"Disappointing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "It's disappointing to find that at heart you are sentimental. I should have liked you better if you hadn't made that ingenuous appeal ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... in the hall. He handed his card to the girl and inquired for the Frau Professorin. There was a council of war on the spot, and the Frau Professorin sent word that she was "not at home." Grover then asked permission to see "the young ladies." It was a very disappointing message; the plural number was especially disheartening. The sisters, however, were equal to the occasion. Minchen and Gretchen nobly declared that they were "out." Accordingly there was nothing to do, except for Roeschen to receive the visitor. She donned her white muslin, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... It is disappointing that up to the present so little has been ascertained of the details of the moon-cult—the great rival to Shamash worship—in the old cities of Ur and Harran. In the Babylonian calendar, the third month—Siwan—is sacred to Sin, but since, as we have found, the festivals in honor ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... silence by the movement of his arm. The sign was instantly obeyed; for having enjoyed their laugh, the multitude wished for the rope-dancer's explanation. As soon as the silence was complete, he drew back two paces, put himself in an oratorical pose, as though he were about to speak, and then, disappointing the expectations of the assembly, deliberately raised forwards and upwards the skirts of his frock-coat. Having thus arranged his drapery he performed a slow gyration—presenting his huge round shoulders and unwieldy legs to the populace. When his back was turned to the crowd, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... them. In Germany, we are told that strawberries are grown below the currants and gooseberries. We are waiting for the Yankee who will be first to grow peanuts or potatoes below strawberries. In the eastern part of this country, plants of the European kinds are disappointing in two ways. First, they are uncertain as to their ability to bear; and second, they are highly susceptible to a fungus disease found everywhere that the native hazels abound. The native species is quite able to resist this disease, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... St. Sauveur, as we see it to-day, is disappointing. It has been so much rebuilt after different convulsions, and pulled about when there has been less excuse, that many a church in an obscure village gives more pleasure as a whole to the eye that seeks unity of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... unanswerable; some, as incongruous with other views of the same writers; others, when carried out, as incompatible with general experience or general beliefs, and therefore as proving too much; still others, as proving nothing at all: so that, on the whole, the effect is rather confusing and disappointing. We certainly expected a stronger adverse case than any which the thorough-going opposers of Darwin appear to have made out. Wherefore, if it be found that the new hypothesis has grown upon our favor as we proceeded, this must be attributed not so much to the force of the arguments of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to do so, by possessing abnormal peculiarities, these are soon corrected, often in the next generation. Even Professor H. H. Newman says, "On the whole, the contributions of biometry to our understanding of the causes of evolution are rather disappointing." A science that upsets evolution is ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... message reached us: "Send at once, for the Temple women are about to get the baby"; and we sent, but in vain. A few weeks later a similar message reached us; and again the long journey was made, and again there was the disappointing return empty-handed. It seemed useless to ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... No doubt it was a prosaic thing for the first man back from the moon to do, and I can imagine that the young and imaginative reader will find my behaviour disappointing. But I was horribly fatigued and bothered, and, confound it! what else was there to do? There certainly was not the remotest chance of my being believed, if I had told my story then, and it would certainly have subjected me to intolerable annoyances. I went to sleep. When at last I woke up again ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... should be adopted during the reign of Chief Griffith, their first Christian Chief and the first monogamist who ever ruled the Basuto, is disappointing. And while we resent the policy of the British authorities in the Union, who promote the interests of the whites by repressing the blacks, we shall likewise object to an attempt on the part of the same authorities ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... his friend Lafayette was engaged as a chief actor, was exhibiting a most alarming and disappointing aspect to the friends of genuine liberty; and the dreams of the marquis, that his country was speedily to be redeemed from disorder and corrupt rule, were disturbed by dismal visions of reality. "Whatever expectations ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the man other than a singular form of fear. His look, his tone, his manner, his presence altogether, inspired a nameless sort of shrinking, inarticulate apprehensions, and mistrust which the girl found at once utterly unaccountable and dismally disappointing; so that, with every wish and will to do otherwise, she found herself involuntarily making excuse of trivial interests to keep out of Victor's way and, when there was no escaping, sitting silent and ill at ease in his society, or seizing ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... sowings may be regarded as generally sufficient, but we are bound to take notice of the fact that the late supplies of these vegetables are sometimes disappointing. In a mild winter the Kales reserved for use in spring will be likely to grow when they should stand still, and at the first break of pleasant spring weather they will bolt, very much to the vexation of those who ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... was disappointing. My husband smiled rather condescendingly, and though Alma praised me beyond measure I saw that she was secretly ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... who does not know how disappointing it is to find a wrong you wish to redress is not so bad as ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... been lived, of actual achievements or shortcomings, of success or failure; it is not imaginary and embellished, not what might be or might have been, not reduced to prescribed or artificial forms, but it is the unvarnished story of that which was delightful, disappointing, possible, or impossible, in a life spent in ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... save these articles, as I would make many sacrifices for that purpose. Gibson strongly advises taking a sequestration at all events. But if the creditors choose to let Mr. Abud have his pound of flesh out of the first cut, my mind will not be satisfied with the plan of deranging, for the pleasure of disappointing him, a plan of payment to which all the others had consented. We will know more on Saturday, and not sooner. I went to Bowhill with Sir Adam Ferguson to dinner, and maintained as good a countenance in the midst of my perplexities as a man need desire. It is not bravado; I literally ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... There is no Latin book the recovery of which the present century would hail with so much pleasure as this. When antiquarianism is leading to such fruitful results, and the study of ancient religion is so earnestly pursued, the aid of Varro's research would be invaluable. And it is the more disappointing to lose it, since we have reason for believing that it was in existence during the lifetime of Petrarch. He declares that he saw it when a boy, and afterwards, when he knew its value, tried all means, but without success, to obtain it. This story has been doubted, chiefly on the ground ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... attraction, they display instinctively and unconsciously the best of themselves; but melancholy discoveries supervene; and then what generally happens is that the idealising friend is angry with the other for disappointing his hopes, not with himself for ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... few words of thanks Christian left the room. Vaguely and mechanically he wandered upstairs to his own particular den. It was a disappointing little chamber. The chaos one expects to find on the desk of a literary man was lacking here. No papers lay on the table in artistic disorder. The presiding genius of the room was method—clear-headed, practical method. The walls were hidden ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... consistently developed plot, constructed with a fine sense of proportion and vivid characterization, except in one respect, which constitutes the weak point of the story—that is to say, the character of Dick Lawton, who is somewhat priggish and altogether disappointing. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... It is disappointing to the agitator to find the question dropping out of sight in later verse. In the Victorian period it comes most plainly to the surface in Browning, and while the exquisite ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... and he ran after us and picked it up. That was, of course, the only time he ever spoke; but, though I have cared not only for Robert Loraine but Henry Ainley since, I should have known his voice anywhere. It was disappointing not to thrill; but to be honest, I must admit that the voice sounded meaningless now, compared with that of the Knight. Nevertheless, he was saying kind things, offering to be our guide over the Castle and ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... press on to Meknez, where we were awaited at the French military post; therefore we were reluctantly obliged to refuse an invitation to take tea with the Caid, whose high-perched house commands the whole white amphitheatre of the town. It was disappointing to leave Moulay Idriss with the Hamadchas howling their maddest, and so much besides to see; but as we drove away under the long shadows of the olives we counted ourselves lucky to have entered the sacred town, and luckier still to have been there on the day ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... varieties or clones which show any marked improvement over those already found and named. There is, of course, always the possibility of the "perfect nut" arising as a chance variation. The recent walnut and hickory contests, however, have been somewhat disappointing for they have not discovered any variety of black walnut better than the Thomas for instance, or a hickory much better than some of those located years ago. This does not mean that members of the Association should not keep a sharp lookout for new varieties occurring spontaneously ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... suppose, asked various questions of the sentries. Anyway, when next I saw him he was coming back down the Cutting followed at an interval by a sentry with a fixed bayonet, who asked me if I knew who he was. My reply was no doubt disappointing to the soldier, who thought he had really captured a spy this time, and earned his two weeks' leave—the ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... caught you at it," said Agatha maliciously, for he was disappointing her. She wanted him to be heroic in his conversation; ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... a ravishingly beautiful girl, Beatrice Nardi, who seems fated to spread desire and death wherever she appears. With her own death at dawn, the city seems to wake as from a nightmare to face the enemy already at the gates. The play holds much that is beautiful and much that is disappointing. To me its chief importance lies in the fact that it marks a breaking-point between the period when Schnitzler was trying to write "with a purpose," and that later and greater period when he has learned how to treat life sincerely and seriously without other purpose than to present ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... This was rather disappointing intelligence, for it required him to retrace his steps, and go back over ground which he had already traveled. However, if the information was reliable, no time was to be lost, and he started from the saloon to ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... send those circulars to us. They're so disappointing, for half the time they look like real letters," said Judith, reaching an eager hand for her own mail. "I think they ought to keep them for older people who don't care so much. Oh, it is Mrs. Shelly, Miss Pat," she broke off, as she tore open the ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... interview him in private, but a Montenegrin was there and all conversation had to pass by him like through an imperfect telephone. We gave the mayor a greeting from Colonel P——and little else. A very disappointing interview. ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... is known by her share in the book of "Poems" and by two novels, "Agnes Gray" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," both of which are disappointing. The former is based on the author's experiences as a governess, and is written in the usual placid style of romances of the time. "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" found its suggestion in the wretched career of Branwell Bronte, and presents a sad and depressing picture of a life of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... place; and, even when near completion, the barrage was not so effective as many had hoped in spite of the great expenditure of labour and material involved. I have not the figures of the number of submarines that the barrage is thought to have accounted for, but it was known to be disappointing. ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... before you go to Philadelphia? Tell all your intentions; I love to plan and arrange. Our blind state here is one of our most vexatious evils; that state of uncertainty damps every view, and converts our most pleasing hopes into the most disappointing reflections. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Medical examination of school children is now required in many states, but unless it is followed up by some one who will see the parents and encourage them to secure the necessary medical or dental treatment, the results of these examinations are often disappointing. ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... beginning of the 15th Century. But what concerned me most was the failure of the fairy-tale glamour. It was shocking to discover a prince who was deaf, bald, meagre, and so prodigiously old. It never occurred to me that this imposing and disappointing man had been young, rich, beautiful; I could not know that he had been happy in the felicity of an ideal marriage uniting two young hearts, two great names and two great fortunes; happy with a happiness which, as in fairy tales, seemed ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... in flowers, hears voices in winds, reads poems from chiselled stone. I certainly havn't had the best of luck, I've tried in different lands, And, as I said, it's a drag to have others upon your hands. 'Twas a most disappointing thing, of course, when that old aunt died at Ayr, And only one hundred pounds was left to Aimee, her rightful heir; Not that I married Aimee for wealth, but I thought it just as sure, That grand estate, to think of it all, and I lying ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... course I owe him a great deal in the way of duty and love; but he owes me something for letting me have my own way all my life, bringing me up with the notion that I should be an heiress, and then disappointing me by marrying a woman whom I utterly despise. Lady Mary—I owe her nothing whatever, beyond the common proper treatment that one must give to every one; she, on the contrary, owes me compensation for marrying ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... can be driven or rolled,—were loaded with the bales and taken a few squares back to burn on the commons. Negroes were running around, cutting them open, piling them up, and setting them afire. All were as busy as though their salvation depended on disappointing the Yankees. Later, Charlie sent for us to come to the river and see him fire a flatboat loaded with the precious material for which the Yankees are risking their bodies and souls. Up and down the levee, as far as ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... thing, having a lower companion, the body. He feels that he has advanced, but yet his "I" does not give him the answer to the riddles and questions that perplex him. And he becomes most unhappy. Such men often develop into Pessimists, and consider the whole of life as utterly evil and disappointing—a curse rather than a blessing. Pessimism belongs to this plane, for neither the Physical Plane man or the Spiritual Plane man have this curse of Pessimism. The former man has no such disquieting thoughts, for he is almost entirely absorbed ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... been partially implemented. The government's continued prosecution of the civil war and its growing international isolation led to a further deterioration of the nonagricultural sectors of the economy during 1994. Agriculture, on the other hand, after several disappointing years, enjoyed a bumper fall harvest in 1994; its strong performance produced an overall growth rate in GDP ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... Ramage; "hear me out! I'll have that satisfaction, anyhow. You women, with your tricks of evasion, you're a sex of swindlers. You have all the instinctive dexterity of parasites. You make yourself charming for help. You climb by disappointing men. This lover ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... testimony was very disappointing. She had seen nobody, heard nobody but the child whom she had found playing with stones in the old ruin. Though by a close calculation of time she could not have been far from Dark Hollow at the instant of the crime, yet neither on direct or cross-examination could anything ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... them, the Harvard, afterwards told the writer that he believed another stretch to the south would have rewarded him with success. The case was one in which blame could be imputed to nobody; unless it were to the Spaniards, in disappointing our very modest expectations concerning their speed as a squadron, which is a very different thing from the speed of ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... attempted the story with all its implications and difficulties, including the scene by the side of the gray rock crowning the height of Malata. But I am not so inordinately pleased with the result as not to be able to forgive a patient reader who may find it somewhat disappointing. ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... as a bright and happy young girl, her face sunny in the light of God's love. Trouble came into her life in many forms. Her own father proved unworthy, failing in all the sacred duties of affection toward his child. Events in her own life were disappointing and discouraging. Friends in whom she had trusted failed in that faithfulness and helpfulness which one has a right to expect from one's friends. There was a succession of unhappy experiences, through several years, all tending to hurt her heart-life. As the result of ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... was a difficult and disappointing Premiership. Harcourt, not best pleased by the Queen's choice, was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. Gladstone, expounding our Parliamentary system to the American nation, once ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... friend!" he said—"you are truly disappointing. The watch said you had made no sound since going below. I was afraid of another of ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... folks are, but her heart was full of another's woe, and had no room left for one selfish regret. She had (in her vision) ruined both; but it was only for dear Dick that her tears fell. If the guardian angel, which is said to watch for a time by every one of us, had not given up his disappointing vigil at poor Mrs. Yorke's elbow, a tremor of delight then stirred him limb and wing. Nay, perhaps in the Great Day, when all our plans shall be scrutinized, whether they have been carried out or not, this poor, impotent, fallacious one, which worldly Mrs. Yorke ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... favourable and transporting confession. Oh, my friend, she acknowledges that from the first moment she saw me, she contemplated me with partiality. She confesses, that her father by the declaration he has made, so far from thwarting her ambition and disappointing her wishes, has conferred upon her the highest obligation. How much, my dear Rinaldo, is the colour of my fortune changed. It was upon this day, at this very hour, I had determined to leave Cosenza for ever. I had consigned myself over to despair. I was about to enter ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... poach on our land; I'm sure he wouldn't! Besides, there is nothing to poach."—Wharton smiled.—"He must be going, after all, to Lord Maxwell's coverts! They are just beyond the avenue, on the side of the hill. Oh! it is too disappointing! Can we do anything?" ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Ah—a real disappointing case, Frank. Darn wild idiot who ought to be probing the farther reaches of the solar system, got himself a job in a chemical plant in Serene. A synthesizing retort exploded. He was burned pretty bad. Just out of the hospital when I last left. It was on account ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... of this jurisdiction of the Senabawdee, exercised in deference to a just and honored usage, that the voice of the oracle fell upon the ear of the dying monarch with a disappointing and offensive significance; for he well knew who was meant by the "rightful owner" of the crown. Hardly had he breathed his last when, in spite of the busy intrigues of his eldest son (whom we find described in the Bangkok Recorder of July 26, 1866, as "most honorable and promising"), in spite ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... in Swiss mountains, don't you know? They're all white—and they're all peaky. There's a likeness in Swiss lakes, too, if you come to think of it. They're all blue, and they're all wet. And Swiss villages, now—don't you think they are rather disappointing?—such a cruel plagiarism of those plaster chalets the image-men carry about the London streets, and no candle-ends burning inside to make 'em look pretty. But I liked Lucerne uncommonly, there was such a ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... the inquest was disappointing. He was cool and collected: said he had no reason to believe that his wife was dead, and less reason to think she had been drowned; she had left him in a rage, and if she found out that by hiding she was putting him in an unpleasant position, she ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... time for the province to settle down. Many who found their lands disappointing moved to other parts of the province; and after 1790 numbers went to Upper Canada. But gradually the settlers adjusted themselves to their environment, and New Brunswick entered on that era of prosperity which has ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... Confederate Congress, which he got at Richmond to hand to the Secretary of War. But I insisted then that he must give it to you; and you tell him for me to hand it over." He then rose, but seemed reluctant to go, expressing a half-determination to delay a while longer. It was undoubtedly to avoid disappointing the audience, to whom his presence had been promised, that he went to the play-house that night. At the door he stopped and said to Speaker Colfax, who was about to leave for the Pacific coast, "Colfax, do not forget to tell the people in the mining regions, as you pass through, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... have to be, my lad. But don't you fidget; I'll tell you when number one cask's ripe, and then don't you expect too much, for it's like lots o' things in this here world; it may turn out werry disappointing. You puts in pounds o' trouble, and don't get out an ounce o' good. P'raps there won't be a teaspoonful o' pearls, and them only as ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... much sudden flatness of mood. Her little restless egotisms of mind and manner had chilled him unawares. Had Fontenoy's speech been so fine, after all? Were politics—was anything—quite worth while? It seemed to him that all emotions were small, all crises disappointing. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to major, after the fermata on the second page, is as typical as it is delectable; and the fifteen bars that follow are of a markedly personal tinge. "From Long Ago" and "From a Fisherman's Hut" are less good, and "The Post Wagon" and "Monologue" are disappointing—the latter especially so, because the exquisite poem which he has chosen to enforce, the matchless lyric beginning "Der Tod, das ist die kuehle Nacht," should, it seems, have offered ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... the old enthusiastic homage to the Iron Duke as a soldier into fierce detestation of him as a statesman. The carrying of the measure on which the people had set their hearts did not immediately allay the tempest—a disappointing result, which was inevitable when the universal panacea failed to work at once like a charm in relieving all the woes in the kingdom. Men were not only rude, and spoke their minds, the ringleaders broke out again into riots, the most formidable and alarming ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... couldn't live without Deniston till September," said the disappointing Rose. "It may not show itself to a casual observer, but I am really quite foolish about Deniston. I shouldn't be happy away from him at all. He's the only husband I've got,—a 'poor thing, but mine own,' as ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... at school is usually a disappointing figure, for, as a rule, one must be commonplace to be a successful boy. In that preposterous world, to be remarkable is to be overlooked; and nothing less vivid than the white-hot blaze of a Shelley ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... very disappointing! I fear, Watson, that all our expectations come to nothing. I trust that the man Porlock will ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... inquiries about Fred Vincy's health, and expressions of her sincere anxiety for her brother's large family, to general remarks on the dangers which lay before young people with regard to their settlement in life. Young men were often wild and disappointing, making little return for the money spent on them, and a girl was exposed to many circumstances which ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... seductive and alluring in prospect, but in retrospect unsatisfactory and frustrating. Civilization has proved to be not an opportunity for the ambitious, but a trap for the ignorant, inexperienced and unwary. For the many contestants who set out to conquer the world the experience has been disappointing and on the whole disastrous. For the few who have reached the summit the ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... decade of the 'eighties was that of disappointing summers, harsh winters, falling prices, declining rents and the shrinkage of land values. It is true that one season of the series, that of 1887, was hot and droughty, but the following summer was exceedingly ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... lonesome and sad. The world's for being all sunshine at prisint, for among you and Mr. McLean and the Bird Woman I'm after being THAT happy that I can't keep me thoughts on me notes. It's more than sorry I am to be disappointing you. Play it over, and I'll be beginning again, and this time I'll ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... seemed to take a curious pleasure in disappointing me; she had not forgotten my unfortunate abruptness of look and manner. "You won't find him here," ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... said the editor, "I would beg you to recollect that, on the faith of your message to me, I have announced an account of the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo for our morning edition. Are you prepared, may I ask, for the consequences of my disappointing ten thousand readers?" ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... in the political history of the nation prepares us to look at those in the Church. Here, too, compromises on the subject of slavery were made as in the State, and generally from the same motives and always with the same disappointing results. ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various
... smile. "At least not more than usual." Her smile was full of pensive sweetness, which made her face beautiful. It was a face that would have been almost plain but for the soul behind. It was dark, with great earnest eyes. The profile was disappointing, the curves were not perfect, and there was a reminder of Polish origin in the lower jaw and the cheek-bone. Seen from the front, the face fascinated again, in the Eastern glow of its coloring, in the flash of the white teeth, in the depths of the brooding eyes, in the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... side of the house, his canine companion trotting beside him. The side yard turned out to be disappointing. It contained no roses—green ones, or any other kind. About all it did contain that was worthy of notice was a dog house—an ancient affair that was much too large for Zarathustra and which probably dated from the days when Judith had owned ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... at twenty, the man she loved, and had found him better than her dreams in many ways, and perhaps disappointing in some few others, but "the best man in the world" for all that. That for more than twenty years he had been satisfied to stand for nine hours daily behind one dingy desk, and to carry home to her his ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... impressions of Edinburgh were disappointing. Though extensive enough, the city was not so great or so imposing as he had expected. It was entirely roofed with glass,—a provision which, though doubtless advantageous in wet weather, militated against an adequate supply of sunlight and ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... right of resistance, passive or active, as their circumstances may advise. They will not be so base as to desert the post of honor they have sought in the great fight for freedom and maintained so long and so well, disappointing and throwing into confusion the distant allies who have stood behind them in their most evil hours, for all the lands that President and Congress have to give. It is, indeed, a momentous crisis for them, and we have faith to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... of it, does not a child seem an insignificant and disappointing gift for God to make to the world? After so long preparation and so great promises and hopes, would we not have expected some greater and more wonderful gift? But a child is so common; millions are born every month; there is nothing unique and wonderful about a child. ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... spared by Sir John Bowring to carry out Professor Wilson's wishes, though he had catalogues sent to him from Buddhist libraries, and from cities where Buddhist compositions might be expected to exist, the results were disappointing, at least so far as Sanskrit texts were concerned. A number of interesting Chinese books, translated from Sanskrit by Hiouen-thsang and others, works also by native Chinese Buddhists, were sent to the library of the East India House; but what Professor Wilson and all ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... disappointing," said Mark. "It is just as if he had brought us here on purpose to show us, ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... support his majesty in all such wise and necessary measures and engagements as his majesty might have taken in vindication of the rights of his crown, or to defeat any attempts which might be made by France in resentment for such measures, and to assist his majesty in disappointing or repelling all such enterprises as might be formed, not only against his kingdoms, but also against any other of his dominions (though not belonging to the crown of Great Britain), in case they should be attacked on account of the part which his majesty had taken for maintaining the essential interests ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... spheres for which you are destined, you must learn the value of convention. Bread and cheese-straws and asparagus and the leaves of an artichoke are eaten with the fingers; but not herrings or sweetbreads or ice cream. As regards the last you are doubtless in the habit of extracting it from a disappointing wine-glass with your tongue. This in notre monde is regarded as bad form. 'Notre Monde' is French, a language which you will have to learn. Its great use is in talking to English people when you don't want them to understand what you say. They ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Brussels, Dresden, Leningrad, Munich, Paris, and Warsaw, etc., in each of which capitals some portion of colourful drama of Lola Montez was unfolded. In a number of directions, however, the result of such investigations proved disappointing. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... sympathy with his son. It never occurred to him to think of the agony with which those few lines had been written; of the wretchedness of the young heart which had hoped so much and failed so greatly; of the misery which the son felt in disappointing the father. He was a good, kind parent, who spent his long days and longer nights in thinking of his family and their welfare; he would, too, have greatly triumphed in the triumph of his son; but it went beyond his power of heart ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... through the rooms, and the crowd about the roulette received a large contingent of spectators. Bernard felt that they were looking more or less eagerly for a turn of the tide; but he was in the humor for disappointing them, and he left the place, while his luck was still running high, with ten thousand francs in his pocket. It was very late when he returned to the inn—so late that he forbore to knock at Gordon's door. But ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... things in which it is harder to get the necessary cooeperation. On the one hand, syphilis is one of the most curable of diseases, and on the other, it is one of the most incurable. At the one extreme we have the situation in our own hands, at our own terms—at the other, we have a record of disappointing failure. As matters stand now, we do not cure syphilis. We simply cloak it, gloss it over, keep it under the surface. Nobody knows how much syphilis is cured, partly because nobody knows how much syphilis there really is, and partly because it is almost ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... ever since he had met this girl for the second time, and it was quite a natural thought, comparing her with Ida May Bostwick. If Sheila Macklin had only been Ida May, after all! It was a ridiculous idea. Not a feature or betrayed trait of character was like any that the disappointing great-niece of Prudence Ball possessed. This girl sitting beside Tunis on the bench and Ida May Bostwick were as little alike as though they were inhabitants of two ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... give title to that land as an inducement for investment in the colony. In its advertisement in 1616 adventurers, both old and new, were invited to take up shares for occupancy by themselves or for development by tenants sent for the purpose. Perhaps because the first response to this appeal was disappointing, the company provided an additional inducement in 1617 by promising 50 acres per head for every person sent to the colony, the payment being due to the one who bore the cost. This was the Virginia headright, as it came to be called, which was destined to remain the chief feature of the colony's ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... first efforts of immature genius. Nothing can be more crude as a novel, nothing more disappointing, than "Morton's Hope." But in no other of Motley's writings do we get such an inside view of his character with its varied impulses, its capricious appetites, its unregulated forces, its impatient grasp for all kinds of knowledge. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... on the continent. But to one who enjoys supervising every step or who likes well-trained ceremony, "good form" in minutiae, and the deference of our kind of good training the heathen is likely to prove disappointing. When you ring your friend's door-bell, you are quite apt to be greeted by a cheerful and smiling "hullo!" I think most Californians rather like the entirely respectful but freshly unconventional relationship that exists between the master ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... bottoms of the immediate neighborhood have fruited with exceeding irregularity. A correspondent from Evansville, who cleared 200 acres of forest land along the Ohio of all growth other than pecan, reports that the yields have been disappointing. F. W. McReynolds of Washington, D. C. has 50 or more grafted trees now 8 or 10 years old, 10 miles north of the District, which, although in otherwise thrifty condition, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... account, Aladdin was thunderstruck. Any other man would have sunk under the shock; but a sudden hope of disappointing his rival soon roused his spirits, and he bethought himself of the lamp, which had on every emergency been so useful to him; and without venting his rage in empty words against the sultan, the vizier or his son, he only ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... things more disappointing than the interior of a violin when opened for the purpose of repairing. Be it a matchless gem of Cremona's art or an old and common Tyrolese worth but a few shillings, the difference to an ordinary observer is so slight as to be uninteresting, indeed to connoisseurs ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... coax him to change his mind. Father never likes disappointing us when we set our ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... offspring. The danger lies in the possibility that these foundations for conjugal love will not have been lain by the time that romantic sentiments begin to grow dim. It is this crisis in the married life which seems disappointing in the afterglow of the engagement ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... you have to fear from me is the vexation of disappointing me. No man loves to frustrate expectations which have been formed in his favour; and the pleasure which I promise myself from your journals and remarks is so great, that perhaps no degree of attention or discernment will ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... done a man a favor do not insist too earnestly that it is a mere trifle, or he may take you at your word and not trouble to repay it; which would be very disappointing. ...
— Crankisms • Lisle de Vaux Matthewman
... said her aunt. "However, poor child, no doubt, after having been two years engaged to that very disappointing hero of Saspataras Hill, she will be shy of venturing ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... night I was so sick about the whole thing that I was ready to give it all up, but now I wonder if it isn't our duty to give it one more trial." Her words were disappointing, but the dispirited tone in which she said them was cheering, and Tom made so bold as to sing the lately revived "Duty, duty must be done, the rule applies to everyone, and painful though the duty be, to shirk the task ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... ground. But you know also how small a strip has as yet been explored of the vast continent of Sanskrit literature, and how much still remains terra incognita. No doubt this exploring work is troublesome, and often disappointing, but young students must learn the truth of a remark lately made by a distinguished member of the Indian Civil Service, whose death we all deplore, Dr. Burnell, "that no trouble is thrown away which saves trouble to others." We want ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... admit frankly that my first impressions of the Siamese capital were extremely disappointing. I didn't expect to be conveyed to my hotel atop a white elephant, through streets lined with salaaming natives, but neither did I expect to make a wild dash through thoroughfares as crowded with traffic as Fifth Avenue, in a vehicle which unmistakably owed its paternity to Mr. Henry Ford, or ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... generally preying upon him," as at this time was indeed the fact, could this occasional failure in the delivery of a lecture (though naturally very disappointing to his audience,) be ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... as to what heaven was like. He had asked Mrs. Dempsey. Her answer had not been quite satisfactory, but then she could not know exactly since she had never been there. And the angels, what were they like? Again Mrs. Dempsey had been referred to and again the reply was most disappointing. Beautiful beings with wings? Why, birds had wings and some of them were very beautiful. As for singing before the throne of God; well, Peter could not even guess what the ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams |
