"Unambitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leaving was sadder. No exile ever turned towards foreign parts with heavier sorrow. Her diadem was a crown of thorns. Her mother's grief augmented her own. Without her children, Josephine, naturally unambitious, found no consolation in the thought that her son was a Viceroy, her daughter a Queen. Before she left Paris Hortense, in terror before the thought that the Emperor would no longer be near to defend her, told her all her domestic ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... accomplishments of the age, as if desiring that he should make some personal effort to recover the victory which was passing into the hands of the Templar and his associates. But, though both stout of heart, and strong of person, Athelstane had a disposition too inert and unambitious to make the exertions which Cedric ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... superficially such; but in which he seems the most deeply instructed; and to which, no doubt, he has so much ow'd that happy Preservation of his Characters, for which he is justly celebrated. Great Genius's, like his, naturally unambitious, are satisfy'd to conceal their Art in these Points. 'Tis the Foible of your worser Poets to make a Parade and Ostentation of that little Science they have; and to throw it out in the most ambitious Colours. And whenever a Writer of this Class ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... unobtrusive unit in the army. He could lie for hours and bask in the sunshine with the patient content of the Mexican peon. He could eat frijoles and tortillas week in and week out, offering no complaint at the monotony of his diet. He was as lazy, as hopeful, and as unambitious as several thousand other riders of the Legion. Nobody paid the least attention to him except to require of him the not very arduous duties of camp service. Presently Pasquale would move south and renew ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... how unambitious Lord Byron was as a child, and with what facility he allowed his comrades to surpass him in intellectual exercises, reserving for his sole ambition the wish of excelling them in boyish ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... with the Senate. His intimate, M. Licinius, played an excellent Maecenas to his Augustus. In his efforts to win the affections of Roman society, Trajan was excellently aided by his wife Plotina, who was as simple as her husband, benevolent, pure in character, and entirely unambitious. The hold which Trajan acquired over the people was no less firm than that which he maintained upon the army and the Senate. His largesses, his distributions of food, his public works, and his spectacles were all on ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... marvellous—but—He had already become the proprietor of several acres of scorched, discredited property near Hickleybrow, at a price of nearly 90 an acre, and at times he was disposed to think this as serious a consequence of speculative chemistry as any unambitious man, could wish. Of course he was Famous—terribly Famous. More than satisfying, altogether more than satisfying, was the Fame he ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... retired way of living. I shall now shew thee the entire confidence which I place in thee. I have only two sons remaining, who are as yet but infants. It is my design that thou take them home with thee, and educate them as thy own. Train them up in the humble unambitious pursuits of knowledge. By this means shall the line of Caliphs be preserved, and my children succeed after me, without aspiring to my throne whilst ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... different modes of life, is struck with the rude and uncomfortable appearance of every thing about this people,—the rudeness of their habitations, the carelessness of their agriculture, the unsightly coarseness of all their implements and furniture, the unambitious homeliness of all their goods and chattels, except the axe, the rifle, and the horse—these being invariably the best and handsomest which their means enable them to procure. But he is mistaken in ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... rights of clanship or vassalage, he was fortunate in the alliance and protection of Vich Ian Vohr and other bold and enterprising Chieftains, who protected him in the quiet unambitious life he loved. It is true, the youth born on his grounds were often enticed to leave him for the service of his more active friends; but a few old servants and tenants used to shake their grey locks when they heard their master ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... unambitious Prince had so spoken, he drew forth a little flask containing branntwein [Footnote: Whisky] (a new drink which some esteemed more excellent than wine, which, however, I leave in its old pre-eminence; I tasted the other indeed but once, but it seemed to me to set my mouth on fire—such is not for ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... propriety and good conduct. This family, though not in actual possession of excessive affluence and honours, was, nevertheless, in their district, conceded to be a clan of well-to-do standing. As this Chen Shih-yin was of a contented and unambitious frame of mind, and entertained no hankering after any official distinction, but day after day of his life took delight in gazing at flowers, planting bamboos, sipping his wine and conning poetical works, he was in fact, in the indulgence of these pursuits, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... forest which covers the steep sides of the ever-winding gorge of the Dordogne for many leagues, only broken where the rocks are so nearly vertical that no soil has ever formed upon them, except in the little crevices and upon the ledges, where the hellebore, the sedum, the broom, and other unambitious plants which love sterility flourish where the foot ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... celebrant of boredom. I was convinced, from some obscure meditation, that Stevenson's conversational method had joined him to my elders and to the indifferent world, as though it were right for old men, and unambitious men and all women, to be content with charm and humour. It was the prerogative of youth to take sides and when Wilde said: 'Mr. Bernard Shaw has no enemies but is intensely disliked by all his friends,' I knew it ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... own doors—nay, should forsake their own kith and kin who are suffering under it—the mother who bore them, the sisters who love them with all a sister's tender and solicitous love, and run off to emancipate the fattest, sleekest, most contented and unambitious race under heaven." ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... tender nature, a deep and lasting joy. I think that if he had married an adoring and sympathetic wife, he might almost have grown exacting—perhaps even selfish, because he is the sort of man that requires to have the best part of him evoked. He is unambitious and in a way indolent; and if everything had been done for him—his wishes anticipated, sympathy lavished upon him—he would have had no region in which to exercise that self-restraint which is now a necessity of the case. We are very liable to try and arrange ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Large pewter pots were brought into it daily at one o'clock, giving it an air that was not aristocratic. The senior of the room, one Mr Love, who was presumed to have it under his immediate dominion, was a clerk of the ancient stamp, dull, heavy, unambitious, living out on the farther side of Islington, and unknown beyond the limits of his office to any of his younger brethren. He was generally regarded as having given a bad tone to the room. And then the clerks in this room would not unfrequently ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... raised the humble but to bend the proud. He had hoped quiet in his sullen lair, But Man and Destiny beset him there: 900 Inured to hunters, he was found at bay; And they must kill, they cannot snare the prey. Stern, unambitious, silent, he had been Henceforth a calm spectator of Life's scene; But dragged again upon the arena, stood A leader not unequal to the feud; In voice—mien—gesture—savage nature spoke, And from his eye ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... attained. I may be answered that this labor can be had from the black as a freeman as well as in the condition of a slave. To this I will simply say, experience has proved this to be an error. Such is the indolence and unambitious character of the negro that he will not labor, unless compelled by the apprehension of immediate punishment, to anything approaching his capacity for labor. His wants are few, they are easily supplied, and when they ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... insight into its fellows and melts all humanity into one cordial heart of hearts. Domestic life, if it may still be termed domestic, will seek its separate corners, and never gather itself into groups. The easy gossip; the merry yet unambitious Jest; the life-like, practical discussion of real matters in a casual way; the soul of truth which is so often incarnated in a simple fireside word,—will disappear from earth. Conversation will contract the air of debate, and all mortal intercourse be chilled with ...
— Fire Worship (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... office, possibly in the Cabinet, he despatched South to get himself elected to Congress, for he must have powerful friends in that body to support the great measures he had in contemplation; and that not unambitious statesman, after a hot fight with Patrick Henry, was obliged to content himself with a seat in the House. Before he went to Virginia he and Hamilton had talked for long and pleasant hours over the Federal leader's future schemes. In all things he was in accord with ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... our travels in Sussex with the best, then Midhurst is the starting point, for no other spot has so much to offer: a quiet country town, gabled and venerable, unmodernised and unambitious, with a river, a Tudor ruin, a park of deer, heather commons, immense woods, and the Downs only three miles distant. Moreover, Midhurst is also the centre of a very useful little railway system, which, having ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... afternoons. Weak-minded though it was, Professor Valeyon loved to listen to it. It suited him better than the full-toned rush and splash of a heavier water-power; there was about it a human uncertainty and imperfection which brought it nearer to his heart. Moreover, weak and unambitious though it was, the fountain must have been possessed of considerable tenacity of purpose, to say the least, otherwise, doing so little, it would not have been persistent enough to keep on doing it at all. It was really ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... [Chopin] not the most retiring and unambitious of all living musicians, he would before this time have been celebrated as the inventor of a new style, or school, of pianoforte composition. During his short visit to the metropolis last season, but few had the high gratification ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... also some of the most perfect. The evolution from the small monogram, generally in white on a black ground, to an elaborate picture occupying from a quarter to a whole page, was much less gradual than is generally supposed. The unambitious marks of the first printers were clearly adopted in consonance with the traders' or merchants' marks which began to be so generally employed during the latter part ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... education much money has been expended, and who, when candidates for clerkships, have, in the simple matters of reading, writing, arithmetic, composition and spelling, shown up very poorly compared to what almost any boy from "old Jessie's" unambitious establishment would have done. But, plain and substantial as my schooling was, I have ever felt that I was defrauded of the better part of education—the classics, languages, literature and modern science, which furnish the mind and extend ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... neither alarming nor unfamiliar. The master at once recognized it as Ben Dabney, otherwise known as "Uncle Ben," a good-humored but not over-bright miner, who occupied a small cabin on an unambitious claim in the outskirts of Indian Spring. His avuncular title was evidently only an ironical tribute to his amiable incompetency and heavy good-nature, for he was still a young man with no family ties, and by ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... essence home Where it would be. Yet is there left behind A transcript that we cherish, and a chasm We have no power to fill. Almost it seems That we beheld him still, with quiet step Moving among us, saintly and serene, Clear-sighted, upright, held in high regard, Yet meekly unambitious, seeking nought Of windy honor from the mouth of men But with the Gospel's perfect code content, Breathing good-will to all. Freely his wealth Wrought blessed channels mid the sons of need, Lending Philanthropy and Piety A stronger ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... gentility on the part of one household. The widow was sometimes sorry to find with what readiness Anne caught up some dialect-word or accent from the miller and his friends; but he was so good and true-hearted a man, and she so easy-minded, unambitious a woman, that she would not make life a solitude for fastidious reasons. More than all, she had good ground for thinking that the miller secretly admired her, and this added ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... and chain—unambitious to add a charge of larceny to his other troubles, should Fate arrest him before the return of Rochester, he came down the corridor to a landing giving upon a flight of stairs, up which, save for the gradient, a coach and horses ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... consultation took place, which ended in the leading senators saying, "There is only one man who can deliver us. We must make Lucius Quinctius Master of the People." Master of the People meant in Rome what we now mean by Dictator,—that is, a man above the law, an autocrat supreme. What service this unambitious tiller of the ground had previously done for Rome to make him worthy of this distinction we are not told, but it is evident that he was looked upon as the man of highest wisdom and soldiership ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... is enshrouded in mystery, the restless ghost groaning for the vindication of rights, the historical background, the archaic spelling of the challenge, are all ineffective fumblings towards the romantic. The Old English Baron is an unambitious work, but it has a certain hold upon our attention because of its limpidity of style. It can be read without discomfort and even with a mild degree of interest simply as a story, while The Castle of Otranto is only tolerable as ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... of men upon whose decision hung such momentous issues, the Council which met that evening at Westminster seemed alike unambitious in tone and uninspired in appearance. Some short time was spent in one of the anterooms, where Julian was introduced to many of the delegates. The disclosure of his identity, although it aroused immense interest, ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spent part of his student life in Europe, and he looked back to his travel there with a fondness that the Old World inspires less and less in Americans. This, with his derivation from one of the unliterary Boston suburbs, and his unambitious residence in a place like Hatboro', gave her a sense of provinciality in him. On his part, he apparently found it droll that a woman of her acquaintance with a larger life should be willing to live in Hatboro' at all, and he ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Malcolm thought—although no other person thought—that they might venture to enter into the holy bands of wedlock, and, with frugality and mutual love in their household, look forward to happiness in their humble and unambitious sphere of life. This thought ended in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... how to tell you! Give me your love; you shall never repent it. I will make home heaven for you. Men say that I have beauty and talent. Ah, me! I would use every gift I have for you; help you to win high honors that cold, unambitious natures never dream of. Ah, love me; love me, cousin! You will find no one else ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... are rather at a loss to divine Mr. Macauley's precise notion of amateur journalism. He speaks of it as a "tarn", but we cannot believe he would have it so stagnant a thing as that name implies. Surely, the United is something greater than a superficial fraternal order composed of mediocre and unambitious dabblers. Progress leads toward the outside world of letters, and to cavil at work such as Mrs. Renshaw's is to set obstacles in the path of progress. Professional literary success on the part of amateur journalists can never react unfavorably on the United, and it seems far from kind ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... bell, one of whose tenants is a living baron, having no title to put on his doorplate under that of the baron, must needs dub himself "privatier;" and he insists upon prefixing the name of this unambitious writer with the ennobling von; and at the least he insists, in common with the tradespeople, that I am a "Herr Doctor." The bills of purchases by madame come made out to "Frau——, well-born." At a hotel in Heidelberg, where I had registered my name with that distinctness of penmanship for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... waste one's evenings and it takes a stout ambition and a firm resolution to separate oneself from a jolly, fun-loving, and congenial family circle, or happy-hearted youthful callers, in order to try to rise above the common herd of unambitious persons who are content to slide along, totally ignorant of everything but the requirements ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... in literary merit, is the better sermon for you to give and for your congregation to hear; it is the better fitted to accomplish the end of all worthy preaching, which, as you know, is not at all to get your hearers to think how clever a man you are. The simple, unambitious instruction into which you have thrown the teachings of your own little experience, and which you give forth from your own heart, will do a hundred times more good than any amount of ingenuity, brilliancy, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... take Life from the young Republic; that new foes Would only follow, in the path of shame, 15 Their brethren, and her triumphs be in the end Great, universal, irresistible. This intuition led me to confound One victory with another, higher far,— Triumphs of unambitious peace at home, 20 And noiseless fortitude. Beholding still Resistance strong as heretofore, I thought That what was in degree the same was likewise The same in quality,—that, as the worse Of the two spirits then at strife remained 25 Untired, the better, surely, would preserve ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... circumstances, it is not the least of the debts which I owe to the encouraging kindness of my readers, that they have not forgotten "Rambles Beyond Railways," and that the continued demand for the book is such as to justify the appearance of the present edition. I have, as I believe, to thank the unambitious purpose with which I originally wrote, for thus keeping me in remembrance. All that my book attempts is frankly to record a series of personal impressions; and, as a necessary consequence—though my title is obsolete, and my pedestrian adventures ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... unambitious, for the mass of rural mankind, there were simpler pleasures, the dance on the green of a Sunday afternoon, the weddings with their feasts and merry-makings, the fairs and the festival of the patron saint of the village. There were games, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... confess that, looking on that labour-crooked group, I felt a dislike, strong and definite, to that system which takes away even the hope of improvement, crushing down the principle of self-esteem in the man, until it reaches the passive and unambitious existence of the oxen which he drives. And looking on those women, negroes though they were, so unnaturally masculine, so completely unsexed, so far removed from all those attributes with which the name of woman is associated, I felt that no reason based on an asserted right, no fiction of argument, ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... London to my rural solitudes, and taste once more, as always, those pure delights of Nature which the Poets celebrate—walks in the unambitious meadows, and the ever-satisfying companionship of vegetables and flowers—I am nevertheless haunted now and then (but tell it not to Shelley's Skylark, nor whisper to Wordsworth's Daffodils, the disconcerting secret)—I am incongruously beset by longings of which the Lake Poets ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... was not sorry to get out of the government house—palazzo, as some of the simple people of Elba called the unambitious dwelling. He had been well badgered by the persevering erudition of the vice-governatore; and, stored as he was with nautical anecdotes and a tolerable personal acquaintance with sundry seaports, for any expected ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... so useful and handsome a dish in a large family, or one where many visitors are received, that it is well worth while to learn the art of boning birds in order to achieve them. Nor, if the amateur cook is satisfied with the unambitious mode of boning hereafter to be described, need ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... designated by a Legislative Caucus or meeting of Representatives in the Assembly, simply because no fairer and fuller expression of the party's preference would be tolerated. And if, passing over the mob of Generals and of Politicians by trade, the choice should fall on some modest and unambitious citizen, who has earned a character by quiet probity and his bread by honest labor, I shall hope to see his name at the head of the poll in spite of the unconstitutional overthrow of Universal Suffrage. After this, though the plurality should fall short of a majority and the Assembly ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... house-physician—little more than a senior student. And he left five years ago—the date is on the stick. So your grave, middle-aged family practitioner vanishes into thin air, my dear Watson, and there emerges a young fellow under thirty, amiable, unambitious, absent-minded, and the possessor of a favourite dog, which I should describe roughly as being larger than a terrier ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... rapidly and widely; not only was the Parliament divided against itself, but so likewise was the army; and the new Protector had neither the courage nor the ability to put down strife with a strong hand. Richard Cromwell was a man of peaceful disposition, gentle manners and unambitious mind, whom fate had forced into a position for which he was in no way fitted. By one of those strange contradictions which nature sometimes produces, he differed in all things from his father; for not only was he pleasure-loving, joyous, and humane, but ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... with Cannae's carnage vies, Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand; They were true Glory's stainless victories, Won by the unambitious heart and hand Of a proud, brotherly, and civic band, All unbought champions in no princely cause Of vice-entailed Corruption; they no land Doomed to bewail the blasphemy of laws Making king's rights divine, by some ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... of her parents in all their happy rambling and unambitious home-life, was their joy and pride. If she frolicked in the grass while her father played his airs, she lost not a strain of the music. She hearkened also to his deep discourse, and gave good heed, when he illustrated the meaning of the tunes he loved to play. And these were rarely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... listeners and lookers on who had no connection with newspapers, save as readers. The "floor" was held not only by the "members," who made the hall vocal with their greetings and congratulations, but by a great crowd of pages, office-seekers, office-holders, and unambitious citizens, who thronged over the new ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... sake, but for my people's welfare. If they expect from this false, fawning Stuart, The younger sovereign, more happy days, I will descend with pleasure from the throne, Again repair to Woodstock's quiet bowers, Where once I spent my unambitious youth; Where far removed from all the vanities Of earthly power, I found within myself True majesty. I am not made to rule— A ruler should be made of sterner stuff: My heart is soft and tender. I ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... mansions and public buildings. . We frequently find the predominance of one species somewhat wearisome. Speaking for myself, there are songsters that are best appreciated when they are limited in numbers and keep their distance, but of the familiar, unambitious strains of swallow, robin, and wren I never tire, nor, during these days, could I have too much of the greenfinch, low as he ranks among British melodists. Tastes differ; that is a point on which we are all agreed, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... appear'd, Where wisdom's sacred hand her ensign rear'd. Celestial blazonry! by heaven bestow'd, Which, waving high, before the vaward glow'd: Then came the Stagyrite, whose mental ray Pierced through all nature like the shafts of day; And he that, by the unambitious name, Lover of wisdom, chose to bound his fame. Then Socrates and Xenophon were seen; With them a bard of more than earthly mien, Whom every muse of Jove's immortal choir Bless'd with a portion of celestial fire: From ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... position of being at the heel of the hunt may have a charm for the philosophic or unambitious, but so black a continuation of so great a start was a trial quite beyond the endurance of a young gentleman possessed of the artistic temperament. And then the abominable Mangan girl came into play, and joined in the circling performance at the big bank. Always, when Larry felt ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... immediately south of us, a single energetic scion has crept even to the banks of the rapid Missouri, and others are pushing steadily on in determined emulation. But in most cases, we must be content to ride to the westward, only on the back of the laggard and unambitious coach, that tortoise of travel, crawling on through prairie and swamp. And it is still within the recollection of almost the youngest inhabitant, how the daily trains, drawn by horse, mule, or ox, dragged themselves through our streets, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... probably resulted, at some far-back period, in farmers' building their residences on the four corners, so as to be neighborly. Farm hands or others built little dwellings adjoining—not many of them, though—and some unambitious or misdirected merchant erected a big frame "store" and sold groceries, dry goods and other necessities of life not only to the community at the Crossing but to neighboring farmers. Then someone ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... of its prevailing expression of thoughtful, preoccupied aloofness. His crisp dark hair is graying at the temples. EDWARD BIGELOW is a large, handsome man of thirty-nine. His face shows culture and tolerance, a sense of humor, a lazy unambitious contentment. CURTIS is reading an article in some scientific periodical, seated by the table. MARTHA and BIGELOW are sitting nearby, laughing ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... stamped; flagging inevitably over characterless books, however clever and meritorious: perceiving well that, as far as my own mind was concerned, God had limited its powers and, its action—thankful, I trust, for the gift bestowed, but unambitious of higher endowments, not ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... functions. The picture of this highly developed state, however, is not such as would tempt us to emulation. As a machine it works; as an ideal it lacks any presentation of the thing we call beauty. The apotheosis of intelligence in the concrete example leaves us unambitious in that direction. ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... their haunts they do not appear so much frightened as offended. "Why do you intrude?" they seem to say; "these are our woods;" and they bow you out with all ceremony. Their songs are in keeping with this character; leisurely, unambitious, and brief, but in beauty of voice and in high musical quality excelling all other music of the woods. However, I would not exaggerate, and I have not found even these thrushes perfect. The hermit, who is my favorite of the four, has a habit of slowly raising and depressing his ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... the herds are cropping, the strain rises. Two or three long, silver notes of peace and rest, ending in some subdued trills and quavers, constitute each separate song. Often you will catch only one or two of the bars, the breeze having blown the minor part away. Such unambitious, quiet, unconscious melody! It is one of the most characteristic sounds in Nature. The grass, the stones, the stubble, the furrow, the quiet herds, and the warm twilight among the hills are all subtilely expressed in this song; this is what they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... have said. If golden dreams of commerce and wealth flatter their imaginations, disappointment will follow: the remoteness of situation, productions of the country, and want of connection with other parts of the world, justify me in the assertion. But to men of small property, unambitious of trade, and wishing for retirement, I think the continent of New South Wales not without inducements. One of this description, with letters of recommendation, and a sufficient capital (after having provided for his passage hither) ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... county of the west, the creatures of the woods, except the fox, had never been systematically hunted. The vicissitudes of history had directly affected the welfare of wild animals. The old professional hunting and fighting classes had become unambitious tenant farmers; and, partly through the operations of an old Welsh law regarding the equal division of property, the land beyond the feudal tracts of the Norman Marches were, in many instances, broken up into small ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... describes both men and women as extremely foul of speech; from which he draws inferences unfavorable to their domestic morals, [Footnote: Journal de Franquet, Part II.] which, nevertheless, were commendable. As is usual with a well-fed and unambitious peasantry, they were very prolific, and are said to have doubled their number every sixteen years. In 1748 they counted in the peninsula of Nova Scotia between twelve and thirteen thousand souls. [Footnote: Description de l'Acadie, ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... story and the story of adventure embrace a considerable though unambitious part of fiction. The love story deals with courtship and marriage. As a rule, after encountering more or less opposition or difficulty, the lovers are at last happily united. A thread of love usually runs through all the more ambitious types of fiction, for it is a source of universal interest ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... hard, honest toil and economy, they had laid up a competence which was regularly invested each year, and of which the children were not allowed to know anything, lest it might make them lazy and unambitious. ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... details of the approach of the Grand Six-in-One Show had, therefore, been heralded to those work-sodden and unambitious persons who tied themselves to their ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fairy-land to the eye, so is the hospitality of its homes a delight to the soul. In this population, if nowhere else in America, is seen a contented and happy people—a people whose pursuit is happiness, and not the almighty dollar. Unambitious of that distinction which only wealth bestows, they are content with an abundance for all their comforts, and for the comfort of those who, as friends or neighbors, come to share it with them. Unambitious of political distinction, despising the noisy ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... but who buys them? Now is it not a significant fact, that within a bow-shot of Paris I found tools in use, which would be laughed at in the free states of America? The true reason for this, is to be found in the condition of the French agricultural laborer. He is ignorant and unambitious. Where the laborer is intelligent, he will have light and excellent tools to work with. This is a universal fact. The slaves of the southern states are in a state of brutal ignorance, and their agricultural implements are heavy and large. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... for most part the offerings of interested servility, or the effusions of partial zeal; enumerating the virtues of men in whom no virtues can be found, or predicting greatness to those who afterwards pass their days in unambitious indolence, and die leaving no memorial of their existence, but a dedication, in which all their merit is confessedly future, and which time has turned into ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... provoke or derange into confusion and disorder the great natural elements which minister to his comfort and happiness—which cause the seed to germinate, the flower to bloom, and the fruit to ripen, regardless of all his passions, and in spite of his ingratitude. The unambitious pursuits of the husbandman may have in them nothing of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war; but they are at least in harmony with the beneficence of God and the permanent interests of man; while they are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... democratic aristocracy. Now, if Emmet had the philosophical attitude of mind, he would n't have the strength to struggle which he undoubtedly does have. He needs that stimulus of personal animosity to get somewhere; if he were philosophical, he would be unambitious. When he has arrived, as they say, he will come to see that an aristocracy in the usual worldly sense of the term must have money to maintain its existence. The old aristocracy must have accessions of vulgar blood and vulgar money to keep it alive, just as the language must ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan To think that a most unambitious slave, Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer 5 A frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept In fragments towards Oblivion. Massacre, For this I prayed, would ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... contented with a humble theme, Have poured my stream of panegyric down The vale of Nature, where it creeps and winds Among her lovely works, with a secure And unambitious course, reflecting clear If not the virtues, yet the worth, of brutes. And I am recompensed, and deem the toils Of poetry not lost, if verse of mine May stand between an animal and woe, And teach one ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... were no great matter; he was diffident, placable, passive, unambitious, unenterprising; life did not much attract him; he watched it like a curious and dull exhibition, not much amused, and not tempted in the least to take a part. He beheld his father ponderously grinding sand, his mother fierily breaking butterflies, his brother labouring at the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... home of the children, will not open its gates to the most miserable who would rise above his equal in misery, who looks down on any one more miserable than himself. It is the home of perfect brotherhood. The poor, the beggars in spirit, the humble men of heart, the unambitious, the unselfish; those who never despise men, and never seek their praises; the lowly, who see nothing to admire in themselves, therefore cannot seek to be admired of others; the men who give themselves away—these are the freemen of the kingdom, these are the ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... such "tired nature's sweet restorer," and to those whose healthy bodies and unambitious natures know no perturbation it is ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... aspiration; of a nature that has made a Moloch of intellect—offered up; in pagan fires, the natural affections—sacrificed the heart to the brain. Do we not all know that true greatness is simple, self-oblivious, prone to unambitious, unselfish attachments? I am certain you feel this truth in ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... orator. He learned to play on both the lyre and flute from the teachings of the best masters, sought the conversation of the learned, but was especially eloquent in speech, and effective, even against the best Athenian opponents. He was modest, unambitious, patriotic, intellectual, contented with poverty, generous, and disinterested. When the Cadmea was taken, he was undistinguished, and his rare merits were only known to Pelopidas and his friends. He was among the first to join the revolutionists, and was placed by Pelopidas among the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... object of his youthful attachment, [7] had left him only one son, who was called Crispus. By Fausta, the daughter of Maximian, he had three daughters, and three sons known by the kindred names of Constantine, Constantius, and Constans. The unambitious brothers of the great Constantine, Julius Constantius, Dalmatius, and Hannibalianus, [8] were permitted to enjoy the most honorable rank, and the most affluent fortune, that could be consistent with a private station. The youngest of the three lived without a name, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Jo than the wisest sermons, the saintliest hymns, the most fervent prayers that any voice could utter. For with eyes made clear by many tears, and a heart softened by the tenderest sorrow, she recognized the beauty of her sister's life—uneventful, unambitious, yet full of the genuine virtues which 'smell sweet, and blossom in the dust', the self-forgetfulness that makes the humblest on earth remembered soonest in heaven, the true success which is possible ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... of stories about love's pretty fever; the simple person wants to hear about the trials and crosses of true lovers, the defeat of villains—to enjoy the kindly finish where faith and virtue are rewarded, and where the unambitious imagination may picture the coming of a long life of homely toil and homely pleasure. Perhaps the simple personage has a taste for dukes—I know of one young person aged thirteen who will not write a romance of her own without putting her hero at the very summit ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... suitor for love." I am to be married (sequitur) on Thursday week.... The lady who is to take me, as the Irish say, "in a present," is some six years younger than myself, gentle, religious, relying, and unambitious. She has never been whirled through the gay society of London, so is not giddy or vain. She has never swum in a gondola, or written a sonnet, so has a proper respect for those who have. She is called pretty, but is more than that in my ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the drenching dribble Courses down my sweltered form, I am basking like a sybil, Lazy, languorous and warm. I am unambitious, flaccid, Well content to drowse and dream: How I hate life's bitter acid— Leave me here to stew and steam. Underneath this jet so torrid I forget the world's sad wrath: O activity is horrid! Leave ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... but that which can only be procured at a price considerably above its real value. In this sense, a hobby is not an expensive thing. It is, as I regard it, one of the safest investments life has to offer. An unambitious man like myself, without a hobby, would necessarily be either an idler or a knave. And I am neither the one nor the other. The truth is, my life was very poorly furnished at the start, and I have been laboring ever since to supply the deficiency. ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... that which arouses their ambitions is the call of a great opportunity or responsibility. Note the change in General Grant's life with the outbreak of the Civil War. The unambitious tanner becomes the untiring, rigid, unconquerable soldier. Striking illustrations of this fact are many men, whose character, as well as conduct after they have been called to positions of political or judicial trust, is in marked contrast to their ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... conscientious and vigilant supervision of the whole matter here brought together—prefaces, texts, and notes—and the correction of errors on the part of his predecessors, occasioned by a variety of causes. In carrying out even this unambitious programme, there was a fair share of labour and difficulty, and, of course, it has involved the addition of a new crop of notes scattered up and down the series, as well as the occasional displacement of certain illustrative remarks ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... children is a sorrow to them, but has served to centre their affections strongly on each other. The husband is a very tranquil and unaffected man. There is no sort of pose about his life. He just lives as he likes best. He is unambitious, and he has no sense of a duty owed to others. But this is not coupled with any sense of contempt or aloofness—he is invariably kind and gentle. He is an intellectual man, highly trained and clear-minded. The wife has less knowledge of the technique of artistic things, but a ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... everyday life, and, appealing to the imagination, which dwells apart, reveals Nature in some degree as she really is, and as she represents herself to the eye of the child, whose every-day life, fearless and unambitious, meets the true import of the wonder-teeming world around him, and rejoices therein without questioning? That skeleton, now—I almost fear it, standing there so still, with eyes only for the unseen, like a watch-tower looking across all the waste of this busy world into the quiet regions ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... unambitious belief of the Osages, a people living on the banks of one of the lower tributaries of the Missouri, they are sprung from a snail and a beaver. The Mandans believe their ancestors once lived in a large village under ground, near a subterranean ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... that by this means she might be put in some easy and genteel way of earning money. She was one of a very numerous class in large American towns. Her father was a carpenter, of a rare sort. He was a good workman, sober, industrious, and unambitious. He was contented with his daily work and wage, and would have thanked Heaven if he could have been assured that his children would fare as well as he. He was of English blood, and had never seemed to imbibe into his veins the restless ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... military service like that of the great Howard, the general of Queen Elizabeth's navy at sea against the navy of Spain. But what he left will endure; the fame of an English gentleman who was honest, surrounded by intrigue; unambitious of honours and titles, a royalist who had the friendship of kings whom courtiers flattered; a virtuoso of learning hardly equalled in his time, a diarist whose jottings, never meant for printing, are a classic; a pious, honourable, shrewd, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... scolder, a bustler, or a whiner; no dirty children to offend the eye, or squalling ones to wound the ear; with admitted claims to the gratitude, confidence, and affection of her hostess: might not these suffice to make a lowly, unambitious ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... floor below Assistant-Secretary Wagstaff held forth; he was in charge of the Western Department, which comprised the states from Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee westward to the coast. Mr. Wagstaff was a competent, careful, unimaginative, unambitious man who did his work from day to day. He enters this story virtually not at all; be it enough to say that he had a red mustache and a bald, bright head and wore shoes with cloth tops. He took good care of his territory, and if he never made much money for the ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... to develop into a pig," he said, with relish,—"a lovable, contented, unambitious porcine, who is alike indifferent to the Tariff, the importance of Equal Suffrage and the market-price of hams, for all that he really cares about is to have his sty as comfortable as may be possible. That is exactly what I am going to develop into,—now, isn't it?" And John Charteris, sitting, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... I had made was that goodnatured unambitious men are cowards when they have no religion. They are dominated and exploited not only by greedy and often half-witted and half-alive weaklings who will do anything for cigars, champagne, motor cars, and the ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... views were unambitious, who preferred the shade and tranquillity of private life to the splendor and solicitude of elevated stations, and whom the voice of duty and his country could alone have drawn from his chosen retreat, no reward for his public services can be so grateful as ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... this year it was with a feeling of having been cheated that I left the house for the office, where, in company with other old fogies and girl clerks, I do my unambitious bit towards downing the Hun. The premonitory symptoms had seemed to me unusually acute, but the morning had brought no parcel. My years weighed on my shoulders again, and I am afraid I was more than a little tart ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... ever shaming him by their unboastful exercise of some enviable and unattainable attribute. Even the friendly pig, who (did but parents permit) should eat of his bread and drink of his cup, and be unto him as a brother, — which among all these unhappy bifurcations, so cheery, so unambitious, so purely contented, so apt to be the guide, philosopher, and friend of boyhood as he? What wonder that at times, when the neophyte in life begins to realise that all these desirable accomplishments have had to be surrendered one by one in the process of developing a Mind, the course of fitting ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... ambition!' . . . Chillon dropped him. He was antipathetic to eccentrics, and his soldierly and social training opposed the profession of heterodox ideas: to have listened seriously to them coming from the mouth of an unambitious bootmaker's son involved him in the absurdity. He considered that there was no harm in the lad, rather a commendable sort of courage and some notion of manners; allowing for his ignorance of the convenable in putting out his hand to take a young lady's, with the plea of thanking her. He hoped ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... grounds of wealthy people with cheap and inferior material. The result will be a sham that will deceive no one, and you will soon tire of it, and the sooner the better. Be honest. If you have only cheap material to work with, be satisfied with unambitious undertakings. Let them be in keeping with what you have to work with—simple, unpretentious, and without any attempt in the way of deception. The humblest home can be made attractive by holding fast to the principle of honesty in everything that is done about ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... Thucydides it was the first which emerged out of confusion and became a regular government. It was also an army devoted to military exercises, but organized with a view to self-defence and not to conquest. It was not quick to move or easily excited; but stolid, cautious, unambitious, procrastinating. For many centuries it retained the same character which was impressed upon it by the hand of the legislator. This singular fabric was partly the result of circumstances, partly the invention of some unknown individual in prehistoric times, whose ideal ...
— Laws • Plato
... and moral obliquities, depend upon threadbare nerves, either inherited or uncovered by friction incident to getting on in the world. I never understood the comforts that follow in the wake of a quiet, unambitious life, until such a life was forced upon me. When you discover these comforts for the first time, you marvel that you have foregone them so long, and are fain to recommend them ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... stared at himself. Gone was the debonair gentleman of a quarter of an hour ago. Instead, there leered back at him a pasty-faced, underfed vagrant, dressed in the tatters of unambitious, satisfied poverty. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... too much o' wut Buregard calls abandon, For all our Thermopperlies (an' it's a marcy We hain't hed no more) hev ben clean vicy-varsy, 160 An' wut Spartans wuz lef' when the battle wuz done Wuz them thet wuz too unambitious to run. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Pauline had married at thirty, only to be made a widow, by a lumber jam, at thirty-two. So it was fortunate that she could cook, for she was a plain woman, and what the country folk call "dumb," meaning dull, and unresponsive, and unambitious. ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... CHRISTINE SILVER'S talent, and Miss EVADNE PRICE faithfully earned the laughter she was expected to make as Sua Se, the opium-den attendant. Leave your critical faculty at home and you will be able to derive considerable entertainment from this unambitious show. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... to leave those ideals unconnected with the consent of their fellow-men. The president of the company thought out within his own mind a beautiful town. He had power with which to build this town, but he did not appeal to nor obtain the consent of the men who were living in it. The most unambitious reform, recognizing the necessity for this consent, makes for slow but sane and strenuous progress, while the most ambitious of social plans and experiments, ignoring ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... with an array of diamonds, which young girls seldom wore. In a week or so the marriage was discussed with a little wonder. Mrs. Nicoll was one of the old New Yorkers, a Ludlow herself. It was fortunate for Lily's prestige that her plain, unambitious father was dead, and her mother kept well in the background. No one ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas |
