"Inappropriate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it may not be inappropriate to remark, that circumstances have combined to secure to the author some qualifications for the preparation of a work of this kind, which are not common to writers in the English language. A residence of several years in early life in Russia, first in the southern provinces, and afterwards ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... through which we are passing, from the pagan conception of life to the Christian. The socialized man of the present day is brought by experience of life itself to the necessity of abandoning the pagan conception of life, which is inappropriate to the present stage of humanity, and of submitting to the obligation of the Christian doctrines, the truths of which, however corrupt and misinterpreted, are still known to him, and alone offer him a solution ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... go," he thought, "but what use would there be in it? I shall only say something inappropriate about boudoirs, about women, about what is honest or dishonest. What's the use of talking about what is honest or dishonest, if I must make haste to save my life, if I am suffocating in this cursed ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Death" is a title the reader will hardly consider inappropriate by the time he reaches the end of this little book. Outnumbered on the battlefield, often exposed to the enemy's fire, and one of us wounded and laid low on a bed of intense suffering, and then charged before a Military ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... though right in adopting a deductive method, had made a wrong selection of one, having taken as the type of deduction, not the appropriate process, that of the deductive branches of natural philosophy, but the inappropriate one of pure geometry, which, not being a science of causation at all, does not require or admit of any summing-up of effects. A foundation was thus laid in my thoughts for the principal chapters ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... in accord with modern demands for greater accuracy in diagnosis that it seems not inappropriate to talk of it as the first definite attempt at laboratory methods in the department of medicine. The maker of the suggestion, curiously enough, was not a practising physician, but a mathematician and scholar, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, who is known in history as Cusanus from the Latin name of the ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... old maps is marked "Thrift Street," a name by no means inappropriate at the present time. It also has its associations, and can claim the birth of Sir Samuel Romilly, the great law reformer, who lived until the early part of the nineteenth century, and whose father was a jeweller here; the early boyhood of Mozart, and the death ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... think it necessary to make this latter observation because the succession of short-lived gales and squalls which have been prominently and unavoidably brought forward in our tale might lead the reader to deem the name of this ocean inappropriate. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... perhaps have shown your Grace that your view of life is too narrow; that your method of dealing with its problems wants variety; that, in point of fact, your employment upon your present mission is distinctly inappropriate. Our meeting today may serve ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... Bessie. "Never!" Bessie herself had bestowed the name of Scrooge on the successful draper, to whom, as far as his personal appearance went, it was absurdly inappropriate. ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... with designs. The great objection to this method was that several persons handled the work and therefore in many cases the decoration had no relation whatsoever to the text; in fact, frequently it was entirely inappropriate ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... describe the person of Miss Laura Stebbins, if I could call to mind any similitudes, whereunto to liken her charms, which have not been worn out in the service of other people's heroines. To use any but brand-new comparisons to illustrate graces like hers would be singularly inappropriate; for she herself always had a bright, fresh look, like some piece of handiwork just finished by the maker. Her hair was black, glossy, and abundant. She had large, hazel eyes, full of expression, shaded by long, black eyelashes, a clear, light-brown complexion, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... seized with a wildly inappropriate desire to seize her, crush her in my arms, taste the red honey of that teasing mouth. The effort of mastering the ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... eyes and a discountenanced expression, feeling, I am sure, that I had put her up to it. Mother thought it quite amusing, and enjoyed my discomfiture hugely. Then for no particular reason she began to garnish her conversation with inappropriate seagoing expressions, such as "Pipe down," "Hit the deck," "Avast," and "Hello, Buddy!" Where she ever picked up all this nonsense I am at a loss to discover, but she continued to pull it to ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... Therefore I don't say inappropriate. I say improper—that is: something to be ashamed of. And at first this impression was confirmed by the obscurity in which the figure embodying this after all considerable fact had its being. The Censor of Plays! His name ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... massacre at Magersfontein, which kept pouring in, indirectly suggested that the business might extend very far indeed. The losses sustained at Magersfontein were more appalling than we were at first led to believe. They were a bitter sequel to the memorable cannonade of ten days before. How inappropriate had been our jubilation! The citizens forgot their personal woes in sorrow for the brave men who after a series of brilliant successes had perished in the final effort. Magersfontein hit us hard, though we knew nothing of the "blazing indiscretions" ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... etymology of her name—[Greek text], a cord—the Thomisus should be like the ancient lictor, who bound the sufferer to the stake. The comparison is not inappropriate as regards many Spiders who tie their prey with a thread to subdue it and consume it at their ease; but it just happens that the Thomisus is at variance with her label. She does not fasten her Bee, who, dying suddenly ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... more Roman than at present—the pulling down and building and excavating, the inappropriate jostlings of time and character merely add to the eternal quality, serene and ironical. Besides, these demolitions have disclosed many things hitherto hidden, and soon destroyed: here in Rione Monti, for instance, above the tram-lines, great green walls, boulders from Antiquity, and quiet ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... peninsula of Michigan, it is fast rising into importance. Three years ago the land was purchased at a dollar and a-half per acre; now, it is selling for building lots at one hundred dollars per foot. They handed me a paper printed in this town called "The Toledo Blade;" a not inappropriate title, though rather a bold one for an editor to write up to, as his writings ought to be very sharp, and, at the same time, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... passed on he was occupied in trying to picture to himself her ladyship sitting before her fire, but that familiar little grey hat, which was so entirely inappropriate, would persist, in spite of all he could do, in getting into the picture. Only once, when curling plumes took its place, had he seen her without it, and though for an instant he would succeed in removing it, presto! before ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... quoted to me by my friend the Rev. Dr. Badger when he heard that I was translating "The Nights": needless to say that it is utterly inappropriate. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... 11, 12 are a warning to the royal house of unknown date, and 13, 14 a sentence upon a certain stronghold, which in this connection ought to be Jerusalem, but cannot be because of the epithets Inhabitress of the Vale and Rock of the Plain, that are quite inappropriate to Jerusalem. This is another proof of how the editors of the Book have swept into it a number of separate Oracles, whether relevant to each other or not, and whether Jeremiah's own ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... have very inappropriate names, for instance another little gem is called "Hog Island." No one knows why it was so called. The clerk ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... this very matter of the proper qualifications for admission to the privilege of studying law, we have heard much in our time. Perhaps a contribution to the subject from the old and somewhat neglected Code of the Mishnah would not be inappropriate. ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... American Surety Company’s building? They do not support anything (the “business” of columns in architecture) except some rather feeble statuary, and do seriously block the entrance. Were they added with the idea of fitness? That can hardly be, for a portico is as inappropriate to such a building as it would be to a parlor ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... unimportant. A Churchman could promote and honour such public servants in the little commonwealth of his cathedral town with greater freedom than might be done elsewhere; and James, a studious and feeble boy, not wise enough to see that the example of his great teacher was here inappropriate and out of place, learned this lesson but too well. The King grew up "a man that loved solitariness and desired never to hear of warre, but delighted more in musick and politie and building nor he did in the government of his realm." It would seem that he was also fond ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... position, or any retreat he liked to select for a life of luxury.[156] Vitellius made similar offers. At first both wrote in the mildest tone, though the affectation on either side was stupid and inappropriate. But they soon struck a quarrelsome note, and reproached each other with immorality and crime, both with a good deal of truth. Otho recalled the commission which Galba had sent out to Germany,[157] and, using the pretext of senatorial authority, sent fresh ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... suddenly found something to which she held very firmly. Imogen was rejoiced for her that she should find a field of real usefulness-were it only that of housekeeping and seeing to weekly bills; but there was certainly a touch of the inappropriate, perhaps of the grotesque, in any assumption on her mother's part of maturity and competence. She therefore smiled back at her with much the same tolerantly interested smile that a parent might bestow on a child's brick-building of ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... inflammation in my left eye, I was prevented from visiting Lexington," etc. Sullivan, in his Familiar Letters, tells us that, for several days afterward, a severe influenza prevailed at Boston and in its vicinity, and was called the Washington influenza. It may not be inappropriate to mention that a similar epidemic prevailed all over New England and a part of New York, after the visit of President Tyler to Boston, in 1843, which ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... like a continuation of the main promontory,—sometimes as one or more lofty acuminated pyramids,—or again we see the different masses extending in nearly a straight line, between which we catch a distant view of Christchurch and other objects on the opposite coast. The name (inappropriate to their present form,) was derived from a spiry rock, 120 feet high and very slender, which fell in the year 1764, having been nearly worn through by the incessant action of the tides: its base however is still ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... south tower the cloud-capped Catskills; on the north are the blue mountains of Vermont; and about the verge of the landscape on all sides runs a line of boldly undulating hills, whose rugged outline forms no inappropriate framing to this very ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... assistance promptly fell forward upon me (he is the biggest horse I have seen in any Yeomanry Company) and nearly broke my instep. I have lately re-christened him "Juggernaut," which I think is not an inappropriate name. I had not much time to spare when we went into Pretoria, but could not help stopping to watch a couple of regiments go through—the Derbies with their band and the Camerons with their pipers. It was a grand sight to see those dirty, ragged, ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... or in the sight of men. That boy was well trained who, when asked why he did not pocket some pears, for nobody was there to see, replied, "Yes, there was: I was there to see myself; and I don't intend ever to see myself do a dishonest thing."—This is a simple but not inappropriate illustration of principle, or conscience, dominating in the character, and exercising a noble protectorate over it; not merely a passive influence, but an active power regulating the life. Such a principle goes on moulding the character hourly and daily, growing with a force that ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... circumstances—i.e. when physical life is, so to speak, in abeyance—be both seen and felt by the known brain. At birth, and more particularly at death, the presence of the unknown brain is most marked. And here it may not be inappropriate to remark that, in my experience at least, the hour of midnight is by no means the time most favourable to occult phenomena. I have seen far more manifestations at twilight, and between two and four a.m., than at any other period of the day—times, I think, ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... when there were no dreams, or when the interpretation of them seemed inappropriate to the pharaoh, his holiness smiled and commanded kindly to act in this way or that in given cases. This command was law which no one might change except in the ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... latter, while the six pieces that form the two outer circles, being separate to the base, give it the technical character of the former. It is still called Hyacinthus non-scriptus—but as the true hyacinth equally wants the inscription, the name is singularly inappropriate. The botanical name of the hyacinth is Hyacinthus orientalis which applies equally to all the varieties of ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... furniture should correspond with the size of the room, with a due regard to the place a piece of furniture or ornament will occupy. The order of arrangement in furnishing is subject to individual taste, but the following suggestions may not be inappropriate:— ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... Jesus of the New Testament this answer is, in a measure, inappropriate. He would not have called the people "a herd confus'd, a miscellaneous rabble." But although inappropriate it is Miltonic. The devil then tries the Saviour with a more subtle lure, ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... him, perhaps some stone of remembrance might have been found to his memory in Germany; but surely, though he was so long an exile, the chief memorial of his birth and death ought to be in Edinburgh or St Andrews. "There, in reference to the cause he advocated, no inappropriate emblem" would be "a father and his child reading the same sacred volume; and, for a motto, in remembrance of his position at the moment, perhaps his own memorable quotation of the Athenian, 'Strike, but ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... had retired to the Grey Sisters, such scenes being inappropriate to her mourning, and besides her apartments being needed for the influx of guests. There, in early morning, before the revels began, Grisell ventured to ask for an audience, and was permitted to follow the Duchess when she returned from mass to her ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... really deadly reptiles encountered in this country that would enable even the novice to distinguish them from those that are harmless would seem not inappropriate here, for where a person is bitten by a snake it becomes at once a matter of vital importance to determine, if possible, its true character. Most non-venomous serpents will viciously bite when cornered, and while they may produce slight wounds, with a small amount ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... and adhered to, as if his own taste had prompted the change. On parade, Colonel Vavasour was a strict disciplinarian;— but his sword in the scabbard, he dropped the officer in his manner,—it was impossible to do so in his appearance,—and no one ever heard him discuss military points in a place inappropriate. He knew well how to make the distinction between his public and his private duties. On an officer under his command, being guilty of any dereliction of duty, he would send for him, and reprimand him before the assembled corps, if he deemed ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... is so little qualified as the German to direct its own destinies, whether in a parliamentarian or republican constitution; to no people is the customary liberal pattern so inappropriate as to us. A glance at the Reichstag will show how completely this conviction, which is forced on us by a study of German history, holds ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... music came to him as he entered the theatre —light, measured music suggestive of tiny streams, toy lambs, and painted shepherdesses. It sounded singularly inappropriate to his mood—as inappropriate as the theatre itself with its gay gilding, its pale tones of pink and blue. It was the setting of a different world—a world of laughter, light thoughts, and shallow impulses, in which he had no part. He halted for an instant ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... astonish, or mortify myself; although there were times when I could not help observing, with a feeling made up of wonder, abasement, and pique, that he mingled with his injuries, his insults, or his contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and assuredly most unwelcome affectionateness of manner. I could only conceive this singular behavior to arise from a consummate self-conceit assuming the vulgar ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... or crowding out of unstressed words or unaccented syllables to make the metre smoother; a term belonging to classical prosody and inappropriate in English prosody except where syllable-counting verse is concerned. Various forms of Elision are called Syncope, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... of the court. But I hardly think it advisable to shape general theory from the exception, and I think it would be better to cease troubling ourselves about primary rights and sanctions altogether, than to describe our prophecies concerning the liabilities commonly imposed by the law in those inappropriate terms. ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... he passed by with a grin as inappropriate to the climate. Cod Liver Oil failed to interest him, as did the Provident Cast Iron Range and the Clean-Press Cider Mill. But he paused speculatively before Punching Bags, for he had the clean pride of body, typical ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... centuries, between the property and rights of a State and the property and rights of its nationals is an artificial one, which is being rapidly put out of date by many other influences than the Peace Treaty, and is inappropriate to modern socialistic conceptions of the relations between the State and its citizens. It is true, however, that the Treaty strikes a destructive blow at a conception which lies at the root of much of so-called international law, as this has been ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... Crane came into the room and overheard my last remark, so I had to tell them the whole thing over again. Both of them laughed tremendously, but Crane, who was captain of the college cricket eleven, and President of the Mohocks, which was the inappropriate name of the St. Cuthbert's wine club, seemed to be more amused at the solemn way I told the story, while Bagshaw said he would have given anything to have seen the Subby rushing down-stairs. They laughed loudly, and as soon as I could ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... adversaries with having failed to prove the existence of their Lord, he himself did not deny the existence of a Supreme Being. Kapila, however, went further. He endeavoured to show that all the attributes which the Mystics ascribed to their Lord are inappropriate. He used arguments very similar to those which have lately been used with such ability by a distinguished Bampton Lecturer. The supreme lord of the Mystics, Kapila argued, is either absolute and unconditioned (mukta), or he is bound and conditioned (baddha). ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Falieri was not a man used to the position of a lay figure, although at seventy-six the dignified retirement of a throne, even when so encircled with restrictions, would seem not inappropriate. That he was of a haughty and hasty temper seems apparent. It is told of him that, after waiting long for a bishop to head a procession at Treviso where he was podesta ("chief magistrate"), he astonished the tardy prelate ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... he was told that there was no one else to take the part; if he would not play with me, the theater must be closed for the night. Then he calmed down and condescended to look the girl over who was to play such an inappropriate role. ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... was a tolerable living. And in the newly-furnished sober drawing-room sat a very old lady, lively but infirm, who was the Rector's mother. Nobody knew that this old woman kept the Fellow of All-Souls still a boy at heart, nor that the reserved and inappropriate man forgot his awkwardness in his mother's presence. He was not only a very affectionate son, but a dutiful good child to her. It had been his pet scheme for years to bring her from her Devonshire cottage, and make her mistress of his house. That had been the chief attraction, ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Cantrip had been allowed to come with her lord;—but, as was well understood, Lord Cantrip was not so manifestly a husband as was Mr. Kennedy. There are men who cannot guard themselves from the assertion of marital rights at most inappropriate moments. Now Lord Cantrip lived with his wife most happily; yet you should pass hours with him and her together, and hardly know that they knew each other. One of the Duke's daughters was there,—but not the Duchess, who was known to be heavy;—and there was ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... banner-working young ladies before the member's wife or the mayor's family had authorized it; and she refused to join, both on the plea of want of time, and because she heard that Mr. Elvers, a real dragoon, declared colours to be inappropriate to riflemen. And so he did; but his wife said the point was not martial correctness, but popular feeling; so Mary gratified the party by bringing her needle, Dr. Spencer took care the blazonry of the arms of the old abbey was correct, and Flora asked the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... declare that the play is the tragedy of irresolution; but all Shakespear's projections of the deepest humanity he knew have the same defect: their characters and manners are lifelike; but their actions are forced on them from without, and the external force is grotesquely inappropriate except when it is quite conventional, as in the case of Henry V. Falstaff is more vivid than any of these serious reflective characters, because he is self-acting: his motives are his own appetites and instincts and humors. Richard III, ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... gentle undulations, with pasture and woodland, with long winding roads, and many a farm that gleamed white amid its orchard leafage, led the gaze into regions of evanescent hue and outline. Westward, a bolder swell pointed to the skirts of Dartmoor. No inappropriate detail disturbed the impression. Exeter was wholly hidden behind the hill on which the observers stood, and the line of railway leading thither could only be descried by special search. A foaming weir at the hill's foot blended its soft murmur with that ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... simplicity, uninterest and leading line or balancing mass or spot (if required) in foreground. When looking for backgrounds he may feel quite sure he has one if it is the sort of thing he would never dream of photographing on its own account. Besides being too interesting, most backgrounds are inappropriate and distracting. The frequent commendations and prizes accorded to good subjects having these faults and therefore devoid of unity tell how little even photographic judges and editors think on the appropriate and essential ensemble ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... variety of forms and with an amazing luxuriance of complicated symbolism and picturesque ingenuity. In America, as in India and Eastern Asia, the power controlling water was identified both with a serpent (which in the New World, as in the Old, was often equipped with such inappropriate and arbitrary appendages, as wings, horns and crests) and a god, who was either associated or confused with an elephant. Now many of the attributes of these gods, as personifications of the life-giving ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... Hudibras; but what if a clergyman should adorn his sermon with a quotation from that poem! Would the abstract propriety of the verses leave him "honourably acquitted?" The Christian baptism of a line in Virgil is so far from being a parallel, that it is ridiculously inappropriate,—an absurdity as glaring as that of the bigotted Puritans, who objected to some of the noblest and most scriptural prayers ever dictated by wisdom and piety, simply because the Roman Catholics ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... of passionate cries to God which ends with a sort of rhapsody of pleading prayer, entitled "Sagesse," begins—and one does not feel that it is in the least inappropriate—with ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... William Gardiner, now venerable but surviving by true merit, is not unlike "Azmon" in movement and character. Though less closely associated with the hymn, as a companion melody it is not inappropriate. But whatever the range of vocalization or the dignity of swells and cadences, a slow pace of single semibreves or quarters is not suited to Wesley's ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... bears evidence of having been covered with lava. It is not unusual on our world for volcanoes to burst up from under the sea, so even the evidence of volcanic action does not, as some seem to think, negative the possibility of water ever existing here; and it may not be inappropriate to point out that our hydrographers have proved that our ocean-beds are not always smooth, but are often diversified by high hills and ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... the curraleiro or "stable horse," bred in the north of the State, especially in the valley of Paranan, bordering upon Minas and Bahia. The curraleiro was also known as cavallo sertanejo or "horse of the jungle"—two most inappropriate names, for it was, accurately speaking, neither ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... forced into daily contact with his lover; moreover he is jealously watched and guarded against everything and everybody, and has to hear misplaced and exaggerated praises of himself, and censures equally inappropriate, which are intolerable when the man is sober, and, besides being intolerable, are published all over the world in all their indelicacy and wearisomeness ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... of this date has just been received. It is scarcely necessary for me to say it is not satisfactory. It would be inappropriate to comment upon it properly in this note, and for that reason alone I ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... Pollux in the Forum (long miscalled the temple of Jupiter Stator), is a typical example of Roman architectural decoration, in which richness was preferred to the subtler refinements of design (see Fig. 44). The splendid figure-sculpture which adorned the Greek monuments would have been inappropriate on the theatres and therm of Rome or the provinces, even had there been the taste or the skill to produce it. Conventional carved ornament was substituted in its place, and developed into a splendid system of highly decorative forms. Two principal elements appear in this decoration—the ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... and mature appearance. He was full of poetic sensibility, and his pure, rich voice had that sympathetic quality that penetrates to the heart.... Curtis was not ever guilty of singing a comic song. It would indeed have been most inappropriate to our intensely earnest mood. Often his brother would join him in a duet with ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... existence it remains mere feeling. Decoration, by stimulating the senses, not only brings a primary satisfaction with it, independent of any that may supervene, but it furnishes an element of effect which no higher beauty can ever render unwelcome or inappropriate, since any higher beauty, in moving the mind, must give it a certain sensuous and emotional colouring. Decoration is accordingly an independent art, to be practised for its own sake, in obedience to elementary plastic instincts. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... more attentive survey, perceiving no badge of authority about him, but rather something quite the contrary—he being of an aspect so singularly innocent; an aspect too, which they took to be somehow inappropriate to the time and place, and inclining to the notion that his writing was of much the same sort: in short, taking him for some strange kind of simpleton, harmless enough, would he keep to himself, but not wholly unobnoxious as an intruder—they made no scruple ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... these seas, the word "nuee" is significant of quantity. Its repetition is like placing ciphers at the right hand of a numeral; the more places you carry it out to, the greater the sum. Judge, then, of Kooloo's esteem. Nor is the allusion to the ciphers at all inappropriate, seeing that, in themselves, Kooloo's profession turned out to be worthless. He was, alas! as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; one of those who make no music unless the ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... public rooms in this great city could be filled by an audience gravely listening to the reverend expositor of the doctrine—that the simple physiological phaenomena known as spirit-rapping, table-turning, phreno-magnetism, and I know not what other absurd and inappropriate names, are due to the direct and personal ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... very inappropriate that Dick should wear a handsome gold watch, more especially as he was quite sure beforehand that his mother would not gratify his own desire to possess one. ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... exponent of the wholesome vitality of earth. The objection that carpenters and joiners, who assume the Heraklean task of purging the earth of monsters, must be prepared to undergo a period of confinement at the pleasure of the Czar in a Criminal Lunatic Asylum is highly sensible, and wholly inappropriate, belonging, as it does, to a plane of thought and feeling other than that in which the poem moves. But perhaps it is not a defect of feeling to fail in admiration of that admired final tableau in which the formidable carpenter is discovered building a toy Kremlin ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... other things to provide for any contingency, and took my meals at a restaurant, which were numerous, including the Chinese which we often patronized, and found myself satisfactorily quartered. It may not be inappropriate to make some general remarks about ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... of uneasy rhymes, inappropriate imagery, vaulting sublimity that o'erleaps itself, and vulgar emotions, we have in this poem an occasional flash of genius, a touch of simple grandeur, which promises as much as Young ever achieved. Describing the on-coming of the dissolution ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... diction of his article, the writer should eliminate (1) superfluous words, (2) trite phrases, (3) general, colorless words, (4) terms unfamiliar to the average reader, unless they are explained, (5) words with a connotation inappropriate to the context, (6) hackneyed and mixed metaphors. The effectiveness of the expression may often be strengthened by the addition of specific, picture-making, imitative, and connotative words, as well as ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... rage, showed me a telegram just received by the Orthodox priest of Scutari. The Patriarchia had been persuaded to appoint one Dochitch, a Montenegrin of Moracha, to the Bishopric of Prizren, in place of Nicephor, dismissed for drunkenness and other inappropriate conduct. Montenegro triumphed, and looked on Prizren as hers. The Serbs were furious; the priests of Kosovo refused to recognize him, and had telegraphed to the two priests of Scutari and Vraka to do so, ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... without feeling keenly the need of a larger, better and better ventilated house of worship. A new chapel is longed for each Sabbath, often through the week, and especially at commencement season when our varied anniversary exercises are all crowded into one small inadequate and inappropriate room. ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 49, No. 5, May 1895 • Various
... wholly nestling and agreeable manner, on the great rugged figure of the Carrier. It was pleasant to see him, with his tender awkwardness, endeavouring to adapt his rude support to her slight need, and make his burly middle age a leaning-staff not inappropriate to her blooming youth. It was pleasant to observe how Tilly Slowboy, waiting in the background for the baby, took special cognizance (though in her earliest teens) of this grouping; and stood with her mouth and eyes wide open, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... still be seen over a laboratory at No. 100 South Bridge, Edinburgh. [It has since been removed.] N.B. There is a tradition that the venerable bust in question was once dislodged by 'Colonel Grogg' and some of his companions, and waggishly placed in a very inappropriate position." ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... south, and joining Eyre's Creek. This river has since been re-named by the Queensland Government, in consequence of there being another Herbert River in the territory. With most questionable taste, the officials, out of a wide choice of names, could find none better than the absurd, and inappropriate one of the GEORGINA! by which it ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... exercising his imagination. This is quite different from the adult mixtures of the animal, the social, and the moral worlds. Does not Cinderella interject a social and economic situation which is both confusing and vicious? Does not Red Riding-Hood in its real ending plunge the child into an inappropriate relationship of death and brutality or in its "happy ending" violate all the laws that can be violated in regard to animal life? Does not "Jack and the Beanstalk" delay a child's rationalizing of the world ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... the original basis of the book, appears to have been consistent throughout. He ends in xii. 8 with the same refrain, Vanity of vanities; all is vanity! In a divine library like the Old Testament, reflecting every side of human thought and experience, such a book is not inappropriate. Its contradictions provoke thought; they beget also a true appreciation of the positive notes thus brought into dramatic contrast with the ground tones of pessimism which resound through ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... not want you to think, sir, on account of what I have said, that I intend to drive you off my property at this hour of the evening, and in your inappropriate clothing. I have heard of you, sir, and you occupy a position of trust and, to a certain degree, of honor, in your village. Therefore, while I cannot depart from my rule—for I wish to make no precedent of that kind—I will ask you to spend the night at my house. You need not be annoyed ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... memories and feelings. Of Eve, at least, he never writes indifferently. When he came to write Samson Agonistes, the intensity of his feelings concerning Dalila caused him to deviate from the best Greek tradition and to assign inappropriate matter to the Chorus. And even in his matter-of-fact History of Britain, the name of Boadicea awakens him to a fit of indignation with the Britons who upheld her rule. There is full scope in Paradise Lost for similar ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... musica parlante, make their appearance. The music assigned by Monteverde to Orpheus when he is leading Eurydice back from the Shades is undoubtedly an air, but the situation is one to which an air is appropriate, and musica parlante would be inappropriate. If the drama had been a play to be spoken and not sung, there would not have been any incongruity in allotting a song to Orpheus, to enable Eurydice to trace him through the dark abodes of Hades. But the arias of Cavalli are not confined to such ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... sucked and bitten his blond moustache into a wisp; he was breathing heavily, with his mouth ajar; his very large and conspicuous blue eyes glittered with a sort of passion. (He wore those eyes in his odd little ugly face like some inappropriate decoration.) ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... that the consciousness of the 'I' does not persist in the state of final release is again altogether inappropriate. It in fact amounts to the doctrine—only expressed in somewhat different words— that final release is the annihilation of the Self. The 'I' is not a mere attribute of the Self so that even after its ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... then discover that you have shot a wandering mule, and not the noble game you were in pursuit of. One cannot take his reference library with him to the shops. The tests, the criteria, must be carried in the head. The last and most inappropriate moment for getting up bibliographical lore is that moment when the pressing question is, to buy or not to buy. Master Slender, in the play, learned the difficulties which beset a man whose knowledge is in a ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... for morality. It is fixed, and therefore unprogressive; while man evolves, and at a later stage of his growth, the morality taught in the Revelation becomes archaic and unsuitable. A written book cannot change, and many things in the Bibles of Religion come to be out of date, inappropriate to new circumstances, and even shocking to an age in which conscience has become more enlightened than it was ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... It is due to a great poet like Ben Jonson, that, without troubling the reader to turn to his works, we should give his own description of these characters, to show that they were not the "perplexed allegories" they are asserted to be by Granger; nor inappropriate to the Masque of Christmas, for which they were designed. MINCED-PIE was habited "like a fine cook's wife, drest neat, her man carrying a pie, dish, and spoon." BABY-CAKE was "drest like a boy, in a fine long coat, biggin-bib, muckender (or handkerchief), and a little dagger; his usher ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the eighteenth century, it has been customary to speak of the Scottish Highlanders as "Celts". The name is singularly inappropriate. The word "Celt" was used by Caesar to describe the peoples of Middle Gaul, and it thence became almost synonymous with "Gallic". The ancient inhabitants of Gaul were far from being closely akin to the ancient inhabitants of Scotland, although they belong to the ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... arrival of the royal pair at my 'umble home, all its surroundings began to lose the charm of rustic simplicity, and appear shabby, inappropriate, and unendurable. It became evident that the entire place must be raised, and at once, to the level ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... his head and face. He was of good family and had been reared in a home of refinement and taught to feel at ease under all circumstances. He accepted his nickname of "The Great and Only Matty" with some complacency, as being not inappropriate, especially since his pitching was the star feature of their baseball playing. A wise father had sent him to the scouts to "get acquainted with himself" but so far the process had not reached perfection. He began to talk with a ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... better that they should be hanged, because nobody knows where violence ends and insanity begins, and it is just as well to be on the safe side. Whenever a given form of intellect happens to be joined to a totally inappropriate temperament, we say it is a case of idiocy or insanity. Of course there are many other cases which arise from the mind or the body being injured by extraneous causes; but they are not genuine cases of insanity, because the evil has not ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... it is clear to all that the laws of marriage and divorce must be made rational and uniform throughout the Nation; that the laws respecting corporations are inappropriate, inadequate, and unjust, both to corporations and to the public—that they do not measure up to the present complex conditions; that the laws respecting commercial paper ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... its value. The woman who possesses a cultivated taste, and a corresponding expression of countenance, will generally be tastefully dressed; and the vulgar woman, with features correspondingly rude, will easily be seen through the inappropriate mask in which her milliner or dressmaker ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... that the actors are prone to consider their own "reading" of a part without reference to the audience, and even, in some cases, to the author. In other words, they are misled by the delusive term "create," so often applied to acting as well as to millinery. The word is inappropriate to the rapidly evanescent. "Original interpreters" is the highest phrase that ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... as one can see from Fig. 212 it is not an inappropriate name. The stem or receptacle, as one can see from the illustrations of the two species treated of here, possesses a very coarse mesh, so that not only the surface but the substance within is reticulated, pitted and irregularly perforated. In the genus Dictyophora ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... for life. As to finishing,—alas! my friend, one does not finish. Considering all that you have in your well-furnished brain beside your accumulated papers, half the contents of which you do not yourself know, your expression "aufraumen,"—to put in final order, is singularly inappropriate. There will always remain some burdensome residue,—last things not yet accounted for. I beg you, then, not to abuse your strength. Be content to finish only what seems to you nearest completion,—the most advanced ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... was crouching by the area-rails looking up and down the street. He darted upon me, in a great rage, to know 'what I meant by it?' I drew myself up as tall as I could, hissed 'Blind leader of the blind!' at him, and, with this inappropriate but very effective Parthian ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... me tell you, it takes a lot of believing." Similarly when we in Ireland learn that Great Britain has founded on the principle of local autonomy an Empire on which the sun never sets, we nerve ourselves to an Act of Faith. It is not inappropriate to observe that a large part of the ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... with the deepest sorrow and anxiety the severe distress which now afflicts the country, and will immediately proceed to examine into its cause, and into the means of effectually providing the necessary relief." His lordship said that a more inappropriate and unsatisfactory speech had never been addressed to any public assembly. The speech said that distress existed "in some parts" of the country: he asked, in what part it did not exist? The kingdom, he asserted, was in a state of universal distress, embracing alike agriculture, manufactures, trade, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... word 'sweet,' for instance, is applied by analogy to things so different in their own nature as a lump of sugar, a young lady, a tune, a poem, and so on. Again, because the head is the highest part of man, the highest part of a stream is called by analogy 'the head.' It is plainly inappropriate to make a separate class of analogous terms. Rather, terms become equivocal by being extended by analogy from one thing ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... the trim morning garb of the young cook, her perfectly arranged hair, her whole aspect of efficiency, and dropped to her own highly inappropriate attire, and she flushed a little. But ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... with a poem, "In Time of Pestilence," which had captivated his strange small boy's soul, and which he had learned for the occasion. Everyone felt it to be singularly inappropriate, and Miss Watson said it gave her quite a turn to hear the relish with which ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... the Elucidation, and on the evidence at our disposal I have ventured to suggest the hypothesis of a group of poems, dealing with the adventures of Gawain, his son, and brother, the ensemble being originally known as The Geste of Syr Gawayne, a title which, in the inappropriate form The Jest of Sir Gawain, is preserved in the English version of that hero's adventure with the sister of Brandelis.[5] So keen a critic as Dr Brugger has not hesitated to accept the theory of the existence of this Geste, and is of opinion that the German poem Diu Crone may, in ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... sound of the drum or the bugle, fit accompaniment for such surroundings. At the foot of the belfry was an antique building in another style, with a small open colonnade, which, though out of harmony, was still not inappropriate. The only thing jarring was a pretentious modern town-hall, in the style of one of our own vestry buildings, 'erected out of the rates,' and which must have cost a huge sum. It was of a genteel Italian aspect, so it is plain that French local administrators are, in matters of taste, pretty ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... and lonely;—a man of such affectionate feelings, too; "a man with more sensibility than other men!" But so had his whole life been, stern and lonely; such the severe law laid on him. Nor was it inappropriate that he found his death in that poor Silesian Review; punctually doing, as usual, the work that had come in hand. Nor that he died now, rather than a few years later. In these final days of his, we have transiently noticed Arch-Cardinal de Rohan, Arch-Quack Cagliostro, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... inculcate principles of brotherly love and affection, and attachment to the Constitution of the country as it now is. I believe, if the convention meet at all, it will be for this purpose; for certainly, if they meet for any purpose hostile to the Union, they have been singularly inappropriate in their selection of a place. I remember, sir, that, when the treaty of Amiens was concluded between France and England, a sturdy Englishman and a distinguished orator, who regarded the conditions of the peace as ignominious to England, said in the House of Commons, that if King William ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... to about eighty. I find it difficult to obtain statistical data as to the comparative number of copies of different works existing in manuscript. With Dante's great Poem, of which there are reckoned close upon 500 MSS.,[1] comparison would be inappropriate. But of the Travels of Friar Odoric, a poor work indeed beside Marco Polo's, I reckoned thirty-nine MSS., and could now add at least three more to the list. [I described seventy-three in my edition of Odoric.—H. C.] Also I find that ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... plot, nor develop a credible situation. He had no grasp on human nature, he had no conception of what character might be in men and women, he had no faculty of expressing emotion convincingly. Constantly you find the most beautiful poetry where it is absolutely inappropriate, but never do you find one of those brief and memorable phrases, words from the heart, for which one would give much beautiful poetry. To take one instance: an Arab slave wishes to say that ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... especially in the great lakes Victoria, Tanganyika and Nyasa. About 180 species are known from Africa (with Syria and Madagascar), 150 from America, and 3 from India and Ceylon. They were formerly known under the inappropriate name of Chromides. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... is hatched from the egg in a form closely resembling, on the whole, that of its parent, so that the term 'miniature adult' sometimes applied to it, is not inappropriate. The baby cockroach (fig. 4 d) is known by its flattened body, rounded prothorax, and stiff, jointed tail-feelers or cercopods; the baby grasshopper by its strong, elongate hind-legs, adapted, like those of the adult, for vigorous ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... conspicuous nebulae; the Great Nebula in Orion, for instance, or the Ring Nebula in Lyra, and his eye will receive light which has not come from any Sun, for it is a well- ascertained fact that these nebulae are nothing but vast masses of incandescent gas. And this objection is singularly inappropriate in the mouth of the opponents of the Mosaic Record, inasmuch as the Nebular hypothesis is with them the favourite method of accounting for the present state of things. The view which they bring forward as an alternative to the Mosaic account assumes the very state of things which, when, ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... architecture, suggesting the Mosque of Ahmed I, at Constantinople, its Gallic decorations have made it essentially French in spirit. The ornamentation of this palace is the most florid of any building in the Exposition proper. Yet this opulence is not inappropriate. In size and form, no less than in theme, the structure is well adapted to carry such rich decoration. This is the palace of the bounty of nature; its adornment symbolizes the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... It seems not inappropriate to mention here the other celebrated national games of the Greeks. The first and most distinguished were the Olympic, founded, it was said, by Jupiter himself. They were celebrated at Olympia in Elis. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... comment in which this grizzled nincompoop was an interlocutor, or of which he was the theme, are as amusing as a page from a comedy of Shakespeare. Braddock has been called brave; but the term is inappropriate; he could fly into a rage when his brutal or tyrannical instincts were questioned or thwarted, and become insensible, for a time, even to physical danger. Ignorance, folly and self-conceit not seldom make a man seem fearless who is a poltroon at heart. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne |
