"Unassuming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the others had been seen, the men noticed the deep bows that unfailingly marked the entrance of Marahna. They questioned her and learned that here was royalty among the people of the moon. This, as they considered the proud poise of her head and her whole attitude of unassuming superiority was not entirely surprising. But they marveled the more at the truth that she finally ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... of mighty France knelt at the feet of the unassuming chevalier,—a picture to the world forever of how that manhood which is without fear and without reproach is ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... shipping papers under his arm, presented himself to Mr. Mathew, handed him his papers, and reported his condition. That gentleman immediately set about rendering every facility to relieve his immediate wants and further his business. The consul was a man of plain, unassuming manners, frank in his expressions, and strongly imbued with a sense of his rights, and the faith of his Government,—willing to take an active part in obtaining justice, and, a deadly opponent to wrong, regardless of the active hostility that surrounded him. After relating the incidents of ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... a desperate, fearless ruffian, he had a pleasant face, keen gray eyes, a light mustache, and a most quiet air and unassuming manner. ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... traveled to her neighbor—a tall young lady, dressed in white, with no color in her costume but a sash of hues trembling between sea-green and lilac. She was slender and graceful, with that air at once exquisite and unassuming that he had seen in the Englishwoman of his dreams. Though he could get no more than a side glimpse of her face, he divined that it was pure and that it must be thrown into relief by the heavy coil of coppery-brown hair. But what he ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... quaint reminiscence of my old friend and the quainter way he had of telling it. The rude dialect of the backwoodsman might have seemed oddly out of place, there, but for the quiet, unassuming manner and the fine old face of Uncle Eb in which the dullest eye might see the ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... field and under fire, had a great effect, and the enthusiasm of the regiment was at its height when I announced the name of Sergeant Prud'homme, reputed justly to be the most intrepid and unassuming of the warriors of the 23rd. This brave survivor of many a fierce encounter, accepted with modesty his piece of ribbon, to the sound of loud acclamation from all the squadrons. A moment of well earned triumph. I shall never forget this moving scene ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... of the western plains was unassuming. Their brown canvas tunics, their prairie hats, their black, hard serge breeches, with broad, yellow stripes down the thighs, possessed a businesslike appearance not to be found in a modern soldier's uniform. These things were for ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... differs from the earnest solidarity of the new French army, and from the businesslike alertness of the Briton, and yet has a very special dash and fire of its own, covered over by a very pleasing and unassuming manner. London has not yet forgotten Durando of Marathon fame. He was just such another easy smiling youth as I now see everywhere around me. Yet there came a day when a hundred thousand Londoners hung upon his every movement—when strong men gasped and women wept at ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Hell and Purgatory could thus appertain to a 'comedy.' This is a crude conception of the distinction between Tragedy and Comedy, which I have ventured to disregard, particularly in the last of these otherwise unassuming stories. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... of Erin, as First Lord of the Treasury, occupied the narrow, unassuming brick house which is the Treasury residence in Downing Street. Although the official head of the Church, with power to appoint its bishops and highest dignitaries, he was secretly a sceptic, if not openly a derider of spiritual ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... contempt for him? Although so much younger, he is a better swordsman and a better rider than you are. He is liked by every one in the auberge, which is more than can be said of yourself; he is always good tempered, and is quiet and unassuming. What on earth do you always set yourself against ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... letter was written by Mr. Jenkyns, and handed by Hamilton to the Shahzada, a quiet unassuming man, to take to the Amir. A forlorn hope indeed faced the brave fellow, as he looked forth through a crevice at the yelling, shooting, cursing crowd, surging round on all sides. To open a door was instant death to himself and others, for a shower of bullets would have greeted ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... total absence of all the "moving" letters found in the original work. The "lordly husband and father," "the imperious son," "the proud ambitious sister, Arabella," all combined to force the universally beloved and unassuming Clarissa to marry the wealthy Mr. Somers, who was to be the means of "the aggrandisement of the family." Clarissa, in this perplexing situation, yielded in a desperate mood to "the earnest entreaties of the artful Lovelace to accept the ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... us love the Saviour, and, through Him, be saved from sin. Dear friends, do pray to Him. With kind love and best wishes to each one of you, believe me always, your sincere friend, ." I have dwelt a little upon this instance of unassuming beneficence, to show that there is a great deal of good being done in this world, which is not much heard of, except by accident. One meets with it, here and there, as a thirsty traveller meets with an unexpected spring in ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... absurdity, surprising, etc., are not wanted. I am sorry to observe so much Nationality in it. Let this be a secret between us, for I will not have my private opinions go beyond yourself. As for Kidd, he is a modest, unassuming man, and is not to be attacked with sticks and stones like a savage. Remember, it is only the epithets which I mean to soften; for as to the scientific part, it shall not ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... plundered his native village on the plain of Gawar, and he removed to Degala, near Oroomiah. He was then about thirty years of age, a sedate, dignified, upright man and very righteous in his own eyes. Gentle and unassuming, he yet commanded the respect of all, and his reputation as a scholar soon secured for him the place of a teacher in the incipient male seminary. For many years he was its first teacher, and down to the close of his life sustained a relation to one or the other ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... were the outpourings of one mood, and were prompted by the same spirit which moved him to write his poems of humble life. The sheltered garden flowers have less attraction for him than the common blossoms by the wayside. In their unobtrusive humility these "unassuming Common-places of Nature" might be regarded, as the poet says, "as administering both to moral and spiritual purposes." The "Lesser Celandine," buffeted by the storm, affords him, on another occasion, ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Captain Flinders in the Investigator, and also on a previous occasion in the Norfolk schooner. This man is well known in the colony as the chief of the Broken Bay tribe; he was about forty-five years of age, of a sharp, intelligent, and unassuming disposition, and promised to be of much service to us in our intercourse with the natives: this addition made our number amount to nineteen, for which we carried provisions for nine months, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... time I met her I was already an ensign. In spite of all her efforts she could not recognize the hated Petya in the ensign with his moustache, but still she did not treat me quite like a relation. . . . And even now, in spite of my good-humoured baldness, meek corpulence, and unassuming air, she still looks askance at me, and feels put out when I go to see my brother. Hatred it seems can no more be forgotten than love. . ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... him. I never heard him well spoken of. I have probably met a hundred of his acquaintances, but I have not yet seen one who pretended to be his friend.' Wilson defended the absent one, who, he said, was the mildest and most unassuming of men, and dissected a book for pleasure, without thinking of the feelings ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... there are few writers less "literary" than Mr. W.H. Hudson, and few among the living more likely to be regarded, a hundred years hence, as having produced "literature." He is so unassuming, so mild, so intensely and unconsciously original in the expression of his naive emotions before the spectacle of life, that a hasty inquirer into his idiosyncrasy might be excused for entirely missing the point of him. His new book (which helps to redeem ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... tone dropping in unconscious imitation of the leader's. Every apprehension forgotten, he yielded instantly to the charm of his unassuming friendliness. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... lowly places, with meekness it seems to shed beauty over its surroundings, and compensate for gaudy vesture by cheerful contentment. Wordsworth calls the daisy "the poet's darling," "a nun demure," "a little Cyclops," "an unassuming commonplace of nature," and sums up its excellences in a verse which may fitly conclude our attempt to pluck a bouquet of fresh ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... devoted a part of her fortune to this real monument and to fulfill a wish Berlioz expressed in one of his works. Mlle. Pelletan was an unusually intelligent woman and an accomplished musician, but she needed some one to help her in this large and formidable task. She was unassuming and distrusted her own powers, so that she secured as a collaborator a German musician, named Damcke, who had lived in Paris a long time and who was highly esteemed. He gave her the moral support she needed and some bad advice as well, which she felt obliged to ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... the young man. He was a good athlete, he was unassuming and well-bred, he clearly knew the difference between Good and Bad Form. Geoffrey's chief misgiving with regard to Japan had been a doubt as to the wisdom of making the acquaintance of his wife's kindred. How dreadful if they turned out to be a collection of oriental curios with whom he would not ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... in the grass, skurried away at the barking of Famulus. The whole place was as quiet and unassuming as the purlieus of a village church, but the walls had that singular luminous glow which the buildings of Rome seem to ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... the ci-devant captain was a quiet, unassuming fellow, who wanted language to communicate with us freely. Nevertheless he managed to interest us much, with an account of the sufferings and trials of his youth. They were by birth Moreote Turks; and in the revolution of that country, when first the Greeks arose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... which he adopted, was to send embassadors around to the neighboring states, soliciting alliances with them, and stipulations allowing of intermarriages between his people and theirs. The proposal seemed not unreasonable, and it was made in an unassuming and respectful manner. In the message which Romulus commissioned the embassadors to deliver, he admitted that his colony was yet small, and by no means equal in influence and power to the kingdoms whose alliance he desired; ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... combined with her homely aspect, and perfectly unassuming manners, made a great impression upon many of those who met her in London. Ticknor says of Maria Edgeworth: "There was a life and spirit about her conversation, she threw herself into it with such abandon, she retorted with such brilliant repartee, and, in short, she ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... command of the whole situation make him sought as a counselor and as a leader. As the older men, like Clough and Downie, pass away, Doctor Ferguson, by common consent, forges to the front. The present prosperity and harmony of the Telugu mission are largely due to his unassuming and welcome influence. He too is a man whose scholarship and character reflect honor upon the Rochester Theological Seminary, where he sat under my ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... upon him, he fell over his own sharp blade, which cut through the bone, and he lay helpless; he was saved by one of his comrades, who immediately rushed in from behind, and with a desperate cut severed the back sinew of the elephant. As I listened to these fine fellows, who in a modest and unassuming manner recounted their adventures as matters of course, I felt exceedingly small. My whole life had been passed in wild sports from early manhood, and I had imagined that I understood as much as most people of this subject; but here were ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... had provoked; for notwithstanding the general mildness of his character, his solitary habits had engendered a testy impatience of contradiction, and a keener sense of pain arising from the satire of others, than was natural to his unassuming disposition. As for his parishioners, they enjoyed, as may reasonably be supposed, many a hearty laugh at their pastor's expense, and were sometimes, as Mrs. Dods hinted, more astonished than edified by his learning; for in pursuing a point of biblical criticism, he did not altogether remember ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... said, "I had altogether forgotten that unpleasant incident. I wish you had not reminded me of it. He is a most respectful, modest, unassuming young man. I am sure he would be dreadfully uncomfortable if he were aware we had seen ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... observer from Detroit, writes: "You ask how we like our new Governor. Very well. He is a well-informed plain man, unassuming in his manners and conciliatory, always ready for business, and accustomed to do everything en ordre. His wife is a fine-looking agreeable woman, with several pretty ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the woman who even under difficulties knew how to live a simple, pure and gentle life. Never have I come in contact with so much human feeling—even the ministers and their families are human, and full of understanding! The officials and people of prominence are all natural and unassuming. ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... wore a blue sweater. He was neither a Raffles nor one of the chefs from Hell's Kitchen. The police would have been baffled had they attempted to classify him. They have not yet heard of the respectable, unassuming burglar who is neither above ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... with that impressive cough which is the rightful indulgence of a man who has written a volume on the rules of evidence, "that 'poor in spirit' undoubtedly means unassuming, rightly satisfied with what is their due, mindful of the fact that human nature is so imperfect that whatever a man obtains is probably more than he deserves. They cannot be the meek, for special allusion is made to the meek in this same group of specially designated persons. ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... York's fashionable and ultra-exclusive clubs, the St. James stood an acknowledged leader—more men, perhaps, cast an envious eye at its portals, of modest and unassuming taste, as they passed by on Fifth Avenue, than they did at any other club upon the long list that the city boasts. True, there were more expensive clubs upon whose membership roll scintillated more stars of New York's social set, but the St. James ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... modest and very unassuming man, and never pushed himself forward, yet he had a just estimate of his abilities, knew what he could do, and when called upon by circumstances, or by those with whom he acted, to take the lead, if the thing ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... of service," said Fleda, gaily; "I am not going unprovided into the business. There is my cousin Seth Plumfield who has engaged himself to be my counsellor and instructor in general; I could not have a better; and Mr. Douglass is to be my right hand, I occupying only the quiet and unassuming post of the will, to convey the orders of the head to the hand. And for the rest, Sir, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... each of his attendants, and he promised that, if the great teacher would come and see him, he would collect his villagers to hear the new doctrine preached. There was something very attractive, meek, and unassuming about the man's whole appearance, and of him there was much hope; but, just about this time great anxiety fell on the mission party. The kindly Myowoon and his wife were removed, and immediately after a summons was sent to Mr. Hough to appear at the ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... other point she was unassuming almost to non-entity. She was weak-minded to the verge of mental palsy. She was more benevolent in deed, and more wandering in conversation, than any one I have met with since. That is, in ordinary life. In the greenhouse ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... time alone can say, whether your bargain has been a good or a bad one. He has certainly no assumption—it is one of his few good traits; he walks with his arms in motion, but attempts not a swagger; his knock is unassuming, and his words, though much attended to, are few, and to the point. Why, then, abuse him? We know not, but believe it originates in fear. An intuitive feeling of dread—a rushing presentiment of evil—crosses our mind, as our eye dwells ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... of Shakespeare, opened the long-disused Sadler's Wells Theatre in partnership with Mrs Warner, a capable actress, whose rendering of Imogen went near perfection. Their design was inspired by "the hope," they wrote in an unassuming address, "of eventually rendering Sadler's Wells what a theatre ought to be—a place for justly representing the works of our great dramatic poets." This hope they went far to realise. The first play that they produced ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... to their city editors that Miss Althea Beekman, one of the Four Hundred, was defying Judge Babson, and to rush up a camera man right off in a taxi, and to look her up in the morgue for a front-page story. O'Brien glanced uneasily at Babson. Possible defiance on the part of this usually unassuming lady had not entered into his calculations. The judge took ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... were for her part intent on reforming the practices of her sex in regard to dress, for she resolutely set her face against the extravagant toilettes of the ladies of the Court, repeatedly appearing at the Tuileries in the most unassuming attire, which, however, by sheer force of contrast, rendered her very conspicuous there. The patronesses of the great couturiers were quite irate at receiving such a lesson from a petite bourgeoise; but all who shared the views expressed by President Dupin a few years ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... offence Carlyle committed with his ungovernable tongue or pen, he had rare virtues in conduct. His generosity was as unassuming as it was persistent; and it began at home. Long before he was free from anxieties about money for himself, he was helping two of his brothers to make a career, one in agriculture, and the other in ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... ever enjoyed in his life-time so extensive a popularity as the Author of Waverley. His love of fame and acquisition of honourable distinction all over the world had not the common effect of making him vain. Hear, in proof, the following unassuming declaration, from the delightful autobiographic sketch to a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... heart-strings, and bring down his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. His only child was a lovely daughter of fourteen. From what I have heard of her, I think she must have been very beautiful in person, quiet, gentle and unassuming in her deportment, and her disposition amiable and affectionate. She was exceedingly romantic, and her mental powers were almost, if not entirely uncultivated; still, she possessed sufficient strength of character to enable her to form a ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... my dears?" asked Miss Merivale from her seat by the fire. Pauline turned round with a little stare. Miss Merivale was so quiet and unassuming a personage that she had got into the habit of ignoring her. "Of Clare's new amusement, Miss Merivale," she said, with a laugh. Her laugh, like her voice, was a trifle hard. "It was scientific dressmaking when I was at Woodcote last, you remember, Rose dear. Now it ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... "The style is quiet, simple, free from all rhetorical and poetical ornament, and the expression in speaking of similar objects has an epic uniformity. Impressive as many pieces are, just from their unassuming simplicity and objectivity, there is nowhere any apparent effort to produce effect or to raise the interest of the reader by the resources of literary art." For an opposite opinion compare Lichtenberg, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... that up to three weeks ago I believed Miss Portheris to be the incarnation of so many unassuming virtues and personal charms that I was almost ready to make a fresh bid for domestic happiness in her society. I have for some ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... one another. Mr. Engelman believed Mr. Keller to be the most accomplished and remarkable man in Germany. Mr. Keller was as firmly persuaded, on his side, that Mr. Engelman was an angel in sweetness of temper, and a model of modest and unassuming good sense. Mr. Engelman listened to Mr. Keller's learned talk with an ignorant admiration which knew no limit. Mr. Keller, detesting tobacco in all its forms, and taking no sort of interest in horticulture, submitted to the fumes ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... recently returned home, after a protracted absence of several years, beyond the mountains, whither they had been sent by their ambitious parents, "to attend college and see the world." Stone was a quiet, modest, unassuming young man, rather handsome, but too pale and thin to be decidedly so. Having made the most of his opportunities at "William and Mary," he had come home well-educated (for that day and country) and polished by intercourse with ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... and breadth of Paris there is a really quiet, peaceful street, a refuge for the thoughtfully inclined, it is surely the broad Rue d'Ulm, which starts from the Place du Pantheon, and finishes abruptly at the Rue des Feuillantines. The shops are unassuming, and so few that one can easily count them. There is a wine-shop on the left-hand side, at the corner of the Rue de la Vieille-Estrapade; then a little toy-shop, then a washerwoman's and then a book-binder's establishment; ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... gorgeous magnolia, in luxuriant bloom, and a thousand other evergreens, on shore, vie with voluptuous aquatic flowers to bewilder and delight the astonished traveller, accustomed hitherto only to the more unassuming productions of the sober north. Everything here was new, strange, and solemn. The gigantic trees, encircled by enormous vines, and heavily shrouded in grey funereal moss, mournfully waving in the breeze—the doleful night-cry of the death-bird and the whip-poor-will—the distant bugle of the ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... the atmosphere of an old-fashioned English parsonage—the quietness, the well-bred but simple air of it, with a tang of scholarly mustiness, the whole of a fragrance never entirely lost to those who have known it intimately. Something of the spirit of George Herbert, that homely gentleman of unassuming saintliness, the epitome of everything that was best and most characteristic in the Anglican Church, has descended on country parsonages ever since and is only now beginning to wear thin. And it was ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... segment carries a similar belt, but a much less powerful one, consisting of a single row of unassuming thorns. The belt is weaker still on the seventh segment; lastly, on the eighth, it is reduced to a mere rough brown shading. Commencing with the sixth, the rings decrease in width and the abdomen ends in a cone, the extremity of which, formed of the ninth segment, constitutes a weapon of a new kind. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... an unassuming, lovable and scholarly Suabian. He laid the foundations of St. Paul's in Harlem, when the little wooden church stood among the truck gardens. He ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... of a piece charmingly harmonious in tone and closely woven together.... The book has a perfect ending.... Few living writers achieve so great a range of sentiment, with so uniformly light and unassuming a manner." ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... in regard to the Near East, with which he was intimately acquainted. A member of the English bar, and the last court of appeal to which Home Office and Foreign Office alike came in troubled times, the brass plate upon the door of his unassuming premises in Chancery Lane conveyed little or nothing ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... the modest, unassuming countenance shown in the illustration which accompanies this sketch, one can imagine the surprised question to which the King answers in the last day: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... unassuming as he was, was ready to do justice to Sarah, and he conferred full power upon her to dispose of Hagar according to her pleasure. He added but one caution, "Having once made her a mistress, we cannot again reduce her to the state of a bondwoman." ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... thought Madison was a rather irritating man. Likable but irritating. He's too good looking in an unassuming masculine way to dress so neatly—it makes him look like a mannequin. That polite way of his of using small words slowly and distinctly proves that he loves his fellow man—even if his fellow always does have less brains or authority than Madison himself. That belief would be forgivable in ...
— Measure for a Loner • James Judson Harmon
... interested in him, as his manners were those of a perfect gentleman: kind, generous, hospitable, humane, dignified, and pleasing, abounding in information on all the various subjects and incidents of the day, very modest and unassuming, and delighting in society at his own house. I have seen him frequently. His head was covered with a thick suit of white hair, which gave him a very dignified and venerable appearance. His dress was uniformly of superfine broadcloth, made in the old style of a plain coat, with ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... Forrester's "Widow's Message to her Son" is, I think, one of the finest and most heart-stirring poems we possess. I have often listened with pleasure to Arthur Forrester, when he used to come to address the "boys" in Liverpool. On one of those occasions Michael Davitt was with him, a modest, unassuming young man, with but little to say, although he was to make afterwards a more important figure in the world than his friend. Forrester was a young fellow full of pluck, and made a desperate resistance when, a boy, he was first ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... that there was a greater amount of talent in the woman's rights convention than has characterized any public gathering in this city during the last ten years, if ever before. The appearance of all the ladies was modest and unassuming, though prompt, energetic and confident. Business was brought forward, calmly deliberated upon and discussed with unanimity and in a spirit becoming true women, which would add an unknown dignity to the transactions of public associations of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... resemble the high blown ambition of the favourite courtier, the successful gallant, and the bold warrior than the submissive, unassuming mediciner, who seemed even to court and delight in insult; whilst, in his secret soul, he felt himself possessed of a superiority of knowledge, a power both of science and of mind, which placed ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... cheerfully defer everything if mamma was likely to suffer from it; but it was very evident that their happiness was greatly augmented when told that it would not be necessary. The wedding occurred on the 28th, in the Heath chapel. It was, of course, very quiet and unassuming, though the bride was lovely in her robe of white satin, exquisitely decorated with Chantilly lace, and wreath of heath, which it has always been the custom for the brides of the house to wear. William looked as noble as ever, and our good old rector made the service ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... eternal honour of these unhappy, but excellent people, be it said, that they have proved themselves worthy of being received in such a sanctuary. Our country has enjoyed the benefit of their unblemished morals, and their mild, polite, and unassuming manners, and wherever destiny has placed them, they have industriously relieved the national burden of their support by diffusing the knowledge of a language, which good sense, and common interest, should long since have considered as a ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... cool and calm demeanour lurked fierce and passionate fires. As she passed through the wards in her plain dress, so quiet, so unassuming, she struck the casual observer simply as the pattern of a perfect lady; but the keener eye perceived something more than that— the serenity of high deliberation in the scope of the capacious brow, the sign of power ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... unassuming!' said Lady Elizabeth. 'I little expected Arthur Martindale's marriage to have ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... valley of Elah, in hearing of the guttural defiance of the giant. At this critical hour, when something must be done, when some special but heretofore untried effort must be put forth to avert the impending destruction, a MAN of the Brethren, unassuming in all respects, about five feet seven inches in height, heavy-set, with a large but symmetrical face, hair down to the neck beautifully parted from the forehead across the middle of the head, voluntarily sets to work in secret through the mails to see what can be ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... genial, unassuming, straightforward Hermit which touched the fellows on their soft side, and made them accept him with pride as a representative of the truest Templeton spirit. They might not, perhaps, love him as fondly as they loved dear old lazy Ponty, ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... way worthy of any confidence I might repose in him. In moderate circumstances, he used prudence and diligence in his business transactions and farm operations. He was one of those kind of men some of which may be found in almost every community—an unassuming, industrious, Christian gentleman. ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... under the bridge. He was just that, a small man, prided himself upon it and was frequent in his boast: "I'm a small man, Carrie. I don't hope to make a big or showy success of it. Just a comfortable and unassuming living is about all I expect to get out of it, and ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... was a hotel of the second class but many nice people stopped there. Among the regular guests was Senator Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, afterwards elected vice-president on the ticket with Grant. He was a very modest man, plain in dress and unassuming in manner. No one would have suspected from his bearing that he was a senator and from the great commonwealth of Massachusetts. The colleague of Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson was at that time one of the ablest, most widely-known and influential statesmen of his day. Conspicuous ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... entreat you, brother. Do not make her of more consequence than she ought to be. At present she is modest and unassuming: ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... which brings to her side not only the society girl but the serious art-student and young teacher? What is the magnet which draws so many pupils to her that five assistants are needed to prepare those who are not yet ready to profit by her instruction? When I came in touch with this modest, unassuming woman, who greeted me with simple cordiality, and spoke with quiet dignity of her work, I felt that the only magnet was the ability to impart definite ideas in ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... return he was carried triumphantly into the Presidency; the burning questions of his brief term of office were the proposed admission of California as a free State and the extension of slavery into the newly-acquired territory; was a man of strong character, a daring and skilful general, of unassuming manners, and loved by the mass of the people, to whom he was known as "Old Rough and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... this usage, which they practise in common with many thousand most estimable citizens, the Vermont gentleman, and the Kentucky whiskered lady—or did I say the reverse?—whichever you like my dear sir—were quite quiet, modest, unassuming people. She sat working with her needle, if I remember right. He, I suppose, slept in the great cabin, which was seventy feet long at the least, nor, I am bound to say, did I hear in the night any snores or roars, such as you would fancy ought to accompany the sleep ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... intentions, though it took every shilling I had put by, and we lost more than one fare by so doing. But the wherry looked so fresh and gay, that we hoped to make up for it the next week. Jim went to chapel on the Sunday with Mary and Nancy and me, and spent most of the day with us. He was so quiet and unassuming that we all liked him much. As we had put plenty of dryers in the paint, and the sun was hot on Sunday, by Monday forenoon we were able to ply as usual. We had taken a fare across to Gosport, when a person, whom we supposed to be a gentleman from ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... An unassuming book, still one of those which grip the reader from beginning to end. When the author started to write his daily impressions and adventures, it was to keep in touch with his people, to quiet those who feared for his safety every moment, and at the same time to give them a clear ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... great favorite with us, and with all the officers of the regiment. He talked less than any man I ever knew, but there was nothing sinister or sullen in his reticence. It was sunshine,—warmth and brightness, but no voice. Unassuming and modest to the verge of shyness, he impressed every one as a man of singular ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... efforts to be homely and unassuming, Gideon Birkenshaw was not always entirely at his ease in his presence. The old man recognized that his own upbringing and education had been sadly deficient and that his roughness of speech and manners ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... of the undertaking Champlain, its guiding spirit, was eminently qualified for his position. Wise, as energetic; persevering, as enterprising; brave in reverse, as unassuming in. success, he laid his plans with consummate prudence and carried them out with unwavering constancy. Disinterested, honourable and patriotic, he suffered no secret view of personal advantage to narrow his mind or mar his usefulness. Looking on his work as the work of ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... behaviour is also frequently exhibited by the Aborigines in their natural state, in the modest unassuming manner in which they take their positions to observe what is going on, and in a total absence of any thing that is rude or offensive. It is true that the reverse of this is also often to be met with; but I think it will usually be found that it is among natives who have before been in contact ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... on the land and on the water. The recent annual report of Mr. Chase, though chiefly confined to a simple statement of facts and figures, is like the account of some great victorious campaign, submitted by the unassuming officer who conducted it. The achievements of the Treasury are in fact the greatest of all our victories; they underlie and sustain the prowess of our armies, while they signalize the confidence and the patriotism of our whole people. Without them the peril ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... singing was peculiar. The evangelist, a man of apparently very simple, unassuming style, spoke a few words, and he was followed by a fine-looking man, the Rev. Henry Maxwell, pastor of the First Church of Raymond. Mr. Maxwell spoke of the fact that the dead woman had been fully prepared to go, ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... agent, Major George Stouch, I found him to be a veteran officer of the regular army "On Special Duty," a middle-aged, pleasant-faced man of unassuming dignity whose crooked wrist (caused by a bullet in the Civil War) gave him a touch of awkwardness; but his eyes were keen, and ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... let us hope that the day will come in which she also may once again trick her beams in some modest, unassuming way, and that for her the morning may even yet be sweet with a glad warmth. For us, here in these pages, it must be sufficient to say this ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... medallist of the year before, Razumov, the young man of no parentage, was sobered. He and some others happened to be assembled in their comrade's rooms at the very time when that last received the official advice of his success. He was a quiet, unassuming young man: "Forgive me," he had said with a faint apologetic smile and taking up his cap, "I am going out to order up some wine. But I must first send a telegram to my folk at home. I say! Won't the old people make it a festive time ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... of spirit which disdained everything mean and servile. He had an extraordinary command of language, and always imparted his thoughts in a peculiarly impressive and eloquent manner. Those who had the happiness to experience the delights of his conversation will long recollect with pleasure his unassuming modesty, and the rich stores of knowledge he poured forth on the most instructive topics. Even when his opinions were solicited, they were given, not as the dictates or admonitions of a superior, but as the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... blonde hair, and eyes of that peculiar blue which burns warm, instead of cold, under excitement,—in the few minutes of our interview the picture was fixed, and remains so. His manner was quiet, natural, and unassuming: he received us with the simple good-breeding which a gentleman always possesses, whether we find him on a throne or beside an anvil. Not a man to assert his claim loudly, or to notice injustice or neglect by a single spoken word; but one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... level, and who spoke smoothly and loftily about "station" and "position" and "the working classes," but the young Holts were not among them. Elizabeth and Clifton deserved less credit than was given them on account of their unassuming and agreeable manners with the village people, for they did not need to assert themselves as some others did. Miss Elizabeth, for all her unpretending ways, was the great lady of the village, and liked it, and very likely would ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... too figurative and imposing for the parish, but it ran henceforward in our modest speech, "He's a cautious body." Cautious, with us, meant unassuming, kindly obliging, as well as much more; and I still hear Drumsheugh pronouncing this final judgment of the glen on Lachlan as we parted at his grave ten years later, and adding, "He 'ill be sair missed ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... and carried out with real understanding of its needs. The individuality of the owner is of course a factor. Unfortunately the word individuality is often confounded with eccentricity and to many people it means putting perfectly worthy and unassuming articles to startling uses. By individuality one should really mean the best expression of one's sense of beauty and the fitness of things, and when it is guided by the laws of harmony and proportion the result is usually one of great charm, convenience, and comfort. These qualities ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... of the most distinguished of portrait painters; but there was only one painter for Jocelyn—his own memory. All that was eminent in European surgery addressed him in the person of that harmless and unassuming fogey whose hands had been inside the bodies of hundreds of living men; but the lily-white corpse of an obscure country-girl chilled the interest of discourse with such a king ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... the exercise of his official duties, this truly great man had the strength to resist all temptations to swerve from the path of right; if, when duty was at stake, he was as rigid as iron, in private life he was as unassuming as a child, and kind and gentle even to ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... helped me bear the daily grinding Of soul with body, heart with heated brain; Nothing to show the purpose of this blinding And sometimes overwhelming sense of pain. And then, dear friend, I thought of thee, so lowly, So unassuming, and so gently kind, And lo! a peace, a calm serene and holy, ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... contrary, he took a leading part in the formation of a new anti-slavery society that was established in opposition to those extremists. He was the president of that new society for many years. Mr. Tappan used the same quiet and unassuming methods in giving his time, influence, and money to the anti-slavery cause as he did to the other ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 3, March, 1896 • Various
... most agreeable resources for amusement in his lonely evenings; for Sheridan's well-informed, animated, and bustling mind never suffered conversation to stagnate; and Mrs Sheridan was a most agreeable companion to an intellectual man. She was sensible, ingenious, unassuming, yet communicative. I recollect, with satisfaction, many pleasing hours which I passed with her {97} under the hospitable roof of her husband, who was to me a very kind friend. Her novel, entitled Memoirs ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... and grey and white, which seemed to be chiefly flint; but the corners and settings of the windows and of the door-ways, and the chimneys, were of brick. There was something sombre about it, and many perhaps might call it dull of aspect; but it was substantial, comfortable, and unassuming. It was entered by broad stone steps, with iron balustrades curving outwards as they descended, and there was an open area round the house, showing that the offices were in the basement. In these days it was a quiet house enough, as Mr. ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... and 1766, John Wesley, on his northern circuit, visited this unassuming little village and preached in the pulpit of the parish church. A circular sun-dial bearing the motto "We stay not," and the date 1782, appears above the porch, and the church is entered by a fine old ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... they have so acted. These incarnations of the commonplace, the object of the disdain, before the war, of the self-styled "intellectuals"—if the war sweeps the insufferable term into oblivion it will have done some good—these honest unassuming gentlemen have responded heroically to the great appeal; and when the intellectuals have thought of their intellects or their skins, they have thought only of their duty. And it was only the heroical sense of duty that sustained Sir Anthony ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... course, an excursion to the great volcano of Kilauea, of which Miss Bird has furnished a singularly fine description. Lady Brassey's sketch is not so elaborate or powerful or fully coloured, but it has a charm of its own in its unassuming simplicity. Let us go with her on a visit to the two craters, the old ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... Duke's escutcheon, as well as other more commendable details of his life, were duly noted down by the zealous Mr. Eames who, in addition, had the good fortune to receive as a gift from his kindly but unassuming friend Count Caloveglia a quaint portrait of the prince, hitherto unknown—an engraving which he purposed to reproduce, together with other fresh iconographical material, in his enlarged and fully annotated edition of the ANTIQUITIES. The print depicts His Highness full face, seated on a throne ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... "went with me to a dinner at Mr. Bevan's country-house, Rougham Rookery, and placed me in an extremely awkward position. Mr. Bevan was a Suffolk banker, a partner of Mr. Oakes. He was one of the kindest and most benevolent of men. His wife was gentle, unassuming, attentive to her guests. A friend of Borrow, the heir to a very considerable estate, had run himself into difficulties and owed money, which was not forthcoming, to the Bury banking-house; and in order to secure ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... a modest and unassuming fireman in the offices of the Intelligence Section, General Staff, is now recognized as one of the best fighting units in the A.E.F. Report has it that he was one of the best bets on the Border, where he served in the Body Snatchers—with a long ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... is concerned, I see nothing whatever to wish different; but am glad to believe that, for my day and long after, he will remain the same unassuming, careless-hearted creature that he now is. If I may be allowed the paradox, it would be too bad for him to change, even for the better. But the bluebird, who like the titmouse is hardly to be accounted ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... truth, the transparent honesty of the man, the supreme contempt with which he could look down upon anything poor or mean or low, the firmness and simplicity with which he assumes high office, the faithfulness, the unassuming devotion, that he carries into the fulfilment of the trust. Take him all the way through, study his character and admire, and you are a worshipper of ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... that every kind of writing demands simplicity, but the simplicity meant is such as does not exclude sublimity or vehemence. In fact, it is no less faulty to treat high and weighty subjects in a slight and unassuming style than it is to treat what is slight and unassuming in a high and weighty style. In both of these ways one departs from that agreement with nature in which, we have said, beauty resides. Therefore, not every piece of writing admits ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... pleased Roger more, I am sure—he told me with that queer, little whimsical grimace of his that it cleared his conscience to feel he was leaving you something! What a personality he has, and how, in his quiet unassuming way, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... widow of a government official, had a small fortune besides her pension, and lived in her own little house opposite the hotel close by the market. She was an unassuming woman, whose husband had influenced her in everything; he had been her pride, her light, and when she lost him, the object of her life was gone; she became absorbed in religion; but, as she was not dictatorial, she allowed her only ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... excellence, and of whom I shall here say a few words; I mean Crabbe, and Robert Bloomfield, the author of the Farmer's Boy. As a painter of simple natural scenery, and of the still life of the country, few writers have more undeniable and unassuming pretensions than the ingenious and self-taught poet, last-mentioned. Among the sketches of this sort I would mention, as equally distinguished for delicacy, faithfulness, and naivete, his description of lambs racing, of the pigs going out an ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... makes us acquainted, it forms a series of unpremeditated conclusions on almost all subjects that can be brought before it, as just as they are of ready application to human life; and common sense is the name of this body of unassuming but practical wisdom. Common sense, however, is an impartial, instinctive result of truth and nature, and will therefore bear the test and abide the scrutiny of the most severe and patient reasoning. It is indeed incomplete without it. By ingrafting reason on feeling, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... laughing; "come, you are getting all at sea with your memory of the flight of time, it goes so rapidly with you. Annunciata is a maiden of nineteen, beautiful as the sun, modest, submissive, inexperienced in love, for she has hardly ever seen a man. She will cling to you with childlike affection and unassuming devotion." "I will see her, I will see her," exclaimed the Doge, whose eyes again beheld the picture of the beautiful Annunciata which ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... stolid confidence, amounting almost to contempt, which struck a chill to the hearts of the School bowlers. It did worse. It induced them to bowl with the sole object of getting the conversationalist at the batting end, thus enabling the professional to pile up an unassuming but rapidly increasing score by ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... yourself known, it is no longer the thing to quietly hand out your card and a modest credential; you must advance with a trumpet and blow a brazen blast to shake the stars. The time has gone by when self-advancement can be gained by modest and unassuming methods. To stand with lifted hat and solicit a hearing savors of an all too humble spirit. The easily abashed may starve in a garret, or go die on the highways. There is no chance for them in the jostle of life. The gilded circus chariot, with a full ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... suspicions and jealousies, and at one time, when they were on the brink of open war, she effected a reconciliation between them by the most courageous and energetic, and at the same time, gentle and unassuming efforts. At the time of this danger she was with her husband in Greece; but she persuaded him to send her to her brother at Rome, saying that she was confident that she could arrange a settlement of the difficulties impending. Antony ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... breeze oil the French shore to a British barque cruising dully in the Channel. She welcomed the sight of Mr. Prohack, and her greeting of him made a considerable change in the managerial attitude towards the unassuming Terror of the departments. The manager respectfully informed Lady Massulam that Lord Partick was indisposed, and respectfully took himself off. Lady Massulam and Mr. Prohack then proceeded to treat each other ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... callers are sure to come. Wear a stocking with a hole in it, you will find it necessary to take your boot off before night. There is the greatest need among girls of a more entire consecration to certain humble, homely, housewifely duties. The wearing torment of discontent with unassuming work arises not from lack of ambition, but from scorn of what one has to do. I sometimes think this reaching out after the unattainable is worse for a girl than passive indifference to what she might acquire. A large part of the success a ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... expressing dissent.' He was much liked by Hazlitt, for they had mutual friends, and Mouncey had been intimate with most of the wits and men about town for twenty years before. 'He had in his time known Tobin, Wordsworth, Porson, Wilson, Paley, and Erskine. He would speak of Paley's pleasantry and unassuming manners, and describe Porson's deep potations and long quotations at the "Cider Cellars."' Warming with his theme, Hazlitt goes on in his essay to etch one memorable evening at the 'Southampton.' A few only were left, 'like stars at break of day,' ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... tones would be almost disagreeable; yet it was by means of his tones, and the happy modulation of his voice, that his speaking perhaps had its greatest effect. He had a happy articulation, and a clear, distinct, strong voice; and every syllable was distinctly uttered. He was very unassuming as to himself, amounting almost to humility, and very respectful towards his competitor; the consequence was that no feeling of disgust or animosity was arrayed against him. His exordiums in particular were often ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim that "a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall." So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... seven potentates who elected him. It was also his duty to provide two huge tanks of wine, one containing the ruby liquor pressed out at Assmannshausen; the other the straw-colored beverage that had made Hochheim famous. These tanks were connected by pipes with the plain, unassuming fountain standing opposite the Town Hall in that square called the Romerberg. The moment an election took place Herr Durnberg turned off the flow of water from the fountain, and turned on the flow of wine, thus for an hour and a half there poured from the northward pointing spout ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... only eleven years old, of the great family of Orsini (Fabius Ursinus). First young, Fabio Orsini sang; then recited verses of his own: requested to turn the verse into prose, he repeated the same thoughts unfettered by measure in an unassuming manner, and with an appropriate and choice flow of expression. After that subjects were proposed to him for epistolary correspondence, on which he was to dictate ex tempore to five amanuenses at once, the subjects ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... unassuming race, and, indeed, I am fain to confess, were not held in more esteem by mortals than are our sweet cousins whom children call 'Bird's-eyes.' But some one made known to the world that pathetic 'Legend of the Rhine,' in which we are described, then people began ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... because he does not disclose all his greatness, especially to the large number of those who are beneath him, since, as also the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 3), "it belongs to a magnanimous man to be great towards persons of dignity and affluence, and unassuming towards the middle class." In the fourth place, it is said that he cannot associate with others: this means that he is not at home with others than his friends: because he altogether shuns flattery ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... sincere affection, and had the highest admiration of his endowments, both of mind and heart, and of his pure and noble devotion of all his powers to the highest purposes of life. One could not fail to be impressed with his simple, loving, Christian spirit, and the combined modest, unassuming, and ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... self-made American, a big business man or captain of industry, as he sat at his work desk, the telephone at his elbow, the electric push-buttons and reams of neat reports adding to the illusion. Quiet, unassuming, and democratic, he yet makes the same impression of virility and colossal energy that Colonel Roosevelt does, but with an iron restraint of discipline which the American never possessed, and an earnestness of face and eye that I had only seen matched in his Commander in Chief, the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... are remarkable for excessively long claws and very shark-like teeth. In this, however, we do not blame England, but agree with Dean Swift who asserted, that in his day, she uniformly selected the most unassuming, learned and pious individuals she could get; fitted them out as became such excellent Christian men, and sent them over with the best intentions imaginable, to instruct the Irish in all Christian truth and humility. It so happened, however, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... made his fortune in his own mind, he was so unassuming with it that I felt quite grateful to him for not being puffed up. It was a pleasant addition to his naturally pleasant ways, and we got on famously. In the evening we went out for a walk in the streets, and went half-price to the Theatre; and next day we went ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... finest figures, as an elderly gentleman (for he died at 82), that could possibly be seen. His stature was tall and frame robust; his gait was firm; his countenance was Roman-like; his manners were conciliatory, and his language was unassuming. His habits were simple and perhaps severe. He generally rose at five, and lighted his own library fire—and his health was manifest in his person and countenance. He was entirely an unpretending man—and may be said to have collected ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... or two after he resumed in the same unassuming voice, like a man thinking his way. "Of course you can't think of such a man, until you do think of him. That's where his cleverness comes in. But I came to think of him through two or three little things in the tale Mr. Angus told us. First, there was the fact that this Welkin ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... and wholly consistent that I should choose an unassuming and grave lodging-house on my arrival at the place of my destination; for, apart from my predilection of religious tenets, quietude is closely allied to much thought; and while my training had made me desire the quietude as a part and portion of the best of life, friend Barbara had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... of Lucy Bargrove will never be prejudicial to me. I wish you knew what an unassuming girl she is, and yet so clever and well informed. Besides, mamma, have we not been playmates since we have been children? It would be cruel to break with her now, even if we felt so inclined. I could not ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... brief word of history, however, is necessary that it may be understood. In 1878, a young man, a graduate of one of the leading New England colleges, enlisted in the great army of A.M.A. teachers. He was a quiet, unassuming, Christian student. The amazing ignorance of the Southern people, both white and black, awoke his pity; and his love, for his Saviour, and for his country, led him to give himself to this most needy field. ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., June, 1888., No. 6 • Various
... threaded my doubtful way homewards, hounded by nameless terrors. The half-crowns happily remained solid and real to the touch; but could I hope to bear such treasure safely through the brigand-haunted wood? It was a dirty, weary little object that entered its home, at nightfall, by the unassuming aid of the scullery-window: and only to be sent tealess to bed seemed infinite mercy to him. Officially tealess, that is; for, as was usual after such escapades, a sympathetic housemaid, coming delicately by backstairs, stayed him with chunks of cold ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... Antiquities of Richborough, Reculver, and Lynne, written by Mr. Roach Smith and illustrated by Mr. Fairholt, which exhibits the results of recent discoveries of many remarkable Roman antiquities in Kent; and a brief, unassuming narrative of the Hudson's Bay Company's Expedition to the Shores of the Arctic Sea in 1846 and 1847, by the commander of the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... was of slight, diminutive person, and unsoldierlike appearance; his manners are represented as unassuming and social, and his temper as placid and forgiving. His public speeches or addresses are said to have partaken of even classical elegance, and his dispatches and general orders also afford proofs of his literary acquirements. Discredit can only be thrown on his character ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... for whom he had a high esteem, and whose talents and character afforded the fairest promise of what might one day be expected of him. Bonaparte was jealous of some generals, the rivalry of whose ambition he feared; but on this subject Desaix gave him no uneasiness; equally remarkable for his unassuming disposition, his talent, and information, he proved by his conduct that he loved glory for her own sake, and that every wish for the possession of political power was foreign to his mind. Bonaparte's friendship for him was enthusiastic. At this interview at Stradella, Desaix was closeted ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... I hope I have won her esteem, though I have never had the honour of eating pig's trotters and chou-croute with her on the pavement of the Rue Saint Honore. It is an honour from which, being an unassuming man, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... her head a simple withe of the cypress vine, whose green leaves and crimson buds contrasted well with her raven black hair. Yet never in all the splendor of her richest dress and rarest jewels had she looked more beautiful. The same good taste that governed her unassuming toilet withheld her from taking any prominent part in the festivities of the evening. She was courteous to all, solicitous for the comfort of her guests, yet not too officious. As if only to do honor to the most distinguished ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... apparent negligence, I went to see them the next day with M. Dandolo. Charles told me that his wife was idolized by his aunt and his sister who had become her bosom friend; that she was kind, affectionate, unassuming, and of a disposition which enforced affection. I was no less pleased with this favourable state of things than with the facility with which Christine was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... use of a dictionary; and many persons find it a source of great pleasure. The genealogy and biography of words are as fascinating to a devoted philologist as stamps to a philatelist or cathedrals to an architect. "Canteen" is quite an unassuming little word. Yet imperious Caesar knew it in its childhood. The Roman camp was laid out like a small city, with regular streets and avenues. On one of these streets called the "Via Quintana" all the supplies were kept. When the word passed ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... while I reluctantly directed my steps towards the college, which now appeared unwelcome and obtrusive. She was so different to everything I had hitherto experienced!—so gentle and kind—so unassuming, and yet so lovely—and now to be torn away and severed from such a person! That night I attempted to console myself in the following effusion; and as they are the first and last lines of which I was ever guilty, shall be here inserted; for though the versification ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... home she thought with maternal anxiety of her two boys; but the nearer she approached the unassuming quarter of the city where she lived the more vividly she felt that she did not belong there, but in the part of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "This unassuming style promotes study, that's why we adopt it," returned Laurie, who certainly could not be accused of vanity, having voluntarily sacrificed a handsome curly crop to ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... avoid observing, that when Ethelinde was there also, many of them would turn to her, and when once engaged in conversation with her, never again quit her side, for that of her friend. This was sufficient ground for her conceiving a rooted dislike to the unassuming and unsuspicious Ethelinde. ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... you, as I was myself surprised. In all my long experience, Mr. Winterfield is, I think, the most fascinating person I ever met with. Genial, unassuming manners, a prepossessing personal appearance, a sweet temper, a quaint humor delightfully accompanied by natural refinement—such are the characteristic qualities of the man from whom I myself saw Miss Eyrecourt (accidentally meeting him in public) recoil with dismay and disgust! ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... of the unassuming Smithers, and such were the happy effects of Scotch whiskey and Havannahs on that interesting person! But Mr. Thomas Potter, whose great aim it was to be considered as a 'knowing card,' a 'fast-goer,' and so forth, conducted himself in a very different manner, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... malprudente. Unadulterated nefalsita, pura. Unaffected neafekta, naiva, simpla. Unalloyed nemiksita. Unalterable nesxangxebla. Unanimity unuanimeco. Unanimous unuvocxa, unuanima. Unanimously unuvocxe, unuanime. Unassuming neafektema, modesta. Unavailing malutila. Unawares senatente. Unbar malbari, malfermi. Unbearable netolerebla. Unbecoming malkonvena. Unbelief malkredeco. Unbeliever malkredulo. Unbend (relax) distri, amuzi, cedi. Unbending (resolute) decidega, neceda. Unbiased senpartia. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... broad Scottish accent; gentle, modest, and unassuming manners; yet, when he entered a room, men of letters, men of science, nay, military men, artists, ladies, even little children, thronged round him. Ladies would appeal to him on the best means of devising grates, curing smoky chimneys, warming their houses, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... into his honest eyes again. Her heart kept hammering against her side, her blood burned in her cheeks, and she felt guilty and miserable. And yet she saw, in a sort of blind and unconscious way, that her escort was a very dazzling phenomenon, and in external finish much superior to her plain and unassuming lover. Gradually, as she accustomed herself to her novel situation, she began to bestow her furtive admiration upon the various ornaments which he carried about his person in the shape of scarf-pin and sleeve-buttons, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... advanced age; that he is non-committal, except upon such matters as he can commit to his private keeping; that his stomach in that respect has great capacity; that he is not over-nice in his diet; is plain and unassuming; is not puffed up, seeing that his hide will not much admit of it; and if he resemble himself to a log adrift, he considereth not what foolish creatures may alight upon his back, or swim within his jaws; he barks no invitation, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... quarrel with General Scott, which, by the first of November, drove the old hero into retirement and out of his pathway. The cabinet members who, wittingly or unwittingly, had encouraged him in this he some weeks later stigmatized as a set of geese. Seeing that President Lincoln was kind and unassuming in discussing military questions, McClellan quickly contracted the habit of expressing contempt for him in his confidential letters; and the feeling rapidly grew until it reached a mark of open disrespect. The same trait manifested ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... as a post whereon to display gold-threaded fabrics, of all the colours of the rainbow: sooner than wear such things, he would willingly resign his neck to the embraces of a halter. His study is to select a modest, unassuming choker, fine if you please, but without pretension as to pattern, and in colour harmonizing with his residual toggery: this he ties with an easy, unembarrassed air, so that he can conveniently look about him. Oxford men, we have observed, tie chokers better than any ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... story I wished to see the hero. That simple, unassuming act of devotion seemed to me more admirable than ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... had taught Bridget Clery cleanliness; at least, he had persuaded her to keep the f owls out of the kitchen, and he had put a paling in front of the house and made a little garden—an unassuming one, it is true, but a pleasant spot of colour in the summer-time—and he wondered how it was that Father Moran was not ashamed of its neglected state, nor of the widow's kitchen. These things were, after all, immaterial. What was important was ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... our acquaintance, and to thank my companion for a donation she had sent to the poor Protestants under his charge. His fine open, healthy countenance, and cheerful, good-humoured expression, gentlemanlike manners, and easy address, pleased us extremely; and the unassuming little wife, dressed in a cap like a bourgeoise—joining him in kind exclamations of sorrow at losing their friends of the moment—equally amused and gratified us with the naivete of the whole proceeding. I have no doubt that our apparition in that solitary town was quite ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... distracting the attention of the enemy and contributing in no small measure to their subsequent speedy defeat. This decision on the part of the Captain, strange to say, met with universal and unqualified approval; for Dick's unassuming demeanour and geniality of manner had long since made him popular and a general favourite, while his superior intelligence, his almost instinctive grasp of everything pertaining to a ship and her management, and his dauntless courage, marked ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... of her own family. Sir Halbert Glendinning and his household were not a little surprised at the change which a brief acquaintance with the world had produced in their former inmate, and rejoiced to find, in the pettish, spoiled, and presuming page, a modest and unassuming young man, too much acquainted with his own expectations and character, to be hot or petulant in demanding the consideration which was readily and voluntarily yielded to him. The old Major Domo Wingate was the first to sing his praises, to which Mistress ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... not like Frank. In fact, he was envious of Merriwell's popularity, although he did his best to keep the fact concealed. Being a sly, secretive person, it was but natural that Rains should come to be considered as modest and unassuming. In truth, he was not modest at all, for, in his secret heart, there was nothing that any one else could do that he did not believe he could do. And so, while appearing to be very modest, he was ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... ought not to think themselves nice, or pretty," said the child. "With us, to be vain is a fault, and we are taught to be modest and unassuming." ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... and your patriotic, not to say pious associates, that, for the Church's good, they resigned their stewardship in the Church, and were so offended at the course of the Presiding Elder, Rev. M. Goheen, than whom there is not a more modest, unassuming, conservative Christian gentleman in the Valley of Virginia, that, at a recent Quarterly Meeting there, they refused to attend church, or to hear him preach. This is just the spirit that actuates ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... Where have I got to? Ah, I remember. I said my father may not have been a hero, but he had a great deal of that sterling stuff in him which you find in really sterling people; and in addition, he performed his brave acts in a quiet, unassuming way, so that often enough they passed unnoticed; and when he had finished, he sank back into his perfectly simple life, and never marched about in metaphorical uniform with a drawn sword, and men before him beating drums, and banging cymbals, and blowing ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... honour and principle should be made to them. He is considered to be a man of great independence of character, and has the reputation of being very tenacious of his own opinions. In manner he is quiet and unassuming. He is a man of good fortune. Mrs. Adams comes of a considerable family in Mass., of the name of Brooks. The late wife of Mr. Edward Everett, who, as your L. is aware, has held the offices of Minister in London and Secretary ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams |
