and to reserve an annuity to myself. This proposition, coming from people who regarded nothing but their own interest, to some might have appeared very unpleasing; but it was in no wise so to me. I had not any friend to advise with. I knew not anyone whom I could consult about the manner of executing the thing, as I was quite free and willing to do it. It appeared to me that I had now ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... a man whom thousands look up to, and reverence, but, in this little world, he is valued only for the supplies he furnishes, the equipages he purchases, the castle in which young royalty dwells. The picture is not unpleasing, however; the slaves have the best of it, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... his understanding had hitherto been confined. He began to perceive the poverty and feebleness of his ideas, and to feel the want of more elevated impressions. The old-fashioned turn of his understanding, in spite of the many advantages with which it was accompanied, formed an unpleasing contrast with the current ideas of society; his ignorance of the commonest things frequently exposed him to ridicule, than which he dreaded nothing more. The unfortunate prejudice which attached to his native country appeared to him a challenge to overcome it in his own person. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... stockings, and an irregular white blaze covering one side of his face and patching an eye. On chest and belly the mother sorrel came out rather sharply, but on the rest of him was that peculiar blending which gives the blue roan shade, a color unpleasing to the critical eye, and one that lowers the ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... you. Not that he who put his hand to it was not a learned man, or did not take trouble; indeed it is easy to believe that he was not minded to disguise it thus, without some reason; nevertheless his work has proved unpleasing. ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... of obtaining its favor, by its inspiring that aim at perfection, in order to the deserving it, which is unknown to a merely mercenary spirit. Under the influence of that sentiment, it occurred to me, that it might not be unpleasing to the public to have a fair state of the pretentions of this art to its encouragement, and even to its esteem, laid before it, by a practitioner of this art. In stating these pretentions, there is nothing I shall more avoid than the enthusiasm arising from that vanity or ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... Prince Itsuse being wounded by an arrow which struck his elbow. It was therefore decided to change the direction of advance, so that instead of moving eastward in the face of the sun, a procedure unpleasing to the goddess of that orb, they should move westward with the sun behind them. This involved re-embarking and sailing southward round the Kii promontory so as to land on its eastern coast, but the dangerous operation ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... thought of him we shall never know. He was never mercenary, but his pride was wounded that so little recognition of his astounding services was forthcoming. The ingratitude of Kings was a commonplace; the ingratitude of peoples an unpleasing novelty. But Washington bestirred himself at last, and Paine was voted an estate of 277 acres, more or less, and a sum of money. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell |
