"Unsavory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perpetuating in a solid telltale record all they may have said and written thoughtlessly or in a momentary pet, giving to a fleeting whim the printed permanence of a settled opinion, and robbing the grave of what is sometimes its only consoling attribute, the dignity of reserve. We know of no more unsavory calling than this, unless it be that of the Egyptian dealers in mummy, peddling out their grandfathers to be ground into pigment. Obsequious to the last moment, the jackal makes haste to fill his belly from the ribs of his late lion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... to hope that the world was not sinking into shams in its old age. Quarrelling editors may win a morning's notoriety by stealing to the field, furnishing a paragraph for the reporters, and running away from the police. But they gain only the unsavory notoriety of the man in a curled wig and flowered waistcoat and huge flapped coat of the last century who used to parade Broadway. The costume was merely an advertisement, and of very contemptible wares. The man who fights a duel to-day excites ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... dull canal creeping between them—stand the buildings, dam and powerful pumps of the water service; ordinarily more than adequate for all uses. Usually, the water was pure and clear; but when heavy rains washed the river lands, the "noble Jeems" rushed by with an unsavory and dingy current, that might have shamed the yellow Tiber and rivaled the Nile itself. Sometimes the weary and worn patriot took his whisky and mud, thick enough to demand ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... into Jersey the reporter had plenty of time to consider his unsavory task. Some one had to do this kind of thing, so long as the public snooped and peeped and eavesdropped through the keyhole of print at the pageant of the socially great: this he appreciated and accepted. But he felt that it ought to be some one other than himself—and, at the same ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... at the time he sold out his steel business. To most people he would have left an unsavory memory, for though we should have considered him successful from the business standpoint, many of us would say that the means were not justified by the end. However, Mr. Carnegie has spent many years since in furthering the cause of ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... contingent, exceedingly well chosen to lay bare the superficiality and emptiness of the existence of that great personage, reduced to the companionship of a theatrical manager thrice insolvent, a picture-dealer enriched by usury, a nobleman of unsavory reputation and a few high-livers and boulevard idlers unknown to fame. Thus far everybody was on foot and bareheaded; in the parliamentary committee a few black silk skull caps had been timidly donned ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... biscuits had not scorched probably they would have been hopelessly soggy, dismal things compared to the brown discs Mike had turned out of the same oven. One was as bad as the other. Nothing seemed to work out right. Nothing ever tasted right. Only a healthy hunger enabled him to swallow the unsavory messes he concocted in ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... unanimous on this point. It was beyond her to appeal to the artistic sense, so she appealed to the lower nature, and therein lay her fascination. Just consider who the men are to whom she appealed. A millionaire with an unsavory reputation. To two or three peers who, even by the wildest stretch of imagination, cannot be considered ornaments of their order. To some younger sons of the Nut description who are ready to pay anything to be ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... that Bill Holmes had manipulated the fake camera while the bank was being robbed, and that the man with him, who bad also driven the machine, was a certain chauffeur of colorless personality and an unsavory reputation among other drivers; and that the number of the automobile was a matter of conjecture, since three different men who were positive they remembered ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... strong; high-, full-flavored; high-tasted, high- seasoned; gamy, sharp, stinging, rough, piquant, racy; biting, mordant; spicy; seasoned &c. v.; hot, hot as pepper; peppery, vellicating[obs3], escharotic[obs3], meracious|; acrid, acrimonious, bitter; rough &c. (sour) 397; unsavory &c. 395. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... pastry-cook's hand-cart which had been rashly left with doors open for a few minutes in the street, while its responsible guardian was gossiping in an adjacent kitchen. Mademoiselle Julie meanwhile was wrestling with Nero, the younger, who had dived to the very heart of a peculiarly unsavory dust-box, standing near the entrance ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... greatest sicknesses. Her ordinary diet was hard and mouldy bread. She would procure secretly, out of the pouches of the beggars, their dry crusts in exchange for better bread. When she {551} fared the best, she only added to bread a few unsavory herbs without oil, and drank nothing but water, making use of a human skull for her cup. She ate but once a day, and by long abstinence had lost all relish of what she took. Her garments were of coarse serge, and she never wore linen, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... way through the throng of applicants for places and servants. She paid no heed to the astonishment of a severe-looking, elderly lady, who, by her impetuous onset, has been rudely thrust back into the very arms of a fat, unsavory cook with whom she had a minute before been quite unwillingly set to confer by the high ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... by day, an evil place by night, an unsavory place at all times is Giles's Rents, down by ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... indecision and fluctuating political combinations, his ambition to play a great role in history, but a role that he seemed not to have fixed upon himself; then all the dirty business of parleys and conferences, and the communications by means of lying, unsavory emissaries with Bismarck, King William and the Empress-regent, who in the end put her foot down and refused to negotiate with the enemy on the basis of a cession of territory; and, finally, the inevitable catastrophe, the completion ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic employment—as some frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite alone by themselves, burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax. Though their blubber is very thin, some of these whales will yield you upwards of thirty gallons ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... thousand tons of wampum, and if she chooses to go joy-riding on a Diplodocus with a gentleman from the Circus, it is Zebulon Zebedee's business, not mine, and a newspaper that insisted upon dumping this unsavory mess on my breakfast-table every morning would sooner or later ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... shoulders of my spirit, but said nothing. So, hand in hand, though at arms' length, we passed from the shade of the cedars into the open meadow, where we presently met Hamor and his party. They would have barred the way, laughing and making unsavory jests, but I drew her closer to me and laid my hand upon my sword. They stood aside, for I was the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... looked like a gentleman. To inspire confidence! I looked older than I was, and he took me on. It was a filthy business, but I was in a panic. I was with Stone eight months. Then I left him. It was too unsavory—even for me. ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... his), directed to a dozen of that sex who sat in the gloom of a corner. The young man was moderate in his sarcasm, and attempted to speak of national issues, but the crowd had small relish for that sort of thing. At eleven o'clock, when we got away from the unsavory room (more than half the candles had gone out), the orator was making slow headway against the refished blackguardism of the evening. The german was still "on" at the hotel when we ascended to our chamber, satisfied that Asheville was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... whole Ploszow episode. At times I feel inclined to think that I was not worthy of her; at others, that I made an ass of myself over a girl like dozens of others. This irritates my vanity, and makes me feel angry with Aniela. One moment I feel an unsavory consciousness of guilt in regard to her, in another the offence appears to me futile and childish. Taken altogether, I do not approve of the part I played at Ploszow, nor do I approve of the part I am playing here. The division between right and wrong is becoming more and ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... than in "great problems of statesmanship," many of which, on analysis, are found to be imaginary and supposititious. Yes, and it would be better for the country if our literary men would describe the healthful life of the Nation's plain people, than tell unsavory stories of artificial careers and abnormal affections, and ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... which the Indians mix with their Pulse and Soups, it giving 'em a pretty Flavour, and scarlet Colour. The Bears crop these Trees for the Berries, which they mightily covet, yet kill'd in that Season, they eat very unsavory; which must be occasion'd by this Fruit, because, at other times, when they feed on Mast, Bears-Flesh is a very well-tasted Food. The other Gum bears a Berry in shape like the other, tho' bitter and ill-tasted. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... ahead until he stood beneath a huge, unsavory bundle wrapped in roughly woven brown fibre, and wedged in a fork between two limbs. Judging from the ugly odor which overhung the grove, there could be no question about what the bundle contained. Nini and Ivana, glancing at the scores of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... without ambition, he had drifted part way through college, a weak parody on those wealthy young men who idle through the great universities, leaving unsavory records. His father had managed to pay his debts, then very selfishly died, and there was nobody to support the son and heir, just emerging from ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... trusted to elect Custom-House officers and postmasters! Otherwise, our republicanism is a humbug. This would abolish the Washington grab-bag. It would also avoid the creation of a class of life-officials than which nothing could be more dangerous and unsavory. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... would venture near enough To run the risk of catching lumps of lead, And this well dressed was no unsavory stuff With which to help a meal of wheaten bread. Of bears and wolves they were at first in dread, But soon found out there was no cause for fear; For if such came and mortal showed his head, They soon ran off with a true coward's leer, Which made it seem surprising ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... all directions, preferring damp, thawy weather. He has very little discretion or cunning, and holds a trap in utter contempt, stepping into it as soon as beside it, relying implicitly for defence against all forms of danger upon the unsavory punishment he is capable of inflicting. He is quite indifferent to both man and beast, and will not hurry himself to get out of the way of either. Walking through the summer fields at twilight, I have come ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... years ago a well-known Bostonian, the descendant of an honored family, began the ancestral quest with expert assistance. All went merry as a marriage bell for a time, when suddenly he unearthed an unsavory scandal that concerned one of his progenitors. Feeling a responsibility for the misdeeds of his great-grandfather, he ordered all investigation stopped, and the disagreeable data destroyed; but he had delved too far. His genealogist had told a friend, and the ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... down listlessly. Her first thought was to question Joy in regard to the book, but she hated to mention it; to have any one know that she was mixed up in such an unsavory affair. Who could have done such a thing—such a contemptible, cowardly thing? Who, in school, disliked her enough to put her in such a position? How had ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... witness in a court of justice the informer as a professional criminal would have little or no standing or credence, and in addition would, under cross-examination, be compelled to lay bare the secrets of his unsavory past, perhaps resulting indirectly in a term in prison for himself.* Thus may be accounted for much of the supposed "romantic, if misguided, chivalry" of the south Italian. It is common both to him and to the Bowery tough. ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... antiquity, and I am its head in America. But, alas! we have no hereditary legislators; and though I feel myself competent to wear the strawberry-leaves, or even to sit upon a throne, I have not been willing to submit to the unsavory contacts of American political life. Mr. Mellasys Plickaman took ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... think this over. And tonight you can tell me what you've decided. And then I'll tell you whether I'm going to dissolve our partnership. Your temper's too bad to decide now. Maybe when you've done that she won't treat me like an unsavory stranger." ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... have wished for a decent, tidy, English servant of all work, instead of these begrimed, ignorant, incapable poor creatures, who stumble about round us in zealous hindrance of each other, which they intend for help to us. How thankful I should be if I could substitute for their unsavory proximity while I eat, that of a clean dumb waiter. This unlimited supply of untrained savages, (for that is what they really are) is anything but a luxury to me. Their ignorance, dirt, and stupidity seem to me as intolerable as the unjust ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Directions, &c Science Forever Seasonable Parody, A Several Unsavory Renderings Ship Ahoy! Sic Semper Epluribus, &c Sorosian Impromptu, A Song of the Returned Soldier Song of the New Babel Song of the Red Cloud Song of the Chicago Lawyer Song of the Mosquito Society, &c Spencerian ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... unsavory or unclean Hath my insect never seen; But violets and bilberry bells, Maple-sap and daffodels, Grass with green flag half-mast high, Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern, and agrimony, ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... morning air was hot and filled with the heavy odors of sea and shore. It was a fair spot, Davao, productive, peaceful.... He looked up the coast toward the north where Malababan had settled with his unsavory crew. ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... forgotten crevices of years before. It will break up sometimes blue-hot and bubbling, in the midst of a clear creek, or make a sucking, scalding quicksand at the ford. These outbreaks had the kind of morbid interest for the Pocket Hunter that a house of unsavory reputation has in a respectable neighborhood, but I always found the accounts he brought me more interesting than his explanations, which were compounded of fag ends of miner's talk and superstition. He was a perfect gossip of the woods, ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... friends at the tannery—and on the following Monday morning he made his way into the long, low room where he had been told the skins were tanned. The room was a revelation, and a none too pleasant one at that! If he had thought the unloading and sorting department unsavory what should he say of this? The floor of the beamhouse was slippery with water, lime, and tanning solutions; unpleasant fumes of wet skins made heavy the air; revolving paddle-wheels suspended from the ceiling dripped upon the passer-by; and men, dragging saturated skins from vats ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... for my opinion of the people of this country," she said. "I am going to express that opinion now. It is that, in spite of his unsavory reputation, Dakota appears to be the only ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... use. Beneath the shading brim showed a loutish face, the coarse features swollen from dissipation, the small black eyes bleared, yet alert and penetrating in their darting, furtive glances. It was Dan Hodges, a man of unsavory repute. The girl, though unafraid, blessed the instinct that had guided ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... the Langdons treat him as a friend—intimate one, too," he thought. "What if they should learn of Norton's questionable operations at the Capitol; of his connection with two unsavory 'deals,' one of which resulted in an amendment to the pure food law so that manufacturers of a valueless 'consumption cure' could continue to mislead the victims of the 'white plague'; Norton, who had uttered an epigram now ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... but he was repelled by the unsavory look of the man who asked him this favor. He felt that it would be very unpleasant to have such a man sitting ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... sheep as he scattered them for an even chance between weak and strong over the grazing lands, and to himself when no other object presented. He swore with force and piquancy, and original embellishments for old-time oaths which was like a sharp sauce to an unsavory dish. ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... taken breath when there was another interruption. This time it was at the outside door. A burly Italian made his appearance there—very brown, very bearded, very dirty, and very unsavory. For some time he stood without saying one word, staring into the room, and fixing his eyes now on the goat as it was held down by the boys, again on the broken furniture, and finally on the long, and somewhat ghostly figure of ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... eat heartily of the unsavory food, however—partly that he might not seem to his employer over-fastidious in taste, and partly because the morning's work had taught him that he would need all the strength he could obtain ere his day's task was over. Stormy though it was, he felt sure ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... involves the carrying of a long-handled net and a huge basket, and a stop at the butcher's to purchase unsavory lumps of meat ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... wiser than the generality of mankind, had to go through his period of youthful folly, and it was good fortune for him that the worst portion of this period fell within the eighteen months which he passed in England. Had this part of his career been run in Philadelphia its unsavory aroma might have kept him long in ill odor among his fellow townsmen, then little tolerant of profligacy. But the "errata" of a journeyman printer in London were quite beyond the ken of provincial gossips. He easily gained employment in his trade, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... its stalls at night, many a 'lodger' often slumbered; and every Sunday morning it was the theatre of a lively and amusing scene, wherein was performed the renowned pastime of 'niggers dancing for eels.' All the unsavory fish that had been accumulated during the week, was thus disposed of, being given to such darkies as won the most applause in the science of the 'heel and toe.' The sport used to attract hundreds of spectators, and the rum shops in the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... sniffed, as it were, at the forbidden fruit, but they longed to inhale the full perfume of the scandal that they felt was in the air. That stout officer of cuirassiers, of whom some people spoke as "The Chatterbox," took advantage of his profession to tell many an unsavory story which he had picked up or invented at his club. He had come to Madame de Nailles's reception with a brand-new concoction of falsehood and truth, a story likely to be hawked round Paris with great success ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... foolishly and indiscreetly, so it is esteemed no less an imperfection in man's utterance, to have none use of figure at all, specially in our writing and speeches public, making them but as our ordinary talk, than which nothing can be more unsavory and far from all civility:—'I remember,' says he, 'in the first year of queen Mary's reign a knight of Yorkshire was chosen speaker of the parliament, a good gentleman and wise, in the affairs of his shire, and not unlearned ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... The close kitchen would be reeking with the odor of boiling potatoes and cabbage, from which a greasy steam would be arising, so that one saw things as through a hot mist. One of the children would be screaming, somewhere about the house, and Mrs. Baxter, in an unsavory wrapper, her face streaming with perspiration, her hair in sticky strands on her hot forehead, would be shrilly threatening personal chastisement: "You shut up, out there! Just you wait till I get this batch o' biscuits ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... city where, for some years, my young enthusiasms were chained to an accountant's desk, was not without its romantic opportunities. Many of the mill-hands at Dunstable were Italians, and a foreign settlement had formed itself in that unsavory and unsanitary portion of the town known as the Point. The Point, like more aristocratic communities, had its residential and commercial districts, its church, its theatre and its restaurant. When the craving for local color was on me it was my habit to resort to the restaurant, a low-browed ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... There was scorn in her voice. "Wot do I know 'bout the thayertre?—Oh, but yer green!" She broke into another merry laugh which, together with the patronage of her words and certain unsavory memories of his own, nettled Champney more than he would ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... the performance, Tavernake made his way to the stage-door and waited. The neighborhood was an unsavory one, and the building itself seemed crowded in among a row of shops of the worst order, fish stalls, and a glaring gin palace. Long before Beatrice came out, Tavernake could hear the professor's voice down the covered passage, the professor's voice ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... say," says John Burroughs, "that there is a species of smilax with an unsavory name, that the bee does not visit, herbacea. The production of this plant is a curious freak of nature.... It would be a cruel joke to offer it to any person not acquainted with it, to smell. It is like the vent of a charnel-house." (Thoreau ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Her father had kept a small, unprosperous corner store, and she had graduated from high school in the lowest fourth of her class two days before he died. At high school she had enjoyed a rather unsavory reputation. As a matter of fact her behavior at the class picnic, where the rumors started, had been merely indiscreet—she had retained her technical purity until over a year later. The boy had been a clerk in a store on Jackson Street, and on the day after ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... unsavory tale we have only to say that there was much scandal on account of the openly expressed statements that the desirable values were, in many instances, cornered by postal employes who had, of course, "first option" on the ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... anything like universal brotherhood. He opened our lyceum as if it had been an oyster, without any regard for the feelings of those inside. He pitched into the world in general, and all his neighbors past and present in particular. Even the babe unborn did not escape some unsavory epithets in the way of vaticination. I sat down, meaning to write you an essay on "The Right of Private Judgment as distinguished from the Right of Public Vituperation"; but I forbear. It may be that I do not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... hermeneia eis ten Oktateuchon], i. e. against Ptolemy's Geography in eight books. The name Cosmas Indicopleustes seems merely to mean "the cosmographer who has sailed to India." He begins his book in a tone of extreme and somewhat unsavory humility: [Greek: Anoigo ta mogilala kai bradyglossa cheile ho hamartolos kai talas ego]—"I, the sinner and wretch, open my stammering, stuttering lips," etc.—The book has been the occasion of some injudicious excitement within the last half century. Cosmas ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... of a bell. After due interval wherein you busy yourself in an inspection of the cakes and buns that beam upon you from a show-case—your nose meanwhile being pressed close against the glass for any slight blemish that might deflect your decision (for a currant in the dough often raises an unsavory suspicion and you'll squint to make the matter sure)—there will appear through a back door a little old man to minister unto you. You will give no great time to the naming of your drink—for the fires are hot in you—but will ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... me, that no woman in this land Could hold fast that which was not in her hand. Now, sirs, in that whole pitch and fire-brand Of that bag so fusty, So stale and so musty, So cankered and so rusty, So stinking and so dusty, God send her as much joy, As my nose hath alway Of her unsavory spice. If that I be not wise, And stop my nose quickly, When she letteth go merrily. But let all this go. I had almost forgot The knave that here erewhile did jet, Before that Telemachus did come in. I will go seech him; I will not blin, Until that I have him: Then, so God save him, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... from the break of our Sabbath days to their close. He had an unusually beautiful way of asking a blessing that always gave me a happy feeling. He merely said in a pleasant way, and with open eyes: "We should be very thankful for this meal; may we have wisdom to prepare no unsavory dishes, and strength to earn for ourselves, and others if necessary, the bread we daily need." This gave us a thought (that never grew old with me) of the needs of our neighbor, and also seemed so rational, and fitted our needs so perfectly. ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... father's boord there sits a ghest To whom the cup of Ganimede will seeme But juice of Hemlocke, and the daintiest dish As much unsavory as the Pomice stone, Unlesse ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... community where unsavory reputations were the rule, Mick Kennedy's saloon was of evil repute. In a land new and wild, his establishment was the wildest, partook most of the unsubdued, unevolved character of its surroundings. There, as irresistibly as gravitation ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... block after block, entering a less deserted, though no less unsavory, neighborhood. Here, a saloon flung a sudden glow of yellow light athwart the sidewalk as its swinging doors jerked apart; and a form lurched out into the night; there, from a dance-hall came the rattle of a tinny piano, the squeak of a raspy violin, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... so will, you may obtain from her liberality a shirt for this worthless tabernacle, and also a pair of hose; for I am unsavory to myself and to others, and of such luxuries none here has superfluity; for all live in holy poverty, except the fleas, who have that consolation in this world for which this unhappy nation, and those who labor among them, must wait ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Painted Vulture). His Rabbi Zadok, the miracle-worker, who exploits superstition for his own aggrandizement; Rabbi Gaddiel, the honest but mistaken henchman of Rabbi Zadok; Ga'al, the parvenu, who seeks to obliterate an unsavory past by fawning upon both; the Shadkan, or marriage-broker, who pretends to be the ambassador of Heaven, to unite men and women on earth,—in these and similar types drawn from life and depicted vividly, Mapu ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... that they should find in a place seemingly so shabby-genteel a cuisine and service of such excellence. Neither of them had ever been there before, and neither of them knew that the reputation of this establishment was in its own way wide—and unsavory. They had no way of knowing that, because of several thoroughly bruited scandals which had had origin here, it was a tabooed spot, except for persons who preferred a semi-shady retreat; and they passed over ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... you have scorn, for him a monument." Taking his cue from this Mormon speaker, one of the most recent of Luther's Catholic critics remarks: "Let the wives and mothers of America ponder well the polygamous phase of the Reformation before they say 'Amen' to the unsavory and brazen laudations of the profligate opponent of Christian marriage, Christian decency, and Christian propriety. Compare the teachings of Luther on polygamy with those of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet and visionary, and see their striking ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... through the streets was frequent. Debtors were shut up in prison, and left to beg from passers-by or starve; and ordinary offenders were fastened in a wooden frame called the "pillory" and exposed on a high platform, where they were pelted by the mob with mud, rotten eggs, and other unsavory missiles. In some cases their bones were broken with clubs and brickbats. The pillory continued in use until the accession of Victoria ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... is not a pleasant one; but as it is one of my strongest arguments, I must be pardoned for giving some more unsavory details. Among some of the British Columbia Indians "pretty women may be seen; nearly all have good eyes and hair, but the state of filth in which they live generally neutralizes any natural charms they may possess." (Mayne, 277.) Lewis and Clarke ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... bedding, and crockery—there was no human trace that he could detect. Nor was there any suggestion of the original condition and quality of the house, except its size: whether the ordinary unsightly cabin of frontier "partners," or some sylvan cottage—there was nothing left but the usual ignoble and unsavory ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... family have felt the dignity of the home, now made a clerk and drudge in a huge establishment that, by its relentless use of millions, has undermined and overthrown all the independent stores of a large district, while his family are thrust into the unsavory communism of a tenement house, and lose all the delicate refinements of a quiet home. It is easy to say that this is but the natural law of trade. So to devour men is the natural law of tigers. But this truth will not reconcile us to the process. If we are to stop men from stealing ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... Sometimes when he was wearily trying to find a way back from the froth of her conversation to the real things he hoped she would enjoy with him some day, she would call him an old crab, and summon to her side other willing youths to stimulate his jealousy; youths of sometimes unsavory reputation whose presence gave him deep anxiety for her. Then he would tell himself he must be more patient, that she was young and must learn to understand ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... hard nigh upon as chips of wood, and which, although hungry, I could feel no stomach for; but I bought of one of the squaws two great cakes of sugar, made from the sap of the maples which abound there, very pure and sweet, and which served me instead of their unsavory meat and cakes of pounded corn, of which Mr. Easton and his sister did not scruple to partake. Leaving them, we had a long and hard ride to a place called Winnicinnit, where, to my great joy, we found a comfortable house and Christian people, with whom ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... purpose. The agent of the Lemaitre property had swooped down on the dove-cot and found a beggarly array of empty bottles and a good deal of discarded feminine gear scattered about on both floors. One room in which certain detectives were vastly interested contained the unsavory relics of a late supper. Three or four empty champagne-bottles, some shattered glasses, and, what seemed most to attract them, various stubs of partially-consumed cigarettes, lay about the tables and floor. ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... wherewith to behold whatever was visible; and ears, to hear whatever was to be heard. For say, Aristodemus, to what purpose should odors be prepared, if the sense of smelling had been denied? Or why the distinctions of bitter and sweet, of savory and unsavory, unless a palate had been likewise given, conveniently placed, to arbitrate between them, and declare the difference? Is not that Providence, Aristodemus, in a most eminent manner conspicuous, which, because the eye of man is so delicate in its contexture, hath therefore prepared eyelids like doors, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... employment almost as hard to get. The few dollars he earned at casual jobs did not pay his board at the hotel where he lived in squalid discomfort, but matters got worse when he was forced to leave it and take refuge in a big tenement house, overcrowded with unsavory foreigners from eastern Europe. New York was then sweltering under a heat wave, and he came home, tired by heavy toil or sickened by disappointment, to pass nights of torment ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... reason and beast of the earth! thou best to be spared of all mankind!"—all of which are genuine epithets from the Quaker books of that period, and termed by Cotton Mather, who collected them, "quills of the porcupine." They surpass even Dr. Chauncy's catalogue of the unsavory epithets used by Whitefield and Tennent a century later; and it was not likely that they would be tolerated by a race whose reverence for men in authority was so comprehensive that they actually fined some one for remarking that Major Phillips's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... abruptly off the main highway and began twisting through a section of the city shunned by the average Venusian citizen. Spaceman's Row had a long and unsavory history. For ten square blocks it was the hide-out and refuge of the underworld of space. The grimy stores and shadowy buildings supplied the needs of the countless shadowy figures who lived beyond the law and moved as ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... this rustick Madrigale, That may thy tunefull eare unseason quite? Thou onely fit this argument to write In whose high thoughts Pleasure hath built her bowre, And dainty Love learnd sweetly to endite. My rimes I know unsavory and sowre, To taste the streames, that, like a golden showre, Flow from thy fruitfull head, of thy Loves praise; Fitter perhaps to thunder martiall stowre, When so thee list thy loftie Muse to raise: Yet, till that thou thy poeme wilt make knowne, ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... texture, and French manufacture. It must have been of an inferior kind when new and fresh, and a long tarry in a tropical climate was not calculated to improve its character. Besides being mouldy, it was dotted with insects, of an unsightly appearance and unsavory flavor. The quality of the beef was, if possible, worse than that of the bread, and we had no other kinds of provisions. Before we arrived at St. Bartholomew the water began to give signs of impurity. The casks, stowed in the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the fore- and mainmasts with the hawser, and resigning themselves to a large subtraction from their salvage, went to a late breakfast—a savory meal of smoking fried ham and potatoes, hot cakes and coffee served to sixteen in the cabin, and an unsavory meal of "hardtack-hash," with an infusion of burnt bread-crust, pease, beans, and leather, handed, but not served, to ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... keeps still and winks to "Shimei," and "Shimei" comes out in the paper which they take in your neighbor's kitchen, ten times worse than t'other fellow. If you meddle with "Shimei," he steps out, and next week appears "Rab-shakeh," an unsavory wretch; and now, at any rate, you find out what good sense there was in Hezekiah's "Answer him not."—No, no,—keep your temper.—So saying, the little gentleman doubled his left fist and looked at it, as if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... mixed up in a grotesque phantasmagoria of torture, before which he should writhe as helplessly and agonizingly as the poor whiskey-drinker before his snakes. But it would be a cruel misplacement of punishment. All the while the true guilty would be placidly sitting down at still further unsavory banquets, which equally helpless providers were driven ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... his height of success, and finally reached a point where he was unable to conceal from himself that he was beaten. In desperation, he tried some daring financial expedients, through which he involved himself and a number of creditors with him in a complete and unsavory bankruptcy. He fled, but was caught and brought back, tried, and sent to jail; and when after several years he appeared once more in the town it was as a discredited and broken man who could not hope to make ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... unobserving person might pass over this sheep outfit as a mere unsavory incident; but Weary was neither unobserving nor unthinking—nor, for the matter of that, were the rest of the Happy Family. It needed no Happy Jack, with his foreboding nature, to point out the unpleasant possibilities ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... running long enough to learn anything; and yet he did learn, and used the talent in conning over travels, sea-voyages, and lives of heroes and naval commanders. Spite of father, mother, and brother, he seemed to possess the most extraordinary faculty of running up unsavory acquaintances. He was hail-fellow well-met with every Tom and Jack and Jim and Ben and Dick that strolled on the wharves, and astonished his father with minutest particulars of every ship, schooner, and brig in the harbor, together with biographical notes of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... the unsavory reputation of the prisoner, Dick Prescott found himself feeling more than ordinary sympathy for this dejected prisoner. Could it be possible that Tag really was innocent of this last and most serious charge against him? It didn't seem likely ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... see your ride has given you so poor an appetite," said the settler, with a look expressive of the savage delight he felt in annoying his visitor. "I reckon that's rather unsavory stuff you've got there, that you can't eat it without bread. I say young man"—addressing Grantham, "can't you find no appetite neither, that you sit there snorin', as if you never meant to ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... questioning her pleasure. She spoke in quick, low accents. He cramped the wagon and she stepped to the road. The Senora Loring, albeit having knowledge of his recent return to Antelope, his drinking, and all the unsavory rumors connected with his return, greeted Corliss as a mother greets a wayward son. She set all this knowledge aside and spoke to him with the placid wisdom of her years and nature. Her gentle solicitude ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... learned in the stars and old bones, ranked with him as a knave or a fool, and sometimes both. His pet joke, which was not original, was that there was only one letter of difference between septic and skeptic, and of the two the skeptic was the more unsavory. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... bearing in its beak the ordure of one of the helpless family. Flying away very slowly with head lowered and extended, as if anxious to hold the offensive object as far from its plumage as possible, the bird dropped the unsavory morsel in the course of a few yards, and, alighting on a tree, wiped its bill on the bark and moss. This seemed to be the order all day,—carrying in and carrying out. I watched the birds for an hour, while my companions ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... had committed his crime, and from that starting-point fight his way up. He found the public room more than usually well filled with loungers, and could not help discovering, as he entered, that he was the subject of their loud and unsavory conversation. The "Evening Spy" had just been read, and all were very busy discussing the scandal. As the knowledge of his presence and identity was speedily conveyed to one and another in loud whispers, the noisy tongues ceased, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Cabinet-work and brasswork, theatrical costumes, blown glass, painted porcelain—all the various fancy goods known as l'article Paris are made here. Dirty and productive like commerce, always full of traffic—foot-passengers, vans, and drays—the Cite Bourdin is an unsavory-looking neighborhood, with a seething population in keeping with the squalid surroundings. It is a not unintelligent artisan population, though the whole power of the intellect is absorbed by the day's manual labor. Topinard, like every other inhabitant ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... were at a red heat, one was taken up by running under it a forked stick; the dust that adhered to it was blown away, when it was dropped into the gourd, and in a short time the water was boiling. As soon as it ceased, another stone was put in, and in a little while a broth not unsavory, though so rudely cooked, was ready and eaten by him ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... Reformed religion" in Maryland; and in 1683 an appeal from them to the Irish presbytery of Laggan had brought over to their aid that sturdy and fearless man of God, Francis Makemie, whose successful defense in 1707, when unlawfully imprisoned in New York by that unsavory defender of the Anglican faith, Lord Cornbury, gave assurance of religious liberty to his communion throughout the colonies. In 1705 he was moderator of the first presbytery in America, numbering six ministers. At the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Science, though usually thought of so specifically, or in its own local terms, usually supposed to be a prying into old bones, bugs, unsavory messes, is an expression of this one spirit animating all Intermediateness: that, if Science could absolutely exclude all data but its own present data, or that which is assimilable with the present quasi-organization, it would be a real system, ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... every hand, the long train had stopped to douse those foul-smelling fires, and, while train-hands pried off the red-hot caps and dumped buckets of water into the blazing cavities, changing malodorous smoke to dense clouds of equally unsavory steam, and the recruits in the afflicted car found consolation in "joshing" the hard-sweating, hard-swearing workers, the young officer who had boarded the second sleeper at Ogden, together with half a dozen bipeds in dusters or frazzled shirt-sleeves, had become involved ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... ratio to what I had suffered in it. All the miseries of hope deferred, unremitting labor, and unnumbered petty cares attendant upon a straightened income, were forgotten, and I yearned for its ugly, midsummer glare, even its unsavory odors, and my stifling little chamber "au troisieme" as I surveyed the tiny bare room, with its blue and gray "cottage set," its white-washed walls, hung with a solitary engraving of Lincoln and his Cabinet. It was not ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... polite and obsequious as if they were sitting near Society ladies, did slightly intimidate their neighbors; but Baron von Kelweingstein, let loose in his vice, was beaming; he cracked unsavory jokes, and with his crown of red hair, seemed to be on fire. He paid gallant compliments in his defective French of the Rhine, and his lewd nonsense, smacking of taverns, expectorated through the hole between his two broken teeth, reached the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... feet; an' as for Queen Victory an' her dolls, more's the shame to you as sets her the example o' growin' up before her time. Vases for the mother, is it? An' she after patchin' the sheets off her bed. Pardon unasked advice, which same is unsavory, belike, an' get the makin' of a new pair. That's ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... began investigations of my own. She had made little or no effort to discover the parents of the child. She could have had no purpose in doing so, I'll admit.... [Here he gave in detail the progress of his investigations at the Foundlings' Home, at the health office, at certain unsavory hospitals and in other channels of possibility.] ...At last, I found the doctor, and then the nurse. After that, it was easy to unearth the records of a child's birth and of a mother's death—all in New York City.... Droom can tell you the ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... at sunset when we left Shanghai, and I got as far away from the crowd as I could and tried to forget my unsavory surroundings. The sails of thousands of Chinese vessels loomed black and big against the red sky as they floated silently by without a ripple. In the dim light, I read on the prow of a bulky schooner, ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... serenade the moon, and display his terrible proficiency in execution on the clarionet, hautboy, or some other soft-toned instrument; nor can he leave the street door open, but his house is defiled by the unsavory visits of a troop of pug dogs, who even sometimes carry their loathsome ravages into the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... sarcastically ascribed to Lallemand, Sanctae Theologiae Doctor, "are six in number (all on various forms of vice); and show great knowledge, classical and sociological, of unsavory subjects. Now that the book is too rare to do us any harm, we may admit that the pastiche was not only highly amusing, but showed a perverse cleverness ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... situation will be forced to the conclusion that for her to hear such tales is nothing compared to the child's hearing them, and that his coming to his mother is proof of his own innocence. It is surely her first duty, no matter how difficult or unsavory the task, to sift out the wrong from the right, to show the child wherein the story is absurd, wicked, and harmful. At such a crisis the mother should be very careful not to show any offence because the child has brought her the story. She may condemn the story as severely as she likes, but ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... of the difference of conceptions between the Anglo-Saxon and continental peoples is contained in the following unsavory document, which the historian, whose business it is to flash the light of criticism upon the dark nooks of civilization, can neither ignore nor render into English. It embodies a significant decision taken by the General Staff of the 256th Brigade of the Army ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... other sort of payment—and there had been more gold changing hands in order to secure the real thieves. And because he loved the gold Alaric had thus assisted both sides and received double pay. Also, he had left an unsavory memory of himself at San Leon as well as offended his Ute relatives; and White Feather not only prevented harm being done to his Mexican brother-in-law, but also used the occasion to make Alaric subject to himself. Thus it was that ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... Orme prepared to go. Much as he longed to see the girl again, he was glad that they were not to make this adventure together, for the reputation of North Parker Street was unsavory. ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... huge bite. Those familiar with the article know how bitter is the mixture of raw meal, hops, and yeast, and so will not wonder that presently a look of horror came over the Indians' faces and that then they sputtered the unsavory stuff out all over the newly scrubbed floor. My mother used to say that if they had killed her she could not have kept from laughing. They looked very angry at first, but finally concluded that they had not been poisoned and had only "sold" ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... subject, but she could not very well do that with his cousin. For years she had been hearing of this man as a crank agitator who had set himself in opposition to her father and his friends for selfish reasons. Her father had dropped vague hints about his unsavory life. The Stetson write-up had given a very different story. If it told the truth, many things she had been brought up to accept without question ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... be used as prayers while compounding medicaments. Some of the prescriptions given here are accompanied by exorcisms which were to be used at the same time. Many of the prescriptions could have had little but mental influence because the remedies recommended consisted of horrible mixtures of unsavory ingredients, the theory, if we can judge by the medicines, being that the more disgusting the dose the more efficacious the remedy; this is true ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... however, it would be safe to say that there is a species of smilax with an unsavory name that the bee does not visit, herbacea. The production of this plant is a curious freak of nature. I find it growing along the fences where one would look for wild roses or the sweetbrier; its ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... San Francisco sent a considerable number of unsavory immigrants to Arizona, who with the refugees from Mexico, Texas and Arkansas, rendered mule property rather insecure in the early days. Gambling has been an industrial pursuit since the first settlement of the country, ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... cot-bed in the corner, with an unsavory heap of bed-clothing upon it, and a couple of chairs, both with wooden seats, and ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... smoke, chew, take snuff. Adj. pungent, strong; high-, full-flavored; high-tasted, high-seasoned; gamy, sharp, stinging, rough, piquant, racy; biting, mordant; spicy; seasoned &c v.; hot, hot as pepper; peppery, vellicating^, escharotic^, meracious^; acrid, acrimonious, bitter; rough &c (sour) 397; unsavory &c 395. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... work and anxieties, his nervous system shattered, Garcia was subject to fits of petulance which were ludicrous. In these rages he called everybody who would bear it pigs, dogs, and other more unsavory nicknames. Coronado bore it because thus he got his living, and got ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... for the special behoof of college presidents and university professors. Why hold up Choricius to ridicule? He was no worse than others of his guild. It was not Choricius, it was another Byzantine historian who conveyed from Herodotus an unsavory retort, over which the unsuspecting Gibbon chuckles in the dark cellar of his notes, where he keeps so much of his high game. The Greek historian of the Roman Empire, the Roman historian of every date, are no better, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who has devoted many pages to the arraignment ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... Sabor proved unsavory eating even to Tarzan of the Apes, but hunger served as a most efficacious disguise to toughness and rank taste, and ere long, with well-filled stomach, the ape-man was ready to sleep again. First, however, he must remove the hide, for it ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... lad grew up wicked, for no one appeared to care for his habits and morals, and as he sank lower in the various vices encouraged by bad company, there were more kicks for him than helping hands. At the age of eighteen his reputation in the town had become so unsavory that he was forced to shift ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... to fraud to perpetuate its hold on power. Unchastened in 1880, three hundred and six of its delegates attempted through thick and thin to force the nomination of General Grant for a third term. The chief opposing candidate was James G. Blaine, whose unsavory reputation, however, caused the majority of the convention which was not pledged to Grant to repudiate Blaine and to choose Garfield as a compromise. Then followed four years of factional bitterness in the party, and when 1884 came ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... if true, was too severe; the offspring who were innocent contributories to the crime deserved pity rather than punishment; the judgment passed on the real offenders was also unduly harsh. My object in citing this unsavory tale is to show the different views held in regard to incestuous marriage in China with its ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... neighbors, who abstained from buying fish at Autun because it was too dear, she said; but who used to bring a full hamper when she came back yearly from Hyeres, where it was cheap, enough to last for a week after the journey, and who considered the unsavory hamper an ample compensation for the absence of fish from her menus during the remainder ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... mildly, is a sensationalist despite his genius, and his business sense is large, as New Yorkers know ever since he wound up an artistic tour of America with a concert in a department store. When Nietszche was the talk of Germany we got "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Oscar Wilde's play, too unsavory for the France for which it was written, taboo in England because of its subject, has been joyously acclaimed in Germany, where there are many men who are theoretically licentious and practically uxorious; and Strauss was willing that his ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the unsavory subject. It was exceedingly unpleasant reading, but for two years Bok persisted, only to find that Doctor Abbott was right. The root of the evil lay in the reticence of parents with children as to the mystery ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... mission. He became a waiter at a coffeehouse, then a clerk, next a salesman; but the reputation of being an infidel follow him, and he could not disprove the charge. In fact, I do not think he tried to, for on Sundays he was at Hyde Park lecturing on temperance and saying unsavory things about the clergy on account of their indifference concerning the real needs ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard |
