"Inoffensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with him. The result was that in about ten days he sent Walter Clifford a letter and the draft of a lease, very favorable to the landlord on the whole, but cannily inserting one unusual clause that looked inoffensive. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... worse; her dress of flannel, trimmed with satin of the same color, which looked so nice when she came, was filthy with spots of gruel and milk they had been forcing her to eat. This day, I remember, was worse than common days of trouble. I had been excited by seeing one of the most inoffensive inmates pushed and spoken to very roughly, without having done any wrong. They attempted to comb that poor girl's hair; she will not submit, begs and cries to go down there. I go to the bath-room door to beg them to be gentle with her. Mrs. Mills slammed ...
— Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum • Mary Huestis Pengilly
... the manners, nay, the morals of young Englishwomen, once patterns! They sketched the young English gentlewoman of their time; indeed a beauty; with round red cheeks, and rounded open eyes, and a demure shut mouth, a puppet's divine ignorance; inoffensive in the highest degree, rightly worshipped. They were earnest, and Nesta struck at herself. She wished to be as they had been, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... edition of Shakspere, prepared with his usual hard work but with inadequate knowledge and appreciation, and published in 1725. His next production, 'The Dunciad,' can be understood only in the light of his personal character. Somewhat like Swift, Pope was loyal and kind to his friends and inoffensive to persons against whom he did not conceive a prejudice. He was an unusually faithful son, and, in a brutal age, a hater of physical brutality. But, as we have said, his infirmities and hardships had sadly warped his disposition and he himself spoke of 'that long disease, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... the party resumed its former tranquillity. Other guests had come in, among them a lame old Spaniard of mild and inoffensive aspect leaning on the arm of an elderly Filipina, who was resplendent in frizzes and paint and a European gown. The group welcomed them heartily, and Doctor De Espadana and his senora, the Doctora Dona Victorina, took their seats among our acquaintances. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... necessarily mischievous to be quarrelsome, though a peaceable person may dislike it. There is no reason whatever why two quarrelsome people, if they enjoy it, should not have a good set-to. What is mischievous is if a man is brutal and tyrannical, and prefers a tussle with an inoffensive person who is no match for him. That is a piece of cowardice, and protest is more than justifiable. There is a fine true story of a famous head-master, who disliked a weakling, putting on a stupid, shy, and ungainly boy to construe, and making ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... him with contempt. Whoever he might be, he looked upon a Quaker as a mild, inoffensive person, hardly ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... she replied; "I'll remain with you. I could not think of permitting you to be alone in your present state of health. I declare," she continued, "it's enough to make any one an abolitionist, or anything else of the kind, to see how inoffensive coloured ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... an unintelligible murmur and turned to Phoebe's bed. She grasped the mattress and gave it a vicious shake as she turned it over. She was probably only transferring to this inoffensive article a process which she would gladly have ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... failure of his prediction for fine weather, and perhaps he feared that the ambitious young officer intended to instruct him in regard to the situation, though Scott had conducted himself in the most modest and inoffensive manner. ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... it was better inside it was at least a surprise. The moment the two duellists had pushed open the door of that inoffensive, whitewashed cottage they found that its interior was lined with fiery gold. It was like stepping into a chamber in the Arabian Nights. The door that closed behind them shut out England and all the energies of the West. The ornaments that shone and shimmered on every side ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... dastardly work began,—as gratuitous a butchery of innocent people as ever the Iroquois perpetrated in their worst raids. Two hours the massacre lasted, and when it was over the French had, to their everlasting discredit, murdered in cold blood thirty-eight men (among them the poor inoffensive dominie), ten women, {174} twelve children; and the victors held ninety captives. To the credit of Iberville he offered life to one Glenn and his family, who had aided in ransoming many French from ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... conceded it to be quite exact in a descriptive sense, if its brick and mortar were intended to honor monumentally the tales of the host. His first name, August, was not an adjective of limitation as to time, for the proprietor was A. Stuffer every month and day in the year; and his son Emil, a quiet, inoffensive student of birds, a taxidermist, ornithologist and mechanical engineer, and a graduate of the neighboring Stevens Institute, world-famed for the breadth and thoroughness of its training, was a worthy son in practically applying to birds abundant science and all the art employed by his ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... table, than the hosts Invited; the illuminated hall Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts, As silent as the pictures ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... my industry than I cast my eye upon her as the possible instrument for disposing of my productions. Excluded as I was from all intercourse with my species in general, I found pleasure in the occasional exchange of a few words with this inoffensive and good-humoured creature, who was already of an age to preclude scandal. She lived upon a very small annuity, allowed her by a distant relation, a woman of quality, who, possessed of thousands herself, had no other anxiety with respect to this ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... They were connected in his memory with atrocious tedium, pietistic insincerity, and humiliating contacts. At the bottom of his mind he still regarded them as a malicious device of parents for wilfully harassing and persecuting inoffensive, helpless children. And he had a particular grudge against them because he alone of his father's offspring had been chosen for the nauseating infliction. Why should his sisters have been spared and he doomed? ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... with surprising agility, dodging or jumping over the sliding trunk and rolling bottles, and making frantic efforts, apparently, to put both legs simultaneously into one boot. Surprised in the midst of this arduous task by an unexpected lurch, he made an impetuous charge upon an inoffensive washstand, stepped on an erratic bottle, fell on his head, and finally brought up a total wreck in the corner of the room. Convulsed with laughter, the Major could only ejaculate disconnectedly, "I tell you—it is ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... that the harmless, innocent, inoffensive automatic shot gun, that "don't matter if you enforce the bag limit," figures prominently in both ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... at once one of the most inoffensive and (in one sense) offensive of our few remaining British Carnivora. He is described by NAPIER of Merchiston, in his Book of Nature and of Man, as a "quiet nocturnal beast, but if much 'badgered' becoming obstinate, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... more,—answered by volleys from Percy's platoons. The British, smarting under the tormenting fusilade, angry over the thought that they were being assailed by a rabble of farmers and were on the defensive, became wanton and barbaric, pillaging houses, and murdering inoffensive old men. ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... are wretched creatures!" cried Vixen passionately, "the poorest examples of machinery in all this varied universe. Look at that cow in your orchard, her dull placid life, inoffensive, useful, asking nothing but a fertile meadow and a sunny day to fill her cup of happiness. Why did the great Creator make the lower animals exempt from sorrow, and give us such an infinite capacity for grief and pain? It ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... I do, what shall I do! My home is gone! My husband is gone! My children are gone! And for what?"—wringing her hands and gesticulating wildly. "For what, Messieurs? For being quiet, inoffensive, ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... at the seemingly inoffensive toy I had pointed out, and altered so suddenly and so vividly that it became instantly apparent that the surprise I had planned for him was fully as keen and searching a one as I had anticipated. Recoiling sharply, ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... wish to help it, Tom," said Mrs. Corey, with a cheerfullness which the thought of the Laphams had never brought her before. "I am sure it is quite fit and proper, and we can make them have a very pleasant time. They are good, inoffensive people, and we owe it to ourselves not to be afraid to show that we have felt their kindness to us, and his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with a fair downy complexion, good, small teeth, blue eyes, and a languid manner. I scrutinised him curiously. Except for a touch of melancholy in his expression, he was nothing out of the common. He was in the shirt-sleeves and tucked-up apron of his trade, and a pencil was thrust behind his inoffensive ear. Athwart his black waistcoat was a gold chain, from which dangled a ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... Louis Napoleon aimed his cannon at the houses of inoffensive people, and shot down, in cold blood, some of the best inhabitants of Paris. A more hellish act was never perpetrated in this world of ours than that—yet he is the patron of modern civilization, and is on excellent terms with the amiable Queen Victoria. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... was observed that Otho's officers were much more inoffensive, both towards the public and to private men, than those of Vitellius; among whom was Caecina, who used neither the language nor the apparel of a citizen; an overbearing, foreign-seeming man, of gigantic stature and always dressed in trews and sleeves, after the manner of the Gauls, whilst ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... was experiencing a change of heart. That they could plan ruthlessly to slaughter the inoffensive little animals passed his comprehension. A remark below him caused the lad to prick up his ears ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... condemnation of all manly pastimes and harmless recreations, as well as of the profane custom of promiscuous dancing, that is, of men and women dancing together in the same party (for I believe they admitted that the exercise might be inoffensive if practised by the parties separately)—distinguishing those who professed a more than ordinary share of sanctity, they discouraged, as far as lay in their power, even the ancient wappen-schaws, as ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... inoffensive group came one day a young widow, the Countess de Vassart, placing at their disposal her great wealth, asking only to be received among ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... dedication drawing comparisons: strange that he should have taken no means to hide it, by at least bringing the king into some position of interest, whereas he is made so little of that he seems a mild, inoffensive, gentle soul, who is ready even to shake hands with the seducer of his wife." In this connection it will repay the reader to peruse, even if the version has not much charm, the long extract from Gottfried's Tristan, with an eye to the noble and knightly way in which the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... Ferdinand and Isabella. Subsequently the king named it Fernandina. This was changed to Santiago, and finally to Ave Maria; but the aboriginal designation has never been lost, Cuba being its Indian and only recognized name. The new-comers found the land inhabited by a most peculiar race, hospitable, inoffensive, timid, fond of the dance and the rude music of their own people, yet naturally indolent, from the character of the climate they inhabited. They had some definite idea of God and heaven, and were governed by patriarchs or kings, whose word was their only law, and whose age gave ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... ineffective father, chastising not too often or too much, but generally on the wrong occasion. He was no scholar and did not encourage his son that way; but he had a great liking for stories. He was of a peaceable and inoffensive temper, but on great provocation would turn on a bully with surprising and dire consequences. Old Thomas, after Abraham was turned loose, continued a migrant, always towards a supposed better farm further west, always with a mortgage ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... of the Knights Templars. In 1118 Hugues de Payens, Geoffrey de St. Aldemar, and seven other French noblemen, whose hearts were touched by the sufferings which the pilgrims underwent in their journey to Jerusalem, formed themselves into a society with the object of the protection of these inoffensive persons on their transit from the coast inland. Hugues de Payens, received in audience by Pope Honore II., was sent by the Pontiff to the Peers of the Council, then assembled at Troyes in Champagne; the Council approving of so charitable an enterprise, the Order was formed, ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... cheval-de-frise against the tiger, they rush tumultuously at him, and fairly hunt him from the jungle. The pig, having a short thick neck, and being tremendously muscular, is hard to kill; but the poor inoffensive cow, with her long-neck, is generally killed at the first blow, or so disabled that it requires little further effort to complete ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... War. Brief Resume of Events Leading up to it. Various Treaties Between the Tribe and the United States. Chief Joseph's Unjust Claim to the Wallowa Valley. President Grant's Proclamation. Atrocities Committed by White Bird and His Followers on Inoffensive Settlers. Men Massacred and Women Outraged. General Howard's Efforts to Quiet the Malcontents and His Subsequent Campaign Against Them. The Battles in White Bird and Clearwater Canyons. The Renegades' Retreat over the Lo Lo Trail. Intercepted by ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... difference: Zephaniah only wanted to pass the Colonel's smithy in peace; Mr. James Smith sought a fight with me. As soon as this Budget began to appear, he oiled his own strap, and attempted to treat me as the terrible Colonel would have treated the inoffensive brother. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... and then runs backward out of her hole to dump it down behind her. Mr. Emerton tells me that he never saw a bee in the act of digging but once, and then she left off after a few strokes. He also says, "they are harmless and inoffensive. On several occasions I have lain on the grass near their holes for hours, but not one attempted to sting me; and when taken between the fingers, they make ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... of the fur is grey above and black on the under parts; the head is white, with a black stripe on each side. In habits it may be taken as typical of the subfamily. It is nowhere abundant, but is found over the northern parts of Europe and Asia, and is a quiet, inoffensive animal, nocturnal and solitary in its habits, sleeping by day in its burrow, and issuing forth at night to feed on roots, beech-mast, fruits, the eggs of birds, small quadrupeds, frogs and insects. It is said also to dig ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... happened that at the most riotous moment of the picnic an old gentleman passed near the lively crowd. He was quite inoffensive, pleasant-mannered, and walked leaning on his cane, yet, had the statue of the Commander in Don Juan suddenly appeared it could not have produced such consternation as his presence did on Jacqueline, when, after a moment's hesitation, he bowed to her. She recognized in ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... splendid conquest, owing to the impression a beautiful woman made upon you?" The emperor started, and Talleyrand added: "Sire, has the blood of your soldiers who fell at Jena, at Eylau, and at Friedland, been shed in vain, and is it to be washed away by the tears of a lady who now appears to be as inoffensive as a lamb, but who is to blame for this whole war? Your majesty ought not to forget that the Queen of Prussia instigated her husband to begin it—that, at the royal palace of Berlin, you took a solemn oath to punish her, and to take revenge for her warlike spirit, and for ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... native element. I endeavoured to explain the marvel, but was utterly unsuccessful; indeed, the peasants did not accept my explanation, which they evidently considered as a fabrication invented to deceive them and conceal my supernatural powers. The inhabitants of these valleys seemed a simple and inoffensive race, and, as in Europe, their respectful demeanour became more conspicuous as we increased our ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... proved by Colonel Montagu in the case of one which he managed to catch by means of a slight wound in the wing, and which lived with him for upwards of a year. It used to follow its feeder about, and displayed a most inoffensive disposition. With other birds it was on terms, of peace, and goodwill, never threatening them with its big, strong bill. An excellent angler, its skill in capture was seen to greatest advantage when it had to ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the inoffensive fool—as they christened that unfortunate man of genius, Adolphe Monticelli, in the dialect of the South, the slang of Marseilles—where he spent the last sixteen years of his life. The richest colourist ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... that item of evidence so satisfactory as Isel did. But he had not come with any intention of ferreting out doubtful characters or suspicious facts. He was no ardent heretic-hunter, but a quiet, peaceable man, as inoffensive as a priest ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... gone, a sort of frenzy came over me. I wasn't hurt; and for the first time in my life I realised what an abominable outrage theft was. The thought that at six o'clock in the evening, in the very heart of a great city like Boston, an inoffensive citizen could be assaulted and robbed, made me furious. I didn't call out. I simply buttoned my coat tight round me and turned and ...
— The Garotters • William D. Howells
... inmediaciones f. pl. vicinity. inmediato immediate. inmensidad f. immensity. inmenso immense. inmortal immortal. inmortalidad f. immortality. inmotivado without motive, ungrounded. inmovil motionless. inmovilidad f. immobility. inofensivo inoffensive, innocent. insecto insect. insensato mad, senseless. insigne notable, great. insignia badge, insignia. insoportable insupportable. inspirar to inspire. instante m. instant. instintivo ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... mare was the better horse," and poor Bishop, an inoffensive man, and a cripple withal, was wedded to a regular Xantippe. It was evident that unpleasant thoughts were dominant in the woman's mind as she proceeded sullenly and vigorously with preparations for breakfast. The bitter bread of charity was being prepared ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... descended from a younger son of the Jaysalmer family. The first Raja of Sirmaur, whom Hariballabh recollects, was Vijay Prakas, who married a daughter of Jagat Chandra of Kumau. He was succeeded by his son Pradipa Prakas, who, like his father, was a tame inoffensive man. His son Kirti Prakas succeeded when eight years old, and died in his twenty-sixth year; but during this period of youth he fought many battles with the Mogul officers, and took from them Larpur, Narayangar, Ramgar, and Pangjaur, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... margins of rivers and lakes, they are often killed by the Indians in the water while they are crossing rivers or swimming from the mainland to islands, &c. When pursued in this manner, they are the most inoffensive of all animals, never making any resistance; and the young ones are so simple that I remember to have seen an Indian paddle his canoe up to one of them and take it by the poll without the least opposition; the poor, harmless animal seeming ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... past the age when youth plunges beyond recall. He was a grown man, neither wise nor clever; but with a man's sedateness of spirit and a man's hopes. There was no innate evil in his nature to lead him into unrighteous courses. Perhaps his fault rather lay in his inoffensive disposition—he submitted too easily. Then, in the second place, there was not much money, and what there was had to meet ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... were all working for sixpence halfpenny and he was going to wipe the floor with him. Some of his friends eagerly offered to assist, but others interposed, and for a time it looked as if there was going to be a free fight, the aggressors struggling hard to get at their inoffensive victim. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... confusion incident to the immense amount of work done, it is remarkable how the building can be kept in so inoffensive a condition, and all the labor performed in such a quiet and orderly manner. The most scrupulous cleanliness is observed in every department, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... France. Louis XV. still sat upon the throne of Charlemagne. His eldest son had died about ten years before, leaving a little boy, some twelve years of age, to inherit the crown his father had lost by death. The young Louis, grandchild of the reigning king, was mild, inoffensive, and bashful, with but little energy of mind, with no ardor of feeling, and singularly destitute of all passions. He was perfectly exemplary in his conduct, perhaps not so much from inherent strength of principle ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... sometimes maintain with the inhabitants of Huanta a trade of barter; but this intercourse is occasionally interrupted by long intervals of hostility, during which the Iscuchanos, though rather an inoffensive race, commit various depredations on the Huantanos; driving the cattle from the pastures, carrying off the produce of the soil, and spreading terror throughout the whole district. Some years ago, when the inhabitants of Huanta had assembled for the procession of the Festival ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... who pressed him hard, after he was wounded, to capture him. He shot one assailant, and grappling with another, brought him to the ground and cut his throat with a pocket knife. Lieutenant Peyton was by birth, education, and character a thorough gentleman. Perfectly good natured and inoffensive—except when provoked or attacked—and then—he dispatched his affair and his man in a quiet, expeditious and thorough manner. The Federal cavalry retreated from the ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... died shortly after we effected the capture of the batilla; but, being a quiet, inoffensive sort of man, I don't think his loss affected any one very much, while Mr Chisholm the middy, who was made an acting sub-lieutenant in his place—such is the fortune of war— was the reverse of ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... drew his bow so plaintive And loud, like a human cry, That the light of the shutter darkened From somebody passing by. A young man peeped at the pensive Great man, so familiar known; His features, if inoffensive, Were ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... To me war is no glory—conquest no Renown. To be forced thus to uphold my right Sits heavier on my heart than all the wrongs[aj] These men would bow me down with. Never, never Can I forget this night, even should I live To add it to the memory of others. 510 I thought to have made mine inoffensive rule An era of sweet peace 'midst bloody annals, A green spot amidst desert centuries, On which the Future would turn back and smile, And cultivate, or sigh when it could not Recall Sardanapalus' golden reign. I thought ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... morning after four months, I opened my eyes in my cell to the piercing consciousness that I had burned Monpont over-night: and so overcome was I with regret for this poor inoffensive little place, that for two days, hardly eating, I paced between the oak and walnut pews of the nave, massive stalls they are, separated by grooved Corinthian pilasters, wondering what was to become of me, and if I was not already mad; and there are some little angels with ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... with their earthen rims began to dot the fields in many places. No damage of "military importance" had been done. Not even a soldier had been killed, but only an inoffensive cow. ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... and universal truth had not time to receive comment from Elizabeth before Cuff reappeared, with the stable key; and at the same instant, a rather delicate, inoffensive knock was heard ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... gentleman, 'really, Mrs Lammle, I should take it as a favour if you could excuse me from any further confidence. It has ever been one of the objects of my life—which, unfortunately, has not had many objects—to be inoffensive, and to keep ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... laughed among themselves at that inoffensive courage, and as the people in the whole country round showed themselves obliging and compliant towards them, they willingly tolerated their silent patriotism. Only little Baron Wilhelm would have liked to have forced them to ring the bells. He was very angry at his superior's politic ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... exciting day in Philippi. Not since Mark Antony's Roman legions went tearing through to meet and destroy the armies of Brutus and Cassius, nearly a hundred years before, had the town been so shaken up; and all because of two inoffensive looking Jews who had quietly walked in there and told about Jesus Christ. They had come over the winding road from Neapolis, nine miles distant on the seashore, where they had gotten out of a ship from Asia. A poor crazy girl, a fortune teller, heard the message, her heart ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... Phallus or emblem of the generative and procreative powers of nature appears to have been of a very simple and inoffensive character—although it was afterwards made subservient to the ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... Having been struck by the fact, that the ass so often feeds upon the thistle, he took some specimens of that plant, and, by careful experiment, has succeeded in producing for the table 'a savoury vegetable, with thorns of the most inoffensive and flexible sort.' Whatever be the kind of thistle, however hard and sharp its thorns, he has tamed and softened them all, his method of transformation being, as he says, none other than exposing the plants to different ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... empire." A European journal in 1850 spoke of the United States as a wonderful empire, which was "emerging," and "amid the silence of the earth daily adding to its power and pride."(741) Edward Everett, in an oration on the Pilgrim founders of this nation, said: "Did they look for a retired spot, inoffensive for its obscurity, and safe in its remoteness, where the little church of Leyden might enjoy the freedom of conscience? Behold the mighty regions over which, in peaceful conquest, ... they have borne ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... flowers that give them their names are expensive to make, and consequently high-priced. The cheap scents are all mineral concoctions, and their use is more or less injurious. A penny-worth of dried lavender flowers in a muslin bag is even cheaper to buy, inoffensive to smell—which is more than can be said of cheap manufactured scents—and ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... to satisfy its thirst. I have seen lizards which had been tamed by children greedily sucking up the saliva from their lips by drawing across them those little forked tongues of theirs, which, after all, are very soft, and perfectly inoffensive. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... mild form of praise, Mr. Rollo. Harmless and inoffensive—to berries. What will you do, then, Mr. Falkirk? seeing there are ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... on a son of Nuncomar, named Goordas. Nuncomar's services were wanted, yet he could not safely be trusted with power; and Hastings thought it a master stroke of policy to reward the able and unprincipled parent by promoting the inoffensive child. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have encouraged the satirist to repeat his stroke next year—and must have astounded his retrospection, when he found himself in prison, and under threat of worse than imprisonment, together with his unoffending associates in an admirable and inoffensive comedy. It is impossible to suppose that he would not have come forward to assume the responsibility of his own words—as it is impossible to imagine that Jonson or Chapman would have given up his accomplice to save himself. But the law ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Mexico, he obtained authority to establish the Mission of San Pablo. Like the good Junipero, accompanied only by an acolyth and muleteer, he unsaddled his mules in a dusky canon, and rang his bell in the wilderness. The savages—a peaceful, inoffensive, and inferior race—presently flocked around him. The nearest military post was far away, which contributed much to the security of these pious pilgrims, who found their open trustfulness and amiability better fitted to repress ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... he called himself, made his appearance at Washington toward the close of the Tyler Administration. He was of middle size, with long hair, and an inoffensive, cadaverous countenance. It was his boast that he was born among the slashes of Hanover County, Virginia, and he was to be seen lounging about the hotels, fashionably, yet shabbily, dressed, generally wearing soiled ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... on Scripture subjects, framed and glazed; and a small looking-glass, placed in a position to secure the best light afforded by the little window, completed the decorations. Various were the conjectures formed by the villagers respecting this inoffensive though singular woman; and many were the stories circulated, all tending to keep alive the prejudice her eccentricities were calculated ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... believe that he had no more desire to be irreverent than you or I have. The fault lay rather in the religious coldness and carelessness of those days than in him. He was liked and respected by every one as a harmless, inoffensive, good-hearted old fellow, and I cannot better close this brief account of some of his peculiarities than by saying—as I do with all my heart—Peace to ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... has done, has the least right to complain of this exercise of a higher authority. If he had a right—and he has no right except brute strength, if that be a right—to bully, beat, torment, and perhaps injure for life a poor little inoffensive child, and by doing so to render the name of the school infamous, I maintain that the monitors, who have the interest of the school most at heart, who are ranged ex officio on the side of truth, of justice, and of honour, have infinitely ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... philandering as a married man should not, though in truth he might soon expect to be released by the death of his crazy wife. The doctor, he said, had been severely shaken by the monstrous assault made on him, and had been most unrighteously handled. The doctor was an inoffensive man in his private life, detestable and dangerous though his teachings were. Outside politics Mr. Tuckham went altogether with Beauchamp. He promised also that old Mrs. Beauchamp should be accurately informed of the state ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... no rival—or it may be that she really loved the King. He had given himself to her in the flush of his triumphant return, while he was still young enough to feel a genuine passion. For her sake he had been a cruel husband, an insolent tyrant to an inoffensive wife; for her sake he had squandered his people's money, and outraged every moral law; and it may be that she remembered these things, and hated him the more fiercely for them when he was inconstant. She was a woman of extremes, in whose tropical temperament there ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... coils around his captive. Brought up in a rigid school of courtesy toward his elders, the Tyro sought some inoffensive means of breaking away; but when the other hooked an arm into his, alleging the roll of the vessel,—though not in the least needing the support,—he all but gave up hope. For an interminable quarter of an hour the marplot jurist teased his captive. Then, with the ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... inoffensive snap, and Rex frowned. But he had not the slightest intention of relinquishing his purpose. With incredible coolness, he went to a corner of the room and took a box of perfectly fresh cartridges from the drawer where he kept his ammunition; after carefully ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... afterward, my interjections were not quite so inoffensive. A torrent of passion burst from me, and he, whose malignity could not justly assert I wanted learning, might, had he stayed, have collected sufficient proofs of my ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... again this awakening, but without avail. The leaves show me their silky completeness, rustling above the stream in softest tree talk; the curious staminate flower-clusters hang like bunches of inverted commas; the neat little burs, with their inoffensive prickles, mature and discharge the angular nuts—but I am not again, I fear, to be present at the hour of the leaf-birth of ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... or half after, when the invariable siesta was over, the main street began to fill with idlers. The natives wore white, with wide soft straw hats, and lounged along with considerable grace. They were a weak, unenergetic, inoffensive race, always ready to get off the sidewalk for other nations provided the other nations swaggered sufficiently. The women, I remember, had wonderful piles of glossy black hair, arranged in bands and puffs, in which they ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... description, is peculiar to the structure of the pease and milk-worts; we will examine it afterwards. The European varieties of the milkwort, except the chamaebuxus, are all minute,—and, their ordinary epithets being at least inoffensive, I give them for reference till we find prettier ones; altering only the Calcarea, because we could not have a 'Chalk Juliet,' and two varieties of the Regina, changed for reason good—her name, according to the last modern refinements of grace and ease in pronunciation, being Eu-vularis, var. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... frightened his wife so she had been prematurely confined, and the child was dead. Could they take bail for a riot, a dastardly attack by a mob of cowards on a poor defenseless woman, the gentlest and most inoffensive creature in England? Then he went on: 'They were told I was not in the house; and then they found courage to fling stones, to terrify my wife and kill my child. Poor soul!' he said, 'she lies between life ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... armed herself with brazen armor! She has transformed neighboring lands into deserts! She has slit throats, laid waste fields, shattered skulls, she has destroyed all that lay in her path! She has tried to impress the terror she holds salutary upon the souls of inoffensive old ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... name will henceforth be a byword amongst all civilised peoples. It must surely be so, for the records of murders, robberies, and outrages unspeakable suffered without warning, without provocation by a prosperous and inoffensive people, will be a textbook of inhumanity and wrong for ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... does not finally settle some conflicting claims, will most assuredly help to teach the warring nations just how far they can go, and will help, consequently, to restrict its subsequent policy within practicable and probably inoffensive limits. It is by no means an accident that England and France, the two oldest European nations, are the two whose foreign policies are best defined and, so far as Europe is concerned, least offensive. For centuries these Powers fought and fought, ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... they please.... From all such we must keep aloof, but we must adhere to those who both preserve, as we have already mentioned, the doctrine of the apostles, and exhibit, with the order of the presbytery, sound teaching and an inoffensive conversation." [585:1] "The order of the presbytery" obviously signifies the official character conveyed by "the laying on of the hands of the presbytery," and yet such was the ordination of those who, in the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... so, Charlotte—Say rather that you hope it will hold you so long only as it may be thought innocent or inoffensive, by the man whom it will be your duty to oblige, and so long as it will ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... they look for a retired spot, inoffensive from its obscurity, safe in its remoteness from the haunts of despots, where the little church of Leyden might enjoy freedom of conscience? Behold the mighty regions over which in peaceful conquest—victoria sine ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... of paternage that's passin'," growled the Cap'n, kicking an inoffensive chair as he came back to his platform. "They talk about him as though he was Lord Gull and ruler of the stars. Jest as though a man that had sailed deep water all his days knowed all the old land-pirut's ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... in the tumults of a conflagration, and toss brands among a rabble passively combustible." All these atrocities and follies amuse and interest us now; they are the coprolites of a literary megatherium, once hateful to gods and men, now inoffensive and curious fossilized specimens. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... Sand wrote under the influence of anger. We refer to Mademoiselle La Quintinie. Octave Feuillet had just published his Histoire de Sibylle, and this book made George Sand furiously angry. We are at a loss to comprehend her indignation. Feuillet's novel is very graceful and quite inoffensive. Sibylle is a fanciful young person, who from her earliest childhood dreams of impossible things. She wants her grandfather to get a star for her, and another time she wants to ride on the swan's back as it swims in the pool. When she is being prepared for her first communion, ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... pleasure, and trying to push their noses through to get the carrot or turnip, or whatever he was handing to them. He called them his little Southdowns, and he said he loved his sheep, for they were the most gentle and inoffensive creatures that he ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... Montalais, after haunting it for upwards of a month, without definite knowledge that he would gain nothing by staying on, or without an equally definite objective, some motive more inspiring than such simple sensuousness as he might find in assassinating inoffensive folk indiscriminately. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... digestive function. On the other hand, it accommodates among the intestinal flora many microbes which damage health by poisoning the body with their products. Among the intestinal flora there are many microbes which are inoffensive, but others are known to have pernicious properties, and auto-intoxication, or self-poisoning, is the cause of the ill-health which may be traced to their activity. It is indubitable that the intestinal microbes or their poisons may reach the system generally, and bring ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... straight lines on the face. The Marubos, on the Javari, have a dark complexion and a slight beard; and on the west side of the same river roam the Majeronas—fierce, hostile, light colored, bearded cannibals. In the vicinity of Pebas dwell the inoffensive Yaguas. The shape of the head (but not their vacant expression) is well represented by Catlin's portrait of "Black Hawk," a Sauk chief. They are quite free from the encumbrance of dress, the men wearing a girdle of fibrous bark around the loins, with bunches ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... sneak off to go swimming in the East River. But it kept me from being very much afraid of the Bowery (we went down on the surface cars), but Olive was scared beautifully. There was the dearest, most inoffensive old man in the most perfect state of intoxication sitting next to us in the car, and when Olive moved away from him he winked over at me and said, 'Honor your shruples, ma'am, ver' good form.' I think Olive thought he was going to murder us—she was sure he was the wild, dying remnant ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... shoulders. But for Muriel's influence she would have been almost ready to follow the example of Kitty and Maud, and if not to make friends, at least to treat with tolerance a companion who was so particularly inoffensive, and so willing to meet an ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... in fact filled with much curiosity concerning and interest in the Marquis of Coombe. She was a clever and well trained person, but socially a simple creature, who in an inoffensive way "loved a lord." If her work had not absorbed her she could not have kept her eyes from this finely conventional and rather unbending-looking man who—keeping himself out of the way of all who were in charge of the seemingly almost dead boy—still would not leave the room, ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sink into feebleness and insipidity. Were I to judge of his character by his Madonnas, I should suppose that Sasso Ferrato had neither original genius nor powerful intellect, nor warmth of heart, nor vivacity of temper; that he was, in short, a mere mild, inoffensive, good sort of man, studious and industrious in his art, not without a feeling for the excellence he wanted power ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... subdued, quiescent way, and I felt, as I always did about her, that her soul was still asleep and untouched, and that much of her reliance and independence came from that. Uncle Ivan was in his smart clothes, his round face very red and he wore his air of rather ladylike but inoffensive superiority. He stood near the table with the "Zakuska," and his eyes rested there. I do not now remember many of the Markovitch and Semyonov relations. There was a tall thin young man, rather bald, with a short black moustache; ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... plead his love; in vain did he show, that if the spirits of the flood warred on their neighbours, who were unable to inflict a wound on their adversaries, it furnished no reason why the beautiful maiden, so lovely and so inoffensive, should be banned. She had not injured, then why should she be spurned? But his argument availed not to influence the warriors, or to bend their stern hearts to pity. They drove the fair Menana from the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... disappointing, yet, looked at aright, a gratifying spectacle. Here were men disciplined by good handling and native force out of barbarism—of which there was little to be seen—and plainly on the high road to comfort; men who led inoffensive and honest lives, yet who expressed their sense of freedom and self-support in their speech, and had in their courteous demeanour the unmistakable air and bearing of independence. If provoked by injustice, a very dangerous people this; but self-respecting, ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... commence in January instead of March He knew nothing about the navy He made the great speech of his life, and spoke for three hours I never designed to be a witness against any man In perpetual trouble and vexation that need it least Inoffensive vanity of a man who loved to see himself in the glass Learned the multiplication table for the first time in 1661 Montaigne is conscious that we are looking over his shoulder Nothing in it approaching that single page in St. Simon The present ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... ever been known in these mountains, very much as old Honeycutt's toothless mouth, ever screwed up in rotary chewing and sucking movements, drooled tobacco juice upon his unclean shirt. Brodie at moments when he desired to be utterly inoffensive could not purge his utterance of oaths; he was one of those men who could not remark that it was a fine morning without first damning the thing, qualifying it with an epithet of vileness, and turning it out of his ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... them with the fingers, at which all the boys became great adepts from necessity. One evening Barker, having snuffed the candle, suddenly and slyly put the smouldering wick unnoticed on the head of a little quiet inoffensive fellow named Wright, who happened to be sitting next to him. It went on smouldering for some time without Wright's perceiving it, and at last Barker, highly ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar |
