"Undesirable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his sister and kept her sternly in view during every possible moment, but she was not sufficiently well dressed to be his sister. And his overcoat was buttoned suspiciously high. Was he to stroll out of the waiting-room and leave her abandoned, like some undesirable kitten, in the corner? The idea was ludicrous: she must be taken care of. Had she thrust herself upon him, enticed him, challenged him? Assuredly not; moved by some completely inexplicable influence, utterly alien to himself, his ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... two dollars a yard? Is the man a personal friend, that he wishes to make you a present of a dollar on the yard, or is there some reason why it is undesirable?" said I. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... contemporary not of the Prophet Isaiah, but of William the Conqueror. As for the setting—I am not an observant man—but I had an impression of much gold and silver and rare flora on the table, great gold frames enclosing (I doubt not) costly pictures on the walls, many desirable jewels on undesirable bosoms, strong though unsympathetic masculine faces, and such food and drink as Lucullus, poor fellow, did not live long enough ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... reintroduced. Without it, no consolation could be found except in the prospect of death and, awaiting that, in incidental natural satisfactions; whereby absorption in the Absolute might come to look not only impossible but distinctly undesirable. To make retreat out of human nature seem a possible vocation, this nature itself must, in some myth, be represented as unnatural; the soul that this life stifles must be said to come from elsewhere and to be fitted to breathe some element far rarer ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... turkey season—and he made himself quite useful. Having had some experience in working under surveyors, he gave the boys a good deal of valuable advice, and, what was of quite as much service, he proved very efficient in quieting the zeal of some ambitious, but undesirable, volunteer assistants. ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... me the souvenir, but that was all. Since that time I have waited. Nothing has come. I sent for word, and I learned that Jack Landis had betrayed his trust, fallen in love with some undesirable woman of the mining camp, denied my claim to any of the gold to which I had sent him. Unpleasant news? Yes. Ungrateful boy? Yes. But my mind is ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... both our interests it would be extremely undesirable that matters should be so left at this stage. I did not mean to say that if you should exceed the sum named in my letter to you by ten or twenty or even fifty pounds, there would be any difficulty between ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... about England, but he could imagine her making an undesirable sensation in Montreal ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... police vans. Some few remained who were packed in an omnibus. MM. Benoist d'Azy, Falloux, Piscatory, Vatimesail, were locked in the wheeled cells, as also Eugene Sue and Esquiros. The worthy M. Gustave de Beaumont, a great upholder of the cellular system, rode in a cell vehicle. It is not an undesirable thing, as we have said, that the legislator should taste of ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... than will pass a 3-1/2-inch ring, these larger stones will prove to be undesirable if placed on the road, as they are almost sure to work to the surface of the gravel layer and become a source of annoyance to the users of the road. Oversize stone can be removed while loading the gravel or while spreading it, if ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... hideous tragedy and calamitous shipwreck; and is served up with increased profusion of detail when the history of the passage is manuscripted to their homes and to their lovers. Here is an instance of this mania in an unusually exaggerated form. For obvious reasons it is undesirable that the name of the vessel, or the captain, should be mentioned here. The captain had a dream, or, as he stated, a vision, when off Cape Horn bound to Valparaiso in a barque belonging to a South Wales port. The vessel had been tossed about for days with nothing ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... through a back-yard which is reached by climbing a wall. Sweeny's front door was always shut on Sundays and his shutters were put up during those hours when the law regards the consumption of alcohol as undesirable. But the sergeant had good reason to suppose that many thirsty people found their way to the refreshment they craved through the back-yard. Sweeny was an object of suspicion and dislike to the sergeant. Therefore he stirred the gravel on the quay again and ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... not only an able man, he was also a man of deep piety, a qualification not altogether undesirable in a shepherd of souls. His writings indicate that in his preaching and catechization he strove not to beat the air but to win souls to a ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... examine the statements of Hester Dyett. Now, it is immediately comprehensible to me that the evidence of this woman at the public examinations was looked at askance. There can be no doubt that she is a poor specimen of humanity, an undesirable servant, a peering, hysterical caricature of a woman. Her statements, if formally recorded, were not believed; or if believed, were believed with only half the mind. No attempt was made to deduce anything ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... the doctor; for through all this time she had been in a state of confusion—as he knew—that made speech undesirable, though she had spoken. And she didn't answer him now, except by ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... mind from the time he begins to read, or to listen to his mother reading; and with description of facts and actual events should be mingled charming and uplifting products of the imagination. To try to feed the minds of children upon facts alone is undesirable and unwise. The immense product of the imagination in art and literature is a concrete fact with which every educated human being should be made somewhat familiar, that product being a very real part ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... over into the reserve fund of the twenty parts of the profits set aside to be so paid, and ordering these twenty parts also to be paid over to the members semi-annually. The reserve fund had already reached proportions which made it unnecessary and even undesirable to increase it. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... present limitations to give them the full discussion they deserve. Starting from the dictum that physical inheritance provides the mechanism of intellect, education and training of any kind prove to be effective as agents for developing hereditary qualities or for suppressing undesirable tendencies. Just as wind-strewn grains of wheat may fall upon rock and stony soil and loam, to grow well or poorly or not at all according to their environmental situations, so children with similar intellectual possibilities would have their growth fostered or hampered ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... contrast most sharply with our own times, was confidence.... In party politics this confidence was almost without limit. There was a section of Conservatism which really believed in things as they were, and thought it undesirable to attempt any change for the better.... It was simply—I speak of a section, not the party as a whole—the articulate emotion of privileged and contented people and their parasites, and its denomination as 'stupid' was an accurate ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... for he warned my mother and myself against making her acquaintance," said the girl. "He said she was a most undesirable person." ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... non-violent direct action, on the other hand, are definitely positive in their approach. Each seeks to effectuate a specified change in the policy of the person or group responsible for a situation which those who organize the non-violent action believe to be undesirable. However, even in such action the negative quality may appear. Satyagraha, for instance, insofar as it is a movement of opposition or "resistance" to British rule in India is negative, despite its positive objectives of establishing a certain type of government and economic ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... Petrograd passed and published abroad a resolution that in view of the victorious progress of the Russian armies across the Carpathians, the contemplated intervention of Italy in the war was belated and undesirable. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... that my friend, Mrs. Graham of the strenuous life and 30 pounds a year, should undertake the care of my aunts, to their mutual satisfaction. My last days in England were spent in either a thick London fog or an equally undesirable Scotch mist, which shrouded everything in obscurity, and made me long for the sunny skies and the clear atmosphere of Australia. I told my friends that in my country it either rained or let it alone. Indeed, the latest news from all Australia was ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... I! The daughter of a poet and the daughter of a convict are not comparable in the consequences of their conduct if their necessity may wear at times a similar aspect. Amongst these consequences I could perceive undesirable cousins for these dear healthy girls, and such like, possible, causes of ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... bill in language that will convey the exact meaning intended, and that will not involve undesirable and unexpected results, is a difficult matter that requires the skill of men ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... pride at his own good fortune in being able to introduce a Lord immediately after a Duke, and offering Walden, as it were, with an expressive wave of his hand, to a pale young gentleman, who seemed seriously troubled by an excess of pimples on his chin, and who plucked nervously at one of these undesirable facial addenda as his name was uttered. Walden acknowledged his presence with silent composure, as he did the wide smile and familiar nod of his brother minister, the Reverend 'Putty,' whose truly elephantine proportions were encased ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... make but a short stage to-day," said Maitre Leroux. "In truth, I am unwilling to travel late in the evening, and prefer stopping at the house of a friend to taking up our quarters at an inn where we might meet with undesirable companions." ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... doctrine or belief that in the system of things all that happens, the undesirable no less than the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the dog, if you want to," said Mrs. Ess Kay, "unless we find out that he's been sent by someone undesirable, and then of course the Duchess would expect me to see that ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... The town is small, the population a miserable mixture of black, white, and indian elements. Few of the couples living there have been legally married. The parish is one of the worst in the whole diocese. The bishop warned the padre that it was an undesirable field, but it was the only one then unoccupied. But the padre was working wonders and the church was then undergoing repairs and decorations. The actual curato was long ago seized by the government and is now used as a schoolhouse. The priest lived in a rented ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... that in the telegram so as not to shock dear Mrs. Herriton. But it is true. He is a younger branch. Of course families ramify—just as in yours there is your cousin Joseph." She adroitly picked out the only undesirable member of the Herriton clan. "Gino's father is courtesy itself, and rising rapidly in his profession. This very month he leaves Monteriano, and sets up at Poggibonsi. And for my own poor part, I think what people are is what matters, but ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... suspicious of Michael's affection for his tutor at Eton, distrustful of the intimacies Michael formed with boys, and, later on, with men of his own age. Wentworth had nipped a few of these incipient friendships in the bud. He vaguely felt that each case, judged by its own merits, was undesirable. Some of these friendships he had not been able to nip. These he ignored; among that number was Michael's affection for his godfather, the Bishop of Lostford. Michael's boyish passion for Fay, Wentworth had never divined. ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... we, of course, must choose their friends for them—nice, well-behaved ladies and gentlemen, the parents of respectable children; because left to themselves—well, you know what they are! They would just as likely fall in love with quite undesirable people—men and women we could not think of having about the house. We will select for them companions we feel sure will be the most suitable for them; and if they don't like them—if Uncle William says he can't bear the girl we have invited up ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... greatest number of entries in their "conduct sheets" the selection was made. This was greatly deplored, for the reason that many men who were frequent offenders in a minor way were excellent soldiers in the line. On the other hand, the real undesirable was sufficiently astute to keep free from ordinary military "crime." Nevertheless, his presence in the ranks was a continual menace to the preservation of order and to the peace and property of individuals. Experience later proved that to the failure to thoroughly ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... in the various oils and fats from 0.2 to 2.0 per cent. All oils and fats contain more or less free acidity; but excess of acidity, though it may be due to the decomposition of the glyceride, and does not always denote rancidity, is undesirable in soap-making material. Rancidity of fats and oils is entirely due to oxidation, in addition to free acid, aldehydes and ketones being formed, and it has been proposed to estimate rancidity by determining the amount of these latter produced. It is scarcely necessary to observe how very important ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... that she must join the others if she did not wish her absence to excite undesirable comment, and going out she came face to face with Sally in the corridor. The girl stopped, and saw ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... introduce, to a person of position, some one she does not care to know, especially on shipboard, in hotels, or in other very small, rather public, communities where people are so closely thrown together that it is correspondingly difficult to avoid undesirable acquaintances who have been given the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... final diameter of seedlings was smaller. There was little difference in seedlings from nuts planted one and two inches deep but they were noticeably larger than those planted 3 and 4 inches deep. Planting nuts with the radicle end down invariably produced seedlings with undesirable crooks in the root-stem region which made them unsuitable for grafting. Planting nuts radicle end up produced straighter seedlings than planting them on their side. The latter method was the most economical for ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... I think of the name in connection with the old days, there was a drunken fellow. To be sure, an awful blackguard, continually before the bench. Dear me! Well, well, but a man is not responsible for his undesirable relations, I hope." ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... any confidence the merchant service as an adequate naval recruiting ground in the event of war, even though we are ready to substitute for the system of 'impressment'—which is now considered both undesirable and impossible—rewards likely to attract volunteers. The importance of the subject need not be dwelt upon. The necessity to a maritime state of a powerful navy, including abundant resources for manning it, is now no more disputed than the law of gravitation. ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... village of the same clan, and still more rarely is she of the same village, clan exogamy being the rule, and marriages within the clan, and still more within the village, being regarded as irregular and undesirable, and people who have contracted them being considered as ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... were you doing, Mabel?" questioned her mother. "Did you, too, pick up an undesirable acquaintance and march away into the gardens with her? Was your new friend also fresh, ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... rebuff which did not encourage him to meddle a second time in the internal economics of Roughborough. He therefore replied that he must either remove Ernest from Roughborough altogether, which would for many reasons be undesirable, or trust to the discretion of the head master as regards the treatment he might think best for any of his pupils. Ernest said no more; he still felt that it was so discreditable to him to have allowed any confession to be wrung ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... for cases where moral elevation, and not historic conviction, is the aim. It is, moreover, because the result, in the case under consideration, is deemed desirable that the affections are called upon to back it. If undesirable, they would, with equal right, be called upon to act the other way. Even to the disciplined scientific mind this would be a dangerous doctrine. A favourite theory—the desire to establish or avoid a certain n result—can so warp the mind as to ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... squadron save those the Breda had lost; that we had plenty of ammunition; that three or four of the enemy's ships had suffered injury and one was quite disabled and in tow. 'Twas all in vain. The most of them concurred with Captain Kirkby's opinion, that it was undesirable to continue the fight, nor could any reasoning turn them. And then they put their names to a paper, formally giving their opinion, and (though I did not know this till afterwards) Captain Fogg and my own old commander, Captain ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... of Schleppenheim, and as she did so in company with half the distinguished people in Europe, she was quite content to follow the course prescribed. In these days when everything is called into question, when social codes alter, and an undesirable fusion of human beings takes place in so many directions, it was positively refreshing to turn to Lady Chaloner, who not only did not know, but could not conceive that it mattered, what other people did in any layer of existence ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... which the stone is cut helps determine the quality of the blue color, as the "ordinary" ray (sapphire exhibits dichroism) is yellowish and ugly in color, and if allowed to be conspicuous in the cut stone, its presence, blending with the blue, may give it an undesirable greenish cast. Sapphires should usually be cut so that the table of the finished stone is perpendicular to the principal optical axis of the crystal. Another way of expressing this fact is that the table should cross the long axis of the ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... I shall go straight to the embassy,' said Bruce. 'No, I sha'n't. I'll send them back and write him a line—tell him that Englishwomen are not in the habit of accepting presents from undesirable aliens.... I consider it a great liberty. ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... on the part of your Majesty's Government, be allowed to raise a question about precedence with your Majesty's representative at Paris; it would be very inconvenient if that question were decided unfavourably to your Majesty's representative, and very undesirable that he should appear to be under obligation to the French Government for ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... good sense and good feeling and good taste, has the advantage of saving the drawbacks of lower motives, which are lower just because they have such drawbacks. You may get a man to do a desirable thing from undesirable motives; but those undesirable motives will induce him, the very next minute, to do some undesirable thing. The wages of good feeling and good taste is the satisfaction thereof. The wages of covetousness and ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... is joined with a singular verb; as, 'The pains they had taken was very great.' Clarendon. 'No pains is taken.' Pope. 'Great pains is taken.' Priestley. 'Much pains.' Bolingbroke."—Univ. and Crit. Dict. The multiplication of anomalies of this kind is so undesirable, that nothing short of a very clear decision of Custom, against the use of the regular concord, can well justify the exception. Many such examples may be cited, but are they not examples of false syntax? I incline to think "the best usage" would still make all these verbs plural. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... who did succeed in getting passes out of camp, the prospect was dreary enough, dreary or undesirable. Going into town in a crowded tram is an amusement which quickly palls. Various ill-defined portions of the town, when you got there, were out of bounds, and a man had need to walk warily if he did not want ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... concluded. "It is nice to read about and to enact on the stage, but it's altogether too unreliable for our solid, every-day world. Well, dear!" consolingly, "it's better to know the truth than to have gone on blindly talking to so undesirable an acquaintance!" ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... by heating iron until all the undesirable elements are burned out by air blasts which furnish the necessary oxygen. The iron is placed in a large retort called a converter, being poured, while at a melting heat, directly from the blast furnace into ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... ignoring and treating with contempt the local Courts and authorities by continually making all sorts of ridiculous and ex parte complaints to Her Majesty's Government in the first instance; Her Majesty's Government is also thereby placed in the equivocal and undesirable position of intermeddling in the internal affairs of this Republic, which is in conflict with the London Convention. Had the complaints been lodged with this Government, or with the proper officials or Courts, the facts could have been very easily arrived at, and ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... them, for they are aware that the labour is great and the glory moderate, and that the field is engrossed by clever specialists not too well disposed towards intruders. They see plainly there is no room for them here. The blunt uncompromising honesty of the scholars thus delivers them from undesirable company of a kind which the "historians" proper have still ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... Habits of submission make women, as well as men, servile-minded. The vast population of Asia do not desire or value—probably would not accept—political liberty, nor the savages of the forest civilization; which does not prove that either of these things is undesirable for them, or that they will not, at some future time, enjoy it. Custom hardens human beings to any kind of degradation, by deadening that part of their nature which would resist it. And the case of woman is, in this respect even, a peculiar one, for no other ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... prescribe opiates in acute cases, where the violence of the disorder would be apt to throw the patient into a fever or delirium? I aver, that my motive for this expedient was mercy; nor could it be any thing else. For a rape, thou knowest, to us rakes, is far from being an undesirable thing. Nothing but the law stands in our way, upon that account; and the opinion of what a modest woman will suffer rather than become a viva voce accuser, lessens much an honest fellow's apprehensions on that score. Then, if these somnivolencies ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... these theories. We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our own brain, where long meditation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... formed a friendship with the Algerine hero and exile Abd el Kadir, a dark, kingly-looking man who always appeared in snow white and carried superbly-jewelled arms; while Mrs. Burton, who had a genius for associating herself with undesirable persons, took to her bosom the notorious and polyandrous Jane Digby el Mezrab. [220] This lady had been the wife first of Lord Ellenborough, who divorced her, secondly of Prince Schwartzenberg, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... these theories. We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our own brain, where long meditation has fixt it in very undesirable distinctness. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... latter conducted the party quietly around the trench corner and into a sap leading directly out into No Man's Land. Twice the trench passed under broad belts of barbed wire, which we were cautioned to avoid with our helmets, because any sound was undesirable for ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... concepts good and bad. At the end a most surprising thing may happen. The moral values may get reversed in the boy's mind. Bad may come to represent the sum total of the satisfactory and desirable, while good may represent the sum total of the unsatisfactory and the undesirable. To the pained adult such a consequence is utterly inexplicable, only because he fails to realize that all mental products are developments. There is always a kind of reciprocity in emotional transfer. The value of the modified factor recoils to ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... faiths, all show how wide is the variance in feelings. With them no introspective [greek]cnzhi seauton overexcites the consciousness of self. But with us; as with those of old possessed of devils, it comes to startle and stays to distress. Too apt is it to prove an ever-present, undesirable double. Too often does it play the part of uninvited spectre at the feast, whose presence no one save its unfortunate victim suspects. The haunting horror of his own identity is to natures far less eccentric than Kenelm Chillingly's only too common a curse. To this companionship, paradoxical though ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... Minimum, And The Stationary State. 1. Abstraction of Capital not necessarily a national loss. 2. In opulent countries, the extension of machinery not detrimental but beneficial to Laborers. 3. Stationary state of wealth and population dreaded by some writers, but not in itself undesirable. Chapter V. On The Possible Futurity Of The Laboring-Classes. 1. The possibility of improvement while Laborers remain merely receivers of Wages. 2.—through small holdings, by which the landlord's ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... and title had offered himself. Was he to whine and despair because a jilt had fooled him? He had too much pride and courage for any such submission; he would accept the lot in life which was offered to him, no undesirable one surely; he would fulfil the wish of his father's heart, and cheer his kind declining years. In this way the marriage was brought about. It was but a whisper to Rosey in the drawing-room, a start and a ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... either side of the north-and-south line would be unequal. And though a slope towards north or south would not affect the equality of such shadows, and would therefore be admissible, yet it would clearly be altogether undesirable; since the avoidance of a slope towards east or west would be made much more difficult if the surface were tilted, however slightly, towards north or south. Apart from this, several other circumstances make it extremely desirable that the surface from which the astronomers ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... type. But none the less I could not help realizing that her present position was a singularly unfortunate one. To be alone in a big hotel, without maid or chaperon, herself caught up in this web of mystery which Louis and those others seemed to have woven around her, was in itself undesirable and unnatural. Whatever was transpiring, I was quite certain that her share in it was a passive one. She had been told to be silent, and she was silent. Nothing would ever make me believe that she was a party to any wrong-doing. And yet the ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... peculiar and special, and one to be thoroughly ashamed of. Nevertheless, Ann Veronica found it a difficult matter not to think of these things. However having a considerable amount of pride, she decided she would disavow these undesirable topics and keep her mind away from them just as far as she could, but it left her at the end of her school days with that wrapped feeling I have described, and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... four-legged dowry to the house of a man she may never have spoken twenty words to before her marriage. We praise our women for their virtue, but the general acceptance of the marriage as arranged shows so unemotional, so undesirable a temperament, that it is not to be wondered at. ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... his hostess making broth. The fracas with Dobson had done him all the good in the world, for it had cleared the problem of dubieties and had put an edge on his temper. But he realized that it made his continued stay in the cottage undesirable. He was now the focus of all suspicion, and the innkeeper would be as good as his word and try to drive him out of the place by force. Kidnapping, most likely, and that would be highly unpleasant, besides putting an end to his usefulness. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... come in my way a few other originals of a questionable sort, who are in all respects undesirable, and most intolerable in their demonstration of friendship. Good-bye. This letter will please you: it ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... ample time, and he hoped he would be—' He paused for a word, and his son supplied it. 'On my good behaviour, I understand.' With that he walked off, leaving Lord Ormersfield telling Mrs. Ponsonby that it was the first introduction, as he had 'for various reasons' thought it undesirable to bring Fitzjocelyn early to London, and betraying his own anxiety as to the impression he might produce on Sir Miles Oakstead. His own perplexity and despondency showed themselves in his desire to view his son with the eyes of others, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for the woman. His practical mind had summed her up at a glance. But he was afraid that his friend might drift into a very undesirable friendship with her. She would enjoy his simplicity, for he seemed to have been born without guile, while his intellectual fascination was not to be denied. Michael was ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... poetry or painting is such as we could have no desire of seeing in the reality, then we may be sure that its power in poetry or painting is owing to the power of imitation." "We may," says our author, "be sure of the contrary; for if the object be undesirable in itself, the closer the imitation the less will be the pleasure." Certainly not; for Burke of course implied, and included in his sense of imitation, that it should be consistent with a knowledge in the spectator, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... The most effective taunt that can be levelled at inconsistent Christians is that they are unlike their Master. Criticisms of the character of Jesus are now few in number, and usually take the form of declaring that it is impracticable or impossible, not that it is undesirable or imperfect. Some, no doubt, would maintain that perhaps the real Jesus did not answer to the ideal which Christians have formed of Him, but that is another question. Here we are now face to face with the unescapable fact that the greatest moral and religious force in the world ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... the other side of the street, Sergeant Murtha of the Detective Bureau waited for Doc Barrows to come out and be arrested again. Murtha had known Doc for fifteen years as a harmless old nut who had rarely succeeded in cheating anybody, but who was regarded as generally undesirable by the authorities and sent away every few years in order to keep him out of mischief. There was no danger that the public would accept Doc's version of the nature or value of his securities, but there was ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... Sensitiveness is indeed the stock-in-trade of all who work in the temple of Art, but unless it be controlled by reins of more than ordinary strength it is a very doubtful blessing. We must ever be able to keep our souls in tune so that they afford no echo to the undesirable. Indulgence of the body in any form hampers its work as an instrument of the spirit, while self-discipline (tho' by no means to the verge of asceticism) increases its sensitiveness, and occasional quiet periods afford the opportunity for the ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... grumpily: "Oh! leaving his ship," and mended my pace. He kept up by my side in the deep gloom of the avenue as if it were his conscientious duty to see me out of the colony as an undesirable character. He panted a little, which was rather pathetic in a way. But I was not moved. On the contrary. His discomfort gave me ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... The London articles written in violent support of a supposed alliance did the harm; and to anyone who keeps touch for himself of Continental opinion the harm was undoubted, and tended to produce several undesirable results. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... patriotism which in Austria-Hungary was so conspicuous by its absence, has placed a gulf of blood between race and race, and rendered their continued existence under the same roof not only difficult but undesirable. Even in the event of only relative failure on the part of Austria-Hungary a much more radical solution may be expected, while the effect of her complete defeat would be to place the solution of the whole "Austrian problem" in the hands of the Entente Powers ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... days of friendship, of ordinary social intercourse, were over. Barron did not intend to receive the Rector again within his own doors, intimate as they had been at one time; and it was awkward and undesirable that they should be meeting ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the first of the two reasons commonly adduced to prove that Russia is an undesirable ally. I trust I have said enough to show that the idea of her being the great modern stronghold of barbarism, ignorance, and tyrannical government is very far from the truth. Now I come to the second reason—that ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... very little to do with the health of the child, unless he happens to carry some particularly undesirable gene. It is the mother who has the job of constructing the fetus out of prepartum nourishment and her own body's nutritional reserves. The female body knows from trillenia of instinctual experience that adequate nutrition from the current food supply during pregnancy can not always ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... Nobody can blame Kate for giving Archibald up; she would have been more than human if she could have intrusted her heart to the keeping of a half-witted wizard, whose mysterious likeness to, or connection with, a charming young gentleman rendered him only the more undesirable. Poor Kate! If she gave her heart to Archibald, and then Archibald became somebody else, what shall we say became of her heart? Must it not have been irretrievably lost, and shall we be surprised if we hereafter detect in her a tendency ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... truth, I enjoy them as much as you. But before we go any further with our discussion, do you not think it would be an excellent idea to hang a blanket over that rear door. The light might attract attention from the lake and bring undesirable ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... indicated, an impression deepened by the extremely Gallic freedom of the illustrations. There can be little doubt that had the works been issued in an unobtrusive form, without illustrations, they would have attracted less attention of the undesirable kind which they afterwards received. The use of the term "Realistic" was the more remarkable as Zola had previously invented the word Naturalisme to distinguish his work from that of the Realistic school. But if Zola's reputation ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... wholesome," Jurgen submitted, "to speak of Koshchei. It seems especially undesirable in a ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... of the Censor's Office, the Government was naturally in a state of perplexity. At the same time they felt, and rightly felt, that it was most undesirable to confront our American friends of the Press (for they were all friendly) with a pure non possumus. What made it worse was the fact that the correspondents had told Ministers in plain terms that if they could ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... discover some tendency to ill-health in the plant that was too ready to bloom into beauty and perfection. She would have liked to be able to assert that Jacqueline's health would not permit her to sit up late at night, that fashionable hours would be injurious to her, that it would be undesirable to let her go into society as long as she could be kept from doing so. But Jacqueline persisted in never being ill, and was calculating with impatience how many years it would be before she could go to her first ball—three or four possibly. Was Madame de Nailles in three or four years to be reduced ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... It is plainly undesirable to insert in a narrative of this character any account of the political questions which led to the separation of the United States from the British Empire. It has already been remarked that the separation followed upon a succession of blunders by the English ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... will be useful as a key to the points of discussion thrown up in its progress. The fulness and freshness of the letters, written daily, and containing the most minute history of those proceedings that has yet appeared in print, requires such slight elucidation as to render it undesirable to interrupt their continuity by commentaries, except where it may become necessary to direct attention to some ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... we find parents wise and sensible enough to strengthen the best that is in their children by discreet praise, and at the same time to control the undesirable qualities by judicious and ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Laverick said kindly, "that we must take it for granted that your brother has got mixed up in some undesirable business or other. He is nervously anxious to keep his whereabouts an entire secret. He has been asking me whether any one has been to the office to inquire for him. Under the circumstances, I think the best thing we can do is ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... husband settled down, renounced all of his undesirable habits and became a new man with such surprising suddenness that his friends marvelled and—derided. A year of happiness followed. He grew accustomed to her frivolous ways, overlooked her merry whimsicalities and gave her the "full length of a free rope," as he called it. He was contented and ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... general church boards ready to help us with facts and methods. The Home Missions people gave us one sort of help, and another board, with the longest name of them all, the Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals, showed us how to go about an investigation of the town's undesirable citizens and their influence. It is in that sort of business for all of us, ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... the bill when in committee. The third reading was moved on the 10th of April, when Mr. Goulburn opposed the measure as pregnant with danger to the church, and tending by its renewed agitation to place the two houses of parliament in an undesirable situation. Another long debate ensued, in which the bill was defended by Colonel Thompson, Lords Morpeth and John Russell, and Messrs. Bulwer, Charles Villiers, and O'Connell; and opposed by Lord ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and maintain about the child a certain atmosphere (or, as they say, a certain odour)[168] in which alone it can thrive. Neither father nor mother will eat or touch anything whose properties are thought to be harmful or undesirable for the child, E.G. such things as the skin of the timid deer (see vol. ii. p. 72), or that of the tiger-cat; and the child himself is still more strictly preserved from such contacts. Further, nothing used by or about the child — toys, garments, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... and noble needs in friendship, love, and marriage must, in any case, be the main roots of healthy direction and ideal restraint of the sex-instinct. Or they fear enlightenment as a possible stimulus to undesirable imagination and experimentation. Or they dislike, even abhor, it as esthetically repulsive—shocking to an unreasoned but cherished craving for silence about these things—a craving which the customs of our land and time have made an unwritten law ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... merry worthy was no longer capable of understanding them. Frequent calls for whisky-and-soda, added to a nice taste for champagne at dinner, left the Captain in that maudlin condition in which a man is first cousin to all the world—at once garrulous and effusive and generally undesirable. Alban had, above all things, a contempt for a drunken man; and leaving Forrest to the care of others of his kind, he went out into the street and ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... aware that a little knowledge was a dangerous thing, or, again, as his friend the Bishop would have doubtless put it, how great a matter a little fire kindleth. There was no escaping it: foreign propaganda, certain undesirable books and papers—books and papers, he need hardly say, outside the control of the reputable Press—and even Socialistic agitators, were abroad in the Army. He did not wish to say too much; it was enough ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... My only thought was of Sylvia and of her strange connection with these undesirable persons who had so ingeniously stolen my money, and who had baited ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... test of physical endurance. The troops were in enemy country where they scrupulously avoided every native village, and no wall or roof stood to shelter them from wind or water. The heat of the first two weeks of November changed with a most undesirable suddenness, and though the days continued agreeably warm on the plain into December, the nights became chilly and then desperately cold. The single blanket carried in the pack—most of the infantry on the march had no blanket at all—did not give sufficient warmth ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... authorities more than $50 to transport them hither. This policy seems scarcely credible, but Switzerland, Great Britain, and Ireland followed it thriftily until our laws put a stop to it, in large part, by returning these undesirable persons whence they came, at the expense of the steamship companies bringing them. It was not until 1882, however, that our government passed laws for self-protection, and in 1891 another law made "assisted" immigrants a special class not to ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... twenty-two years ago? Not in London, because we knew Maitland never was in London—at any rate, before his trial, and we haven't the least proof that he was in London after. And why won't Aylmore tell? Clearly because it must have been in some undesirable place. And then, all of a sudden, it flashed on me in a moment of—what do you writing ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... said Miss Vernon, very gravely; "and were I you, I would endeavour to meet and obviate the dangers which arise from so undesirable an arrangement." ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of forests is now being restricted by the authorities to some extent. Great areas have already been denuded, and it is stated that this has had some undesirable effect on the rainfall in certain regions. The natives of the more remote districts—as in the States of Vera Cruz, Guerrero, &c., are abominably wasteful in timber-cutting, sacrificing whole trees for the obtaining of a single plank at times. There is a nomadic race ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... temporary shed should be erected to cover the material, as moisture would make it very undesirable for the vessel, and a day was occupied in ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... any opinion as to the cause of this bickering? For instance, did you imagine that Mr. Fenley wished his son to break off relations with an undesirable acquaintance?" ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... licenses at Sage Butte, and a testimonial to the excellent manner in which the Sachem Hotel was conducted by its owner, Oliver Beamish. George had only once entered the place, but it had struck him as being badly kept and frequented by rather undesirable customers. ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... breeding, and general management of these animals that this tendency can be successfully resisted. Sometimes, however, an animal of even the best breed will "return to nature," or will acquire some undesirable quality; such an animal should be rejected for breeding purposes, for its defects would in all probability be transmitted to its descendants, near or remote. A case, which admirably illustrates this point, is recorded in the Philosophical Transactions ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron |
