"Inopportune" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at a loss to understand what she had meant by the man out of Warwickshire, followed her into the hall, and became more angry than before at finding that his brother had brought a friend to his house at so very inopportune a moment. The wrath in his face was so plainly expressed that Doodles could perceive it, and wished himself away. The presence also of the spy was not pleasant to the gallant captain. Was the wonderful woman ubiquitous, that he should thus encounter her again, and that so soon after all the ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... in the afternoon, poorer by many dollars paid for rotten salmon. He wasn't in a particularly genial mood. The Sam Kaye affair had come at an inopportune moment. He didn't care to stand out as a bruiser. Still, he asked himself irritably, why should he care because Nelly Abbott and Betty Gower had seen him using his fists? He was perfectly justified. Indeed, he knew very well he could have done nothing else. The trailers had chortled ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... National Celebration, and he stood beside Christine in all the splendid picturesque pomp of the McFarlane tartans. He was holding Christine's hand, and she stood as a white lily in the glow and color of his dark beauty. Perhaps both of them felt James' entrance inopportune. At any rate they received him coldly, Donald drew Christine a little apart, said a few whispered words to her, and lifting his bonnet slightly to James, he ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of course, and occasionally a regular fusillade, but to us the day on the whole has been peaceful. From 5 a.m. we have been very busy among the Australian wounded, these being the principal sufferers in yesterday's fight, owing, it is said, to their charging with the bayonet at an inopportune moment. Many of their senior officers passed through our hands, and their men, fine, ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... jollier, much more energetic. Sarah is fashionably dressed: Barbara is in Salvation Army uniform. Lomax, a young man about town, is like many other young men about town. He is affected with a frivolous sense of humor which plunges him at the most inopportune moments into paroxysms of imperfectly suppressed laughter. Cusins is a spectacled student, slight, thin haired, and sweet voiced, with a more complex form of Lomax's complaint. His sense of humor is intellectual and subtle, and is complicated by an appalling temper. ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... dressed in black, and he had about him an appearance of prosperity which she was not accustomed to see. He looked different, more staid and respectable, but his drollness of speech and kindly manner were the same as ever. He held out his hand to Laura, who invited him in. He came at an inopportune time, but she could not forget his kindness to her during those terrible days at ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... inopportune accident happened to me later in the day, when speaking at Shrivenham. A large yard enclosed by buildings was chosen for the meeting. The difficulty was to elevate the speaker above the heads of the assembly. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... even apostolic," said the doctor, with one or two contented and discontented grunts. Eleanor understood them; the content was his own, the discontent referred to the speaker whose words were so inopportune. The doctor rose and left the ground. Mr. Rhys had gone even before him; and Eleanor wondered anew whether this man were indeed shy or not. He was so little seen and heard; yet spoke, when he spoke, with such clearness and self-possession. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... minutes the Golden Butterfly was on the sward beside the crippled Cobweb. Mortlake's face was black as night. He fulminated maledictions on the young aviators who had appeared at—for him—such an inopportune moment. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... in history had a more inopportune moment been chosen for such crying illegalities. For close upon the heels of the demonstrations and unrest which they evoked, came the dramatic events of the Balkan War, the crushing victories of the allies, the resurrection ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... of the Duke of York from the command of the army was singularly inopportune, for Sir David Dundas had scarcely been appointed as his successor when a juncture arose specially demanding a combination of energy and experience. The British government, already engaged in the Peninsular ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... had left a mob of irate owners and jockeys in a violent state of mind, intent on finding some one to hang. I had seen the chance of getting a valuable lot of stallions for the Museum, but it was evident that the time was most inopportune for suggesting such a disposition of the remains. Had I done so, the results would have been, to say ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... still sat in a kind of helpless maze when his servant came in with the card of Mrs. Spencer Birtwell. He read the name almost with a start. Nothing, it seemed to him, could have been more inopportune, for now he remembered with painful distinctness that it was at the party given by Mr. and Mrs. Birtwell that Ridley had yielded to temptation and fallen, never, he feared, ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... was succeeded by his son Alexis. The new Tsar sent an envoy to Charles the First of England to announce his succession. He arrived with his letter to the King at an inopportune time. He was on trial for his life. The Russian could not comprehend such a condition, and haughtily refused to treat with anyone but the King. He was received with much ceremony by the House of Lords, and then to their consternation arose and ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... this inopportune flirting with fate must stop; that I must give over dallying with sensations, or it would soon be all over with me. I was falling a prey to the native Lorelei—for all these spots in Japan have their familiar devils—subjectively, as befits a modern man. I numbed ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... own idea to storm the splendours of the Castle Inn; and for certain reasons he had carried it in the teeth of his companions' remonstrances. Now between the suddenness of the onslaught made on them, the strangeness of the surroundings, Sir George's inopportune arrival, and the scornful grins of the servants who thronged the doorway, he was cowed. For a moment his wonted sharpness deserted him; he faltered and changed colour. 'I don't know what you mean,' he said. 'I gave—I gave the name ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... and say yes? Why does an objectlessly lying devil make its inopportune entry into me? Through some misplaced and crooked false shame I answer, "Not at all! not at all! of course a few minutes one way or the other could not make much difference; I was only puzzled to know what had become ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... past week. My offers to take Ida's letters to the post, or to go and fetch home the mail, have been met with a hasty negative, and Minna despatched forthwith to attend to them; and whenever I might enter Ida's room, it would appear to be at a most inopportune moment, for the earnest conversation that had been going on between herself and Gabrielle would instantly stop, and their countenances assume a most transparent expression of indifference. Long whispered conversations with mamma were continually taking place, and Ida seemed to be more frequently ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... Moreau, if you can state your plea briefly, I will hear you. But I warn you that I shall be very angry if you fail to justify the impertinence of this insistence at so inopportune a moment." ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... we left Crowland, and before we had replaced a tire casing that, as usual, collapsed at an inopportune moment, the long English twilight had come to an end. The road to Peterborough, however, is level and straight as an arrow. The right of way was clear and all conditions gave our car opportunity to do its utmost. It ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... for me a certain impatience which I might otherwise have missed in those last words of hers. From Charley it brought out, I feel quite sure, the speech which (in some form) she had been expecting from him as her confederate in this unwelcome and inopportune interview with me, and which his less highly schooled perceptions had not suggested to him ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... right. Warboise's action had been inopportune, offensive, needlessly hurting a kindly heart. But the Master, while indignant with Warboise, could not help feeling just a reflex touch of vexation with Mr. Colt. The Chaplain no doubt was a stalwart soldier, fighting the Church's battle; but her battle was not to ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... each hoped as an innocent and youthful love will hope, and each trembled as each hoped. Nothing explicit had been said that evening; but much, very much, in the way of sympathy and feeling had been revealed, and but for the inopportune entrance of Julia and myself, all ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... read. The entrance of a servant prevented the happy lover from proceeding to extremities upon her lips, "according to the statute in such case made and provided;" and a very excellent statute it is too. Whether the "quashing of proceedings" by the inopportune appearance of the servant was agreeable to either party, I leave to wiser ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... down; and in this her Care, she so well succeeded, that, to her Dismay, he bade her take Pen and Ink, and commenced dictating to her as composedly as if they were in Bunhill Fields. This was somewhat inopportune, for every Thing was to seek and to set in Order; and, indeed, Mother soon came in, all of a Heat, and sayd, "I wonder, my Dear, you can keep Nan here, at such idling, when she has her Bed to make, and ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... instructions, who had been exposed to the full influence of His personal character; and yet, notwithstanding all, the rock-bed of pride, that cast the angels down from heaven, that led to the fall of man, obtruded itself. This occasion in which it manifested itself was very inopportune; already the look of Calvary was on the Saviour's face, and the sword entering His heart. Surely, they must have been aware that the shadow of the great eclipse was already passing over the face of their Sun. ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... accursed Jew," he said to the lieutenant, "and stuff him underground. I am busy, I am absorbed in work. When I have leisure I will attend to him. You can dig him up again. And I take this opportunity to tell you, Lieutenant, that your visit is most inopportune. For six months you have brought me nothing of the sort, and to-night, for example, you plump a Jew on my doorstep. Bury your beastly Jew and leave ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... inopportune moment: despite the subdued light of the chamber, it was high noon and the sun shone burningly outside, and Bruce, who had just eaten a hearty dinner, was utterly devoid of sentiment and indifferent to nice ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... another shock to Miss West, another tumultuous, inopportune return to the experience of half a score years back, to find that she could no more dictate to Bill Nairne on this small matter than she could have done it as Mad of ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... "that our visit is not inopportune. Sir Richard Dyson, I believe?" he continued, bowing—"my friend, Mr. Masters here, has consulted me as to the loss of a betting book, and we ventured to call to ask you, sir, if by any chance on his recent visit to ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... kings of Scanderoon, A royal jester, Had in his train, a gross buffoon, Who used to pester The Court with tricks inopportune, Venting on the highest of folks his Scurvy pleasantries and hoaxes. It needs some sense to play the fool, Which wholesome rule Occurred not to our jackanapes, Who consequently found his freaks Lead to innumerable scrapes, And quite as many kicks ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... tramp from one to another, almost sinking from pain, pressed upon by an immense crowd, and frequently bothered by a policeman, who followed me from one place to the other, making wholly unrighteous demands for my passport at that most inopportune time. After a long search I could get nothing better than this room, with fusuma of tissue paper, in the centre of the din of the house, close to the doma and daidokoro. Fifty travellers, nearly all men, are here, mostly ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... gentlemen, I feel Like one that greets the gracious evening star Thro' a gap in a great wood. Is aught amiss? Why are you all so silent? Ah, my good, My brave Fitzwalter, I most fervently Trust I am not inopportune. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... this of which we have freely partaken?" cried they around, and, in the really impressive silence which followed, an inopportune person discovered a small silver tablet among the fragments upon his plate, and, taking it up, read aloud ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... Penny with an angry impatience waved him aside. There were other silk hats and coats, and a woman's fringed wrap, on the stand where he left his stick and outer garments; and from above came a peal of mingled laughter. The presence of others, now, was singularly inopportune; it would be no good waiting for their departure—here such gatherings almost invariably drew out until dawn; and he abruptly decided that, after a short interval, he would give Essie to understand that he wished to talk ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... very inopportune change in the direction of the wind, we had had an unprecedentedly quick passage. The distance from Copenhagen to Iceland, in a straight line, is reckoned at 1200 geographical miles; for a sailing vessel, which must tack now and then, and must go as much with the wind as possible, 1500 to ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... 1. Perseus hoped to eject the Romans from Greece completely, but through his excessive and inopportune parsimony and the consequent contempt of his allies he became weak once more. When Roman influence was declining slightly and his own was increasing, he was filled with scorn and thought he had no further need of his allies, but believed that ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... inopportune, for at that moment the stranger's umbrella met a like fate with her own, and was turned inside out, while hers, loosened by the opening of her hand, went sailing off into the darkness and rain. She thought she heard an oath ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... she had never been greeted with quite such an outburst as this. Desperate to make herself understood, Mary began in the middle of her carefully planned speech and breathlessly explained backward, as to why she had arrived at this inopportune time. The explanation was so characteristic of her, so heart-felt and utterly honest, that it revealed far more than she intended and opened a wide door into Madam's sympathies. As she stood looking down at the girl with grave kind eyes, Mary suddenly became aware of a strangely ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love,—there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... twenty pounds Scots a year, until such time as a benefice of at least fifty pounds should fall to him; so that he was kept in hope. After this Dunbar tunes forth a song of welcome to "his ain Lord Thesaurair," in which terror at this functionary's inopportune absence—since quarterday we may suppose—is lost in gratulations over his ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... began to feel unaccountable sinkings of spirit, nameless and formless fears seemed to surround and haunt her. Once when she arose in the morning she felt an uncontrollable desire to cry, and frequently thereafter this feeling would seize upon her at the most inopportune times. Mrs. Gerhardt began to note her moods, and one afternoon she resolved ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... knew of my passion for Spain, and kept finding out my dereliction, alleging the Sud-Express to Madrid as something that left me without excuse. The very summer before last I got so far on the way in London as to buy a Spanish phrase-book full of those inopportune conversations with landlords, tailors, ticket-sellers, and casual acquaintance or agreeable strangers. Yet I returned once more to America with my desire, which was turning into a duty, unfulfilled; and when once more I sailed for Europe in 1911 it was more with foreboding of another failure ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... warriors. They've been taken in on the copper find, on some small sharing, while we, in quite another sense of the word, are simply taken in. Such," observed Mr. Dewing philosophically, "is the result of inopportune virtues." ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... world in many ways, particularly in the way of cleansing the shores of the land, and carrying off the filth that was constantly poured into the sea there-from; which, Peterkin suggested, was remarkably tidy of it to do. Poor Peterkin could never let slip an opportunity to joke, however inopportune it might be: which at first we found rather a disagreeable propensity, as it often interrupted the flow of very agreeable conversation; and, indeed, I cannot too strongly record my disapprobation of this tendency ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Parliamentary Reform. He moved that the petition should be referred to the consideration 'of a committee'; but Pitt, in spite of his own measure on the subject in 1785, was now lukewarm about Reform, and accordingly opposed as 'inopportune' such an inquiry. 'This is not a time,' were his words, 'to make hazardous experiments.' The spirit of anarchy, in his view, was abroad, and Burke's 'Reflections,' had of course increased the panic of the moment. Although ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... as far as the library door on his way to the station, when he suddenly remembered the news with which he was fraught when he entered the poor bishop's bedroom. He had found the moment so inopportune for any mundane tidings, that he had repressed the words which were on his tongue, and immediately afterwards all recollection of the circumstance was for the time banished by the scene ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... friendships are priceless. Yet the best and truest of them are only fragments of the perfect friendship. They bring us only little cupfuls of blessing. Their gentleness is marred by human infirmity, and sometimes turns to harshness. Their helpfulness at best is impulsive and uncertain, and ofttimes is inopportune and ill-timed. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... the attack to be fixed for the 23d; an inopportune delay, during which Americans were strengthening their still very imperfect defences. On the 23d the wind was unfavourable. On the 25th the Experiment, 50, arrived, crossed the bar, and, after taking in her guns again, ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... hand, but the moment was inopportune. My father had given his undivided attention to the shutters on the east windows. He walked swiftly over and drew them to, snapping a bolt to hold them in place. Then he turned and rubbed his hands together slowly, examining my uncle the while with a ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... your space due to the clash of opposing views of domestic politics is likely to be for the moment relaxed, you may, perhaps, not think it inopportune that attention should be recalled to a question of permanent international interest raised by the recent action of the Turkish Government in closing the ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... forever this notion of marrying an alien. The Greek church would oppose it tooth and nail, and the people would soon follow the lead of their Popes. This young lady's appearance in Delgratz has come at a singularly inopportune moment. She was brought here by some one hostile to your son. If she came in obedience to Alec's wishes, he ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... were parting, "be more than ordinarily prudent. Do not take any risks, even the most trivial, unless you feel you must. Perhaps I'm weak and foolish, but I'm possessed with a strange, nervous dread. This sudden call of duty—for so I suppose I must look upon it—seems so inopportune;" and she hid her tears on ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... no definite conclusion, the subject was resumed at a meeting on the following day; but Lincoln decided that the time was inopportune. While he thought that more evil than good would be derived from the wholesale arming of Negroes, yet he was not unwilling that the commanders arm, purely for defensive purposes, those slaves who came within the Union lines. But the President had reached ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... at the well, more pensive still. When I went up to her, she was listening absent-mindedly to Grushnitski, who was apparently falling into raptures about Nature, but, so soon as she perceived me, she began to laugh—at a most inopportune moment—pretending not to notice me. I went on a little further and began stealthily to observe her. She turned away from her companion and yawned twice. Decidedly she had grown tired of Grushnitski—I will not talk to her for another ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... line opposite to that of his first five ships, and in doing so had deliberately taken position on one side of a French vessel already engaged on the other, Saumarez's remark was substantially a censure, inopportune to a degree singular in a man of his kindly and generous temper; and its reception by Nelson is not a cause for surprise. On the other hand, as a matter of tactical criticism, based upon tactical conceptions previously adopted, if ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... at him with an expression which reminded him of a servant girl who knows she is giving notice at an inopportune time. Then she planted her feet still deeper in the ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... a bad quarter of an hour over the pipe which this sentimental episode had extinguished; but he could not regret, in the face of his new engagement, the finale of a past and now inopportune love-affair. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... more inopportune! I never dreamed she'd come— [CYNTHIA comes in veiled. As she walks quickly into the room, VIDA greets her languorously.] My dear Cynthia, you ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... superstition continued to recur to me at inopportune moments; in my brain his voice was ceaselessly sounding—"A man in love, a man in love, a man in love"—until a flash of temper sent my lions scurrying and snarling into a pack, where they huddled and growled, staring at me ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... the most elementary additions, and subtractions and much less frequently in the extraction of the most complicated roots, which again, in similar cases, such as "xenoglossy" and psychometry, is one of the eccentricities of human mediumism and is explained by the same cause, namely, the inopportune intervention of the ever fallible intelligence, which, by meddling in the matter, alters the certainties of a subliminal which, when left to itself, never makes a mistake. It is, in fact, quite probable that the horse, being really ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and the arrival of the landlady, silenced the master of the puppet-show, and put a speedy and final end to that grave and solemn harangue, of which we have given the reader a sufficient taste already. Nothing indeed could have happened so very inopportune as this accident; the most wanton malice of fortune could not have contrived such another stratagem to confound the poor fellow, while he was so triumphantly descanting on the good morals inculcated by his exhibitions. His mouth was now as effectually ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... said Mrs. Tulliver, entering thoroughly into the possibility of an inopportune decease. "There's never so much pleasure i' wearing a bonnet the second year, especially when the crowns are ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... most inopportune moment, just when Joe was head and shoulders out of the water, not more than twenty feet away from the boat, the searchlight was ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... hadn't reckoned with that hurting smile, with the sharp reawakening of the vicarious sense of wrong; but, all the same, before her look, her silence, he could but feel for her mother, and feel, too, a keener discomfort from the fact that his inopportune presence must make Mrs. Upton's ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... have come at a more inopportune time? I was distracted; and upon leaving the king went at once to seek the Lady Mary where I had left her in the ante-room. She had gone, so I went to her apartments, but could not find her. I went to the queen's salon, but she was not there, and I traversed that ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... lands stood out from the common enthusiasm, but gave little overt trouble. In Quebec some, but not all, of the Nationalists opposed Canada's participation in the war, taking either the belated colonial view that it was Britain's part to fight the {318} Empire's wars, or the more logical but inopportune view that Canada should not fight in a war when she had had no part in shaping the policy that went before it. They claimed to stand where practically all Canadians had stood a generation before. They forgot that meanwhile the world, ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... was thus thrust into the foreground of discussion at a most inopportune time. The Florida treaty had not yet been ratified, for reasons best known to His Majesty the King of Spain, and the new Spanish Minister, General Vives, had just arrived in the United States to ask for certain explanations. The Administration had every reason at this moment ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... devotion? She bobbed her head, hardly more than a trifle pleased, one might say. Just like females. They're riddles, not worth spelling. Then, drunk I'll get to-night, my pretty dear! the man muttered, soured by her inopportune staidness, as an opponent's bruisings could never have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... course, we are not going up to London," said Alice. "We are only schoolgirls. We are at school and must mind our lessons. I am trying for my scholarship, and I mean to get it. And I don't suppose, even if your aunt is coming at a most inopportune time, that she ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... may be no possible mistake in the interpretation of the gesture, he invariably accompanies it by the phrase: "What a fool I am!" All will admit that if a man really believed himself the author of his discovery, he takes a very inopportune time to declare his impotence and his stupidity so distinctly. But taking none too kindly his avowal which, moreover, is but the proclamation of an indisputable truth, let us rather say that this act of humility is forced ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... to him with a vague inopportune desire to explain what so evidently did not need explaining. He walked about the room trying ways of putting ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... in their elusive methods. Of course, they were playing their own game, and had a right to, and it was for their opponents, whom Nelson so well represented, to outwit and trap them into fighting; but as for having any grounds for complaint, it was not only silly, but inopportune, to give expression to having a grievance against the French admirals because they cutely slipped out of his deadly grasp from time to time and made him weary of life! His grievances were easier to ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... rest of the day! Then with easier pace I went in search of some wild and desert spot in the forest, where there was nothing to show the hand of man, or to speak of servitude and domination; some refuge where I could fancy myself its discoverer, and where no inopportune third person came to interfere between nature and me. She seemed to spread out before my eyes a magnificence that was always new. The gold of the broom and the purple of the heather struck my eyes with a glorious splendour that went to my very ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... changed colour, but felt that, inopportune as the demand was, she could not refuse it without laying herself open to suspicion, and perhaps worse. "Oh, let her come in, poor old soul," she said, "and find a seat for her. I'd really no idea she was well ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... during that summer will remember the suppressed activity in the State, War, and Navy Departments on a certain very humid night. Nothing leaked out at the time as to the cause, but it was understood later that a crisis was narrowly averted at a very inopportune season, for the heads of the departments were all away, the President was at his summer home in the North, and even some of the under-secretaries were out of town. Hasty messages had been sizzling over the wires in cipher and code ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... there be anything of this involved? Cocks had crowed before, even at noon-tide in summer, and the world had outlived the omen! Nevertheless the sound, especially so loud and grating a one, in which the bray of the donkey was so evenly mixed with the hideous scream of the peacock before rain, was an inopportune and impudent one; and the Colonel would have been very likely to wring chanticleer's neck if it had happened to come within the clutch of his fingers. As it was, he determined to cause an immediate abandonment of that stronghold, and sprung up to look for a club or a stone with which the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... mater!" said Arthur kindly. "It's very tiresome of Peggy to disappear at such an inopportune moment, but no harm can have happened to her, you know. It's impossible! As I said before, she has probably some wild prank in her head of which this is a part. I'll give her a lecture when I catch her for spoiling dinner like this, and such an uncommonly good dinner too!" And Arthur smiled ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... the curse of American social life, among a very considerable class of our people, is "perpendicular drinking''—that is, the pouring down of glass after glass of distilled spirits, mostly adulterated, at all sorts of inopportune times, and largely under ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... a pretty kettle of fish! and occurring, too, at such a terribly inopportune moment. Yet, as Dick moodily reflected, while being ferried across to the mainland in one of Grosvenor's new, fast-sailing cutters, perhaps the moment might not be so very inopportune after all. It was a fact that, under the able leadership ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... unburdened of directions for a dress to a forewoman, who was too ill to understand; scoldings to be scattered with no illiberal hand amongst a group of frightened girls, hardly sparing the poor invalid herself for her inopportune illness. In the middle of all this turmoil, Ruth crept quietly to her place, with a heavy saddened heart at the indisposition of the gentle forewoman. She would gladly have nursed Jenny herself, and often longed to do it, but she could not be spared. Hands, unskilful in fine and ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of King or Emperor, as the case might be; and with respect to the cash, not only was each willing to pay but to pay more than the other. Yet the Albanian is most mindful of tradition, and he is aware that his approach to the Slav in the Middle Ages was blocked by the inopportune arrival of the Turks; it is in the nature of man that the Albanian was more impressed by the brilliant young States of the early princes, with that barbarically sumptuous residence at Scutari (the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... letter very useless, and even inopportune; but I was desirous of having a pretty, long conversation with you upon the present circumstances, to explain you what I think of this matter. As a proper opportunity for it did not occur, I took the liberty of laying down some of my ideas in this letter, because it is for ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... to differ," protested Ramblethorne. "Corpses have a nasty way of turning up at inopportune moments. These youngsters are worth more ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... originally as a sort of fire escape. Some enterprising janitor later fixed a spring lock on the upper door to this stairway (surprises had been sprung through this door upon the chapel stage by prankish students at inopportune moments), so that now it was only an exit, and was called by the students "the road to perdition," easy to descend but ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... length reached the shutter, after the delay caused by Li-loe's inopportune presence, he found that Hwa-mei was already ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... a more inopportune moment. The hero, who had troubled Hugh's repose in the moist atmosphere of the city, persisted in behaving in an untoward fashion, even when translated to an altitude of three thousand feet or so. He ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... (placet) and only two, one from Sicily, the other from the United States, voted against it (non placet). Fifty-five Bishops, who fully accepted the doctrine itself, but deemed its actual definition at that moment inopportune, simply absented themselves from this session. Finally, the Holy Father, in the exercise of his supreme authority, sanctioned the decision of the Council, and proclaimed officially, urbi et orbi the decrees and the canons ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... not be inopportune to summarise here, Bienkowski's criterion for dating Roman busts, which is as follows: Augustan and Julio-Claudian epoch, head only rendered; Flavian, shoulders rendered but juncture of arms not indicated; the sculptors ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... several cardinals and archbishops, entreated his Holiness not to submit the dogma of infallibility for consideration, "because the Church has to sustain at present a struggle unknown in former times, against men who oppose religion itself as an institution baneful to human nature, and that it is inopportune to impose upon Catholic nations, led into temptation by so many machinations, more dogmas than the Council of Trent proclaimed." It added that "the definition demanded would furnish fresh arms to the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... girl, with dancing eyes, a continual smile, and as elusive as a drop of mercury. She just couldn't keep still, and she was always getting minor marks in deportment because her sense of fun was sure to bubble over at inopportune times. ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... little gentleman here! (He salutes Inez.) I thought you were with your mother, mademoiselle, and I never dreamed my visit would be so inopportune. Be good ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... the house of Mrs. Loring, his mind was in a state of painful excitement. The inopportune appearance of Dexter had so annoyed him, that he had found it impossible to assume the easy, cheerful air of a visitor. He was conscious, therefore, of having shown himself in the eyes of Miss Loring to very poor advantage. Her manner at parting had, however, ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... ticket, and it was elected. Then followed the death of the President in office, the obnoxious vetoes of the newly installed President—Tyler—the division of the Whig party, the nomination of Mr. Clay at this late inopportune time and the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... she come to visit me at the Abbey Inn and what had she gained by this interview? Perhaps—I reflected, as I plodded along the deserted country road—she had been interrupted on that occasion by the inopportune appearance of Dr. Damar Greefe. Again, why had he appeared there at that moment if not because he had suspected her presence at the Inn; and what was the relationship existing ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... the little cub again but I don't." Mr. Johnson said further, that Mr. Young observed that life was a sad, sad thing —"because the joy of every new marriage a man contracted was so apt to be blighted by the inopportune funeral of a less recent bride." And Mr. Johnson said that while he and Mr. Young were pleasantly conversing in private, one of the Mrs. Youngs came in and demanded a breast-pin, remarking that she had found out that he had been giving a breast-pin to No. 6, and she, for one, did not propose ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Hegel—"unconsciously," he has the caution to say; but that qualification does not in the least mitigate the mischievous intention and effect of his accusation as a glaring falsification of fact and artful misdescription of my work. It would be inopportune and discourteous to weary you with philosophical discussions. I exposed the amazing absurdity of Dr. Royce's accusation of plagiarism in the reply to his article which, as appears below, Dr. Royce himself anxiously suppressed, and which I should now submit ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... by the official atrocities in the Punjab and the manifestly dishonest breach of official declarations on the Khilafat. With the knowledge that India was bleeding at heart, the Government of India should have told His Majesty's ministers that the moment was inopportune for sending the Prince. I venture to submit that it is adding insult to injury to bring the Prince and through his visit to steal honours and further prestige for a Government that deserves to be dismissed ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... plexus blow to American womanhood. The heroine marries a German prince, merely because he is a Prince, discarding her honest and true lover in a scoundrelly fashion, while her beautiful stepmother comes within an ace of surrendering her person to her son- in-law, and is prevented only by the inopportune arrival of her idiotic husband. It is all very "elevating," and a good thing to take your wife and daughter ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... history, but it gives us no clear indication that this version is an elaborate tissue of falsehoods. It is true that Bernick's evident uneasiness and embarrassment at the mere idea of the reappearance of Lona and Johan may lead us to suspect that all is not as it seems; but simple annoyance at the inopportune arrival of the black sheep of the family might be sufficient to account for this. To all intents and purposes, we are completely in the dark as to the course the drama is about to take; and when, at the end of the first act, Lona Hessel marches in and flutters the social dovecote, we do not ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Law hardly offered complete proof of this assertion. He had slept ill enough, and in the morning light his face showed gaunt and pale. Here, then, was a situation most inopportune; the coach of two ladies, unattended, stopped by two strangers, who certainly could not claim introduction by either friend ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... been good for so short a time it wanted to prove by a shining example how it abhorred the lawlessness of its youth. At this inopportune moment Clanton gave himself up to be tried for the ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... England now declared war against Prussia. But Fox, who was an advocate of peace, had come into power in England (Jan. 23, 1806); and Prussia discovered that Napoleon, who was friendly to him, was negotiating for the surrender of Hanover to that country. This crowning indignity moved Prussia, at this inopportune moment, to take up arms against him. Prussia had no ally but Russia. The Prussian army was full of pride and hope; but its organization and method of warfare were after the old, traditional fashion which had come down from the days of Frederick the Great, and its commander, the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... dramatist—the power to describe situation. One cannot deny the appeal of his girl-Francesca, nor the beauty of many of his haunting lines; but no warm impression of the situation is gained, and the characters are peculiarly inactive at inopportune times. Mr. Phillips's talent was predominantly undramatic; he was too much the poet to allow his feeling to be guided by historical material. Yet, as acted, the play was ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... Matthew Arnold. After the introduction of the Home Rule Bill he could not bring himself, though requested by a friend, to write words which would have expressed or implied esteem for the statesman who had made that most inopportune experiment in opportunism[112] and whose talents he admired. Yet for a certain kind of opportunism—that which conserves rather than destroys—Browning thought that much might fairly be said. To say this with a special reference to the fallen Emperor of France he wrote ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... that he could not have selected a more inopportune moment for his visit, and already began to fear that he would have no success to-day. But it began to look as though it were a question of now or never; Brodie would return despite the shotgun, and Brodie might now be looked to for rough-shod methods. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... unwillingly, and with a vague feeling of irritation against this interruption, which seemed to her so inopportune, and in turning round she realized at once that her period of absorption must have lasted a good deal longer than she had had any idea of. She had walked straight across the marshes towards the little hillock on which she stood, but the way by which she had come was no longer visible. The ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it must be your childlikeness ... and your spirit of horse-play, that breaks through at the most inopportune moments, that encourages these fools to ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... timidity, he feared she would never say anything of the kind. Then, too, his conscientiousness stood in his way. Should he presume to take her to his poor house, even if she would come? No, no, he must not think of it; he must work and wait, and defer hope. This hour so opportune was also most inopportune,—such sorrow at home! He would not speak to-night,—O no, not to-night! And yet he could bear up against everything else, if she only cared for him! Such were his resolves, as she passed to and fro before him, trifling away the time with pretence of adjusting this thing and that; but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... hours' warm rain changing the whole world, we got news that a lieutenant and two men with their horses were imminent, and would be quartered here for three nights while some occult military evolutions were going on a few miles off. It was specially inopportune, because the Man of Wrath would not be here, but he comforted me as I bade him good-bye, my face no doubt very blank, by the assurance that the lieutenant would be away all day, and so worn out when he got back in the evening that he probably would not appear at all. But I never met a more ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... with them in consequence. In your position it is not at all necessary to make advances to everybody—and, moreover, it is the very way to have no one for yourself. Look, observe, and keep an intelligent reserve, and don't cast yourself, German-wise, precipitately into politeness and inopportune modesty. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... inopportune time I was thinking of. Who knows what confusion this event may not have thrown them into? If you like to risk the discomfort, I ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of February 12th, dealing with certain very important points connected with the problem of National Defence. Though it would be inopportune for me to pass any detailed judgment upon the scheme which you have laid before me in outline, and though it is evident that difficulties of a serious kind must attend any effort to carry out so important a change in our traditional ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... force than these external distractions working to draw us away, one that we carry within, in our own vacillating wills and wayward hearts and treacherous affections and passions that usually lie dormant, but wake up sometimes at the most inopportune periods. Unless we keep a very tight hand upon ourselves, certainly these will rob us of this consciousness of being justified by faith which brings with it peace ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... cursed the man liberally, nothing could have been more inopportune; he needed that uncouth conveyance for his own purposes, and if only it had waited until he had piloted the girl to the station of the Metropolitain, he might have had it. Now he must either yield the cab to the girl or—share ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... the Danube. His estimate of the highlands would naturally be lower than ours. The main drawbacks in his opinion, however, were the slave-trade, and the power allowed the effete Portuguese of shutting up the country from all except a few convicts of their own nation. The time of his coming was inopportune; the disasters which, from inexperience, had befallen the Mission of the Universities, had a depressing effect on the minds of many at home, and rendered a new attempt unadvisable; though, had the Scotch perseverance and ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... first attempt of the French to colonize Acadia is among the bright deeds of their colonial history. While the death of De Chastes was most inopportune, the future of the French race in America did not hinge upon any one man. In 1603 fishing on the Grand Bank off Newfoundland was a well-established occupation of Normans and Bretons, the fur trade held out hope of great {24} profit, and the spirit of national emulation supplied a motive which ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... justice of this claim, and went on about a hundred rods further, but, just as he was slanting to the left to return to the crossroad, another man, armed like the first, had suddenly started up with the same inopportune question. Jacques gave him the same answer: "Watching for game." The man had then pointed to the edge of the woods, saying in a threatening manner: "If I have any advice to give you, my young friend, it is to go over there. It will be safer ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... risked discovery at an inopportune moment, I could not resist the temptation to raise my eyes level with the sill of the window. So did Uncle Jap's Lily. We both peered in. Uncle Jap was facing Leveson; in his hand he held the long-barrelled six-shooter; in his eyes were tiny pin-point flashes of light ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... This inopportune memory did not trouble her: she was almost grateful to Raymond for giving her the touch of superiority her compatriots clearly felt in her. It was not merely her title and her "situation," but the experiences she had gained through them, that gave ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... interrupted this inopportune conversation, the violence increasing with the noise till the whole atmosphere seemed to vibrate ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... continued, "look upon your husband's arrival as inopportune and unfortunate. We are all agreed that you must be kept apart. Certain obligations have been laid upon you. You could not possibly fulfil them with a husband at your elbow. The matter will be put plainly before your husband, as I am now putting ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... General Wallace contributed on this occasion, by the defeat of the troops under him, a greater benefit to the cause than often falls to the lot of a commander of an equal force to render by means of a victory" (Grant's "Memoirs"). A tactical success may be not only useless, but actually inopportune, if it is out of accord with the plans of the higher command. On the morning of June 18, 1815, Marshal Grouchy was in {8} pursuit of the Prussians whom Napoleon had defeated on June 16 at Ligny. Although urged "to march to the sound of the cannon" (at Waterloo), Grouchy pushed on eastwards, ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... alone, and still more, a certain abrupt contradictoriness in his way of speaking, seemed to put Liszt into a state in which he was easily irritated. One evening Liszt was speaking in an impressive tone of the merits of the Jesuits, and Ritter's inopportune smiles appeared to offend him. At table the conversation turned on the Emperor of the French, Louis Napoleon, whose merits Liszt rather summarily insisted that we should acknowledge, whereas we were, on the whole, anything but enthusiastic ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... imploring procession, even at a respectful distance! My pen is at your service. I prefer to be your historian, your literary maid—half slave, half confidant; for then you will always welcome me. If I were a lover, I might some day be inopportune. That ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... this wave of change now rapidly sweeping away the old order, with whatever beauty and grace it possessed, it might not seem inopportune at the present moment to give a rapid sketch, from the field naturalist's point of view, of the great plain, as it existed before the agencies introduced by European colonists had done their work, and as it still ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... high-toned friends of Hartrott emphasized their love for France, but it was the pious love that a weak and mischievous child inspires, needing protection. And they would accompany their affability with all manner of inopportune memories of the wars in which France had been conquered. Everything in Germany—a monument, a railroad station, a simple dining-room device, instantly gave rise to glorious comparisons. "In France, you do not have this," "Of course, you never saw ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the two men left the room. I waited until certain they were safely out of the way. I was perplexed, hurt, by the girl's words and action. What cause had I given her for treating me with such open contempt? Surely not my avowal of love, however inopportune that might have been, nor my holding her prisoner. Could something have occurred of which I knew nothing? Could Le Gaire have poisoned her mind against me with some ingenious lie? It was all too hazy, too improbable, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... sometimes said things which were quite inopportune, and you managed now and then to let out an exalted: I love you! on such singular occasions, that I was obliged to restrain a strong desire to laugh. There are times when the words: I love you! are ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... had by this time introduced himself into the chamber, and watched the course of procedure from behind the chair of the president. He now leaned forward, and whispered into Hullin's ear, "this would be inopportune."—These significant words were obeyed. The court pronounced the duke guilty of the capital crimes of having fought against the Republic; of having intrigued with England; of having maintained intelligence with Strasburg, with the view of seizing that place; and of having conspired against the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... others—including the "too proud to fight," the laudation of German "humanity and justice," the "war-mad Europe," whose ravings did not concern us, the "peace without victory" forgotten; but that cannot be, and they rise to accuse him now. Macbeth did not welcome the inopportune visit of the Murderers and of Banquo's Ghost ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... who arrived at so inopportune a moment was little calculated to smooth Joan's ruffled brow, being Charles, the eldest son of the Durazzo family. After he had introduced his fair cousin to the people as their only legitimate sovereign, he had sought on various occasions to obtain an interview with her, which in all probability ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... in his own mind to chloroform the bold Michigan cavalryman, but his wife broke it all up by throwing her arms around him at an inopportune moment, thus pinioning the President of the Confederacy so he could not whip the Union army. And so, like Adam, Jeff lays the whole business to the woman. What would we do without women to ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... I felt the plot breaking out on me, very much as the measles do, at a most inopportune time for everybody concerned, and my secretary, more wide-awake than you'd imagine by looking at him, urged me to coddle the muse while she was willing and not to put her off till an evil day, as frequently I am in the habit ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... now recalled the name, and also having asked Willie, long since, to identify it. However, she thought the topic just a little inopportune at the moment. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... came, early; the ladies had not long left the dining-room. They were agitated when his name was announced; even Apollonia's heart beat; but then that might be accounted for by the inopportune recollection of an ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... 26th, Eight A.M.—I sent off a few lines to you yesterday, to tell you of my very inopportune arrival off this town, at a moment when all the world, functionaries, &c., are on tiptoe expecting a new Captain-General to make his appearance at any hour. However, Castilian hospitality is not to be taken in default, and at 4 P.M. we landed with great ceremony, and after being conducted ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... first mishap occurred in the inopportune arrival of the Rev. Lisle Lindsay, whose rather sedate and solemn appearance cast a slight gloom upon everybody's spirits, which deepened when Queenie whispered to Mildred that he looked upon dancing as a frivolous ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... gives her a look which means that it must be done if only to avoid such a scandal. It is at this inopportune moment that MISS HENRIETTA and ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... an hour, were bound to drift through his mind; but he was conscious that their uncomfortable persistence and precision were due to the inopportune arrival of the Countess Olenska. Here he was, at the very moment of his betrothal—a moment for pure thoughts and cloudless hopes—pitchforked into a coil of scandal which raised all the special problems he would ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... out her hand, "as I hope and mean to be—as I am your friend—promise that I will have no more to do with him than the barest courtesy demands. To tell you the truth, your coming this afternoon was a little inopportune. If you had been a single minute later, I honestly believe that he ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... any money," said D'Artagnan to himself, "I would go away; but I have none. I must stay and follow the advice of my hostess, while thwarting the conjugal designs of this inopportune apparition." ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... asking the question, "What is the Negro Teacher doing in the matter of uplifting his race?" In so brief a period of years it would seem to savor of arrogance to ask a question so seemingly fraught with significance, so inopportune and, too, about a people so recently freed from bondage that they have not yet had the time to grow a generation of teachers. It took England more than a generation to grow an Arnold at Rugby. It took France more than several generations to produce a Guizot, and Pestalozzi, whose reputation ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... unfortunate circumstance that I did not destroy the telegram which I saw on the mantel-piece. But I supposed it contained some ordinary congratulations. A more vulgar prudence than mine would have read and burnt it in any case. My fault is, unquestionably, a most inopportune delicacy of feeling. I witnessed the whole scene between Mr. Orange and Her Imperial Highness. It brought tears to my eyes, but as evidence it was valueless for my purpose. She wept, stormed, and showed much feeling. I was reminded in many ways of her mother, Madame ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... kept the audience laughing at their caprices; while they enjoyed the brilliant costumes, and admired the ease and grace of the young actors. Josie was a prominent figure in the plot, as she listened at keyholes, peeped into notes, and popped in and out at all the most inopportune moments, with her nose in the air, her hands in her apron-pockets, and curiosity pervading her little figure from the topmost bow of her jaunty cap to the red heels of her slippers. All went smoothly; and the capricious Marquise, after tormenting the devoted Baron to her heart's content, owned ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... a psychological question, a matter of mental states. Feats of legal subtlety are inopportune, arithmetical exploits still more so. To emerge with the sum of 4s. 6-1/2d. as a minimum, by calculating on the basis of the mine's present earnings, from a conference which the miners and everybody else imagined was to give a minimum of 5s., may be clever, but it is certainly not politic in ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... trying situation in which the revolt of the Duchies, and war with many powerful enemies had placed her, a struggle which required all her resources, both intellectual and material, of which she could dispose; and thus it would have been inopportune had we at that time obtruded ourselves on the notice of the government. But now, that the clouds which obscured the political horizon have been dissipated, now, that a glorious war is concluded, and peace sheds its blessings over Denmark, we can no ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... told by Neifile brings to my mind another in which also Jew appears, but this time as the hero of a perilous adventure; and as enough has been said of God and of the truth our faith, it will not now be inopportune if we descend to mundane events and the actions of men. Wherefore I propose to tell you a story, which will perhaps dispose you to be more circumspect than you have been wont to be in answering questions addressed to you. Well ye know, or should know, loving gossips, that, as it often happens ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... under direction of Mrs. Elizabeth Jones, of Salem, to canvass the State, lecturing and procuring names to petitions to the Legislature for equal legal and political rights for the women of the State. The time chosen for this work was inopportune for immediate success—the opening scenes of the rebellion alike absorbing the attention of the people and their Legislature. Women in goodly numbers came out to hear, but men of all classes waited in the streets, or congregated ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of that mysterious parcel which it had been so difficult to pack and bring; whose contents he would not explain to her, saying that time would soon show her the purpose thereof. In his zest and his gaiety he had hung it there. How foolish and inopportune that mistletoe looked now. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... crowd. I feel sure he intended to make a short speech, as the multitude seemed to demand it. The President was bowing his acknowledgments to the large gathering, when someone, with that bad taste that always crops out at the most inopportune moment, yelled 'Hurrah for Cleveland.' A great many others, with bad taste, laughed. Harrison flushed to his temples, bowed ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... his head to glance sharply at Captain Clubbe, at Colville, at Turner, who listened with that half-contemptuous silence which Englishmen oppose to unnecessary or inopportune speech. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... not named, is, and I sometimes wish he wasn't. When I drew him at a venture, I vainly hoped he was not like other horses, especially that Argentine. Well, apart from stumbling and reverentially kneeling on most inopportune occasions, I have not much fault to find with him. To-day is our first day on this fresh jaunt (we are to join Clements), and already more than half the horses dished out to us seem played out. You see they have all passed through the Sick Horse Farm, and I presume are really ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... intrusion at such a time, Elvira. The effusions of even the best-intentioned friends are injudicious at the inopportune ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... very cordially welcomed. Mrs. French said she was afraid a patient would come to hand at an inopportune moment. ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... been written socially and politically, until the promulgation of the new constitution, in which culminated the national pride of the people. The matter to be noted here is that the European civilization encountered but a few obstacles, notwithstanding its inopportune introduction, and was soon adopted with determined zeal. The like progressive phenomenon on a smaller scale is also recurring in Korea, but ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... come at an inopportune time, madam," said he, "when my friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home; but I arrive from a very long journey, and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate acquaintance as to instal myself ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... by their environment or their physical condition, but the fact that there is a most favorable time and condition for such thought and work should continually be borne in mind. Without this a man with natural endowment may try his wings at flight at an inopportune time, and if he fails he may be firmly convinced that he was ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... of the Caribbean extends a chain of islands which are really smoldering furnaces, with fires banked up, ever ready to break forth at some unexpected and inopportune moment. This group, commencing with Saba, near Porto Rico, and ending with Grenada, consists of ancient ash heaps, piled up in times past by volcanic action. For nearly one hundred years there has been not the slightest sign of explosion and we had grown to ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... and unsavoury alley. One faithful man, who had followed him through many adventures, rendered him such services as he needed, prepared the food he liked and guarded the house in his absence. The fellow was far too much in awe of his terrible master to play the spy or to ask inopportune questions. ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... can finish the sentence, there is a sudden confusion of bodies, a jostling as it were, for Arthur Dynecourt, who had been looking on attentively with one foot on a footstool close to Sir Adrian's elbow, had slipped from the stool at this inopportune moment, and had fallen heavily ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess" |
