"Unmentionable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fate will be the same as Indians on the reservation in the State of New York, who have been for one hundred years in the midst of our best civilization, but are still lazy and shiftless, their reservation being permeated through and through with unmentionable vices. They have no interest in the civilization of the present. They are living in the past, dreaming over the glory of their ancestors. They cannot be reached through civilization without religion. To an Indian there is nothing secular. Everything pertains to his religion. When he goes ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... result that at last the association of uncleanliness with these natural conditions becomes so overpowering that among civilized people (that is, people massed in the labyrinths of slums we call cities), half their bodily life becomes a guilty secret, unmentionable except to the doctor in emergencies; and Hedda Gabler shoots herself because maternity is so unladylike. In short, popular prudery is only a mere incident of popular squalor: the subjects which it taboos remain the most interesting and earnest of subjects ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... The streets were noisy with match-peddlers, with vendors of cake and tripe and coke; there were touts there too, altars to unimportant divinities, lying Jews who dealt in old clothes, in obscene pictures and unmentionable wares; at the crossings there were thimbleriggers, clowns and jugglers, who made glass balls appear and disappear surprisingly; there were doorways decorated with curious invitations, gossipy barber shops, where, through the liberality of politicians, the scum of a great ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... had bribed a travelling artist from Paris to decorate the bakery sign with certain scurrilities, and the whole village had conned next morning a list of the virtues of the Champollion yeast and of the things—mostly unmentionable—it was warranted a faire sauter. There were further charges and counter-charges—as that the widow's Cochin-China cock had been found with its neck wrung; and that she, as sage femme, and the only ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... When she had, in May, at last taken thought for the morrow, and applied at the Foreign Office for one of those secret jobs which could not be mentioned because they prepared the doers to play their parts after the great unmentionable event, she was too late. The Foreign Office said they could not take over people from ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... slave-trade on this part of the coast, who was believed in his day to be the very worst man in Africa, a pre-eminence to which few can hope to attain. Until his face had been seen, stamped as it was with the traces of long and unmentionable wickedness, few honest men could guess to what depths humanity can sink. Some indeed have declared that to see him was to understand the Evil One and ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... less, free and delightful as this resumption of the old intimacy had been, John knew Caesar too well not to perceive that between them lay an unmentionable five weeks, during which something had occurred. From signs only too well interpreted before, John guessed that Caesar was once more in debt to the Demon. And finally, Caesar confessed that he had been betting, that he had ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the business was presently disposed of. So far, things were not too seriously bad, and Prudence sighed in great relief. Then the Ladies took out their sewing, and began industriously working at many unmentionable articles, designed for the intimate clothing of a lot of young Methodists confined in an orphans' home in Chicago. And they talked together pleasantly and gaily. And Prudence and Fairy felt that the cloud ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... in the unmentionable place are barred in this connection," he continued gayly. "On my way to carry out these good intentions—at some one else's expense, remember, all the time—I was called to the bedside of a dying man, and detained there some ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... once comical and sad to see this harmless old gentleman with his naive, benevolent countenance, and his thin hair flaming up in a semicircle, like the footlights at a theatre, revelling in the intricacies of the unmentionable deed. ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... possessions, and was a diligent student and hardworking man from youth upward. He was not wont to boast of his pedigree until in later life, being assailed by vilest slander, all his kindred nearest or most remote being charged with every possible and unmentionable crime, and himself stigmatized as sprung from the lowest kennels of humanity—as if thereby his private character and public services could be more legitimately blackened—he was stung into exhibiting to the world the purity and antiquity of his escutcheon, and a roll of respectably placed, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was an antiquated relic of a former life in the States. A pair of old trousers generally hung by one suspender over a colored shirt, which, the summer before, possibly, had had a wash-tub experience, but not later; his footwear was altogether unmentionable. He was called well-to-do, and there was no necessity for him to cut such an abominable figure, so he soon became a by-word, and was designated as "sour dough." At all events, he was sour enough, and kept up a continual siege of torment until he ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... is Bucks. I can't go back on him. He is amiable and I am soft. He says he is going to have a crown and harp for me some day, but I fancy—that is, I have an intimation—that there will be a red-hot protest at the bar of Heaven," he lowered his tone, "from a certain unmentionable quarter when I undertake to put the vestments on. By the way, I hear you are interested in chickens. Oh, yes, I've heard a lot about you! Bob Johnson, over at Oroville, has some pretty bantams I want to ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... mind, all the world over, believes the squeak of the official penny whistle to be as the trump of archangels and the voice of Sinai. That all the people do not fall down prostrate at the squeak is, to this order of mind, the one unmentionable sin. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... looks and the improvement wrought by our early rising in our health and characters. And all this, please observe, for a society without treasury or commercial prestige, for a play which was being denounced in advance as unmentionable, for an author without influence at the fashionable theatres! I victoriously challenge the West End managers to get as much done for interested motives, if ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... struck Hilary particularly was the mortal terror that was depicted on the blind man's face. It was as though he expected some cruel, crippling blow to follow; as though it were the last straw on the back of unmentionable former agonies. Hilary shuddered. It was not good to witness such animal fear. A dark shadow blotted out the brightness of the Earth-day for him. There was something wrong here, something that required a good deal ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... Abbey, "an edifice which I believe was originally built to the honor of Jesus Christ." "The blasphemies of Voltaire," he says, "pale into insignificance when compared with those of Marlowe;" he "deliberately accused Jesus Christ and his personal followers of crimes which are justly considered unmentionable in any civilised community," and "any monument which may be erected in honor of Christopher Marlowe will be a deliberate ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... tell you that neither Delahaye, if he lives, nor any other person, will appeal to the law to force you to give the child up. This is the truth. I see you still hesitate. Listen! This also is truth. The child is in danger from Delahaye—hideous, unmentionable danger." ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a list of unmentionable ordures used in Germany near the end of the seventeenth century, see Lammert, Volksmedizin und medizinischer Aberglaube in Bayern, Wurzburg, 1869, p. 34, note. For the English prescription given, see Cockayne, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... her African dominions for some years to come. In other words, it has been coolly decreed by that weakest of all the European nations, that slavery, murder, injustice, and every other conceivable and unmentionable vice and villainy shall still, for some considerable time, continue to be practised on the men, women, and ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... her Uncle Tom's. Winifred had a small baby, born at the end of the summer. She had become strange and alien to Ursula. There was an unmentionable reserve between the two women. Tom Brangwen was an attentive father, a very domestic husband. But there was something spurious about his domesticity, Ursula did not like him any more. Something ugly, blatant in his nature had come out now, making him shift everything over to a sentimental ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... itself is unmentionable and inexpressible,—it is neither a thing nor no-thing: and this is known even ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... unfavourably criticised of Leaves, he is the Great Bridegroom, and in no literature, ancient or modern, have been the "mysteries" of the temple of love so brutally exposed. With all his genius in naming certain unmentionable matters, I don't believe in the virility of these pieces, scintillating with sexual images. They leave one cold despite their erotic vehemence; the abuse of the vocative is not persuasive, their raptures are largely rhetorical. This exaltation, this ecstasy, seen at its best in William ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... the English seem, on the whole, whiter than most men, their records cleaner. But, good Lord, don't run away with the idea that I don't see the drawbacks—horrors—unmentionable things done in our very midst! I'm under no illusions. Few people, I suppose, have fewer illusions than I have. Have you ever been in a factory, Miss Vinrace!—No, I suppose not—I may say ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... prevent its untying. He also wore “hygienic suspenders,” a discovery of great importance (over three thousand patents have been taken out for this one necessity of the toilet!). This brace performs several tasks at the same time, such as holding unmentionable garments in place, keeping the wearer erect, and providing a night-key guard. It is also said to cure liver and kidney disease by means of an arrangement of pulleys which throw the strain according to the wearer’s position—I omit ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... rhetorical defiance, but as no one answered he proceeded to express the teachers and officers in terms of unmentionable quantities. Suddenly he turned upon a big, vacant-looking ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... teemed with the glory of Jehovah, an unmentionable space, for there was no time there. Neither were there the aged or dying, for Satan had not as yet cursed any thing that Jehovah had made. But justice being the authority of Jehovah, he must be just with ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen
... stommick and kill ye. For they've schales on their bodies, and can't get back; and they just scratch, and bite, and claw at your innards till ye die." There was nothing to be done with these terrible lizards but to drink an unmentionable potion, which, I am assured, is strong enough to rout the most determined lizard of them all, and bring him to nought. It is, however, noteworthy that stories of persons being killed by lizards crawling down their throats are widely ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... rang out a long string of "sacre chien," "sacre diable," and still more unmentionable phrases. The effect-upon the dogs was magical; the cariole flew to the summit; the progress of the episcopal tour was undeniably expedited, and a-practical exposition was given of the poet's thought, "From seeming evil still ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler |
