"Ungraceful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... demeanour there is an evident assumption of dignity, which, falling short of the aim, gives an ungraceful stiffness to her appearance. Her dress was rich but suited to her age, which I should pronounce to be about sixty. Her manner has the formality peculiar to those conscious of occupying a higher station than their ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... expect to be told that my numbers, though here and there tolerably smooth, are not always such, but have, now and then, an ugly hitch in their gait, ungraceful in itself, and inconvenient to the reader. To this charge also I plead guilty, but beg leave in alleviation of judgment to add, that my limping lines are not numerous, compared with those that limp not. The truth is, that not one of them all escaped me, but, such as they ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... never served at a luncheon or a dinner; but, if you insist on eating it at home or in a restaurant, to attack it with as little ferocity as possible, is perhaps the only direction to be given, since at best it is an ungraceful performance and to eat ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... in the distance he spies a young gentleman crab making love to a beautiful female. He looks at her with a discriminating eye. Sees she is fair to look upon, and thinks he would like to be acquainted. He makes several sideway moves in the direction, ungraceful, but satisfactory to himself, and as he advances his admiration increases, his courage improves; he feels almost heroic. The observant lover with staring eyes perceives the advancing strides of another gentleman crab, and instantly, seized ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... neatly kept; but here no such attempt is made to ornament the cottages. We saw no smiling orchard or grove to conceal the bare log walls; and as to the little farm-houses, they are uglier still, and look so pert and ungraceful stuck upon the bank ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... religion and common decency. They can be met in but one way: by the breadth and broadening of human reason, by catholicity of taste and culture. And so, too, the native ambition and aspiration of men, even though they be black, backward, and ungraceful, must not lightly be dealt with. To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires; to flout their striving idly is to welcome a harvest of brutish crime and shameless lethargy in our very laps. The guiding ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... assume she must be your wife, for how could it be supposed that you would have an unattractive sweetheart? A true woman may be ungraceful; but then, her ugliness implies a thousand disagreeable things for you. One supposes you must be a notary or a magistrate, as these two professions have a monopoly of grotesque and well-dowered spouses. Now, is this not ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... marble, and its forest of columns, lost the merit of simplicity without gaining that of grandeur. The eye was teased with a multitude of details, not in themselves good; the same defects were repeated in each story, and the real height was diminished by the projecting and ungraceful cornices. The interior arrangements were admirable; and modern architects can not sufficiently commend the skill with which eighty thousand spectators were accommodated with seats; or the ingenious contrivances, by which, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... us through several chambers, decorated with much cost and barbarous splendour. The wainscot of one of the principal saloons is inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ebony, coral, and ivory; but the workmanship seems harsh and ungraceful. The ceiling is plastered with massive gilding, the effect of which is rather cumbrous than ornamental; "not graced with elegancy, but daubed with cost." Pillars, of a composition to resemble the richest marble, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... make?' Vittoria treated her physical weakness and ailments with this spirit of humour. 'They may say that Michiella has bewitched you, my Camilla. I think your voice would sound as if it were dragging its feet after it just as a stork flies. O my Camilla! don't I wish I could do the same, and be ungraceful and at ease! A moan is married to every note of your treble, my Camilla, like December and May. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... she stood, her arms uplifted, in an attitude which is almost always graceful, even for an otherwise ungraceful woman. Madame d'Aragona was perhaps a little too short, but she was justly proportioned and appeared to be rather slight, though the tight-fitting sleeves of her frock betrayed a remarkably well turned arm. Not seeing her face, one might not have singled her out of many as a very striking ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... Colors and forms and modes, in themselves graceful or beautiful, can become ungraceful and ridiculous simply through inappropriateness. The most lovely bonnet that the most approved modiste can invent, if worn on the head of a coarse-faced Irishwoman bearing a market-basket on her arm, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... their little feet. These beauties, as we may suppose them to be, since they are masked more closely than society ladies at the Opera ball, wear over their garments a habbarah, a sort of black taffeta sack, which fills with air and swells in the most ungraceful fashion if the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... custom already noticed, of wearing a dress so thickly quilted as might withstand the stroke of a dagger, which added an ungainly stiffness to his whole appearance, contrasting oddly with the frivolous, ungraceful, and fidgeting motions with which he accompanied his conversation. And yet, though the king's deportment was very undignified, he had a manner so kind, familiar, and good-humoured, was so little apt to veil over or conceal his own foibles, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... inexperienced surgeon. This, also, was a blemish in his deportment; and though his broad shoulders, sinewy arms, and expanded chest, betokened the strength which he often displayed, it was strength of a clumsy and ungraceful character. His language and gestures were those of one seldom used to converse with equals, more seldom still with superiors; short, abrupt, and decisive, almost to the verge of sternness. In the judgment of those who were habitually acquainted ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... middle of September in this year (1798), Bonaparte ordered to be brought to the house of Elfy Bey half a dozen Asiatic women whose beauty he had heard highly extolled. But their ungraceful obesity displeased him, and they were immediately dismissed. A few days after he fell violently in love with Madame Foures, the wife of a lieutenant of infantry. She was very pretty, and her charms were enhanced by the rarity of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... in her heart a general contempt for the white race, save those of our own household, drew her bright-colored shawl around her, and set off with her peculiar walk. Her walk was not ungraceful, because it was so purely natural; but it differed almost as much as the step of a quadruped from what we are taught. I, with heavy thoughts but careless steps, set off on my wanderings. I wanted to try to have no set purpose, course, or consideration, but to go wherever chance ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... apparently as much interested in looking at us as we were in their style, features, and attire. They all wore light-coloured "dual garments" of great width, and tight bodices. Their coiffure was carefully finished, but a part of the forehead was hidden by an ungraceful ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... wages. She was a young girl, and pretty for one of her sisterhood, who perpetuate, as a rule, the hard and strenuous lineaments and forms held to hard labor, until they have attained a squat solidity of ungraceful muscle. This little Hungarian Marie was still not overdeveloped muscularly, although one saw her hands with a certain shock after her little, smiling face, which still smiled, despite her wrongs. Nothing could exceed the sweetness of the ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sensation, far from being pleasant, is intensely uncomfortable—the suspension of respiration, indeed, quickly resolves itself into a feeling of suffocation—and the posture necessitated by the approximation of lips and lips is unfailingly a constrained and ungraceful one. Theoretically, a man kisses a woman perpendicularly, with their eyes, those "windows of the soul," synchronizing exactly. But actually, on account of the incompressibility of the nasal cartilages, he has to incline either his or her head ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... They are, in fact, the palms of the mountains. I behold the great palmetto (Chamcerops), with its fan-like fronds standing out upon long petioles from its lofty summit; the yuccas, with their bayonet-shaped leaves, ungraceful, but picturesque, with ponderous clusters of green and pulpy capsules. I behold the pita aloe, with its tall flower-stalk and thorny sun-scorched leaves. I behold strange forms of the cactus, with their glorious wax-like blossoms; the cochineal, the tuna, the opuntias—the great tree-cactus ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... athletic, good-looking young fellow in badly-fitting clothes, who appeared in no way ashamed to admit that he had never before been east of the Mississippi, and was frankly impressed by New York. His gaucherie was not ungraceful; there was an attractive impertinence in his cheerful assertions that his Moravian grandparents had desired him not to smoke or drink until he had completed his education and was earning his own living, and that, consequently, he knew tobacco only by sight and smell, and had contented himself ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... moment's hesitation, lingered near the big wood-fire in the hall, unwilling to admit that she had never seen a billiard table. She made a pretext of staying to talk to Mrs. Fiske, who sat stooping her tall figure forward in a chair too small for her. Sylvia looked at this ungraceful attitude with strong disapproval. What she thought was that such inattention to looks was perfectly inexcusable. What she said was, in a very gracious voice: "What a beautiful home you have, Mrs. Fiske! How wonderfully happy you must be ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... (non bene) on the battle-field. But it requires a poetic sympathy, which in classical editors is rare, to understand that, as Lessing and others have urged, the very way he speaks of his own retreat was by implication a compliment, not ungraceful, to his friend, who had continued the struggle against the triumvirate, and come home at last, war-worn and weary, to find the more politic comrade of his youth one of the celebrities of Rome, and on the best of ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... the army. After moving a short distance in this direction, the head of the column was turned to the east and took the road over Massanutten gap to Luray. Scarce a word was spoken on the march, as Jackson rode with me. From time to time a courier would gallop up, report, and return toward Luray. An ungraceful horseman, mounted on a sorry chestnut with a shambling gait, his huge feet with outturned toes thrust into his stirrups, and such parts of his countenance as the low visor of his shocking cap failed to conceal wearing a wooden ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... pleat that falls to just below the waist-line lends neither grace nor style to the figure. It is too short to give the distinction and dignity that handsome wraps with long lines almost invariably do, although they seem to add age to the form. There is a hint of youth in this ungraceful jacket to be sure, but it is not especially attractive in its ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... neither, and others partaking of the character of one or all. There were Frenchmen, Canadian voyageurs, strays of the north-west company, wearing white capotes, and chatting, dancing, and singing their boat-songs with all the esprit of their race. There were pueblos, Indios manzos, clad in their ungraceful tilmas, and rather serving than associating with those around them. There were mulattoes, too, and negroes of a jetty blackness from the plantations of Louisiana, who had exchanged for this free, roving life the twisted "cow-skin" of the overseer. There ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... amazing still was the sense of familiarity that he inspired, as, though he were a part of Shelton's soul. It came as a shock to realise that this young foreign vagabond had taken such a place within his thoughts. The pose of his limbs and head, irregular but not ungraceful; his disillusioned lips; the rings of smoke that issued from them—all signified rebellion, and the overthrow of law and order. His thin, lopsided nose, the rapid glances of his goggling, prominent eyes, were subtlety itself; he stood for discontent ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... nothing extraordinary in the face except the eyes burning fitfully under the gloom of incredibly thick, coarse, reddish eyebrows. His mouth was a curious mixture of softness and cruelty, and his hands were broad, but not ungraceful. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... narrow chested, the figure was clothed all in cream-coloured silk and silver, relieved only by the collar of the Golden Fleece, the solitary order the King wore. His step was ungraceful and slow, as if his thin limbs bore his light weight with difficulty, and he sometimes stumbled in walking. One hand rested on the hilt of his sword as he walked, and even under the white gloves the immense length of the fingers and the proportionate development of ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... to try to dismount, woman enough not to make an awkward struggle or do anything ungraceful. In her face I read an immense astonishment; fascination seemed to rivet her eyes on me, following my every movement as I shortened one stirrup for her, tightened the girths, and laid the bridle in her ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... of set features with a pair of keen eyes deeply sunken. His figure was lithe and sinewy, his movements quick and not ungraceful. His dress was of the better peasant class, a short knife was sheathed in his girdle, and one hand rested lightly on the hilt of it as he stood motionless under the Captain's scrutiny. He might have been a forester. His companion ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... great surprise," says vivacious Pennant, "I met again with Sir John Cutler, Grocer, in marble and on canvas. In the first he is represented standing, in a flowing wig, waved rather than curled, a laced cravat, and a furred gown, with the folds not ungraceful; in all, except where the dress is inimical to the sculptor's art, it may be called a good performance. By his portrait we may learn that this worthy wore a black wig, and was a good-looking man. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... have given the hint to Raphael for one of his figures, in a similar attitude, introduced into the famous cartoon of the same subject. Before St. Paul, below, a woman is sitting—looking at him, and having her back turned to the spectator. The head-dress of this figure, which is white, is not ungraceful. I made a rude copy of it; but if I had even coloured like * * * I could not have done justice to the neck and back; which exhibited a tone of colour that seemed to unite all the warmth of Titian with all the freshness of Rubens. In the foreground ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... remembers what a weirdly ungraceful thing was the first safety bicycle, and so was the gaudy painted-up early locomotive—and they are so yet on certain English lines where their early Victorian engines are like Kipling's ocean tramp, merely "puttied up with paint." So with the early automobiles, they jarred ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... to explain?" said the second stranger in Italian, bowing with a not ungraceful bend, and a touch of his hand to ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... pours the pure water over them thrice from a ladle-shaped vessel of bamboo with a long handle, and then gives me a little blue towel to wipe them upon, a Votive towel with mysterious white characters upon it. Then we all ascend; I feeling very much like a clumsy barbarian in my ungraceful ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... talking, soft as flutes and with quiet intonations. Hope told a flattering tale: I put aside the leaves; and behold! in place of the expected dryads, a pair of all too solid ladies squatting over a clay pipe in the ungraceful ridi. The beauty of the voice and the eye was all that remained to these vast dames; but that of the voice was exquisite indeed. It is strange I should have never heard a more winning sound of speech, yet the dialect should be one remarkable for violent, ugly, and outlandish vocables; so ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trivial as compared with the life-long misery to which tailless horses are subjected, for we deprive them for ever of their caudal appendage, and the ridiculous stump sticking up where the tail ought to be, is as ungraceful as it is indecent, especially in the case of mares. Our friend, the late Dr. George Fleming, says in The Wanton Mutilation of Animals, "nothing can be more painful and disgusting to the real horseman and admirer of this most ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... over they go; one, two, or three summersaults at a time. Here and there a bird gives a very quick and rapid spin, revolving like a wheel, though they sometimes lose their balance, and make a rather ungraceful fall, in which they occasionally hurt themselves by striking some object." From Madras I have received several specimens of the common Tumbler of India, differing slightly from each other in the length of their beaks. Mr. Brent ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... instant's silence, and then Mr. Morrow made another movement. I may have been mistaken, but it affected me as the translated impulse of the desire to lay hands on the manuscript, and this led me to indulge in a quick anticipatory grab which may very well have seemed ungraceful, or even impertinent, and which at any rate left Mr. Paraday's two admirers very erect, glaring at each other while one of them held a bundle of papers well behind him. An instant later Mr. Morrow quitted me abruptly, ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... the common words which offer difficulty in spelling. Unluckily it is not easy to produce classic English when one is writing under the necessity of using a vocabulary previously selected. However, if we concentrate our attention on the word-forms, we are not likely to be much injured by the ungraceful sentence-forms. This story is not long, but it should be dictated to every school class, beginning in the fourth grade, until every pupil can spell every word correctly. A high percentage is not enough, as in the case of some other studies. Any pupil who ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... When pursued by the hunters, he is said to bury his head in the sand, and having done this, to imagine that he cannot be discovered by the keenest search. Do not you, my lord, imitate the manners of the ostrich. Believe me, they are ungraceful; and, if maturely considered, will perhaps appear to be ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... horsemen were talking in ordinary, conversational tones as they rode leisurely down to the ford. When they passed Lorraine, the horse nearest her shied against the other and was sworn at parenthetically for a fool. Against the skyline Lorraine saw the rider's form bulk squatty and ungraceful, reminding her of an actor whom she knew and did not like. It was that resemblance perhaps which held her quiet instead of following her first impulse to speak to them and ask them to carry her to ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... bring it into fashion. He distinguished himself formerly in Paris by wearing clothes of a strange form. As an actor, he has no nobleness of manner, and not unfrequently his gestures are aukward. His deportment is always ungraceful, though he often endeavours to imitate the posture of the antique statues; but even then he presents only a caricature. His countenance has little or no expression, except in moments of rage or terror. In pourtraying the latter sentiment, all the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... way for a coming good. They go down on their knees in the mire of life to lift up and brighten and restore a neglected truth; and we that have not the energy to share their struggle should at least refrain from criticizing their soiled garments and ungraceful action. There have been excrescences, eccentricities, peculiarities about the camp of these reformers; but the body of them have been true and noble women, and worthy of all the reverence due to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... because of the bank and tower in front of it; the ships, necessarily for the effect, but fatally for themselves, are confused, and incompletely drawn, except the little sloop, which looks paltry and like a toy; and the foreground objects are, for work of Turner, curiously ungraceful and uninteresting. ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... willow by the well, darning those same triangular rents. Still has all this nothing to do with Cousin Jehoiakim Johnson. You have probably seen folks that were often in your way; now, he was never any where else. Always in the way, and always ungraceful. He was not ungraceful for lack of desire to please: bless his kind, officious heart! Oh, no! Was there a cup of coffee to be handed, and were there a half dozen waiters ready to hand it, he was sure to thrust forth at least ten huge digits, and if he chanced to get it in his grasp, wo to the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... variety (fig. 64); the flower is inverted like a bell, and the shaft is turned upside down, the smaller end being sunk in the plinth, while the larger is fitted to the wide part of the overturned bell. This ungraceful innovation achieved no success, and is found nowhere else. Other novelties were happier, especially those which enabled the artist to introduce decorative elements taken from the flora of the country. In the earlier ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... at the Homestead were assembled near the door, when, discerning them too late to avoid them, Lady Temple's equipage drew up in the peculiarly ungraceful fashion of waggonettes, when they prepare to shoot their ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and Romans amused themselves with witnessing the gladiatorial contests of their male slaves; but it was left for civilized America to introduce woman into the "ring" and make her show her paces on the race-course. An ungraceful figure she cuts, and a repulsive spectacle she presents; and worst of all is the havoc which she makes with her health. At the very time that these four female pedestrians were making their disgraceful exhibit in Boston, in ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... represents a boy of perhaps twelve, absorbed in pulling a thorn from his foot. We do not know the original purpose of the work; perhaps it commemorated a victory won in a foot-race of boys The left leg of the figure is held in a position which gives a somewhat ungraceful outline; Praxiteles would not have placed it so. But how delightful is the picture of childish innocence and self-forgetfulness! This statue might be regarded as an epitome of the artistic spirit and capacity of the age—its simplicity and purity and freshness of feeling, ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... an equal fear of giving pain. It would give pain to the Colonel (who, after all, had received him kindly) if he went before his time. By the art of graceful evasion Durant had escaped many such an old gentleman as the Colonel; but when it came to doing the really disagreeable and ungraceful thing it seemed ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... regard herself as a woman with many wrongs, because her natural rights are denied her. She is cockered up into a domestic martyr, and is bred into an impatience of reproof which is very harmful and very ungraceful. If we look about us, we find that in our cities, especially, this is producing some very sad results. Some of the men are getting very impatient at the increasing demands of women for attention, for place, and for consideration; ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... serve, but you would waste much time, and should the vertebrae have not been removed by the butcher, you would be compelled to exercise such a degree of strength that would make one's appearance very ungraceful, and possibly, too, throwing gravy over your neighbor sitting next to you. The correct way to carve this roast is to cut diagonally from fig. 1 to 2, and help in slices of moderate thickness; then it may be cut from 3 to 4, in order ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... not ungraceful retorts which I mentioned may be instanced as follows. Demaratus, being asked in a troublesome manner by an importunate fellow, Who was the best man in Lacedaemon? answered at last, "He, Sir, that is the least like you." Some, in company where Agis was, much extolled the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... this very day, for some unknown reason, words between them more or less unfriendly, and Tai-y was again sitting all alone in her room, giving way to tears. Pao-y was once more within himself quite conscience-smitten for his ungraceful remarks, and coming forward, he humbly made advances, until, at length, Tai-y little by little ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... air, and saluted her with a courtesy by no means ungraceful; and then the sweet lady said to him, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... comfortable chair near the fire, and, having waited for the rest to seat themselves, proceeded to open the council. Mollie, who was sixteen, large, fair, beautiful, and not as tidy as she might have been, dropped into a not ungraceful position at her feet. Aimee, who was a little maiden with a tender, spirituelle face, and all the forethought of the family, sat near, with some grave perplexity in her expression. 'Toinette and Tod, posed in the low nursery-chair,—the girl's firm, white ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... court-yards of the great mansions; the students were leaving the great school of Paris, to which the Duke of Bedford at Caen, and Charles VII. himself at Poitiers, were attempting to raise up rivals; and silence reigned in the Latin quarter. The child-king was considered unintelligent, and ungraceful, and ungracious. When, on the day after Christmas, he started on his way back to Rouen, and from Rouen to England, he did not confer on Paris "any of the boons expected, either by releasing prisoners or by putting an end to black-mails, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... you, Miss Deb," interrupted Jan, tilting himself backwards over the arm of the chair in a very ungraceful fashion, and leaving his legs dangling. "Others will, if he wo—if he can't. Lionel has just been saying that as Sibylla's sisters, he shall ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of the white which had garbed the wedding party in the ungraceful clothing of the European mode had failed to pose the natural attitude of the Tahitian toward ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... cherry laurel water. Marguerite immediately began, to use the words of M. Sajous's note, to smile agreeably and then to laugh; she became gay. 'It makes me laugh,' she said, and then, 'I'm not tipsy, I want to sing,' and so on through the whole performance of a not ungraceful giserie, which we stopped at that stage, for I was loth to have the degrading performance of drunkenness carried to the extreme I had seen her go through at the Charite. I now applied a tube of alcohol, asking ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... you will go to your room, and try to learn a little patience. You begin to be too pat with your own opinions, which in a young lady is ungraceful. There, you need not cry, my darling, because your opinions are always sensible, and I value them very highly; but still you must bear in mind that you are ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... began, it might almost be said it was only when a spectator was present that he was not sobbing. For Rosie, who was an awkward, ungraceful young person, proved to be the dullest and most butter-fingered pupil ever invented for the torture of teachers; at least, so Lancelot thought, but then he had never had any other pupils, and was not patient. It must be admitted, though, that Rosie giggled perpetually, ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... time, as Miss Muloch was, in one of those Thames monsters concerning which she wrote her fascinating pages, "A Week in a House-Boat"! We could scarce catch a glimpse of the river upon our tramps—and it was our constant silvery accompaniment, as the treble to a part-song—without coming across these ungraceful, unwieldy creatures, seeming like bloated denizens of depths below come to bask upon the surface. Hundreds of them dot the river between Teddington and Oxford: once we counted ten between Ethel and the wooded island whither we rowed every Sunday to dine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... provisions, that the natives were whiter and better-looking than those of the other islands; but that the gold country lay still more to the eastwards. By their description the men were not of large size, yet brawny and well set, without beards, having wide nostrils and broad smooth ungraceful foreheads, which were so shaped at their birth as a beauty, for which reason, and because they always went bareheaded, their skulls were hard enough to break a Spanish sword. Here the admiral observed the length of the day and night, and found that twenty half-hour glasses ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... the natives of Port Jackson, having fallen to the low pitch of their voices, recommenced their song at the octave, which was accompanied by slow and not ungraceful motions of the body and limbs, their hands being held up in a supplicating posture, and the tone and manner of their song and gestures seemed to bespeak the good will and forbearance of their auditors. ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... being given a horse much inferior to either Uncle David's or Norah's—the latter rides like a jockey, and, of course, astride, which I consider very ungraceful. She turns out well, however, and all her get-up is good—her habits come from a Melbourne tailor. I think I will get some clothes in Melbourne on my way back; they may not have newer ideas, but it may be useful for purposes of comparison with the Sydney ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... precisely as if their shoes were down at the heel—"slipshod"—and they could not lift up their feet in consequence. If it is dusty or sandy, they kick up the dust before them and fill their skirts with it. This is exceedingly ungraceful. If I were a gentleman, I really do not think I could marry a lady who walked like this; she would appear so very undignified, and I could not be ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... osculatory way. Now, being twenty-five, she is married, has two children, is growing stout, and always refers to her lord and master as 'He,' never by any accident pronouncing his name. Second, Julia; sixteen, flaxen-haired, lithe, not ungraceful, self-possessed, and perhaps a little pert. She is unmarried; but, having fed her mind with no more solid aliment than country gossip, no sensible man could talk to her five minutes. Third, Laura; eighteen, black hair, with sharp outlines on the temples, eyes heavily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... the room," said Clelie, "and found the mother and daughter together. Mademoiselle, who stood by the fire, had evidently been weeping Madame was in an abrupt and angry mood. She wasted no words. 'I want you to give her lessons,' she said, making an ungraceful gesture in the direction of her daughter. 'What do you charge a lesson?' And on my telling her, she engaged me at once. 'It's a great deal, but I guess I can pay as well as ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... for him. And the graceful manner of doing all these things opens the way to the heart, and facilitates, or rather insures, their effects. From your own observation, reflect what a disagreeable impression an awkward address, a slovenly figure, an ungraceful manner of speaking, whether stuttering, muttering, monotony, or drawling, an unattentive behavior, etc., make upon you, at first sight, in a stranger, and how they prejudice you against him, though for aught you know, he may ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... generally wear a red or white handkerchief round the head; and a full-plaited mantle tied over one shoulder, and passed under the opposite arm, with a full petticoat, is a favourite dress. Some wrap a long cloth round them, like the Hindoos; and some wear an ugly European frock, with a most ungraceful sort of bib tied before them. Round the washerwoman's plain, hedges of acacia and mimosa fence the gardens of plantains, oranges, and other fruits which surround every villa; and beyond these, the coffee plantations extend far up the mountain, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... became the forerunner of the artistic movement which preceded the Renaissance, the inspirer of that group of Pre-Raphaelites, awkward, grotesque in drawing though at times they were, to whom we turn to-day with a sort of piety, finding in their ungraceful saints an inner life, a moral feeling which we seek for ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... all fine and pleasant. Tom's pulse beat high, and a glad light was in his eye. He bore himself right gracefully, and all the more so because he was not thinking of how he was doing it, his mind being charmed and occupied with the blithe sights and sounds about him—and besides, nobody can be very ungraceful in nicely-fitting beautiful clothes after he has grown a little used to them—especially if he is for the moment unconscious of them. Tom remembered his instructions, and acknowledged his greeting with a slight ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Room." In b the lady's face is refined, and made less of the "nut-cracker" type. The comb is removed, her feet are separated, and the figure becomes not ungraceful. A white night-gown in b is introduced; in a it is her day-gown, and dark; the back of the chair in b is treated more ornamentally; in a a plain frilled nightcap is hung on the chair, changed in b to a more grotesque and "Gamp-like" headgear. Nothing can be better ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... central tower. There is a legend to the effect that there were seven towers in the original design—the central one, two at the west end, and one at each angle of the transepts; and this seems to be supported by the solid character of some of the piers in the transepts. Yet, despite the rather ungraceful outline of the whole building, when its mere size is realised, it gradually asserts its importance and incontrovertibly proves its right to be considered one of the very finest ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... woman, in the neat peasant dress of our country, when, taking a little from the fashion of the last century (the cap and the kerchief), it assumes no ungraceful costume,—replied to their summons. She was the solitary cicerone of the place. She had lived there, a lone and childless widow, for thirty years; and, of all the persons I have ever seen, would furnish forth the best heroine to one of those pictures of homely ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... could write a book, perhaps one that had read a great deal would say, that an Arabian horse is a very clumsy, ungraceful animal." This was written by Horace Walpole to Miss Berry, in 1791, in allusion to Dr Johnson's depreciation of Thomas Gray the poet.[192] It is an acute observation, well worth being wrought out. There is a grandeur and even a grace about this bulky beast and its motions well deserving the study ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... account for; the sympathies of England were awakened by the terrible revolutions of France, and the desolation of Poland; as a principle, we hated Napoleon, though he had neither act nor part in the doings of the democrats; and the sea-songs of Dibdin, which our youth now would call uncouth and ungraceful rhymes, were key-notes to public feeling; the English of that time were thoroughly "awake," the British Lion had not slumbered through a thirty years' peace. We were a nation of soldiers and sailors, and patriots; not of mingled cotton-spinners ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the art of making an impressive and almost triumphal entry on new scenes. Therefore she had been in no haste. Indeed, haste had no place among her attributes: it was ungraceful and usually not effective. When, therefore, the crowd had passed on, and there was a comparatively clear space in the hall, she advanced down it at Graydon's side as if her mind was wholly engrossed with their lively chat. Never for a second was she unconscious of the attention ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... were a fuzzy, ungraceful lot at this season. Even the best of them had big bellies and carried dirty and tangled manes, but as the grazing improved, as the warmth and plenty of May filled their veins with new blood, they sloughed off their mangy coats and lifted their wide-blown nostrils ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the town of Cambridge member of the long parliament. His domestic affairs were then in greater disorder; and he seemed not to possess any talents which could qualify him to rise in that public sphere into which he was now at last entered. His person was ungraceful, his dress slovenly, his voice untonable, his elocution homely, tedious, obscure, and embarrassed. The fervor of his spirit frequently prompted him to rise in the house; but he was not heard with attention: his name, for above two years, is not to be found oftener than twice in any committee; and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... little man, of perfect form, lithe as a spirit; ardent, open, affable; with a high and swelling forehead; a deep, warm, lustrous eye that darted forth the living fire of intelligence and love; a long thin nose, winding in a slight and not ungraceful curve toward the right shoulder; an eloquent gesture, a clarion voice, and a face benignant and bland ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... pretty, feminine faces that peered from the interior of the limousine. They had remained silent thus far, but now one of them, a fellow with dark eyes and a sallow complexion, reined his horse nearer the car and removed his hat with a sweeping gesture that was not ungraceful. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... them forgive his successes during the week, and his varnished boots and lilac gloves on Sunday. Toward the close of his college course, he became particularly attached to a poor bursar, by name Lescande, who excelled in mathematics, but who was very ungraceful, awkwardly shy and timid, with a painful sensitiveness to the peculiarities of his person. He was nicknamed "Wolfhead," from the refractory nature of his hair; but the elegant Camors stopped the scoffers by protecting the young man with his friendship. Lescande ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... mountains hang down "somewhat so poetical," as Mr. Ashe(439) said, that your own poet Gray will scarce keep tune with you. All this refers to your cascade scene and your letter. For the library it cannot have the Strawberry imprimatur: the double arches and double pinnacles are most ungraceful; and the doors below the book-cases in Mr. Chute's design had a conventual look, which yours totally wants. For this time, we shall put your genius in commission, and, like some other regents, execute our own plan without minding our sovereign. For the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... several large gongs were loudly beaten and a salute of muskets fired off. A large jar of rice wine, very sour but with an agreeable flavour, was then handed around, and I asked to see some of their dances. These were, like most savage performances, very dull and ungraceful affairs; the men dressing themselves absurdly like women, and the girls making themselves as stiff and ridiculous as possible. All the time six or eight large Chinese gongs were being beaten by the vigorous arms of as many young men, producing such a deafening discord that I was glad ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... poems interspersed throughout the volume. Mr Tennyson has his "Claribels," and "Isabels," and "Adelines," and "Eleanores"—ladies with whom he frequently plays strange, though, we admit, by no means ungraceful vagaries; and Mr Patmore, as in duty bound, and following the imitative bent of his genius, must also have his Geraldine to dally with. The two following stanzas of playful namby-pambyism, are a specimen of the manner in which this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... subject of pride with which their posterity will hardly sympathise. Monmouth Square had been the name while the fortunes of the Duke of Monmouth flourished; and on the southern side towered his mansion. The front, though ungraceful, was lofty and richly adorned. The walls of the principal apartments were finely sculptured with fruit, foliage, and armorial bearings, and were hung with embroidered satin. [114] Every trace of this magnificence has long disappeared; and no aristocratical mansion is to be found ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... parishes on the estate all dined at the Towers to-day, in order to pay their respects to their bishop. "Lothair's oecumenical council," said Hugo Bohun, as he entered the crowded room, and looked around him with an air of not ungraceful impertinence. Among the clergy was Mr. Smylie, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... realisation and enjoyment. Such a moment was granted to Matthew Arnold when he wrote A Summer Night. Whether that rather vague life-philosophy of his, that erection of a melancholy agnosticism plus asceticism into a creed, was anything more than a not ungraceful or undignified will-worship of Pride, we need not here argue out. But we have seen how faithfully the note of it rings through the verse of these years. And here it rings not only faithfully, but ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... principles are common, which again divide the whole series from that of the Transalpine Gothic—and whose importance Lord Lindsay too lightly passes over in the general description, couched in somewhat ungraceful terms, "the vertical principle snubbed, as it were, by the horizontal." We have already alluded to the great school of color which arose in the immediate neighborhood of the Genoa serpentine. The accessibility of marble ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... in clay are of rare occurrence. The best is one figured by Ker Porter, which represents a mother with a child in her arms. The mother is seated in a natural and not ungraceful attitude on a rough square pedestal. She is naked except for a hood, or mantilla, which covers the head, shoulders, and back, and a narrow apron which hangs down in front. She wears earrings and a bracelet. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... seemingly pitifully inadequate for the great adventure on which she was bound; her lines were short and ungraceful. From her clumsy iron-shod bow to her high, round stern, from her bulging sides to the summit of her short, powerful masts there was scant beauty in her. She was broad, blunt, evidently slow in her movements, and in the smooth waters of the bay seemed out of her element. But, for all that, ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... palm-tree pleasantest to thirst And hunger both, from labour, at the hour Of sweet repast; they satiate, and soon fill, Though pleasant; but thy words, with grace divine Imbued, bring to their sweetness no satiety. To whom thus Raphael answered heavenly meek. Nor are thy lips ungraceful, Sire of men, Nor tongue ineloquent; for God on thee Abundantly his gifts hath also poured Inward and outward both, his image fair: Speaking, or mute, all comeliness and grace Attends thee; and each word, each motion, forms; Nor less think we in Heaven of thee on Earth Than of our fellow-servant, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Toplitz, as if by accident, he met the Princess Mary out on a hunting party. The princess was on horseback; but she rode awkwardly, and her demeanor was shy and ungraceful. She well knew the object of this casual meeting, and when the King of Rome approached to greet her, she turned pale and trembled as she felt the gaze of his large blue eyes. Her paleness did not increase her beauty, nor did her shyness contribute to make her interesting. Joseph was ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... gentle and timid, and he will always try to avoid danger by flight. It is when running that he exposes his only ungraceful point. ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... approach of an acquaintance afar off, and the wise, slow smile gleamed about his mouth as he drew near. "How do you do?" was sometimes his greeting; but more often, "Good-bye!" or "Good-night!"—an original and more sensible greeting. Though ungainly in formation, he was not ungraceful in bearing and action; there was a fitness and harmony in his manifestations even on the physical plan. On the lecture platform he stood erect and unadorned, his hands hanging folded in front, save when he changed the leaf of his manuscript, or emphasized ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... founded, to give much of what they do or say the appearance of impertinence. Look at the self-confidence of Wordsworth, stiffening every other sentence of his prefaces into defiance; there is no more of it than was needed to enable him to do his work, yet it is not a little ungraceful here and there. Suppose this stubbornness and self-trust in a youth, laboring in an art of which the executive part is confessedly to be best learnt from masters, and we shall hardly wonder that much of his work has a certain awkwardness and stiffness in it, or that he ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... problems. Christopher was established as queer, and his townsfolk were disposed to let him rest at that. His pale face was remarkable for nothing except a pair of dreamy eyes which could at times give sign of inward lightnings. His hair was lank; his figure was attenuated and ungraceful; he wore his clothes awkwardly. He was commonly supposed to be sulky, and some people thought his tone of voice bumptious and insolent. He was far from being a favourite, but those who knew him best liked him best, which is a good sign about a man. Everybody was compelled to admit that he was ...
— Cruel Barbara Allen - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... long been accustomed to deny to ourselves. Observe the stately but flowing periods of Motley; his polished courtliness of style, the warm but not exaggerated coloring of his descriptions, the firm but never ungraceful outlines of his sketches of character that mark him the Michael Angelo among historians. In his brilliant imagery, his splendid scholarship, his fine analytical power, he is not surpassed by Macaulay, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various |
