"Fastidiousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their fatherly elder brother. Now that they guessed something to be amiss with him, they had no irritation for him—and indeed he gave them no cause for any; the discomfort was partly indeed occasioned by the lack of his usual quiet mirth, but far more by Alda's fastidiousness, and Wilmet's vigilance lest she should be annoyed. This caused restrictions that weighed more heavily on the younger ones than on Lance and Robina, and had the effect of making Angela and Bernard rebellious. They had neither the principle nor the consideration of their two seniors; to ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of a gentleman—kept him from putting any questions to Mary Ann. Indeed, his own delicacy repudiated the images that strove to find entry in his brain, even as his fastidiousness shrank from realising the unlovely details of Mary Ann's daily duties—these things disgusted him more with himself than with her. And yet he found himself acquiring a new and illogical interest in ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... sphere; drawing its line of demarcation between time and eternity, it works for the welfare of man in this world"—"The Secularist is the larger and more comprehensive designation of the Atheist."[253] With all this coyness and fastidiousness about names, there can be no doubt that the character of the system is essentially atheistic: "We refuse to employ the term God, not having any definite idea of it which we can explain to others,—not knowing any theory of such an existence as will enable us to defend that dogma to others. We therefore ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... for a moment on this minor aspect of the matter because the error about impartiality and justice is by no means confined to a criminal question. In much more serious matters it is assumed that the agnostic is impartial; whereas the agnostic is merely ignorant. The logical outcome of the fastidiousness about the Thaw jurors would be that the case ought to be tried by Esquimaux, or Hottentots, or savages from the Cannibal Islands—by some class of people who could have no conceivable interest in the parties, and moreover, no ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... we have alluded, entitled "Love and Madness," attracted attention in higher quarters, and even perplexed the fastidiousness of Walpole himself. In one of his letters of March 1780, he thus writes:—"Yesterday was published an octavo, pretending to contain the correspondence of Hackman and Miss Ray. I doubt whether the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... side of Thorne's nature was cultured to the extreme of fastidiousness; ugly, repulsive, even disagreeable things repelled him more than they do most men. He disliked intensely any thing that grated, any thing that was discordant. If "taste is morality," Thorne had claims to be considered as having attained an unusual ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... as he stood on the edge of the road and pointed with mingled mischief and fastidiousness to the depths of impalpable red dust that lay between him and the horseman. Steptoe saw that he was very smartly attired in holiday guise, with white duck trousers and patent leather shoes, and, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... render any scruple that might otherwise be felt in giving publicity to such avowals unnecessary; besides which, the testimony of so near and clear an observer to the state of Lord Byron's mind upon religious subjects is of far too much importance to my object to be, from any over-fastidiousness, suppressed. We have here, too strikingly exemplified,—and in strong contrast, I must say, to the line taken by Mr. Hunt in similar circumstances,—the good breeding, gentle temper, and modesty for which Shelley was ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... only, in favor of a maiden lady whose parents he had known, whose servants were kind to him, and whose retired and dignified way of living quite suited his fastidiousness. ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... the midst of the far profounder passion which distinguishes the English from all literatures on the modern European continent, it is singular that a fastidious decorum never sleeps for a moment. It might be imagined that this fastidiousness would be in the inverse ratio of the passion: but it is not so. In particular the French, certainly the literature which ranges at the lowest elevation upon the scale of passion, nevertheless is often homely, and even gross, in its recurrences ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... make-up of Marion's mind in the matter was an equally irrational affair. Her training had been one, not simply of silences, but suppressions. An enormous force of suggestion had so shaped her that the intense natural fastidiousness of girlhood had developed into an absolute perversion of instinct. For all that is cardinal in this essential business of life she had one inseparable epithet—"horrid." Without any such training she would have been a shy lover, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... fat silver jug over her own belated cup, and waited for the thick cream to come out in a slow and grudging gobbet with a heavy plump into the coffee. As she waited, she gently rebuked that fastidiousness in her companion that shrank from contact with the unsavoury ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... reasonably be suspected that Ashley's confusion and the ingenious use which he made of it had been carefully premeditated. His speech, however, made a great impression, and probably raised expectations which were not fulfilled. His health was delicate; his taste was refined even to fastidiousness; he soon left politics to men whose bodies and minds were of coarser texture than his own, gave himself up to mere intellectual luxury, lost himself in the mazes of the old Academic philosophy, and aspired to the glory of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... uncle spoke like this there was always that dancing, mischievous light in his dark blue eyes, which showed me that this humour of his was a conscious eccentricity, depending, as I believe, upon a natural fastidiousness of taste, but wilfully driven to grotesque lengths for the very reason which made him recommend me also to develop some peculiarity of my own. When I thought of the way in which he had spoken of his unhappy friend, Lord Avon, ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Limited as he was he would make the most of them. Knowing something of their merits he knew there was a bestial entertainment to be had from both. It was a kind of entertainment which his cursed fastidiousness had always loathed; but now his reckoning would be different. If he got anything he should not feel so wastefully thrown away. He would be selling himself first and making his bargain afterwards; but some meager balance would stand to his credit, ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... In many cases these are conducted and very largely staffed by unmarried girls and women who are indeed, in effect, assistant mothers. This class of capable schoolmistresses is one of the most interesting social developments of this period. For the most part they are women who from emotional fastidiousness, intellectual egotism, or an honest lack of passion, have refused the common lot of marriage, women often of exceptional character and restraint, and it is well that, at any rate, their intelligence and character should not pass fruitlessly ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... a fastidiousness of stomach which is quite laughable, and not at all peculiar to the Germans, who are in general blessed by nature with especial good appetites; and they spend so much money that the English officers who have not had the advantages of plunder that these Prussians have had must appear by ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... This fastidiousness of the best writers and critics of America is by no means inconsistent with the existence of an enormous class of half-educated readers, who devour the kind of "literature" provided for them, and batten in their various degrees on the productions ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... passing. I do not suppose that there are many of my hearers who are likely to commit overt breaches of the law. But there are a great many of us who are apt to neglect the obligations of citizenship. In a community like ours, laziness, fastidiousness, absorption in our own occupations, and a number of other more or less reputable reasons, tempt many to stand aloof from the plain imperative obligations of every citizen in a free country. Every man who thus neglects to do his part for the common weal does his part in handing over the rule of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... his equals, and never withdrew, no matter how many callers—whom he recognized as of his society—might come into the drawing-room. Calvin was fond of company, but he wanted to choose it; and I have no doubt that his was an aristocratic fastidiousness rather than one of faith. It ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... from all tendency to plaything-sentiments and trivial romances, his youth had been unlike the youth of other men. Being man and young, he had known temptation, but had disdained it; being also proud and perhaps haughty in his fastidiousness, and being strong, he had thrust base and light things aside. He had held in his brain a fancy from his boyhood, and singularly enough it had but grown stronger and become more fully formed with his own strength and increase of ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... attitude of mind and disposition, however, were naturally somewhat aristocratic, I think. Also, as I have said, our talk was in the 'sixties. He was sensitive, very proud, inclined, perhaps, to scornfulness, certainly to fastidiousness, and one who seldom suffered fools either gladly or with much show of tolerance. It was a somewhat unfortunate temperament, probably, for a man situated as he was, possessed of no private means and dependent entirely upon his earnings. In my mother, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... arrangement of life one may be a bookman and yet have very few books, since he has not the wherewithal to purchase them. It is the foolishness of his kind to desire a loved author in some becoming dress, and his fastidiousness to ignore a friend in a fourpence-halfpenny edition. The bookman, like the poet, and a good many other people, is born and not made, and my grateful memory retains an illustration of the difference between a bookowner and a bookman which I think is apropos. As he was to ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... clearer view of what he was than enthusiasm allowed later on. Rejecting Marchmont, or rather acquiescing in Marchmont's refusal, on the ground of his excessive caution, his want of imagination, and his fastidiousness, he had hesitated to sound Quisante in regard to the great project. It seemed to him impossible to regard his new friend as an ideal leader for this purpose; one reason is enough to indicate—the ideal leader should be absolutely unselfish by nature. By nature Quisante was very far from that, ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope |
