"Unamiable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... companionship lacked attraction. Moreover—a thing which superficial observers do not realise—like all who are most genuinely at odds with the world, the first head of his quarrel was with himself. He was only too well aware of his own defects and errors. He felt himself to be unamiable, often gross of understanding, always ready to fall into a blunder which other men would avoid. He had stood in his own way as often as he had been balked by ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... itself humorous. Pleasantry without pungent seasoning may be seen in those "facetious" verbal conceits which our American cousins, and especially "yours trooly," Artemus Ward, have been fond of framing. But accessory emotions are necessary to render humour demonstrative. They are generally unamiable, censorious, or otherwise offensive, perhaps in keeping with the disapproval excited by falsity. In some cases the two feelings of wrong are almost inextricably connected, but in others we can separate ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... he was not prepared to risk his crown, possibly his head, for any Pope who ever lived; nor did the project of providing a French bride for his successor, the Duke of York, promise much better. Louis proposed the Duchess of Guise, his own cousin; but James had heard too much of this unamiable and unattractive Princess from his sister, Henrietta, to relish the venture. The Duchess herself suggested a Princess of Lorraine, as a suitable bride, but Louis, who had no love for the d'Elboeuf ladies, nipped this project in ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... all unamiable she might have dressed their heads all awry, for such unkindness; but she returned good for evil, and did it in ...
— Little Cinderella • Anonymous
... their readiness to accept the efforts made to please them. I felt quite sorry this evening for poor Mr. Didear, to whom not the faintest sign of encouragement was vouchsafed on his first coming on. This is being cold to an unamiable degree, and seems to me both a want of good feeling and good breeding. I acted as well as they would let me. As for poor John Mason, concluding, I suppose, from their frozen silence that he was flat and ineffective, he ranted and roared, and pulled me about in the last scene, till I thought ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... glorious full moon in the sky, and the garden, with its deep shadows and brilliant avenues of light, looked lovely. But Maggie was not thinking of the scenery. Her thoughts were busy with those ideas which were always running riot in her busy little head. She was not unamiable; she was in reality a good-hearted girl, but she was very ambitious, and she sighed, above all things for power ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... received nothing for their product but Confederate money which the result of the war had made worthless, manifested an unamiable reluctance to give it up, for if they could market it for themselves it would more than recoup them for all their losses in the war. They had therefore exercised a considerable ingenuity in effacing all record of its transfer to the Confederate Government, obliterating the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... wished he would step straight back into them. He was a very surly fellow, very rugged and gruff. He was the antithesis of pleasant little Maltby. I used to think that perhaps he would have been less unamiable if success had come to him earlier. He was thirty years old when his book was published, and had had a very hard time since coming to London at the age of sixteen. Little Maltby was a year older, and so had waited a year longer; but then, ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... half a dozen cunning little chicks. The hen-mother was frightened as we came near, and called to her little ones to come in out of danger; but they would n't mind, and she was very angry, and ruffled up her feathers, and scolded furiously at their disobedience. "I think biddies are very unamiable creatures," said Miss Grey. I said nothing, but I thought to myself, "Ah, Miss Grey, if you were a mother, with ever so many children, playing around the door so peacefully, and you shut up in jail, for no crime but scratching up food in gardens for them, and you should love them dreadfully, ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... temper with meekness. It was only in his unrestrained confidence with his widowed mother that he ever uttered a complaint of the young Atheling, and then he spoke of him in sorrow, not in anger; for he rightly attributed much of Prince Edwin's unamiable conduct to the pernicious influence which the artful Brithric had, through flattery, obtained over ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... of reserving all for self, is as unsuccessful as it is unamiable: it cannot succeed. The man who should hoard in his own granary all the corn of Egypt, could not eat more of it than a poor labourer—probably not so much. It is only a very small portion of their wealth that the rich can spend directly on their own personal comfort ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... also have liked to add that she was excessively fat. She replied that it did not matter; so polite a person as myself would know how to accommodate his pace to that of his companion. Unable to shake her off, I started for my walk in a somewhat unamiable mood, the stout lady resolutely trudging on at my side, perspiring abundantly. Our path led us down to a little canada, or valley, where the ground was moist and abounding with numerous pretty flowers and feathery grasses, very refreshing ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... said Lancelot, with the whimsical expression that sometimes flashed across his face even in his most unamiable moments. "You must deduct the thalers I made in exhibitions. As for living in cheap lodgings, I am not at all certain it's an economy, for every now and again it occurs to you that you are saving an awful lot, and you take a hansom ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... owed many a dinner, to attach himself exclusively to the young lord, although he suspected he might be occasionally in the predicament of needing one as much as himself. And even the notice of this original, singular and unamiable as he was, was not entirely indifferent to Lord Glenvarloch, since the absolute and somewhat constrained silence of his good friend Heriot, which left him at liberty to retire painfully to his own agitating ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... to be called a child. She disliked her Aunt Elizabeth's manner to her at all times, and now she flushed and frowned, and looked decidedly unamiable. ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... her good and queenly qualities and accomplishments, Elizabeth had many unamiable traits and unwomanly ways. She was capricious, treacherous, unscrupulous, ungrateful, and cruel. She seemed almost wholly devoid of a moral or religious sense. Deception and falsehood were her usual ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... white cousin, the Black Stork rather avoids the society of man, frequenting solitary places and building its nest on the very top of the very tallest trees. It is really, however, not an unamiable bird, as was proved by Colonel Montagu in the case of one which he managed to catch by means of a slight wound in the wing, and which lived with him for upwards of a year. It used to follow its feeder about, and displayed ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Thomas, the last of the monological succession, he made such a piece of work with his prophecies and his sarcasms about our little trouble with some of the Southern States, that we came rather to pity him for his whims and crotchets than to get angry with him for calling us bores and other unamiable names. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Exulting in the unanswerable logic of this latest fact, Hannah quite unintentionally gave the glove a scornful toss, which caused it to fall into the fireplace, and down between two oak logs, where it shrivelled instantaneously. Unfortunately science is not chivalric, and divulges the unamiable and ungraceful truth, that perverted female natures from even the lower beastly types are more implacably vindictive, more subtly malicious, more ingeniously cruel than the stronger sex; and when a woman essays to track, to capture, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... for a short rest: it was so pleasant in the garden. She would remain by the fountain. She liked its sparkling and splashing, it refreshed her; the Intendant could come for her in half an hour; she wanted to be alone; she felt in a hard, unamiable mood, she said, and he only made her worse by stopping with her when others wanted him, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the Vicar, while Tom busied himself doing nothing to the telescope, and began to take a good deal of interest in the discussion about his enemy. "You will grant, I suppose, that Mother Warboys is about as unamiable, cantankerous an ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... his fond mother, his only surviving parent, in a room, or rather a loft, in the roof of a house. She is accidentally run over and killed by a nobleman's carriage. A certain uncle Peppo, a cripple and a beggar, claims guardianship of the orphan. Of this Peppo we have a most unamiable portrait. His withered legs are fastened to a board, and he shuffles himself along with his hands, which were armed with a pair of wooden hand clogs. He used to sit upon the steps of the Piazza de Spagna. "Once I was witness," says the Improvisatore, who tells his own story, "of a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... quicker than the North in perceiving that public opinion in England is rapidly changing in certain quarters in favor of the Federal cause, and it is for this reason that the press in Secessia has of late been so unamiable toward Great Britain, while SEMMES has shown in his pirating so little kindness to English goods. Possibly Secessia may after all discover that she might do a more unprofitable thing than be in alliance offensive and defensive with us, and that she might go further ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and this fact said more for him than anything else. She seemed gaining a power over him that could not be for other than good with any man who submitted to it. It had begun to bring out and cherish what was best in a disposition far from unamiable, although nearly ruined by evil influences on all sides. Both glad and proud to see her daughter thus potent, how, thought Mrs. Raymount, could she interfere? It was plain he was improving. Not once now did they ever hear him jest on anything belonging ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Abel to help him to sweep the mill or couple the sacks for lifting. He would have been only too glad to put some of his own work on the shoulders of another, had it not been for the vexatious thought that he would be giving pleasure by so doing where he only wanted to annoy. And in his very unamiable disposition malice was a stronger quality even ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... at home, and you disobeyed that order again and again. And you have been behaving very badly ever since, showing a most unamiable temper. I have overlooked it, hoping to see a change for the better in your conduct without my resorting to punishment; but I think the time has now come when I ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... unlike that in the famous picture of Farragut ascending Mobile Bay. His leather case was swung over his shoulder, and with his glasses he swept the lake in search of the Scimitar and other vessels of a like unamiable character. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... looks so unamiable seen from your island. Yet I have too much respect for the writing profession to complain of it. It is a necessity of rhetoric that there should be shades, and, I suppose, geography and government always determine, even ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... subtle and far-reaching sentence, which made a strong impression upon Bentham. "In order to love mankind," he writes, "we must expect little from them." This might, on the lips of a cynic, serve for a formula of that kind of misanthropy which is not more unamiable than it is unscientific. But in the mouth of Helvetius it was a plea for considerateness, for indulgence, and, above all, it was meant for an inducement to patience and sustained endeavour in all dealings with masses of men in society. "Every man," he says, "so long as his passions do not obscure ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... was not thus when the turn came to others among us. Then it was look out for squalls. The business of dining became a bore, and digestion was seriously impaired by the unamiable discourse we had ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... expressive of intellect and kind feelings, her figure buoyant with health, and her attire distinguished by a tasteful simplicity, she cannot fail to be eminently attractive, while ill health—a silly or unamiable expression, and a vulgar taste—will mar the effect of form and features the most symetrical. A clever writer has said, "Beauty is but another name for that expression of the countenance which is indicative of sound health, intelligence, ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... endowed by Thee with knowledge, understanding, and discernment. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, gracious Giver of Knowledge.' The intellect was to be turned to the service of the God from whom intelligence emanated. The Jewish estimate of intellect and learning led to some unamiable contempt of the fool and the ignoramus. But the evil tendency of identifying learning with religion was more than mitigated by the encouragement which this concept gave to education. The ideal was that every Jew must be a scholar, or at all events ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... man!—and Jim, though he did make a great laugh wherever he went, and sometimes laughed where he hadn't ought to, was a noble-hearted fellow. Now, to be sure, as the Doctor says, 'amiable instincts a'n't true holiness'; but then they are better than unamiable ones, like Simeon Brown's. I do think, if that man is a Christian, he is a dreadful ugly one; he snapped me short up about my change, when he settled with me last Tuesday; and if I hadn't felt that it was a sinful rising, I should have told him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... the interest which the excited imaginations of the company took in the Misanthrope, that, notwithstanding the unamiable qualities which the word expresses, there was only one of the society who did not desire to see the specimen at their rooms, for the purpose of examining him closely and at leisure; and the ladies were particularly desirous to enquire whether he was actually a Misanthrope? Whether ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... we passed over lightly the presence of Prussians at the decisive action. And well we might. Even at the time our sentiment was not solely jealousy, but very largely shame. Wellington, the grimmest and even the most unamiable of Tories, with no French sympathies and not enough human ones, has recorded his opinion of his Prussian allies in terms of curt disgust. Peel, the primmest and most snobbish Tory that ever praised "our gallant Allies" in a frigid ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... his father now was life with an unamiable hornet. Careless as he affected to be of his father's vagaries, he was tried almost to madness, and fled away at every moment to Kenmuir; for, as he told Maggie, "I'd sooner put up wi' your h'airs and h'imperences, miss, than wi' him, the wemon ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... the religious controversies of the present age. The divisions of schools, old school and new school, and the polemical zeal and fury with which the contest is waged, are entirely foreign from the true spirit of Christianity. The Christianity of the age is, in my view, most unamiable. It has none of those lovely, mellow features which distinguished primitive Christianity. If Christianity as it now exists should be propagated over the world, and thus the millennium be introduced, we should need two or three more millenniums before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... self-neutralized. Taking them jointly, we might ask—Were they, this life and this death, to be regarded as a common movement on behalf of a deep and heart-fretting Hebrew patriotism, which was not the less sincere, because it ran headlong into the unamiable form of rancorous rationality and inhuman bigotry? Were they a wild degeneration from a principle originally noble? Or, on the contrary, this life and this death, were they alike the expression of ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... his daughter Julia was the cause of sore vexation to him. He had no son, and his nephew Marcellus, and Caius and Lucius, his daughter's sons, whom he had appointed as his successors and heirs, as well as his favorite stepson, Drusus, all died early; while his stepson, Tiberius, was an unamiable character whom he could not love. Age, sorrow, and failing health warned him to seek repose; and, to recruit his strength, he undertook a journey to Campania; but his infirmity increased, and he died at Nola (14 A.D.), in the seventy-seventh year of his age. According to tradition, shortly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... no response to this kind speech from the unamiable girl; and with the somewhat painful feeling on the part of Miss Livesay that she was going to introduce into her hitherto peaceful household the apple of discord, she rose to take leave, with the promise, however, of renewing her visit ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... found in all but the "felon" knights, differing only in degree. It is true that the later romances and compilations, feeling perhaps the necessity of shade, extend to all the sons of Lot and Margause, except Gareth, and to some extent Gawain, the unamiable character which Mordred enjoys throughout, and which even in the Merlin is found showing itself in Agravaine. But Sir Lamoracke, their victim, is almost Lancelot's equal: and the best of Lancelot's kin, especially Sir Bors, come not far behind. It is entirely untrue that, as the easy epigram ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the town office next morning in a frame of mind distinctly unamiable. Though his house was far out of the village, the unearthly racket of the night had floated up to him—squawking horns, and clanging bells, and exploding powder. The hundred cannons at sunrise brought a vigorous word for each reverberation. At ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... They thought there was a change in Rachel's ideas, and that it was not for the better; and Miss Isabella expressed, with a sentiment of sincere sorrow, that the acquisition of fortune seemed to have brought out some unamiable traits in her character, which, perhaps, had she not been exposed to the companions and temptations of the great world, would have slumbered, unfelt by herself, and unknown ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... are called 'good eating and drinking,' if very unamiable in grown persons, is perfectly hateful in a youth; and, if he indulge in the propensity, he is already half ruined. To warn you against acts of fraud, robbery, and violence, is not here my design. Neither am I speaking against acts which the jailor and the hangman punish, nor against ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... calm under it all. Each insult added to the value of the claim. Such unamiable reluctance to sell advertised but one thing to him, and he was aware of a great relief when Hootchinoo Bill sank snoring to the floor, and he was free to turn his attention to his ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... she had dwelt so much on the misfortunes and talents of the sisters. The last evening Jane spent in Edinburgh was passed at the Rennies'; Mr. Brandon was asked to meet the girls he had been of such service to, and though Mr. Hogarth was rather dull, and Laura Wilson in a particularly unamiable mood, the liveliness of the Australian settler made it ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... doubtless had great effect in directing the genius of their sons; and we find this especially illustrated in the lives of Gray, Thomson, Scott, Southey, Bulwer, Schiller, and Goethe. Gray inherited, almost complete, his kind and loving nature from his mother, while his father was harsh and unamiable. Gray was, in fact, a feminine man—shy, reserved, and wanting in energy,—but thoroughly irreproachable in life and character. The poet's mother maintained the family, after her unworthy husband had deserted her; and, at her death, Gray placed on her grave, in Stoke Pogis, an epitaph describing ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... measure, never breaking out into eccentricity or excess, would appeal less to the popular imagination than the fiery nature of Pelides, "strenuous, passionate, implacable, and fierce." And on this ground we may partly explain the unamiable light in which Odysseus appears in later Greek literature. Already in Pindar we find him singled out for disapproval. In Sophocles he has sunk still lower; and in ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... not much knowledge of the world, however, and would have been surprised to hear that Congreve was more dangerous and unscrupulous, and altogether bad, than Philip himself, in spite of the latter's unamiable traits. ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... nights Wolfgang was still more unamiable, more taciturn, more sulky, more reserved than ever. And he looked ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... can safely admit him. He formally renounced his mother, brothers, and sisters about forty years ago, and wrote to other persons requesting them not to count him a Newman ... because we were religious and he was an Atheist. He had all the same dear sweet influences of home as all of us; yet how unamiable and useless has he become! still loving to snarl most at the hands that feed him. Is not this an admonition not to attribute too much to the single cause of home Influences, however precious? I shall be happy to attend to ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... for she was highly educated, played well upon the lute, understood geometry, and had been accustomed to listen with profit to lectures on philosophy; all this, too, without in any degree becoming unamiable or pretentious, as sometimes young women do when they pursue such studies. Nor could any fault be found either with her father's family or reputation. The disparity of their ages was however not liked ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... he was. It is a pleasure to mediocrity to have its superiors brought within range, so to speak; and if the ablest of them will only live long enough, and keep on writing, there is no pop-gun that cannot reach him. But I fear that this is an unamiable reflection, and I am at this time in ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... why you give Oliver such an unamiable character! In my opinion, he is often not so much on his guard as I ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a disorderly way, by means of ill-connected quotations. The original editor, whether rightly or wrongly, is quite certain that the Lay of Helgi, which ends with the victory of Helgi over the unamiable bridegroom, is a different poem from that which he proceeds to quote as the Old Lay of the Volsungs, in which the same story is told. In this second version there is at least one interpolation from a third; a stanza from a poem in ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... speeches, like that on the auspicious occasion and on her being left a rich young widow, if Gervase Norgate did for himself smartly. This was discomfiting even to a man who piqued himself on his resources in conversation. Die had uttered twice as many of these abrupt, unamiable, unanswerable rejoinders within these twenty-four hours, since she had ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... however, to be understood as urging that all children long ill or crippled grow to be unamiable and spoiled. I do not quite know why it is, but, after all, children are less apt to suffer morally from long illness than adults, and very often, despite careless or thoughtless usage, these young sufferers come out as wholesome in mind and heart as if they ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... certainly right with respect to the argument and to reason ; but his opposition was so warm, and his wit so satirical and exulting, that I was really quite grieved to see how unamiable he appeared, and how greatly he made himself dreaded by all, and by many abhorred. What pity that he will not curb the vehemence of his ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... subsistence or that of any one else. I intend to work, but at my own will and pleasure, and even to do nothing, if it happens to suit me, without any one finding fault except my stomach."[251] We may call this unamiable, if we please, but in a frivolous world amiability can hardly go with firm resolve to live an independent life after your own fashion. The many distasteful sides of Rousseau's character ought not to hinder ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... is a much more important personage than in the "Antony and Cleopatra" of Shakespeare. She is, however, more cold and unamiable; for, in the very short scenes in which the Octavia of Shakespeare appears, she is placed in rather an interesting point of view. But Dryden has himself informed us, that he was apprehensive the justice of a wife's claim upon her husband ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... to believe that this sort of thing is as unusual as it is unpleasant. For the rest, the picture of the "artistic" household in which the children grew up, of their managing mother, and the slightly soured and disappointed painter their father, is drawn vividly enough. But what unamiable people they all are! "MILES IGNOTUS," who supplies a quaintly attractive little preface, in which he speaks of having read the book in proof under shell-fire, affects to discover in them a kinship with Prussia. Certainly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... knocker of our collection is the most remarkable one of all, inasmuch as Dickens derived his idea of Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" from its hideous lineaments. Look at our photograph and then read Dickens' own description of the unamiable Scrooge: ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... without scruple from our place in the world's markets, a model of municipal government and enterprise, a land where vice, poverty, idleness, and dirt are all unknown. We hear so much of this praiseworthy but most unamiable Wunderkind amongst nations, that we generally forget the Germany we know, the Germany still there for our affection and delight, the dear country of quaint fancies, of music and of poetry. That Germany has vanished, the wiseacres say, the dreamy unworldly German is no more with us, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... There are private cabins on board holding four, badly placed, uncomfortable, possessing the single advantage of privacy; but these managers would have them empty rather than allow two passengers to occupy one of them under the full fare of four. This is unamiable and exacting. In crowded times it may be all very right, but on ordinary occasions they would do well to follow the example of the more generous Norwegians, who place their state cabins holding four at the disposal of anyone paying the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... George Gissing to point out the glaring fact that in the remarkable set of life studies of XIXth century women to be found in the novels of Dickens, the most convincingly real ones are either vilely unamiable or comically contemptible; whilst his attempts to manufacture admirable heroines by idealizations of home-bred womanhood are not only absurd but not even pleasantly absurd: one ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... death of any ordinary man in a short time. There is not the slightest danger of her injuring Hiram's prospects of a long life, or of causing him an hour's uneasiness. To be sure, he is despotic, but he is neither irritable nor unamiable. Besides, he has a great desire for social position (it aids in carrying out his plans), in which his wife is of real service. Hiram, although close and careful in all matters, is not what would be called penurious. In other words, he makes liberal provision ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... interests come in, and the old affection is crowded out of its old place in the heart. And so those comparatively fanciful disappointments sit lightly. The romance is gone. The mid-day sun beats down, and there lies the dusty way. When the cantankerous and unamiable mother of Christopher North stopped his marriage with a person at least as respectable as herself, on the ground that the person was not good enough, we are told that the future professor nearly went mad, and that he never quite got over it. But really, judging from his writings and his biography, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... earl's visits to his mountain home, and then a week was the longest period of his lingering; but no evidence of a gentler spirit or of less indifference to his children was apparent, and years seemed to have turned to positive evil, qualities which in youth had merely seemed unamiable. ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... them well or not, to ask of themselves, in the first place, how they use the world. If they find that they do little for it—are stupid, illiterate, possessed of not one graceful accomplishment, neither useful nor ornamental, but selfish, sulky, and unamiable, then let them try whether a remedy cannot be found in themselves. It is not to be expected of all that they are to be greatly serviceable in any way to the world, or very agreeable either; but it is the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... not consistent with infinite goodness." "How dreadfully is God dishonored by such monstrous representations as these!" Such a being cannot be loved by us, for every heart rebels against it. "All descriptions of the Divine Being which represent him in an unamiable light do the greatest hurt to religion that can be, as they strike at love, which is the fulfilling of the law. I am persuaded that many of those who think they believe this doctrine do not really ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... be regarded as an unamiable indiscretion. In art, the bare truth must, in common gallantry, be awarded a print petticoat or one of canvas, as the case may be, to hide her nakedness; and in life, it is a disastrous virtue that we have united to commend and avoid. Nor is the decision an unwise one; for man ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... there came from New Orleans a wealthy invalid, with his only daughter Matilda. She was a proud haughty girl, whose disposition, naturally unamiable, was rendered still worse by a disappointment from which she was suffering. Accidentally Mr. Richards, her father, made the acquaintance of John Nichols, conceiving for him a violent fancy, and finally ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... the summer in a villa) for the pleasure of seeing the Austrian troops enter, and of witnessing (as Gino Capponi records) the French prisoners or Frenchly-inclined Florentines being pilloried and tortured by the anti-revolutionary mob. Besides such demonstrations of an unamiable disposition as these, working with the fury of an alchemist, and, perhaps, taking a holiday at that house where the doggrel verses were written. The Countess of Albany, who had been so horribly unhappy with her legitimate husband, must have been ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... himself, and yawned slightly. It was a sallow, strong, unamiable face. He put me, in a surly, bored fashion, through the usual questions as to lights and signals, and I escaped from the room thank fully—passed! Forty minutes! And again I walked on air along Tower Hill, where so many ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... Jekyll's best displays of brilliant impudence was perpetrated on a Welsh judge, who was alike notorious for his greed of office and his want of personal cleanliness. "My dear sir," Jekyll observed in his most amiable manner to this most unamiable personage, "you have asked the minister for almost everything else, why don't you ask him for a piece ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... well stocked with pigs, calves, sheep, oxen, and with two or three litters of puppies, with their mothers, in it, and have heard them all in tumult together, may form a good idea of the confused noise of the seals at Cone Point. The sailors killed as many of these harmless, and not unamiable creatures, as they were able to skin during the time necessary for me to take the requisite angles; and we then left the poor affrighted multitude to recover from the effect of ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... Buzfuz was certainly a counsel of power and ability, and I think lawyers will admit he managed Mrs. Bardell's case with much adroitness. His speech, besides being a sort of satirical abstract of the unamiable thundering boisterousness addressed to juries in such cases, is one of much ability. He makes the most of every topic that he thought likely to "tell" on a city jury. We laugh heartily at his would-be solemn and pathetic passages, but ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... discharge three chauffeurs because Pat did not get on well with them, and he had found it quite impossible to keep a dog for the simple reason that Mary insisted on keeping a cat—a most unamiable, belligerent cat at that. He would have made home a hell for any ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... not even deign to mention in his preface; but this joke was still more unsuccessful [than his History of Britain].' J. H. Burton's Hume, i. 478. Hume says of him, that he had 'scarce ever known a man more perverse and unamiable.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... positive, trivial, human existence. No doubt it was this that had caused Mrs. Poyntz's harsh judgment against the wisdom of my choice. But such chiller shade upon Lilian's charming nature was reflected from no inert, unamiable self-love. It was but the consequence of that self-absorption which the habit of revery had fostered. I cautiously abstained from all allusion to those visionary deceptions, which she had confided to me as the truthful impressions of spirit, if not of sense. To me ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the epitaph runs on to considerable length, acknowledging the good qualities of the poor woman, but killing each by setting against it some peculiarly unamiable trait. I confess that my feeling is quite turned in her favour by the unmanly assault which her brother (the author of the inscription) has thus made upon the poor dead woman. If you cannot honestly say good ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... a boundless command of the rhetoric in which the vulgar express hatred and contempt. The profusion of maledictions and vituperative epithets which composed his vocabulary could hardly have been rivalled in the fishmarket or the beargarden. His countenance and his voice must always have been unamiable. But these natural advantages,—for such he seems to have thought them,—he had improved to such a degree that there were few who, in his paroxysms of rage, could see or hear him without emotion. Impudence and ferocity ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was an animal of note, and called General Jackson, from the fact of his licking up everything that came in his way, and taking 'the responsibility' on all occasions. He was a wicked looking beast, very lean and unamiable in aspect, with hair all standing the wrong way. He had fought some fifty bulls (so they said), always coming out victorious, but that neither one of the fifty had been an Attakapas bull, the bills of the performances did not ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... it. But on this particular afternoon I seemed to weary of everything. Even my last new book of fairy stories failed to interest me. I felt as if, instead of fancying myself the hero of the tale, I was perpetually being compared, by my own conscience, to the unamiable characters—Cinderella's sisters, for instance, or the elder of the two princes who lived in a country long ago and nowhere in particular; elder brothers being in fairy tales, as all true connoisseurs ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... and endowed with a far greater share of shrewd, hard iron, or granite understanding; which, duly mingled with a fair proportion of doctrinal ingredient, constitutes a highly respectable, efficacious, and unamiable variety of the clerical species. There were others again, true saintly fathers, whose faculties had been elaborated by weary toil among their books, and by patient thought, and etherealised, moreover, by spiritual communications with the better world, into which their purity of life had ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had found a cheap establishment for such wines as he did not drink himself! In playing cards and in betting, he was very careful, never playing high, never risking much, but hoping to turn something by the end of the year, and angry with himself if he had not done so. An unamiable man he was, but one whose heir would probably not quarrel with him—if only he would die soon enough. He had always had a house in town—a moderate house in Berkeley Square, which belonged to him, and had belonged to his father before him. Lady Clavering had usually ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... the Domesticities, as set forth by our Prussian authorities, an opulent topic for us. Friedrich's Old Age is not unamiable; on the contrary, I think it would have made a pretty Picture, had there been a Limner to take it, with the least felicity or physiognomic coherency;—as there was not. His Letters, and all the symptoms we have, denote a sound-hearted brave old man; continually subduing to himself many ugly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... hateful, ill-tempered, surly, churlish, disagreeable, ill-conditioned, morose, unamiable, crabbed, dogged, ill-humored, sour, unlovely, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... was never considered an unamiable person; she was well spoken of by her friends and relations, for she was rich, and gave away a great deal of money to various charities and benevolent institutions. But if ever any one expected her to depart in the smallest particular from her own way they were vastly mistaken. ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... emotion far exceeds intellectual action. At this stage, we have a kind of laughter which we may call that of pleasure, inasmuch as it is the first that deserves a distinct name. This laughter of pleasure required very little complication of thought, contained no unamiable feeling, and expressed the mildest sense of the ludicrous. At the same time, it did not flow from any mere constitutional joyousness, but only arose upon certain occasions, in consequence of some remarkable and unusual occurrence—such as the reception of glad tidings, or the sudden ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... you to confess that I shall have more than balanced it. A ball-room is an epitome of all that is most worthless and unamiable in the great sphere of human life. Every petty and malignant passion is called into play. Coquetry is perpetually on the alert to captivate, caprice to mortify, and vanity to take offence. One amiable female is rendered miserable for the evening by seeing another, whom she intended ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... golden age will endure. Not until he forswears love will he stretch out his hand to the gold, and found the Plutonic empire for himself. But the choice between love and gold may not rest altogether with him. He may be an ugly, ungracious, unamiable person, whose affections may seem merely ludicrous and despicable to you. In that case, you may repulse him, and most bitterly humiliate and disappoint him. What is left to him then but to curse the love he ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... of extraordinary obduracy," he said, "for one of your years. I should like to know how much the Stanbury influence has had to do with strengthening your unwise, unamiable, and stiff-necked resolution! If I were Claude Bainrothe, I should lay heavy damages against you in the courts of law, for your unjustifiable evasion of a formal contract—one your father sanctioned, one of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... little anecdote to show that Spanish slavers sometimes ventured to have a little fun with the British lion, and that when we got him on his haunches, his month full of beef and his fore paws in air, he was by no means the unamiable beast he is described to be, when, in company with ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... statement to this effect—That the custom prevalent among children in that age of asking their parents' blessing was probably first brought into disuse by the Puritans. Is it possible to imagine a perversity of prejudice more unreasonable? The unamiable side of the patriotic character in the seventeenth century was unquestionably its religious bigotry; which, however, had its ground in a real fervor of religious feeling and a real strength of religious ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... ill-natured, ill-conditioned, ill-contrived; evil-minded, evil- disposed; black-browed^. malicious; malign, malignant; rancorous; despiteful, spiteful; mordacious, caustic, bitter, envenomed, acrimonious, virulent; unamiable, uncharitable; maleficent, venomous, grinding, galling. harsh, disobliging; unkind, unfriendly, ungracious; inofficious^; invidious; uncandid; churlish &c (discourteous) 895; surly, sullen &c 901.1. cold, cold-blooded, cold-hearted; black-hearted, hard-hearted, flint-hearted, marble-hearted, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the resemblance to that animal. Her teeth, utterly unacquainted with the action of a brush, were prominent, so that her lip seldom covered them, and her uncombed hair hung rough and shaggy around her unattractive face. Agnes at once guessed that this poor child was deficient in intellect, and unamiable in temper. ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... assert itself early, and shift for itself more and more not only in washing and dressing itself, but in opinions and conduct; yet as nothing is so exasperating and so unlovable as an uppish child, it is useless to expect parents and schoolmasters to inculcate this uppishness. Such unamiable precepts as Always contradict an authoritative statement, Always return a blow, Never lose a chance of a good fight, When you are scolded for a mistake ask the person who scolds you whether he or she supposes ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... woman are almost angel-like. We have seen in her letters to Madame de Grantmesnil that from the first he inspired her with a compassionate interest; then the compassion was checked by her perception of his more unamiable and envious attributes. But now those attributes, if still existent, had ceased to be apparent to her, and the compassion became unalloyed. Indeed, it was thus so far increased that it was impossible for any friendly ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... what may a cross-light be? An unamiable and inhospitable light, like that which gleams from the eyes of an astronomer when he is interrupted in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... concluded the Duke, "has resulted all this dirt." It could hardly be matter of surprise, either to Philip or his Viceroy, that the discovery by Elizabeth of a plot upon their parts to take her life and place the crown upon the head of her hated rival, should have engendered unamiable feelings in her bosom towards them. For the moment, however, Alva's negotiations were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... gone to hers, but soon after, at her brother's solicitation, had accompanied him to a neighboring pond to make sure that the ice was safe for him. But, though she yielded to Dan's teasing, her compliance was so ungracious, and her manner so short and unamiable, that with a boy's frankness he had said: "What is the matter with you, Lottie? You are not a bit like Auntie Jane to-day. I wish you could stay ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... "Truly, you are an unamiable guest," snarled the Owl, his yellow eyes growing keen and fierce with anger and mortified pride. "You are an ungrateful bird, Miss, and the Bat is right. You do not deserve this generous hospitality which I have offered, this goodly ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... apparently about as little of a human being as was consistent with the possession of a human form and the power of speech. Most of her qualities seemed to be negative—if we may say so. She was obviously not unamiable; she was not unkind; and she was not sulky, though very silent. In fact, she seemed to be the nearest possible approach to a human nonentity. She may be described as a black maid-of-all-work, but her chief occupation was ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... I have not an amiable worldling for my sister, instead of an unamiable and devilish conceited Christian." And with these bitter words, Alfred snatched a candle and bounced to bed in a fury. So apt is one passion to ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... large man, who seemed to shake the ground as he trod. His face was devoid of speculation, and his dull blue eyes looked from under heavy and unamiable brows. His hair was matted, and his mode of dressing his big limbs showed that he was careless of opinion. He was called Hob's Tommy because the villagers had a fancy for regarding sons as the personal property of the father, and thus a man called Thomas, who happened to be ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... blended with his wit, which rendered it singularly original and attractive; and perfectly succeeded, though I know not whether he intended it or not, in directing the attention of the company from my altered and somewhat unamiable mood. ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... this is in great measure their own fault: that testiness and ill-nature (qualities which, as he observes, do not usually improve with age) are always disagreeable, and that such persons attributed to their advancing years what was in truth the consequence of their unamiable tempers. It is not all wine which turns sour with age, nor yet all tempers; much depends on the original quality. The old Censor lays down some maxims which, like the preceding, have served as texts for a good many modern writers, and may be ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... contemptuous, and so dreadfully offended if Hamilton does not treat him with the deference he wants. I think we know more of each other than any one else does, and no one would think, in company, when Trevannion is smiling and talking so cleverly, that he is so unamiable." ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... and patches as a harlequin's coat. Pitt had tried to make a chemical combination, but he only succeeded in making a mixture that might at any time dissolve into its component parts. It was composed {109} of men of all parties and all principles. The amiable Conway and the unamiable Grafton remained on from Rockingham's Ministry. So did the Duke of Portland and Lord Bessborough, so did Saunders and Keppel. Pitt did not forget his own followers. He gave the Great Seal to Lord Camden, who, as Justice Pratt, had liberated Wilkes from unjustifiable ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... mediaeval doctor would have called him saturnine. His face, which carried the entire tale of his years, was of the brown tint of Dublin streets. On his long and rather large head grew dry black hair and a tawny moustache did not quite cover an unamiable mouth. His cheekbones also gave his face a harsh character; but there was no harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in others but often ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... But Milton was a politician as well as a poet, a fanatic as well as a man of letters of seldom equalled, and never, save in two or three cases, surpassed powers. He was also a man of a more morose and unamiable private character than any other great poet the world has known except Racine. The easy bonhomie of the Caroline muse repelled his austerity; its careless good-breeding shocked his middle-class and Puritan Philistinism; its laxity revolted his principles of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... former friend's neglect of you does not at all surprise me: there is an inveteracy, a darkness, a design and cunning in his character that stamp him for a very unamiable young man: it is uncommon for a heart to be so tainted so early My cousin's(1332) affair is entirely owing to him;(1333) nor can I account for the pursuit of such ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... really deem me imperfect. She spoke in this way because she thinks I am soon to die. However that may be, I have heard nothing but kind and tender words from her; and so I consider her most kind, and myself an unamiable creatures. ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... luncheon, though madame invites her cordially. She is a little late at home, and finds her lord in a rather unamiable state. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... however, in stating that we were received by the commander of the fortress with a kind of acid good-nature, or mild cynicism, that indicated him to be a humorist, characterized by certain rather pungent peculiarities, yet of no unamiable cast. He is a small, thin old gentleman, set off by a large pair of brilliant epaulets,—the only pair, so far as my observation went, that adorn the shoulders of any officer in the Union army. Either for our inspection, or because the matter had already been arranged, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... long ago," murmured M. Renard, as if to himself. It was quite human that he should slightly resent being classed with an unamiable ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... unfairness of his foes, it has to be admitted, likewise, that he was quite as ready to quarrel with his friends. He succeeded, at least once, in forcing a quarrel even upon Lamb. His relations with Leigh Hunt (who, whatever his faults were, was not unamiable) were constantly strained, and at least once actually broken by his infernal temper. Nor were his relations with women more fortunate or more creditable than those with men. That the fault was entirely on his side in the rupture with his first wife is, no doubt, not the case; ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... my mother's weapon showed evidences of contact. For another instant they glared at each other in the most unamiable way; then my poor, wounded father, feeling the hand of death upon him, leaped forward, unmindful of resistance, grasped my dear mother in his arms, dragged her to the side of the boiling cauldron, collected all his failing energies, and sprang in with her! In a moment, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... those around them. Harmless these habits maybe in themselves, perhaps; but inasmuch as they are teasing, annoying, and irritating to others, they are not harmless. Nay, they are criminal, because they are accompanied by a most unamiable disregard to the feelings ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... counter, after Captain Candage was back on his quarter-deck, he gave it a stare over the rail, and his expression was distinctly unamiable. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... fairy tales in the glowing embers! Is there no one in all this big house to attend to your wants? But Dance will be here presently, I have no doubt, and the good old soul will do her best to make you comfortable. I have been to pay my respects to her ladyship, who is in one of her unamiable moods this evening. I, however, contrived to wring from her a reluctant consent to your paying Aunt Felicity and me a visit now and then at Eastbury, and it shall be my business to see that the promise is duly ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... 62: Not like those of former days)—Ver. 524. Syrus, by showing himself an admirer of the good old times, a "laudator temporis acti," is wishful to flatter the vanity of Chremes, as it is a feeling common to old age, perhaps by no means an unamiable one, to think former times better than the present. Aged people feel grateful to those happy hours when their hopes were bright, and every thing was viewed from the sunny side ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... Remember that, in the sight of God, there are no little sins. The least transgression is sufficient to condemn the soul forever. "He that offendeth in one point is guilty of all." Especially avoid the indulgence of a selfish disposition. It is both unamiable and unchristian. Be always ready to sacrifice your own feelings, when by so doing you can give pleasure to others. Study the wishes and feelings of others, and prefer them to your own. Manifest ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... and putting on a sweetly apologetic manner, as if penitent for the gross misbehaviour of the ship. Such a man would reconcile me to far greater discomfort than that of the "Kilauea." I wonder if he is ever unamiable, or ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Nellie is the beauty of the house," and Maude shook her head mournfully, for on the subject of beauty she was a little sensitive, her sister always pronouncing her "a fright," and manifesting a most unamiable spirit if anyone complimented her ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... valet's master was a Viennese gentleman of twenty-six or eight (I heard), but who looked forty. I found myself wondering how dear, puritanic, little Elsie Hazzard could have fallen in with two such unamiable wrecks as these fellows appeared to be at ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... guessing that Great Britain was desperately in debt, and in the very mood to resort to desperate measures of delivering herself therefrom. Her being in this particular mood at that particular time (for it is only now and then that she has shown herself so unamiable) was owing chiefly to the fact, that she was just then under the rule, or rather misrule, of that narrow-minded, short-sighted, hard-fisted, wrong-headed man, who commonly goes in history by the name of King George the Third. Had he been ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... however discrepant: every known property, however opposed. All your ingenious systems, all your mysteries, all the subtilties which ye have invented, are they capable of reconciling that discordant assemblage of amiable and unamiable qualities, with which ye have dressed up your figments? In short, is it not by these theories that ye disturb the harmony of the universe; is it not in their name ye follow up your barbarous proscriptions; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... saw his uncle and aunt. He had never noticed before that they were quite old people. The Vicar received him with his usual, not unamiable indifference. He was a little stouter, a little balder, a little grayer. Philip saw how insignificant he was. His face was weak and self-indulgent. Aunt Louisa took him in her arms and kissed him; and tears of happiness flowed ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... advantages, but wastes them all in drink. He does this not in Australia alone. I hate legislative interference with private habits, and I have no fancies about diet. A citizen of Maine, who has eaten too much pork, is just as great a transgressor against medical rules, and probably just as unamiable, as if he had drunk too much whisky. But when I have seen the havoc—the ever increasing havoc— which drink makes with the industry, the vigour, the character of the British workman, I have sometimes asked myself whether in that case extraordinary measures might not be justified ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... a failure too. He has hitherto been encumbered with embarrassing questions and an unmanageable party. Time has disposed of the first, and he is divorced from the last; if his great experience and talents have a fair field to act upon, he may yet, in spite of his selfish and unamiable character, be a distinguished ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease very painful. Virtue will not help us, and it is not meant to help us. It is not even its own reward, except for the self-centred and - I had almost said - the unamiable. No man can pacify his conscience; if quiet be what he want, he shall do better to let that organ perish from disuse. And to avoid the penalties of the law, and the minor CAPITIS DIMINUTIO of social ostracism, is an affair of wisdom - of cunning, ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by side with these unamiable figures, are a set of people, equally religious, whose characters are immeasurably sweetened and strengthened by their religion. It is not that they profess another faith, attend another church, or spend lives remote from the affairs with which the ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... business life, we shall find that it is this unamiable, but indomitable, quality of grit which not only acquires fortunes, but preserves them after they have been acquired. The ruin which overtakes so many merchants is due not so much to their lack of business talent as to their lack of business nerve. How many lovable persons we see in trade, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... whom I could enjoy a single moment of real social intercourse, or whose conversation was calculated to render me better, wiser, or happier than before; or who, as far as I could see, could be greatly benefited by mine. My only companions had been unamiable children, and ignorant, wrong- headed girls; from whose fatiguing folly, unbroken solitude was often a relief most earnestly desired and dearly prized. But to be restricted to such associates was a serious evil, both in its immediate effects ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... with half an inch of dust and cobwebs. When he came down, he heard uncle Nathan's voice in the kitchen. He was growling because his wife used so much wood to heat the oven, and Levi concluded not to see him that day, for he seemed to be in a more than usually unamiable frame of mind. He went out at the front door, and Bessie joined him as he passed Mr. Mogmore's house. The saw-mill was taken to the spot where it had stood before. The dam was reconstructed much more readily ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... to us in blood—I had thought it so much our duty to provide fitting entertainment for them that your attitude is incomprehensible to me. Come! does it not strike you as savouring a little of the unamiable dog in the fable? I know you hate company yourself, and all the rest of it; but how can these things here affect you upon your island? As for the budget, it will stand it, I assure you. I speak hotly; pray excuse me. I own I have ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... He shot a most unamiable glance in my direction, and, turning upon his heel, he walked with little, quick, noiseless steps out of ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... answered, in his most unamiable manner (he applies that word to me with increasing frequency); "is that what you've waked me up for? Why, the Quackenbosses left Lake George on Tuesday morning, and I had the dispatch-box in ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... been sitting angling from the side of the stream when, by ill-luck, the wind had entangled his beard in his line, and just afterwards a big fish taking the bait, the unamiable little fellow had not sufficient strength to pull it out; so the fish had the advantage, and was dragging the dwarf after it. Certainly, he caught at every stalk and spray near him, but that did not assist him greatly; he was ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... luck. "Why did not that fool of a bookworm give over his chance to him, if he would not profit by it himself? Why the devil should he descend to play the commoner, when he was born to play the prince?" and suchlike unamiable and ill-tempered speeches. However, he was now silenced by the drums and trumpets, which struck up the Te Deum, in which all present joined. Then Doctor Dannenbaum offered up a prayer, and so that grand ceremony concluded. But the feasting and drinking was ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... Heraldry, Advocates' Library, w. 4. 13. While, however, the Fairy of warmer climes was thus held up as an object of desire and of affection, those of Britain, and more especially those of Scotland, were far from being so fortunate; but, retaining the unamiable qualities, and diminutive size of the Gothic elves, they only exchanged that term for the ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... known literary women, and as far as they have been made known to us in literary biography, the unwomanly and unamiable, the poor wives, and daughters, and sisters, have been the rare exceptions. I mean not alone "women of genius," but would include those of mere talent, of mediocre talent even, devoted to letters as a profession, and who, by their estimable characters and blameless lives, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage |
