"Ungenerous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have opinions, and yet not use them to knock down one's opponents who have had no chance to arm against one. Do not be ungenerous, girls, selfish, in talking. Allow that some one else may have ideas as good as yours. George Eliot says, in "Daniel Deronda," "I cannot bear people to keep their minds bottled up for the sake of letting them off with a pop." That is not conversation: ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... in her the passion for size which is at the bottom of every American heart, and which perhaps above all else marks us the youngest of the peoples. We pride ourselves on the bigness of our own things, but we are not ungenerous, and when we go to Europe and find things bigger than ours, we are magnanimously happy in them. Pupp's, in its altogether different way, was larger than any hotel at Saratoga or at Niagara; and when ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... been superhuman instead of very human indeed (with an ordinary British middle-class humanity, and an extraordinary vein of genius) if he had done otherwise, few have joined him in thinking Joseph a "lewd and ungenerous engraftment." We have not ourselves been very severe on the faults of Pamela, the reason of lenity being, among other things, that it in a manner produced Fielding, and all the fair herd of his successors ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... ungenerous sneer as soon as he spoke. But his blood was up, and before Drew's menacing ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... me off altogether. It is ungenerous. It is preposterous. You may or may not be right; but it is simply farcical (Plancine cried, "George!"—but he went on warmly, nevertheless) to make our happiness contingent on the possible tumbling down of a bit of old cliff—an accident that, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... cannot comprehend me; though you showed me last night a penetration which did not flow from sympathy. But this I may say—though the glad light of hope and ambitious confidence, which has vitalized my mind, should be extinguished forever, I will not in life act a mean, ungenerous, or useless part. Therefore, let not a slight thing lessen your respect for me. If you feel as much pain as I do, when obliged to diminish my respect for any person, you will be glad of this assurance. I hope you will not think ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... carried his insolence so far, as to declare that he should mutilate Honorius before he sent him into exile. But this assertion of Zosimus is destroyed by the more impartial testimony of Olympiodorus; who attributes the ungenerous proposal (which was absolutely rejected by Attalus) to the baseness, and perhaps the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... swayed over the table. In an instant he was beside her; for though he had been irritable and ungenerous, he had at bottom a kind heart. Catching up a glass of water, he ran an arm round her waist and held ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "Hush!—hush. It is ungenerous in you to wound me so sorely. When I remember the fiery furnace through which my wife walked unscorched, with such sublime and patient heroism, is it possible that I should forget whose rash hand, whose besotted ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... stowed away in one corner of his dwelling. It held four square flasks, which, somehow or other, always contained just enough to need emptying. In truth, the fine old Irishman was a rosy fellow in canonicals. His countenance and his soul were always in a glow. It may be ungenerous to reveal his failings, but he often talked thick, and sometimes was perceptibly eccentric in ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... boy about fifteen. The gentleman politely asked him if he would sit with another gentleman, that he and the lady who was with him might not be separated. The first impulse of the boy was a civil one, and he started to rise; but the second thought was ungentlemanly, ungenerous, and extremely selfish. "I like my seat very well," he muttered, and drew back to the window and looked out. Perhaps even then he began to feel ashamed ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... extent the vast resources possessed by Great Britain in these her own peculiar fields of national wealth. But the policy displayed throughout the history of her Colonial possessions, has ever been the reverse of this. It was that grasping and ungenerous policy that called forth a Washington, and cost her an empire. It is that same miserable and low-born policy that still recoils upon herself, depriving her of vast increase of wealth and power in order to keep ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... shall deny this. I do not, but acknowledge to the uttermost that, in spite of all resistance, I was conquered by a woman. If it affords you satisfaction to hear this, to know that it is hard to say, harder still to feel, take the ungenerous delight; I give it to you as an alms. But remember that if I have failed, no less have you. For in that stormy heart of yours there is no sentiment more powerful than that you feel for me, and through it you will receive the retribution you have brought upon ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... coldly, "You must take your own way, Stephen. I am an old man. I have had my say in my generation, maybe I haven't any right to meddle with yours. New men, new times." Then being conscious that he was a little ungenerous he walked off to Mrs. Sandal, and left the lovers together. Steve would have forgiven the squire a great deal more for such an opportunity, especially as a still kinder after-thought followed it. For he had not gone far before he turned, and called back, "Bring Steve into the house, ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of bad taste in the manner in which he and some at least of his fellow courtiers treated the unfortunate poet, and there was certainly bad blood between the two soon after the production of the Aminta, owing, probably, to the ungenerous remarks passed by Guarini upon the author's indebtedness to previous writers. After Tasso's confinement to S. Anna in 1579, Guarini became court poet, and the luckless prisoner was condemned to see his own poems entrusted to the editorial care ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... as far as I know; but I delighted to model my own character according to the standard set forth in my foolish books, and by the contemplation of them I hoped to succeed. I loved to mark in others a mean, ungenerous, selfish, or malicious trait, and to contrast with it my own high-flown notions of the opposite qualities. My memory was well stored with fine sentiments concerning human dignity, honor, virtue, and so forth; and while secretly ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... in what fits of flighty resolution, in what collapses of despair, Gideon consumed the night, it would be ungenerous to enquire too closely. ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... my aunt to remonstrate with her son on his ungenerous conduct: her authority with him was a mere cipher, he had his father upon his side, and for my aunt's ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... artist like Byron put sentiments into the mouth of Cain such as would be harmless in the essays of a country parson? If he painted Lucifer, he must make him speak like Lucifer, not like a theological professor. Nothing could be more ungenerous and narrow than to abuse Byron for a dramatic poem in which some of his characters were fiends rather than men. We have no more right to say that he was an infidel because Cain or Lucifer blasphemed, than to say that Goethe was an ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... supervening on the agonies of the rack. Home they crept together, speechless and hopeless all three, to be thenceforth the contempt and not the envy of their fellow parishioners. For if the vulgar feeling towards the home born prophet is superciliousness, what must the sentence upon failure be in ungenerous natures, to which every downfall of another is an uplifting of themselves! But Mr Graham's worth had gained him friends in the presbytery, and he was that same week appointed to the vacant ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... of good men among them, and think of the good they can do! There are bad men everywhere. They're not peculiar to criticism. Do you know anything worse than an ungenerous, vain, and embittered artist, to whom the world is only loot, that he is furious because he cannot grab? You must don patience for your protection. There is no evil but it may be of good service. The worst of the critics is useful to us; he is a trainer: he does not let us loiter by the way. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... routine and the necessary and incessant social intercourse with the eager crowd of youth. It may be years before an American college for women can sustain and foster creative scholarship for its own sake, after the example of the European universities; but Wellesley is not ungenerous; the Sabbatical Grant gives certain heads of departments an opportunity for refreshment and personal work every seven years; and even those who do not profit by this privilege manage to keep their minds alive ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... doctor tried in vain to stop her tirade. She was in a fury; such blazing eyes, such crimson cheeks, and voice quivering with scorn. For a moment I was abashed and would have liked to slink out of sight. But when she was so ungenerous as to call me "a pretty boy," the fire returned to my heart, and I ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... love you far more now than I did then; and though I was so stupid and idiotic as to fancy that Miss Phillips would suit me as well, whenever I saw you together her faults came out, and your virtues. I do not wish to take you at a disadvantage. Do not think it ungenerous in me to ask so much just when you are in trouble and perplexity, and need advice ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... fulfilling her word was like our belief in the immutability of the laws of nature. Whoever asked her got of her the absolute truth on every subject, and, when she had no good thing to say, her silence was often truly awful. When anything mean or ungenerous was brought to her knowledge, she would close her lips resolutely; but the flash in her eyes showed what she would speak were speech permitted. In her last days she spoke to a friend of what she had suffered from ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... this the fair invested with my spoil By Europe's laws, and senates' stern command? Ungenerous Europe! let me fly thy soil, And waft my ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... all this rancour was produced by mere feminine emulations and jealousy do these ladies of the ancient sept Macnamara foul wrong. Mrs. Mack, on the contrary, had a fat and genial soul of her own, and Magnolia was by no means a particularly ungenerous rival in the lists of love. But Aunt Rebecca was hoitytoity upon the Macnamaras, whom she would never consent to more than half-know, seeing them with difficulty, often failing to see them altogether—though Magnolia's stature and activity did not always render that easy. To-day, for instance, when ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... old-time spirit of '49, hap-hazard, unscientific, persisted in his mind. Everything was a gamble—who took the greatest chances was most apt to be the greatest winner. The idea of manuring Los Muertos, of husbanding his great resources, he would have scouted as niggardly, Hebraic, ungenerous. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... a portion of these vices, in common with Poets, Musicians, and other candidates for fame, is reasonably to be expected; but that they should exclusively monopolise them, or even hold an undue proportion, 'twere ungenerous to suppose. The Author has known Artists in various countries; and can truly say, that, with a very few exceptions, he has found them candid and liberal; prompt to discover merit, and just in applauding it. If there have been exceptions, he has ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... and Fox were returned as elected. In this matter Pitt did not display his usual tactfulness. Excusably enough in so young a man, he allowed himself to be swayed by personal feeling, and his feeling was ungenerous. With the exception of a small knot of friends like Dundas, he kept himself aloof from his supporters and was ignorant of the annoyance with which they regarded this attempt to deal harshly with a defeated foe.[190] A bill ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... am truly sorry to hear it; my poor boy will overtask his strength; and how unfair of the other young gentlemen; it seems ungenerous; unreasonable; my poor child against ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... with a lofty and daring hand. His eye sparkled with poetic rapture, and his countenance beamed with the sublime smile of luxuriant fancy and heaven-born inspiration. He sung of the wanton shepherd, that followed, with ungenerous perseverance, the chaste and virgin daughter of Cadwallo. The Gods took pity upon her distress, the Gods sent down their swift and winged messenger to shield her virtue, and deliver her from the persecution of Modred. With strong and eager steps the ravisher ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... two ways which remained to her, she chose, in the end, the course which appeared to her to be the least ungenerous. She would not read the letter—the opening and the closing sentences she had seen by accident—for, when all was said, it had not been written for her eyes; and it struck her, as she brooded over it, that there would be positive disloyalty ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... before the days of limited companies and coal syndicates, and the proprietor of the pits in Lowwood, Mr. Rundell, lived about two miles out of the village. He was not a bad man, as men go; he was fiery and quick-tempered, but had a not ungenerous nature withal, and was usually susceptible to a reasoned statement. Just as they were about to decide on a course of action, Andrew spoke: "I dinna want ony mair o' ye than can be helped to get into ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... wicked wasp of Twickenham; his lies affect me now no more; they will be all as much despised as the story of the seraglio and the handkerchief, of which I am persuaded he was the only inventor. That man has a malignant and ungenerous heart; and he is base enough to assume the mark of a moralist in order to decry human nature, and to give a decent vent to his hatred to man and woman kind.—But I must quit this contemptible subject, on which a just indignation would render my pen so fertile, that, after having fatigued ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... Mr. Radcliffe took the first opportunity of getting a passage to France.[409] He lived, for many years, in Paris, in great poverty, tantalized with promises of assistance from the French Court, yet witnessing the ungenerous treatment of the Chevalier by that Court. His nephew, John Radcliffe, who was killed accidentally, assisted him with remittances in 1730 for some time, and James Stuart gave him a small pension: his difficulties and privations must have been considerable; ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... remain unanswered; and, says his son, "the same benignity and courtesy which marked his conduct in every relation of life, pervaded his whole correspondence." "In the many volumes of his letters which are preserved, I venture to affirm that there is not the faintest indication of an ungenerous or unkindly sentiment—not a sentence which is not inspired by the spirit of equity and justice, and by universal charity ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Kingsley that he never wrote an ungenerous word of the country which sent him away empty-handed from the store of its riches. Not even a suggestion of the fruitless toil and the disillusionment which he shared with scores of other amateur diggers during the first two years of his colonial life finds expression in any of his ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... CHARTERIS (rising indignantly). You ungenerous wretch! Is this your gratitude for the way I have just been flattering you? What have I not endured from you—endured with angelic patience? Did I not find out, before our friendship was a fortnight old, that all your advanced views were merely a fashion picked up and followed ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... in opposition to Hamilton's greatest opponent, Jefferson; Hamilton knowingly incurred a feud which must at the best have been dangerous to him, by unhesitatingly throwing his weight upon the side of Jefferson, his own ungenerous rival. The details of his policy do not concern us, but the United States could hardly have endured for many years without the passionate sense of the need of government and the genius for actual administration with which ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... him for forsaking his own true lady, and for his ingratitude his friend Valentine; and then Silvia left the window, not choosing to listen to his music and his fine speeches; for she was a faithful lady to her banished Valentine, and abhorred the ungenerous conduct of his false ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... ungenerous," said Grace. "Forgive me." But she said it rather coolly, and not with a ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Andy, who had flushed hotly at Pete's rather ungenerous intimation, spurred his pony round and rode toward a dim figure that nodded in the starlight. Pete whirled his own pony and rode in the ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... along the rank at the saddened faces which showed how great a favourite the young lieutenant had been, and something like a feeling of jealousy flashed through him as he began to think how it would have been if he had been the missing man. But the ungenerous thought died out as quickly as it had arisen, and he marched on with the men slowly, so as to make it easier for the corporal, till half the slope of the kopje had been zigzagged down, when ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... my friend. There is not an infant in a neighbour's house but you become jealous of it the moment I take it in my arms. There is not a flower in your garden, not a book on my table, that you will let me love in peace. How ungenerous—while you have one to cherish and who cherishes you, that you will have me lonely!—that you quarrel with all who show regard to me!—that you refuse me the least solace, when my heart is breaking with its loneliness! Oh, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... English said that he was envious of Richard's superiority; and they attempted to lay the whole blame of the quarrel on him, attributing the unfriendly feeling simply to what they considered his weak and ungenerous jealousy of a ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... early novel Jacopo Ortis. His career broken by his determination never to come to terms with any sort of baseness, his happiness destroyed by political disappointment, literary feuds, and a number of love affairs into which his weaker, more passionate and vainer, yet not more ungenerous temper was for ever embroiling him, Foscolo came to Florence, ill and miserable, in the year 1812. The Countess of Albany, recognising in him a something—a mixture of independence, of passion, of vanity, of truthfulness, of pose—which resembled Alfieri in his earlier days (though, as she was ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... green peas crested the racing waves of Long Island Sound, and unnumbered carrots of gold sprang up in the wake of the ploughing steamer; till I was wellnigh drunk with the new wine of my own purple vintage. But I was not ungenerous. In the height of my innocent exultation, I remembered the dwellers in cities who do all their gardening at stalls, and in my heart I determined, when the season should be fully blown, to invite as many as my house could hold to share with me the delight of plucking strawberries ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... over lightly. Far be from me the disgusting and ungenerous task of raking up a heap of the weaknesses, vanities, and miserablenesses of actors and actresses dead and gone. After life's fitful fever they sleep (I trust) well; and in common candour, it ought never to be forgotten that whilst it has always been the fashion—until one ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... be right at his expense. She ought to have given in, and she ought to have given in gracefully, there was no question of that. When a woman loved a man as much as she loved him, it was unreasonable of her to let these innumerable little points of fact come between them; it was ungenerous of her to cling so stubbornly to her advantage. Her very quietness—that look of gentle obstinacy which refused either to fight back or to surrender—irritated him almost to desperation. His temper, always inflammable, suddenly ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... self-sacrificing in the main, though causing so much sorrow and disaster to others by these occasional whirlwinds of passion. In all that delicacy of feeling and usual regard for "the amenities" indicate, they are "well-bred." To say that they are not is as ungenerous as to criticise the conduct of the insane. But habitual, cold-blooded, and willful ill-temper—the trade-mark of unmitigated selfishness—is indisputably ill-bred. Whatever the tendency, temperament, ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... Lord Chesterfield to Mr. Dayrolles, on the 2d of May, "an indecent, ungenerous, and malignant question, which I had no mind should either be put or debated, well knowing the absurd and improper things that would be said both for and against it, and therefore I moved for the House to adjourn. As you will imagine that this was agreeable to the King, it is supposed ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... state of its commerce, &c. I am not yet wholly reconciled to this step, for if, unhappily, my first apprehensions are well founded, it would be exceedingly easy here, to lay an insurmountable obstacle in my way. While I am making this observation, I feel a concern, lest it might be ungenerous. Besides, it has a strange appearance to me, for a private gentleman of one country to ask the public Minister of another, both being in amity together, whether it is safe or proper for him to travel into the other. The Minister would be apt to wonder what could give rise ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... back. I hardly know what to say. The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me to assure you that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation. There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury. Cast about and see if this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to fall ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... turned the matter over once more in his mind. The proposal was absurdly unbusiness-like. That his part in it might look ungenerous was nothing; so his actions were right, he rather liked them to bear a hideous aspect: that was his war-paint. There was that in the stranger's attitude that agreed fairly with his own theories of living. A fear of debt, for instance, if that ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... small and ungenerous minds cannot admire heartily. To their own great misfortune, they cannot recognise, much less reverence, great men and great things. The mean nature admires meanly. The toad's highest idea of beauty is his toadess. The small snob's highest idea of manhood is the great snob. The slave-dealer ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... he must at some part of his career have pillaged a church, taken the altar-piece, and sold it to a picture-dealer in Paris, or whipped the earrings out of the Madonna's ears, or admitted the female enemy to quarter upon ungenerous conditions: this, or some such crime to which we poor soldiers are liable: and now was committing the mistake of remording himself about it. "Always ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... whether the war aimed at rebuking slavery in a practical way, or by strengthening it as a locally constitutional institution? When the question was begged by the assertion that recognition of the Southern confederacy, although granted to be of abolition tendencies, was ungenerous and unfraternal, the position assumed was that nations, like individuals, cherished self-love, and always sought to turn intestine troubles among competitive powers into the channels of home-aggrandizement; and it was asked whether, should Ireland maintain a provisional government for nearly ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to the conquered,—forbearing insults, forgiving injuries, overpaying benefits. Full of dignity themselves, they respect dignity in all, but they feel it sacred in the unhappy. But it is then, and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendor, and shine out in the full lustre of their native villany and baseness. It is in that season that no man of sense or honor can be mistaken for one of them. It was in such a season, for them of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Price had alienated his brother clergy, and his fellow-curate allowed himself to be kept aloof by his mother, in a manner that became ungenerous. Half petulant, and wholly ungracious, as Mr. Smith's manner was in receiving assistance, only strong principle could lead any one to befriend him; and his few advisers found it difficult to hinder him from making a public exposure of 'my Lady,' or from throwing up his work suddenly and leaving ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to me that is an ungenerous and superficial view, especially as we have never seen the same people courting hysterics before," she said; but she did not speak as if she cared ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... would reflect, "I shall surely feel myself more open—and his kind heart is so full of sympathy that he will understand my silence and not feel it has been grudging or ungenerous to ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of Liberty is interwoven in the Soul of Man. "So it is in that of a Wolf;" However irrational, ungenerous, and unsocial the love of liberty may be in a rude Savage, he is capable of being enlightned by Experience, Reflection, Education, and civil, and Political Institutions. But the Nature of the Wolf is, and ever will be confined to running in the forest to satisfy his hunger, and his brutal appetites; ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... Jeffrey. But I feel bound to say you are ungenerous. You've an old grudge against Weedon Moore. You all have, all you boys who were brought up with him. So you break up ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... in his man[oe]uvre; but I do not for an instant believe that he will. Whatever judgment my readers may eventually form of me from these pages, I am confident that they will believe me in what I shall say in the course of them. I have no misgiving at all, that they will be ungenerous or harsh towards a man who has been so long before the eyes of the world; who has so many to speak of him from personal knowledge; whose natural impulse it has ever been to speak out; who has ever spoken too much rather than too little; who would have ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... lord, 'tis ungenerous thus to press me—Oh, no, you must not do so, Archie; the book says that Lord Orville only ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... me," said Alice, making in her mind a sort of bargain that she was not to be received into Mr Palliser's house after the fashion in which Lady Midlothian had proposed to receive her. But it struck her at once that this was unworthy of her, and ungenerous. "But I'll come to you," she added, "whether you come to me ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... cried Jeanne; "do not be ungenerous towards him. It was the impulse of a generous heart that your majesty should understand and sympathize with. When he heard my account he cried,—'What! the queen refuse herself such a thing, and perhaps see it one day worn by one of her subjects!' And when I told him that it was ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... persevered, and in later life he was wont to say jestingly that he found he was growing more and more like his famous portrait every day. But if it was becoming of Wilkes to bear the attack in so serene and even so jocular a spirit, it was not unbecoming, as it was not ungenerous, of his friends to fail to imitate the coolness of their leader. It is not quite easy to understand why, in an age of caricature, an age when all men of any notoriety were caricatured, the friends of Wilkes were so sensitive ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... phase of Regina's character better than any she had yet seen. "Come," she said, with a sudden generous impulse, and holding out her hand, "let us stop quarrelling. You saved me from a bad accident, and I was too ungenerous to be grateful. I thank you now, with ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... conform all the time, and our lapses are our undoing—or maybe, our happy emancipation, who knows? We cannot hide the pettiness of our nature, even though we profess the broadest principles. Only one thing can save the ungenerous spirit, and that is to be up against life single-handed and alone. To know suffering, spiritual as well as physical; to know poverty, to know loneliness, sometimes to know disgrace, broadens the heart and mind more than years spent in the study of Greek philosophy. Life is the only real ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... cessions. You may then say, that they would not have ceded the territory, had it occurred to them, that Congress would have cleared it of slavery; and that, this being the fact, Congress could not thus clear it, without being guilty of bad faith, and of an ungenerous and unjustifiable surprise on those States. There are several reasons for believing, that those States, not only did not, at the period in question, cherish a dread of the abolition of slavery; but that the public sentiment within them was decidedly ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... republicanism of Milton, or pardon a man who defended the execution of the blessed Martyr. He failed, therefore, to satisfy the ardent admirers of the great poet. Yet his judgment is not harsh or ungenerous, but, at worst, the judgment of a man striving to be just, in spite of some ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... assume that a thing which would be in its very nature unkind, ungenerous, and unfair has not been done. What should we think of the crime of that human being who should take a young mind from circumstances where it was progressing in virtue, and throw it recklessly into corrupting and depraving society? Particularly if it were the ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... your knights from the King of Mauritania. The cowardly old King Dannemont has made the brave Ogier prisoner, and has prevailed on our general to refuse to give him up. I come to make amends for this ungenerous conduct by yielding myself, Carahue, King of Mauritania, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... feeling for her of the deepest and most unqualified regard. This feeling was not lessened, though rebuked, by the development so unnecessarily and so wantonly conveyed. It taught a new feeling of distrust for his uncle, whose harsh manner and ungenerous insinuations in the progress of the preceding half-hour, had lost him not a little of the youth's esteem. He felt that the motive of his informer was not less unkind than was the information painful and oppressive; and his ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... your will is quite sufficient for me. Yet you are also a generous woman. I have many a time had to stand godfather to your literary foundlings. You have never yet exercised the contrary privilege. I have done a mean thing and an ungenerous thing, and though I would do it again at your bidding, again and again, I should like an ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... individual who makes gold his god. The Despot will occasionally act upon noble and generous impulses, and help the weak against the strong, the right against the wrong. But commercial avarice is essentially egotistic, grasping, faithless, overreaching, crafty, cold, ungenerous, selfish, and calculating, controlled by considerations of self-interest alone. Heartless and merciless, it has no sentiments of pity, sympathy, or honor, to make it pause in its remorseless career; and it crushes down all that is of impediment in its way, as its ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... one day address'd the Reed: "To you ungenerous indeed Has nature been, my humble friend, With weakness aye obliged to bend. The smallest bird that flits in air Is quite too much for you to bear; The slightest wind that wreathes the lake Your ever-trembling head doth ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... Moerkerke—and there is a special interest in his name. For it is through him that we get in 1492 the long and interesting notice of the first settlement of the Azores on the globe of Martin Behaim, now at Nuremberg, the globe which was made to play such a curious part, as undesigned as it was ungenerous, in the ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... himself with secret warnings, found its most wonderful expression in the Maid who revived in the French their old attachment to their native King and his divine right; the English, when she fell into their hands, with ungenerous hate inflicted on her the punishment of the Lollards: but the Valois King had already gained a firm footing. It was Charles VII who understood how to appease the enmity of Burgundy, and in unison with the great men of his kingdom to give his ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Voltaire is well known. But of Addison it may be confidently affirmed that he has blackened no man's character, nay, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find in all the volumes which he has left us a single taunt which can be called ungenerous or unkind. Yet he had detractors, whose malignity might have seemed to justify as terrible a revenge as that which men not superior to him in genius wreaked on Bettesworth and on Franc de Pompignan. He was a politician; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... none of the children thought was near "it would be ungenerous I wouldn't deprive Master William of ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the way of discovery. Then, in Heaven's name, why didn't they? Why did they go off in this style, without a word, leaving me a prey to suspense of the worst kind? It was cruel. It was unkind. It was ungenerous. It ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... only to the few, the favoured, did I speak of him. It may have been my uncertainty (which still persists) whether he called himself Sayki, Sahki or Sakki which made me thus ungenerous of his name, or it may have been the feeling that the others were not worthy of him; but how refreshing it was when some intellectually blown-up stranger said "Do you ever read Saki?" to reply, with the same pronunciation and even greater ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... was anxious for her favorite and though she did not mean to be ungenerous, she could not so cordially rejoice. If the girl had been awkward or underbred, she could have taken her in hand with a good grace. But she was not likely ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... was capable of uttering and even of feeling such a sentiment, his conduct towards Fenelon, the fairest apparition that Christianity ever presented, was ungenerous and unjust. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... wilful I will admit them sometimes to be, and in evil hands their misdirected energies may for a time become the instruments of evil. Mistaken in judgment they may often be, for such is the lot of humanity, but regardless of right and justice they seldom are, and ungrateful or ungenerous they cannot be. The evidence of their native spirit of enterprise is found in their daily braving destitution in the hope of bettering their hard lot. Their hatred of oppression is proved by their ill-directed, but constant struggles for equal rights; and, if kind-heartedness ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... with C. H. McCormick; for when his claims were rejected by the Board of Extensions,—and most justly, as we think, in accordance with the evidence—he petitioned Congress against Hussey's extension: and to this most ungenerous, illiberal and unfair course, and of which Hussey was for years totally ignorant, C. H. McCormick may justly attribute this enquiry;—but for this, it had never been written. Our object is not to injure C. H. McCormick; but it is that justice may be done to another, whose interests ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... matter though the knowledge of this priority be widely diffused; if readers can, by means of national predilections, be induced to place confidence in your denial, the effect, as far as relates to them, is completely obtained. Yet one would think it an ungenerous act, to call in question, and before partial judges, the veracity of such men as are here named. Where a physician reports cases which agree too well with his preconceived theories, we doubt the correctness ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... respecting the independence of the American colonies, and constantly opposed it. Far was she from foreseeing that a revolution at—such a distance could excite one in which a misguided populace would drag her from her palace to a death equally unjust and cruel. She only saw something ungenerous in the method which France adopted of ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... sufferings, will sometimes be even more regardless of the sufferings of others; and perhaps sometimes, with the natural perversion of human passion effected by civil war, will seek to avenge their own misfortunes by ungenerous rigor and cruelty toward all within their power, suspected of favoring the enemy only in thought or sentiment. Even this imperfect discrimination is too often altogether omitted, and innocent loyalty ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a good deal, I must say," says Mrs. Chichester, who loves to hear her own voice, and who certainly cannot be called ungenerous on her own account. "The way she dances! ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... if we ever find an Indian fellow-worker whom we can thoroughly trust. The ungenerous question would make us as indignant as it would if it were asked about our own relations, were it not that we know it is asked in ignorance by those who have never had the opportunity of experiencing, or have missed the ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... effort to bind ye to the troth. In both of these I erred, and now crave a pardon. Ye can scarce hold me guilty that my love made me hot for the quickest marriage I could compass, or that, believing ye in honour pledged to me, I should seek to assure myself of the plight from your own lips, ungenerous though it was at the moment. It has since been my endeavour to show that I regretted my impulsive persecution, and I trust that my long forbearance and self-effacement have proved to ye that your comfort and happiness are the first object ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... very much that a gentleman of venerable age, who was in full maturity of life when I was a child, and whom I have respected since my childhood, should have taken occasion here in this place to use language so uncalled for, so ungenerous, so unjust to me, and disgraceful to himself. I have borne with the ill-nature and bad blood of that gentleman, as many others in this House have, out of respect for his years; but no importunity of age shall shield him, or any man, from my denunciation, who is so lacking in the proprieties ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... very little to the credit of the West Point cadets, a body of young men in whose superior discipline and thoroughly excellent deportment we feel in common with nearly all others a gratified pride, that they should be so ungenerous and unjust as they confess themselves to be in their treatment of the colored boy, who, like themselves, has been made a ward of the nation. We know nothing of this young man's personal character or habits, but we have seen no unkind criticism of them. For that reason we condemn as ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... pleased. Let him only be enabled to carry with him the tidings of his betrothal, and he would start for his father's house without an hour's delay. But this authority Violet would not give him. When he answered her after this fashion she could only tell him that he was ungenerous. "At any rate I am not false," he replied on one occasion. "What ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... safe from her lively tongue, and alas, certain little details, insignificant in themselves, gave ground for the ungenerous hypothesis that van Koppen, like all the rest of them, had a cloven hoof. There was the usual "dark side" to this otherwise charming and profitable stranger, the usual mystery, the usual fly in the ointment. In the first place it was a singular ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... that I think Discretion the most useful Talent a Man can be Master of, I look upon Cunning to be the Accomplishment of little, mean, ungenerous Minds. Discretion points out the noblest Ends to us, and pursues the most proper and laudable Methods of attaining them: Cunning has only private selfish Aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... that, at all events, there could be no doubt. It seemed hard that he should be compelled to suffer, supposing even that he was guilty, when a new sphere was open to him; and the better disposed boys, even though they mostly went with the tide, could not help feeling that Barber had acted in a very ungenerous way in bringing tales from one school to another, and in injuring the character of one who had always proved himself so harmless and kind-hearted ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... lessen the load of anguish he saw imprinted on the brow of his Christian captive. Mordaunt's noble spirit was touched by the indulgence and kindness he received, and he made no effort to escape, for he felt it would be but an ungenerous, dishonourable return—but still he was a slave. No fetters galled his limbs, but the fetters of slavery galled his spirits with a deep anguish; no taskmaster was now set over him with the knotted whip, to spur on ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... There may be one or two passages—they cannot well be more—printed in these volumes, which belong to other writers; and if such there be, the Editor can only plead in excuse, that the work has been prepared by him amidst many distractions, and hope that, in this instance at least, no ungenerous use will be made of such a circumstance to the disadvantage of the author, and that persons of greater reading or more retentive memories than the Editor, who may discover any such passages, will do him the ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... that it had been possible to be silent about her own plans. She had spoken without stopping to think; but even now that she did think, she could not see how silence would have been easy. It seemed that unless she were willing to be hard and ungenerous to this unhappy man and woman she could not avoid offering them shelter for a few days. Quickly she told herself that she must give them money in addition to the viatique which Lord Dauntrey would receive in cash to-morrow. If he still refused to accept anything more from her, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and the doctrines of passive obedience and absolute non-resistance, and to Bishop Blackall, I know it gave my father some uneasiness, that there is a reference to a fact, which, as he resolved himself never to take notice of, thinking it ungenerous, so he was sorry to see any friend of the cause had; which is, that the Bishop had said inadvertently, he was at Bath, and had not a Bible in his family. It is worth remarking, that all the arguments used by Powell about his power over Punch, 'lighting his pipe with one of his legs,' ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... which sent Byron into this "lawless conscription of rhythmus," was inspired partly by an ungenerous attack on Moore, which appeared in the pages of John Bull ("Thomas Moore is not likely to fall in the way of knighthood ... being public defaulter in his office to a large amount.... [August 5]. It is true that we cannot from principle ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... logical conclusion; that Collins is not what Bentley would have him to be—a mere Materialist—an Atheist in disguise; that Bentley's insinuation, that looseness of living is the cause of his looseness of belief, is ungenerous, and requires proof which Bentley has not given: that the bitter abuse which he heaps upon his adversary as 'a wretched gleaner of weeds,' 'a pert teacher of his betters,' 'an unsociable animal,' 'an obstinate and intractable wretch,' and ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Christopher's temper such trash was too much; And it soon made the malecontent quiver and cower, When he saw preparations for handling the Crutch. "Lay your croaking aside," The old gentleman cried, "Or I'll make you eat up each ungenerous word: Not our deadliest foe, Such injustice should know, And far less shall a friend be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... covert slur on his character. Charley's devotion was the thing that redeemed the dull monotony of existence. She became suddenly humble and tenderly penitent in her mood toward him; he loved her much better than she deserved, and she suspected that her own attitude had been habitually ungenerous and selfish. She had accepted all and yielded nothing. She wondered gravely why it was she did not love him; she was fond of him—she was very, very fond of him; she wondered if after all, as he said, this were not the ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... ungenerous wish I hae, Nor stronger in my breast, Than, if I canna make thee sae, At least to see ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... of there being just grounds to excite the latter than conscious of having deserved the former, I continue not to believe that probable, which I am sure must have been unprovoked. However, if it was so, and I could even mark the quarter from whence it came, it would be ungenerous to retort: for no passion suffers more than malice from disappointment. For my own part, I see no reason why the author of a play should not regard a first night's audience as a candid and judicious friend attending, in behalf of the public, at his last rehearsal. If ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... negotiation, have insured the title to the government as far as a written agreement could give it; but for two sufficient reasons I declined all treaty upon the subject until the war was over. The first of these reasons was, that it would have been highly ungenerous to take advantage of a man's distress to tie him down to any agreement which, in other circumstances, he might not be willing to adopt; and by acting thus ungenerously, it would be tempting the rajah ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... my brother, or any of their acquaintance, should again calumniate Mr. Trevor, I will forewarn them of my further determination to inform him, and enquire into the facts. But I hope they will neither be so unjust nor so ungenerous. At least, I think my aunt will not; when she hears the truth, knows my resolution, and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... The writer hopes that the note on p. 374 will not be considered an ungenerous censure of Mr. Rogers, who is selected because he is the ablest and wisest of those writers who have ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... doctrines of the Moon's rotation ..." Edinburgh. Of all the works I have seen on the question, this is the most confident, and the sorest. {5} A writer on astronomy said of Mr. Jellinger Symons,[18] "Of course he convinced no one who knew anything of the subject." This "ungenerous slur" on the speculator's memory appears to have been keenly felt; but its truth is admitted. Those who knew anything of the subject are "the so-called men of science," whose three P's were assailed; prestige, pride, and ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... be so? She would admit the ungenerous sentiment no longer. D'Urberville was not the first wicked man who had turned away from his wickedness to save his soul alive, and why should she deem it unnatural in him? It was but the usage of thought which had been jarred in her at hearing ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy |
