"Uncomely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of face and symmetry of figure Queen Crucha yields neither to Semiramis of Babylon nor to Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons; nor to Salome, the daughter of Herodias. But she offers in her person certain singularities that will appear beautiful or uncomely according to the contradictory opinions of men and the varying judgments of the world. She has on her forehead two small horns which she conceals in the abundant folds of her golden hair; one of her eyes is blue and one is black; her neck is bent towards the left side; and, like Alexander ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... mounted on their hobby-horse Thinke they are riding, when with wanton toile They beare what should beare them. A man may well 175 Compare them to those foolish great-spleen'd cammels, That to their high heads beg'd of Jove hornes higher; Whose most uncomely and ridiculous pride When hee had satisfied, they could not use, But where they went upright before, they stoopt, 180 And bore their heads much lower for their hornes: Simil[iter.] As these high men doe, low in all true grace, Their ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... stout, dewlapped old lady, with dull eyes and pachydermatous folds in her face. She had a husky voice and a funereal manner. Jessie, her eldest daughter, was not altogether uncomely in a commonplace way: she was dark-haired, high-coloured, loud-voiced—generally sprightly and voluble and overpowering; she was in such a hurry to speak that her words tripped one another up, and she had a meaningless and, ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... think what I should deem, if I had ridden by, unlooked for, and spied my lover with a maid, not unfriendly, or perchance uncomely, sitting smiling in a gallant balcony. Would I be appeased when he came straight to seek me, borne in a litter? Would I—?" And she mused, her finger at her mouth, and her brow puckered, but with a smile on her ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... ladie faire he saw, Standing alone on foote in foule array; To whom himself he hastily did draw, To weet the cause of so uncomely fray, And to depart them, if so ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... one told her a while ago that she should stand for hours watching every change in that pale face, whose common, uncomely features grew spiritualized with sickness, till she often trembled on their unearthly sweetness; that twenty times in the night she would start up from her uncomfortable sofa-bed, listening for the slightest sound; that the sight of Arthur eating his dinner (often prepared by her own ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... lines display for the inharmonious as well as the harmonious, for the uncomely, as well as the comely parts of nature has been made familiar by Wordsworth, but it was new in the time of Cowper. Let us compare a landscape painted by Pope in his Windsor forest, with the lines just quoted, and we shall see the difference between ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... a room, that is in so far as four sides, a floor and a ceiling comprise one. Of that I had no doubt. A sort of uncomely offshoot from the main inn building, built on piles in the earth after the fashion of the seashore houses of the Malay—but much dirtier and incomparably more shaky. For many a long year, longer than mine horrid host would care to recollect, this ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... that before," Sieur Raymond suggested. "And I agreed, as I remember, that it was more than probable; for my niece here—though it be I that speak it—is by no means uncomely, has a commendable voice, the walk of a Hebe, and sufficient wit to deceive her lover into happiness. My faith, young man, you show excellent taste! But, I submit, the purest affection is an insufficient excuse for outbaying a whole kennel of hounds ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... were mixed with the smaller china ware. And, when George entered the shop, the hunchback's wife was behind the counter. Like Mrs. Lake, he paused to think where he could have seen her before; the not uncomely face marred by an ugly mouth, in which the upper lip was long and cleft, and the lower lip large and heavy, seemed familiar to him. He was still beating his brains when the Cheap ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... fair to see men will stand by her, and as men, in this world, are "the dog on top", they are the power to truckle to. A plain woman will have nothing forgiven her. Her fate is such that the parents of uncomely female infants should be compelled to put them to ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... party in power by giving it small majorities in a large number of districts, and coop up the opposing party with overwhelming majorities in a large number of districts. This may involve a very distortionate and uncomely "scientific" boundary, and the joining together of distant and unrelated localities into a single district; such was the case in the famous original act of Governor Gerry, of Massachusetts, whence the practice obtained its amphibian name.[6] ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... fair example of the well-bred, well-fed Englishman—tall, brawny, limber, not uncomely, with a red neck, a powerful jaw, and a keen eye. Something more of repose, of self-possession, and a slightly more intellectual brow, would have made him the best type of conquering, civilising Briton. He came of ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... served her to see nothing but what was out of her field of vision. The scenery grew by degrees rough and wild; cultivation and civilisation seemed as they went on to fall into the rear. A village, or hamlet, of miserable, dirty, uncomely houses and people, was passed by; and at last, just as the morning was wakening up into fervour, Mrs. Starling drew rein in a desolate rough spot at the edge of a woodland. The regular road had been left some ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... pretended to have as little a stomach as she had a mouth, and therefore would not swallow her pease by spoonfuls; but took them one by one, and cut them in two before she would eat them. It is very uncomely to drink so large a draught that your breath is almost gone—and are forced to blow strongly to recover yourself—throwing down your liquor as into a funnel is an action fitter for a juggler than a gentlewoman: thus much for your observations in general; if I am defective ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... astonishment. She was unrecognizable. Her dress was ragged and dirty; the hands and face that once rivalled the Parian marble in whiteness, were tanned by toil, and lay shrivelled and dried. Her hair was dishevelled and gathered up in an uncomely heap on the back of her head. She looked like the ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... seemed to have been wandering through copse and dingle! Mr. Thoreau has risen above all his arrogance of manner, and is as gentle, simple, ruddy, and meek as all geniuses should be; and now his great blue eyes fairly outshine and put into shade a nose which I thought must make him uncomely forever." ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... seemed that Jillings, who, by the way, was not uncomely, had established friendly relations with one of the gardeners at the big house of the neighbourhood—with the result that Celia found her sitting-rooms replenished at frequent intervals with the most magnificent specimens ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... the whitening roll of her eyes under her flame-coloured turban made one think of a tiger-cat, and roused that knowledge of danger which adds a tingle to interest. A man could scarce take his eyes from her, though there were other women there and not uncomely ones. Another black wench there was, clad as gayly, but sunk in a languorous calm like a great cat, with Nick Barry, now his song was done, lolling against her, and two white women, one young and well favoured, and the other harshly ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... made halt, the Maid had done her hair very uncomely upon her head, and had lookt slyly to see whether I did note; but truly, I took no heed; so that in the end she had it again in a pretty fashion, and did sing naughtily and with an heart of mischief, as she did shape it loose and wondrous nice about ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... services for week-days and holydays, in preference to following the only method heretofore thought possible, namely, that of shortening the Lord's Day Order, rests on two grounds. In the first place permissions to skip and omit are of themselves objectionable in a book of devotions. They have an uncomely look. Our American Common Prayer boasts too many disfigurements of ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... chancel; (3) monument to the Clarkes of Chipley (1679) in N. chapel. In the beautifully-kept churchyard is the base of a fine cross, now prettily overgrown with ferns and lichen. In close proximity to the church is a large but uncomely-looking manor house. ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... with mountain laurel, and wild flowers, and placed in that post of honor by little Anne, who was sure to renew it every day. Camp stools stood around the tent, while the whole surface of the ground in the tent was matted with dried buffalo skins, making it free from dampness, and not altogether uncomely in appearance. ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... as the admirable Captain Mayne Reid says at the beginning of The Headless Horseman, though one cannot say here, as there, "By Heavens! it is 'the head!'" There is head enough of a kind—a not at all unkempt or uncomely headpiece, very well filled with brains. But it has no aureole, as the other preferred persons cited in the last sentence and earlier have. This aureole may be larger or smaller, brighter or less bright—a full circlet of unbroken or hardly broken splendour, or ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the private office was brusquely opened. Mr. Waddington, the only existing member of the firm, entered—-a large, untidy-looking man, also dressed in most uncomely fashion, and wearing an ill-brushed silk hat on the back of his head. He turned at ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unfortunately passion for the grotesque and the fanciful often lending a touch of caricature. Downright ugliness must have had an especial charm for the future illustrator of the Inferno, his unconscious models sketched by the way being uncomely as the immortal Pickwick and his fellows of Phiz. A devotee of Gothic art, he reproduced the medival monstrosities adorning cornice and pinnacle in human types. Equally devoted to nature out of doors, the same taste predominated. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... common red brick glows in its translucent atmosphere like a ruby; and the russet defaced column, as it comes out against its vivid light, becomes luminous like a pillar of gold. Brick and marble are of equal aesthetic value in this magic city, in which the uncomely parts and materials have a more abundant comeliness by reason of the medium through which they are seen. Over all things lingers permanently the transfiguring glow that comes to northern lands only in the afternoon. In that land it is always afternoon; the ruins bathe as it were in ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... touched with compassion for this uncomely woman alone among these gallant and handsome knights, a woman so helpless and ill-favoured, and he said: "Peace, churl Kay, the lady cannot help herself; and you are not so noble and courteous that you have the right to jeer at any maiden; such deeds do not ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... changed so that you would hardly know the country to-day. A new era has come over everything, especially over the other sex. Well do I remember the women of the old King's time, how monstrous uncomely they were, how little they knew how to walk or carry themselves, how painfully barbaric was their notion of dress. I dare swear that your ladies here in Yucatan are not so provincial to-day as ours were then. But you should see them ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... la vieille from the very day that she counted her wedding presents, mostly chickens, and turned them loose in the dooryard—sometimes she enjoyed the fine excitement of seeing her vieux catching and branding his yearling colts. Small but not uncomely they were: tougher, stronger, better when broken, than the mustang, though, like the mustang, begotten and foaled on the open prairie. Often she saw him catch two for the plough in the morning, turn them loose at noon to find their own food and drink, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... universal clerical pipe,—but, observing a delicate woman once nauseated by coming into the atmosphere which he and his brethren had polluted, he set himself gravely to reflect that that which could so offend a woman must needs be uncomely and unworthy a Christian man; wherefore he laid his pipe on the mantelpiece, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... the epoch have preserved her face to posterity; the grief-stricken face of a hard-featured but commanding and not uncomely woman, the fountains of whose tears seem exhausted; a face of austere and noble despair. A decorous veil should be thrown over the form of that aged matron, for whose long life and prosperity Fate took such ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 'Oh, profane and uncomely simile!—which will next, I presume, liken the coming hailstorm to hair-powder shaken from the ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... more, and like a born natural, I made answer that Nan Boleyn was no mistress of mine to bid me hold a tongue that had spoken sooth to her betters. Thereupon, what think you, boy? The grooms came and soundly flogged me for uncomely speech of my Lady Anne! I that was eighteen years with my Lord Cardinal, and none laid hand on me! Yea, I was beaten; and then shut up in a dog-hole for three days on bread and water, with none to speak to, but the other fools jeering at me like ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... contrary, The Apostle says (1 Cor. 12:23, 24): "Those that are our uncomely (inhonesta) parts, have more abundant comeliness (honestatem), but our comely (honesta) parts have no need." Now by uncomely parts he means the baser members, and by comely parts the beautiful members. Therefore the honest and the beautiful are apparently ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... prose is distinctly better than English; and French verse, above all while Hugo lives, it will not do to place upon one side. What is more to our purpose, a phrase or a verse in French is easily distinguishable as comely or uncomely. There is then another element of comeliness hitherto overlooked in this analysis: the contents of the phrase. Each phrase in literature is built of sounds, as each phrase in music consists of notes. One sound suggests, echoes, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clasp-knife; and we sat watching, silent, all.... And I felt bad, too, because of the maid at Whooping Harbor—a rolling waste of rock, with the moonlight lying on it, stretching from the whispering mystery of the sea to the greater desolation beyond; and an uncomely maid, wishing, without hope, for that which the hearts of women ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... and I saw that it was an old woman grey haired, uncomely of raiment, but with shining bright eyes in her wrinkled face. And she made an obeisance to me and said: 'I was passing through this lonely wilderness and I looked down into the little valley and saw these goats there and the lovely lady lying naked ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... princes." What is not generally realized is that he was also a high-strung and eager spectator of the greater things. I have already spoken of his enthusiasm for wild nature as shown in his letters from the Alps. It is true he grew weary of them. "Such uncouth rocks," he wrote, "and such uncomely inhabitants." "I am as surfeited with mountains and inns as if I had eat them," he groaned in a later letter. But the enthusiasm was at least as genuine as the fatigue. His tergiversation of mood proves only that there were ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd |
