"Unpretentious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Stede Bonnet's terminal adventures a very unpretentious pirate made his appearance in the waters of New York. This was a man named Richard Worley, who set himself up in piracy in a very small way, but who, by a strict attention to business, soon achieved a remarkable success. He started out ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... important ones, but the volume is nevertheless of absorbing interest to him, for by it he is enabled to look into the face and heart of one of his own kin, who lived when the Nation was young. In leaving this unpretentious record, therefore, I seek to do simply what I would have had my ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... and then examined Desnoyers with evident astonishment as though he thought his appearance too unpretentious for a proprietor. He had taken him for a simple employee, and his respect for social rank ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... prospects—the Joss House, for instance, one of the several temples whither the Chinese frequently repair to propitiate the reposeful gods. It is an unpretentious building, with nothing external to distinguish its facade from those adjoining, save only a Chinese legend above the door. There are many crooks and turns within it; shrines in a perpetual state of fumigation adorn its nooks and corners; ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... views" uttered in speech and platform are expressed in sickening syntax and offensive rhetoric. Doubtless an American politician, statesman, what you will, could go into a political convention and signify his views with simple, unpretentious common sense, but ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... played the mandolin, guitar and piano by ear. These men were not only grateful to Von Barwig for his kindness, but they loved him, and recognising in him the real artist had unbounded respect for him. As for Von Barwig, he found them simple fellows, sentimental, unpretentious and good-hearted, and he liked them and felt at ease with them because they did not seek to probe into that part of his life which he preferred should remain unknown to them. They merely accepted him as they found him and for this Von Barwig was grateful. As time went on, Von Barwig found himself ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... fortnight, and thereby retains a striking originality of his own, is not an ordinary parrot, and the conviction was dawning on Travers that Nehal Singh was not an ordinary Hindu. The unusual simplicity of his dress, which nevertheless concealed a costly and refined taste, his firm though unpretentious bearing, the energy with which he had overthrown what Travers guessed must have been a fairly violent opposition on the part of his priestly advisers, pointed to a decided, interesting and perhaps, under certain circumstances, ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... wide range, at the same time thorough and unpretentious, is a rarity; a philologist who is neither perversely wrongheaded nor the victim of a preconceived theory is a still greater one; yet we find both characters pleasantly united in the author of these Lectures. Decided ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... This unpretentious little book is the outcome of my own experiences and adventures in Alaska. Two trips, covering a period of eighteen months and a distance of over twelve thousand ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... spacious than the drawing-room, and as unpretentious. The furniture everywhere was sparse, but there were one or two rich knick-knacks, and an abundance of signed photographs. The few pictures, too, were signed, and they drew attention. On the table the napkins, save George's, were in rings, and each ring different ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... with wafers, in the window of the dining-room, a small hand-bill announcing furnished lodgings. At half-past six of a fine July morning, he affixed the bill, and went forth into the square to study the result. It seemed, to his eye, promising and unpretentious; and he returned to the drawing-room balcony to consider, over a studious pipe, the knotty problem of how much he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fauna lively with squirrels, wood-chucks, and the like; where the leading sportsmen snare patridges, as they are called, and "hunt" foxes with guns; where rabbits are entrapped in "figgery fours," and trout captured with the unpretentious earth-worm, instead of the gorgeous fly; where they bet prizes for butter and cheese, and rag-carpets executed by ladies more than seventy years of age; where whey wear dress-coats before dinner, and cock their ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... day know how plain and unpretentious were the dwellings of the burghers of Paris in the sixteenth century, and how simple their lives. Perhaps this simplicity of habits and of thought was the cause of the grandeur of that old bourgeoisie which was certainly grand, free, and noble,—more so, perhaps, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... on his lips to say "rather more than you have," but it occurred to him in time that jokes on this ground are dangerous. Wayne Carey had been married in November, was living in a somewhat unpretentious way in a downtown boarding-house, and certainly had to-night so much of a lost-dog air that it made the doctor pause. So he substituted: "—rather more than I should have expected, even of a fellow who has got the girl he ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... disliked the imposing ceremonies which the English church still retained: some of the ministers ceased to wear gowns in preaching, performed the marriage ceremony without using a ring, and were in favor of simplifying all the church service. Unpretentious workers began to tire of the everlasting quarreling, and to long for a religion simple and quiet. These soon met trouble, for the rulers had decided that salvation was by the Church of England, as the sovereign, its head, should ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... simple. Terribly foot-sore, though he would never have admitted it, hungry and weary, he turned into an unpretentious eating-house and ordered some dinner. The place when he entered was occupied mostly by labourers and workmen, dressed very much as he was himself, and quite as grimy as he had become after having driven about for hours in ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... is entirely unpretentious. There is no bluster and no cant about him. He does not claim our gratitude for the doubtful boon of life. He does not pretend to be just, while he is committing, or winking at, the most intolerable injustices. ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... without a border or parterre, unvisited, and left alone, the orchard has acquired an atmosphere of peace and stillness, such as grows up in woods and far-away lonely places. It is so commonplace and unpretentious that passers-by do not notice it; it is merely a corner of meadow dotted with apple trees—a place that needs frequent glances and a dreamy mood to understand it as the birds understand it. They are always ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... to do things which Nature has forbidden them to do—things which we can do so very much better than they, without any trouble. Heaven defend me from those meaningless palaces! But the little old music-halls have always attracted me by their unpretentious raciness, their quaint monotony, the reality of the enjoyment on all those stolidly rapt faces in the audience. Without that monotony there would not be the same air of general enjoyment, the same constant guffaws. That monotony is the secret of ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... still in the land of the living) I hope you will be able to come and see our little estate, which is to be called by the descriptive name of "Old Orchard." I have got a good architect to make the working drawings and he has designed a very picturesque yet unpretentious house.—Yours very truly, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... was little more than a closet, with two berths, one above the other, and very little standing room between these and the wall. By paying nearly double fare a passenger might secure a room for himself, but the room given him did not compare well even with that of small and unpretentious modern steamers. ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... imperative that a relation of individual experiences—however devoid of stirring incident and adventure—should be written in the first person. At the same time, the writer of this unpretentious story of a summer's tramp cannot but feel that he owes his readers—should he have any an apology for any avoidable egotism. His excuse is that, no twit notwithstanding ding the glamour attaching to the old mining towns, it ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... granddaughter of a former governor or justice of the Supreme Court comes home from her typewriter and her brother from the cotton mill or the lumber yard. Social life in a small town—and most Southern towns are small—is simple and unpretentious, although here too the influence of prosperity is beginning to be manifest. Social affairs are more elaborate than they were ten or fifteen years ago, and there is also less casual expression of informal hospitality. The higher prices of food ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... I'm not sure it was right for you to come here where the life is so different from the quiet, unpretentious one you have led," the doctor thought, but he merely said: "It's my impression they wear their best ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... about his antecedents and associations. But I have not known this story long. He only told it me this evening; just an hour or two before he died. Well, we all have our little romances, as you are pleased to call them!" "Yes, yes, all of us. Even I, unpretentious, plain Elizabeth Fairleigh,—but no matter." I mind me, reader, that I promised not to talk of my own experiences. Ah, there are no such phenomena in the world really, as "commonplace" lives, and "commonplace" persons! ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... at some other time? Was the sentence stored in the man's memory, or did it come with the first gleam of returning consciousness from a soul laid open by disaster? I think racial words, simple and unpretentious, may lies in any man close to the bone like that to be rived out with a mortal hurt. That's what keeps me wondering about the words he used. And he did ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... The translation is unpretentious. The translators are content to exhibit such a work to the American military public without changing its poignancy and originality. They hope that readers will enjoy it as much as they ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... to be free to a select public, but now the chosen, who are nearly always people from the hotels, must pay ten pesetas each for their pleasure, and it is not too much for a pleasure so innocent and charming. The academy is on the ground floor of the maestro's unpretentious house, and in a waiting-room beyond the shoemaker's shop which filled the vestibule sat, patient in their black mantillas, the mothers and nurses of the pupils. These were mostly quite small children in their every-day clothes, but ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... of these arrangements may be admirably adapted to unpretentious establishments, where, however, it is wished to employ separate rooms; the second (1, b) is only suitable for elaborate baths of the highest class, in which it may be adopted with excellent and with practical results. Of the combination arrangements (a) has little to recommend it; (b) is ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... and we walked away together. I actually had to shorten my steps a little to accommodate myself to his quick, shuffling gait. It is queer, Aunt Jennie, but before this tiny, unpretentious parson I feel a sense of deference and high regard. To think he is able to overcome his fears, that his gracile body has been called upon to withstand the bufferings of storms, and that his notion of duty should appear to raise him, ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... he said to me. And from that day on, I often dined with him informally with M. and Mme. Lockrou, Meurice, Vacquerie and other close friends. The fare was delightful and unpretentious, and the conversation was the same. The master sat at the head of the table, with his grandson and granddaughter on either side, saying little but always something apropos. Thanks to his vigor, his strong sonorous voice, and his quiet good ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... so unpretentious, in its style and furnishings, that we are more than surprised at its comfort. Miss Cassandra says that she has never in her life seen floors scrubbed to such immaculate whiteness, and we know that Quakers know all about cleanliness. The service which the men ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... of the great School. A little beyond it, where by a conduit one of the Mere's hurrying tributaries gushed beneath the road, they came to a regiment of noble elms guarding a gateway, into which Brother Copas turned aside. A second and quite unpretentious gateway admitted them to a green meadow, in shape a rough ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... now he enjoys adorning it with fanciful embellishments. One would say of him, as of many an author of the Talmud, that in writing his work he rested from his Talmudic studies; and one seems to hear in these unceremonious conversations, these unpretentious homilies, the same note that even in the present day is sometimes struck in synagogues on Saturday afternoons. What clearly shows that Rashi unbent a little in composing his Biblical commentaries are the flashes of wit and humor lighting them, the display ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... had mentioned "the average voter in tramcar or railway train," and the words had called up a haunting vision of disgust. He often said that he had no objection to the working classes as such. He rather liked them. He found them intelligent and unpretentious. He could converse with them without effort, and they always had the interest of sport in common. He felt no depression in passing through the working quarters of the city, and at Stennynge he was well acquainted with all the cottagers and farmers alike. In one family he had ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... I did it. I began in the most unpretentious way by telling them a story which might last an hour, and favoured by many an unexpected wind it lasted eighteen months. It started as the wreck of the simple Swiss family who looked up and saw the butter tree, but soon a glorious inspiration ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... horses and our two guides, and started about two o'clock. For some time we followed the road known as the Rue de la Raillere, which leads to the baths of the same name from the Place St. Martin; crossing the river by a very unpretentious bridge, not far from the town. Leaving La Raillere behind, and passing in turn the drinking establishment of Mauhourat—near which the Gaves of Lutour and Marcadau form the Gave of Cauterets—and the baths of Petit St. Sauveur and Le Pre, and gaining as we mounted a good view of the "Cascade de ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... the dew falling to refresh the earth. He had left Paris, and was now in a provincial town under the protection of the princess Margaret, who, loving the gospel, extended her protection to its disciples. Calvin was still a youth, of gentle, unpretentious bearing. His work began with the people at their homes. Surrounded by the members of the household, he read the Bible, and opened the truths of salvation. Those who heard the message, carried the good news to others, and soon the teacher passed beyond the city to the outlying ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... so far advanced that the exterior was nearly completed, for in David Burpee's book of accounts, under that date, there is a charge for work done by Messrs. Plummer and Bridges in "clapboarding one third of the east end of the meeting house." When finished the building was doubtless a very unpretentious little structure not at all like a modern church edifice and very unlike its successor, the Congregational church in Sheffield, but it was the first Protestant place of worship erected on ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... New York. It was a doughtful anomaly in a society which otherwise was exceedingly brutal, that a good woman possessed a civilising power which gained the respect of her rough surroundings, and, by an unpretentious charm, softened both speech ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the central square—an unpretentious building in the trees, with a driveway leading up from two gates, at which stand two motionless sentries, each with one stiff feather in his cap. It is such an entrance as you might expect to find at any comfortable country ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... of the regime, as established under the Commonwealth, 1649, was reflected in the dress of both men and women when all finery was discarded. Fabrics became somber in color and unpretentious in texture. Men had their locks shorn close to the head, and women returned to the simple caps or hoods, which held the hair close to the head. Virginia authorities took cognizance of England's turn towards ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... great trees with leafy branches rose on every side.... As they rode on beneath the leafy trees from every tree the birds sang out, for the spell of silence over the lonely moor was broken for ever." This unpretentious story, a child's story, is as engaging as a gem. And so, I think, are most of the others. One more example to illustrate the quality of Leamy's style—say, the description of the contest of the bards before the High King at the Feis of Tara in the story called "The Huntsman's ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... an unpretentious poem, describing in six short cantos the six seasons into which the Hindus divide the year. The title is perhaps a little misleading, as the description is not objective, but deals with the feelings awakened by each season in a pair of young lovers. Indeed, ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... and have a tendency to check the behavior that goes with tenement- house conditions. We of the profession are so impressed with the atmosphere that should pervade a library, that a very small and unpretentious collection of books brings our voices involuntarily to the proper library pitch. But this is not true to the small arab, who, coming from the cluttered little kitchen at home to a small, crowded children's room where the aisles are so narrow that the quickest way of egress ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... effort and valor; and while recognizing the glory that came to American arms in the period described, honestly seeks to place some of that glory upon the deserving brow of a race then enslaved and despised. The book is unpretentious and aims to relate the facts in a straight-forward way, unaccompanied by any of the charms of tasteful presentation. Its author, however, is deserving our thanks, and the book marks an important stage in the development of the colored American. His mind was turning ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... in Webster Street. It was twice as large as the old one, had a garden back and front, a verandah round three sides. When Mahony bought it, and the piece of ground it stood on, it was an unpretentious weather-board in a rather dilapidated condition. The situation was good though—without being too far from his former address—and there was stabling for a pair of horses. And by the time he had finished ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... familiarity which gives the town a homely comfort not often met with elsewhere. In laying on one side our pen we feel contented in having been able, though so late in this work, to bestow a panegyric, however unpretentious, on a town which, though possessing no picturesque natural surroundings, nor interesting architectural productions, has yet a body of citizens whose hearts cannot but obtain for their town a reputation for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... interior. It was such as one would hardly have expected in a bachelor in Barnriff. There were none of the usual impedimenta of a prairie man's abode, there was no untidiness, no dirt, no makeshift. Yet like the man himself the place was simple and unpretentious. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... new house the things which she had brought with her from Trieste. When all was finished, her modest quarters in Baker Street were curiously characteristic of the woman. Like many of the houses in her beloved Damascus, the one in Baker Street was unpretentious, not to say unprepossessing, when viewed from without, but within totally different, for Lady Burton had managed to give it an oriental air, and to catch something of the warmth and colouring of the East. This was especially ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... the small unpretentious cabin. The door stood wide open, and the shaggy old dog was stretched on the doorstep, dozing. No soul was ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... just before the battle of Fredericksburg and after, were at a point on the road between Fredericksburg and Hamilton's Crossing, selected on account of its accessibility. Notwithstanding there was near-by a good house vacant, he lived in his tents. His quarters were very unpretentious, consisting of three or four "wall-tents" and several more common ones. They were pitched on the edge of an old pine field, near a grove of forest trees from which he drew his supply of fire-wood, while the pines helped to shelter ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... names I hold in honor and whose writings are in my library. If any such failed to receive our cards of invitation, it was an accident which, if I had known, I should have deeply regretted. So far as we could judge by all we heard, our unpretentious party gave general satisfaction. Many different social circles were represented, but it passed off easily and agreeably. I can say this more freely, as the credit of it belongs so largely to the care and self-sacrificing efforts of Dr. ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... thrown open. A single thick-set man, apparently unarmed and dressed like an ordinary traveler, followed by half a dozen other equally unpretentious-looking men, entered. The leader turned ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... Rebecca Miller was unlike the majority of the plain, unpretentious people of that rural community. In all her years she had failed to appreciate the futility of fuss, the sin of useless worry, and had never learned the invaluable lesson of minding her own business. "She means well," Mrs. Reist said in conciliatory tones when Uncle Amos or the children ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... of this local brother's unpretentious discourse:—It cheered us, one and all. Faces brightened and drooping heads were lifted up as the old man pursued his way. The last hymn was the heartiest of all, not because, as is sometimes the case, the people were encouraged ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... living requires enormous vigilance and sympathy. No one can write conclusively about it. Compared with this creative statesmanship, the administering of a routine or the battle for a platitude is a very simple affair. But genuine politics is not an inhuman task. Part of the genuineness is its unpretentious humanity. I am not creating the figure of an ideal statesman out of some inner fancy. That is just the deepest error of our political thinking—to talk of politics without reference to human beings. The creative ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... toilette, kissed him upon his forehead, after brushing his hair. Then she laid their modest table, which was always decorated with a pretty vase of flowers. Soon the father entered. He was one of those mild, unpretentious men who ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... afternoon to an excursion to Johore, the capital of an independent Malay province, whose Sultan reigns with pomp and ceremony. After a railway ride, we took the ferry across the river, where a scene of loveliness awaited us. The city is unpretentious in appearance, but our afternoon excursion revealed to us a varied landscape with a tropical growth. We visited a plantation where india rubber, one of the chief articles of export, is cultivated; then a large Mohammedan mosque, finely ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... and eight horse teams that had brought in grain. This square is still covered with fine primeval forest trees, and has at its centre a handsome soldiers' monument of the Civil War, to which four paved walks converge. It is an altogether pleasant and unpretentious town, which cherishes with no small amount of pride its association with the name of ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... of family expense in any European country, are unnecessary. Some of the rich Japanese are now lavishing money on their homes, which are partly modeled on European plans; but in the main the residences, even of rich people, are very simple and unpretentious. These homes are filled with priceless porcelains, jades, paintings and prints, but there is no display merely for the sake of exhibiting ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... The unpretentious chapel was small and nearly dark, for the usual dimness was increased by the lowering clouds outside. The deep, narrow window openings, fitted with stained glass, ran almost to the rough-hewn rafters supporting ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... trio was, like themselves, ancient and unpretentious, nearly one hundred years having elapsed since the solid foundation was laid to a portion of the building. Unquestionably, it was the oldest house in Silverton, for on the heavy, oaken door of what was called the back room was still to be seen the mark of a bullet, left there by some marauders ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... reproduction of the Bayeux Tapestry have been familiar to me since I was a child. Yet until to-day I entered the room opposite the Cathedral where it has lately been simply but fittingly housed, I never imagined, and no one had ever told me, how splendid a work of art it is. Nothing could be more unpretentious, more domestic in a sense, with almost the air of our grandmothers' samplers, than this long strip of embroidered canvas, still so fresh in its colours that it might have been finished, if indeed it is finished, yesterday. It is technically crude, childishly conventionalised, wrought ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... Gammon—he's heavy," said Robert; and he made the savings of that unpretentious veteran bare. Master Gammon had likewise written his word. It was discovered on the blank space of a bit of newspaper, and looked much as if a fat lobworm had plunged himself into a bowl of ink, and in his literary delirium had twisted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... name from Brooke Market, established here by Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, but demolished a hundred years ago. It was in Brooke Street, in a house on the west side, that poor Chatterton committed suicide. St. Alban's Church is an unpretentious building at the north end. An inscription over the north door tells us that it was erected to be free for ever to the poor by one of the humble stewards of God's mercies, with date 1860. Within we learn that this benefactor was the first Baron ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... told me in the most normal and unpretentious tone that she hated the moon. I talked to the same lady several times afterwards; and found that this was a perfectly honest statement of the fact. Her attitude on this and other things might be called a prejudice; but it could not possibly be called a fad, still less an affectation. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... collection, though in an unpretentious store, at last attracted attention, and after some little time it became the thing in the fashionable world to go there, and from that time forward ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... gleamy streaks, according to the sky and breeze. Pasture-land and arable come sloping to the margin, which, instead of being rough and rocky, lips the pool with gentleness. Ins and outs of little bays afford a nice variety, while round the brink are certain trees of a modest and unpretentious bent. These having risen to a very fair distance toward the sky, come down again, scarcely so much from a doubt of their merits, as through affection to their native land. In summer they hang like a permanent shower of green to refresh the bright water; and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Is there a phrase in our language more eloquently significant of physical and mental refreshment, more expressive of remission of toil and restful relaxation, or so rich in associations with the comforts and serenity of home life, and also with unpretentious, ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... first time around their own family dinner table, Mr. Farrington exclaimed, "Now this is what I call comfortable! It's unpretentious, but it's way ahead of that gorgeously dressed-up hotel, which made one feel, though well taken care of, like a traveller and a wayfarer. But I expect you were sorry ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... was a mixture of old and new. Formerly it had been an unpretentious cottage like the others, but she had added a new wing of red brick built in the most approved style of the jerry-builder, and looking like the villas in the more modern parts of Rexton. The crabbed ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... goes, and also vivid and distinct. The style adopted has therefore been the opposite of the pedantic, utilizing any vivacities of method which are consistent with truth of fact." The same principles have guided me in the present equally unpretentious treatise. I agree entirely with Mr. Warde Fowler when he says: "I firmly believe that the one great hope for classical learning and education lies in the interest which the unlearned public may be brought to feel ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... mess precincts, we proceeded to ensconce ourselves in Flashman's Hotel, which is certainly far better than the Lime Tree, where we stayed before. Indian hotels are about the worst in the world. We have sampled rough dens in Spain, in Tetuan, and in Corsica—especially in Corsica, but then they are unpretentious inns in unfrequented villages, whereas in India you find in world-famous cities such as Agra or Delhi the most comfortless dens calling themselves hotels—hotels where you hardly dare eat half the food for fear of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... The unpretentious house of Lenard et Morellet of Paris now and then effects deals so enormous that financial circles are staggered, and the world stands amazed. The true facts of who is actually behind that apparently unimportant firm are, however, ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... trembling trees bowed toward him as he advanced, the sun-rays quivered, frightened, yet curious, through the green leaves, and in the blue heaven above there swam visibly a golden star. The Emperor wore his unpretentious-green uniform and the little world-renowned hat. He rode a white palfrey, which stepped with such calm pride, so confidently, so nobly—had I then been Crown Prince of Prussia I would have envied that horse. The Emperor sat carelessly, almost laxly, holding his rein with one hand, and with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... been of the most unpretentious nice breeding and unaffected taste, Emily might have been ingenuously funny in ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... were four or five boys and young men, eighteen to twenty-one years of age, also a kindly and unpretentious but droll young fellow, named John C. Aston, whose age was about twenty-five. This younger element was responsible for most of the occurrences of lighter vein, which became a feature of ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... despair of such a destiny with silent resignation; it moved her as nothing less, as nothing feebler or of more common type could ever have found power to do. There were a simplicity and a greatness in the mute, unpretentious, almost unconscious, heroism of this man, who, for the sheer sake of that which he deemed the need of "honor," accepted the desolation of his entire future, which attracted her as nothing else had ever ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... came to see that she affected no airs of superiority, but treated him on the footing of an equal, his confidence returned to him in a measure and he showed himself in his true colors, as a man of intelligence by reason of his sound, unpretentious common sense. Besides, he was surprised at times to think he could note a change was gradually coming over him; it seemed to him that his mind was less torpid than it had been, that it was clearer and more ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... morning Camellia wore an unpretentious dress of white—one which made the thing the Gay Lady had worn at dinner the evening before seem to her memory poor indeed. Later in the morning the Skeptic took Camellia boating on the river, and she went up and dressed for it in a ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... STOUGHTON) Miss PHYLLIS BOTTOME achieves the difficult feat of treating a love conceived in a romantic vein without declining upon sentimentality, and seasons her descriptions, which are shrewdly, sometimes delicately, observed, with quite a pretty wit. I commend it as a sound, unpretentious, honestly-written book. Sir Julian Verny, a baronet with brains and a very difficult temper, falls a captive to Marian's proud and compelling beauty. Then, just before the War flames up, secret service claims him, and he returns ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... a beautiful one, commanding a view of valley and hill and the narrow winding river. The house, an unpretentious square of red brick, with sloping roof and dormer windows, wore its hundred years with dignity, and amid its fine trees was an object of interest to strangers, of ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... are played to the regular accompaniment of clapping palms, songs about ducks and parrakeets, dances full of shuffling and leaping. Even the movements of the sumptuous "Persian Dances" in "Khovanchtchina" are singularly naive and simple and unpretentious. Sometimes, however, the full gorgeousness of Byzantine art shines through this music, and the gold-dusty modes, the metallic flatness of the pentatonic scale, the mystic twilit chants and brazen trumpet-calls make us see the mosaics of Ravenna, the black ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... exterior of the cottage was humble and unpretentious, and in keeping with the wildness of the landscape, its interior gave evidence of the cultivation and refinement of its inmates. An aquarium, containing goldfishes, stood on a marble centre-table at one end of the apartment, while a magnificent grand piano occupied the other. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... time-honoured trappings that characterize this rather feeble literature of the supernatural. On the contrary, the scenes enacted in houses that appear to be really haunted are generally very simple and insignificant, not to say dull and commonplace. The ghosts are quite unpretentious and go to no expense in the matter of staging or costume. They are clad as they were when, sometimes many years ago, they led their quiet, unadventurous life within their own home. We find in one case an old woman, with a thin grey shawl meekly ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... wiser not to travel at all." The Captain slackened his walk before an unpretentious red brick residence. "The landlady of this house takes paying guests and asks no questions. Here you can remain perdue," with emphasis, "and no one inside will trouble you; but be cautious, Julie, how you venture on the street day ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... in the neighbourhood of York. "The ground was elevated, and the situation afforded excellent air and water, as well as a very extensive and diversified prospect." The illustration (Frontispiece) will convey a better idea than any verbal description of this unpretentious building. Its character as a labour of love and humanity was embodied in an inscription written at the time, which may be discovered whenever ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... reality of the old and the blatancy of the new. The little parish church is of the very far past, having lost its Cathedral rank over six hundred years ago to Sainte-Marie in Grasse, a town scarcely younger than its own. It is the type of the church of this coast, with its unpretentious smallness, its strength, and its disfiguring restorations; and it is, especially in comparison with Vence and Grasse, of small architectural interest. The facade, and the double archway which connects the church and the tower, are of the unfortunate ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... hundred yards away. It was a disappointing house to find in that great enclosure, for though it was certainly neither small nor trivial, it was as certainly far from possessing anything like grandeur. It had been in its day a respectable, unpretentious square structure of three stories, entirely without architectural beauty, but also entirely without the ornate hideousness of the modern villas along the route de Clamart. Now, however, the stucco was gone in great patches from its stone walls, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... George Mansion's silent, unpretentious little mother possessing all this power among her people, and she, Lydia Bestman, was shaking hands with ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... was that she looked upon as she turned back toward that spot—it was one more low mound, simple, unpretentious, added to the many which had been placed there this last century and a half; one more little gray sandstone head-mark, cut simply with the name and dates of him who rested there, last in a long roll of ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... in turn. James was much softened by the exercise; so much so that when Donald asked permission to walk with him as far as their way lay together, he very pleasantly acceded to the request. And Donald was so bright and unpretentious it was almost impossible to resist the infectious good temper which seemed to be ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... The elegant, the unpretentious, the quiet soir,e to which the woman of fashion shall welcome the litt,rateur and the artist, the aristocrat who is at the top of the social tree and the millionaire who reached his culmination yesterday, would seem to be that Ultima ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... one of our large mill towns, at the very end of a narrow street lined on each side by a row of dwelling houses of the poorer class, stood a tiny cottage. It was a humble, unpretentious abode of only four rooms, but it was home to the weary girl struggling up the hillside. The tired eyes brightened and lagging steps quickened involuntarily as she turned the corner and saw the welcoming light streaming from the ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... familiar with history, is to delve into the origin and development of periods in furniture. The story of Napoleon is recorded in the unpretentious Directoire, the ornate Empire of Fontainebleau, while the conversion of round columns into obelisk-like pilasters surmounted by heads, the bronze and gilded-wood ornaments in the form of the Sphynx, are ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... both come here not at all with the prudent and simple purpose of leaving here the surplus of their passion. He, the good for nothing, has come to enjoy himself; he needs beauty, d'you see—aesthete that he is! But all these girls, these daughters of the simple, unpretentious, great Russian people—how do they regard aesthetics? 'What's sweet, that's tasty; what's red, that's handsome.' And so, there you are, receive, if you please, a beauty of antimony, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... nightcapped bourgeois pulling on his trousers. There flashed on me incongruously the thought of our English laureate's stately home by the sea, in which, jealously guarded by hedges and flunkeys, the poet chiselled his calm stanzas; and all the vagabond in me leapt out to meet the unpretentious child of Paris. He greeted me with simple cordiality; and, ugly and coarse though his face was, it was lit up throughout by a pleasant smile. His notorious leg was bandaged, but not repulsively. No, "homely" is the only impression ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the house. It was a fairly typical fazenda dwelling, if more substantial than most. It was wholly unpretentious, with whitewashed walls, and the effect of grandeur it would give to natives of this region would come solely from the number of buildings. There were half a dozen ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... dilapidated hat which had seen a prodigious amount of service of a nondescript kind; while a tattered gray blanket that had done duty for many a month as a bed by day and a cloak by night, and was now in the last stage of dissolution from age and general infirmity, completed his unmilitary and unpretentious toilet. Having at first no one to identify them, Glazier and his companion were as strangers among friends, and necessarily without official recognition. At length, however, after much searching, they found Lieutenant ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Francis!" he said in a rich, thick, uncomfortable voice. "This is an unexpected pleasure! Won't you come upstairs? My girls are having a little informal dance—just among themselves and their own young friends—quite simple,—in fact an unpretentious little affair!" And he rubbed his fat hands, on which twinkled two or three large diamond rings. "But we shall be charmed if ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... on a narrow balcony that projected from the second floor of a neat but unpretentious boathouse. The rear end of the edifice was built against the sloping ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... frontier was a great leveler. The conditions of life there were such as to make men plain, common, unpretentious—genuine. The frontier fostered the sympathetic attitude. It made men really democratic and in matters political led to the three-fold ideal of Equality which constitutes the essence of American Democracy in ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... look on his flippant protege and then commenced a very grave discussion of future ways and means, which ended in an immediate departure for Paris, where the two men entered upon an unpretentious career in the commercial line as agents and travellers for the patentees of an improved kind of gutta percha, which material was supposed to be applicable to every imaginable purpose, from the sole of an infant's boot to the roof of a cathedral. There are times when genius must stoop to ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... rather curiously. While on my round I came across an unpretentious-looking young man who, I discovered, was also working on the same side. We had chatted together for some time when I happened to make some reference to the candidate. "Oh," he said, with a laugh, "I am the candidate." ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... In the same little unpretentious dwelling in which he had first greeted his nephew years before, the old soldier, Rene de Laudonniere, sat one chill autumn evening, musing beside a small fire. His surroundings were poor, and his fine face was haggard and careworn. ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... real geniuses at is the omelet. I remember, when we put in at Toulon for coal, I went ashore for a stroll, and had the most delicious omelet with chicken livers beautifully cooked, at quite a small, unpretentious place near the harbour. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Hawthorne and her daughter were transforming their Concord home into a small repository of the fine arts. Without much that would pass by the title of elegance, they succeeded in giving it an unpretentious air of refinement, and one could not enter it without realizing that the materials of a world-wide culture had been brought together there. Hawthorne soon found the dimensions of the house too narrow for the enlarged ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... wit and distinction of a French woman. General Merlin married her in Madrid in 1811, and brought her to Paris, where she created a sensation. Being an accomplished musician, she gave delightful concerts, and though also gifted as a writer she was as simple and unpretentious as if she had been created to remain obscure. In addition, she was so truly good that she had almost no enemies; her charity was inexhaustible, and she possessed one of those hearts which live only to do good ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... town in France about midway between the ancient and romantic cities of Tours and Poitiers. To-day it is an exceedingly unpretentious and an exceedingly sleepy place; but in the seventeenth century it was in vastly better estate. Then its markets, its shops, its inns, lacked not business. Its churches were thronged with worshipers. Through its narrow ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... would not allow himself to be dazzled by it, and therefore on his first introduction had made his best endeavour to put on an air of severity, and to show himself superior to its attractions. But now he was not only astonished by the well-ordered and unpretentious comfort of the house, but he was also shaken in his preconceived notions about the rich, when he came to make the acquaintance of the Garmans. Johnsen had expected to find something more ostentatious, especially at table; but the solid tone of the household, and the easy ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... seemed a festivity at Solferino's never gave us the holiday sense Paris filled us with from the early hour in the morning when, after our little breakfast, we met downstairs in the unpretentious hotel in the Rue St. Roch where most of us stayed—if we did not stay instead at the Hotel de l'Univers et Portugal for the sake of the name. The Rue St. Roch was convenient and if we were willing to climb to the top of the narrow house, where the ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... there is always some penalty attached to the possession of anything really valuable. So, though I wasn't interested in the cattle, I was bound to follow them till I recovered my dog. Thompson's unpretentious stockwhip was in my hand at the time; and, judging it unlikely that Cleopatra had been broken in to the use of that disquieting implement, I was just turning Bunyip round, when Willoughby ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... assembly, as though their presence was merely casual, while Mingo passed along from group to group of his white friends and acquaintances with that familiar and confident air of meritorious humility and unpretentious dignity which is associated with good-breeding and gentility the world over. When he lifted his hat in salutation, there was no servility in the gesture; when he bent his head, and dropped his eyes upon the ground, his dignity was strengthened and fortified rather than ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... white setting-hen, tied down to her pert little face with a veil whose large-meshed surface was broken by a single design, a large black butterfly anchored just across her dainty little nose. A most astonishing costume in which to appear in the Rev. John Burns's unpretentious little church crowded with the canaille of ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... indeed been transformed! No one would have recognized it, covered as it was with a wealth of pure white blossoms and dark-green leaves, for it looked more like the throne of a fairy than like anything so ordinary and unpretentious. Mrs. Seabrook, who possessed exquisite taste, had so massed the blossoms around her and daintily perched an inverted one on her head that the effect was exceedingly beautiful and picturesque. Katherine, who had chosen to be "Lady Poppea," made a brilliant foil, on one side, with her garlands ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... can sometimes speak from the heart and to the heart as Lincoln did it is perhaps not given to be uniformly felicitous. Among these speeches was that delivered at Philadelphia, which has already been quoted, but most of them were not considered felicitous at the time. They were too unpretentious. Moreover, they contained sentences which seemed to understate the gravity of the crisis in a way which threw doubt on his own serious statesmanship. Whether they were felicitous or not, the intention of these much-criticised utterances was the best ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Lucy and Amelia by name, were unpretentious young women, without personal attractions, and soberly educated. They professed a form of Dissent; their reading was in certain religious and semi-religious periodicals, rarely in books; domestic occupations ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... come here with three nieces to give them sea air and change. They are all perfectly quiet, sensible, and unpretentious girls; so as, if you will come over here any day or days, we will find you board and bed too, for a week longer at any rate. There is a good room below, which we now only use for meals, but which you and I can be quite at our sole ease in. Won't ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... briskly, and a few minutes later they entered a narrow court off Duke street, St. James. Through a dingy and unpretentious doorway, unmarked by sign or plate, they passed into the premises of Benjamin and Company. In a dark, cramped office, scantily furnished, they found an elderly Jewish ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... enjoy the advantage of having some one other than themselves cook their meals and make their beds. The hotel, a relic of old times, with its patio and long portal, its rooms whose lower floors were on the ground level, its unpretentious spaciousness, appealed strongly to Bartley as something unusual in the way of a hostelry. It seemed restful, romantic, inviting. It was a place where a man might write, dream, loaf, and smoke. Then, incidentally, it was not far ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... now engaged with. Until his providential discovery of Sen, the distinguished Provider had been immersed in a most unenviable condition of despair, for his enlightened but exceedingly perverse-minded master had, of late, declined to be in any way amused, or even interested, by the simple and unpretentious entertainment which could be obtained in so inaccessible a region. The well-intentioned efforts of the followers of the Court, who engagingly endeavoured to divert the Imperial mind by performing ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... many thoughts had come to him from the unpretentious things of music.... Ben Bolt brought back the memory of some prolonged and desperate sorrow. The lineaments of the tragedy were effaced, but its effect lived and preyed upon him under the stress of its own melody. Once he ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... frequented by male street prostitutes (Pupenjunge) the invert risks being blackmailed or robbed if he goes home or to a hotel with a cafe acquaintance. There are also a considerable number of homosexual Kneipen, small and unpretentious bar-rooms, which are really male brothels, the inmates being sexually normal working men and boys, out of employment or in quest of a few marks as pocket money; these places are regarded by inverts as very safe, as ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... ephemeral literature, as well as the records of the explorations of early days, I have been astonished at the rich treasures of scientific and descriptive literature that have Lake Tahoe as their object. Not the least service this unpretentious volume will accomplish is the gathering together of ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... about to be celebrated in the Chapel Royal, Savoy, when enter Wife No. 1 who explains that she was a married woman when she met Cuthbertson, and therefore, a fair, or rather unfair, bigamist. Upon this Cuthbertson (who is conveniently near in a pew, wearing the unpretentious uniform of the Royal Horse Artillery), rushes into the arms of the lady who has erroneously been numbered Wife No. 2, when she has been in reality Wife No. 1, and all is joy. Now I need scarcely point out to you that nothing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... sleeve—no searching for blind paths—no stooping and looking for ancient tracks, grass-grown and dim. Each argument travels the highway—"the big road." It is logical. The facts and conclusions agree, and fall naturally into line of battle. It is sincere and candid—unpretentious and unanswerable. It is a grand defence of human rights—a brave and manly plea for universal justice. It leaves the decision of the Supreme Court without argument, without reason, and without excuse. Such an exhibition of independence, courage ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... had amassed money he kept no servants, but went every morning to the bazaar, and purchased his provisions, which he cooked with his own hand. He lived frugally, and his dress was mean and threadbare, nevertheless, this strange, austere, unpretentious man was one of the greatest linguists of his time. Not only could he speak most of the languages of the East, including Arabic and Persian, but he wrote good idiomatic English. To his translations, and his connection with the Kama Shastra ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... freshmen lived was an unpretentious dwelling, built of wood and painted a dull gray. A straggling bit of uneven lawn in front by no means added to its appearance. Even in the concealing twilight it had a neglected look. It was in glaring contrast to stately Madison Hall with ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... stand at the mouth of a deep, dark mine. I didn't descend into the pit; I did, instead of this, a much idler and easier thing: I simply went every afternoon, my stint of work over, I like to recall, for a musing stroll upon the Lizza—the Lizza which had its own unpretentious but quite insidious art of meeting the lover of old stories halfway. The great and subtle thing, if you are not a strenuous specialist, in places of a heavily charged historic consciousness, is to profit by the sense of that consciousness—or in other words to cultivate ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... events were happening at Vivey, the person whose name excited the curiosity and the conversational powers of the villagers—Marie-Julien de Buxieres—ensconced in his unpretentious apartment in the Rue Stanislaus, Nancy, still pondered over the astonishing news contained in the Auberive notary's first letter. The announcement of his inheritance, dropping from the skies, as it were, had found him quite unprepared, and, at first, somewhat sceptical. He remembered, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... doorsteps or lintels, or lying about at random, or utilized as seats at the house entrance; they date from Roman or earlier times—columns, too, some of them adorned with the lotus-pattern, the majority unpretentious and solid. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... is Camelford House (Lord Hillingdon), an unpretentious building in a courtyard, once the property of the Pitts, Earls of Camelford. George Grenville occupied it in 1805, and subsequently H.R.H. Princess Charlotte and her husband, afterwards Leopold I. of Belgium. Adjoining it ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... buildings as to any undertaking in life. Rough hemlock lumber, rudely put up and whitewashed, would be a cheap mode of construction, which might be tolerated on a merely commercial place, but would illy correspond with neatly-kept private grounds, however humble and unpretentious they might be. The plan selected may be devoid of mere ornament, which would increase the cost, without adding to the capacity or usefulness, but the proportions should be satisfactory, the arrangement convenient, the materials the very best of their kind, and the workmanship well and faithfully ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... stay to dinner; how he stayed and talked politics with his host; how they went out to the barn afterwards to look at the stock; what Greeley said to him and what he said to Greeley,—it was a perfect bit of word-sketching, spontaneous, realistic, homely, unpretentious, irresistibly comic because of the quaintness of the dialogue as reported, and because of the mental image which we formed of this large-headed, round-bellied, precocious youth, who at the age of sixteen was able for three consecutive hours to ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... was also deeply absorbed; after thinking of his friends at Devil's Cliff, he turned his thoughts, with a mixture of disquietude and joy, to his little flock at home, his garden, his poor and unpretentious church, his house, his favorite horse, his dog, and his two slaves who had always given him the most devoted service. And then—shall we say it?—he thought of certain preserves which he had made some days before his ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... which is written by a master of the original sources. Indeed, the use of the text of Homer, Herodotus, the dramatists, and the other contemporary writers is very effective, and very suggestive as to the right method of teaching and study. The style is delightful. For simple, unpretentious narrative and elegant English the book is a model. In my judgment, the work is far superior to any other text-book for high school or academic use which has yet appeared. Its value is enriched by the illustrations, ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... An examination of her editorial contributions to the Sunday Times from March to December, 1861, suggests her mental vivacity, vigor, breadth of view, and uniform clearness and power of expression. The title of the whole series is unpretentious enough: "Parlor and Sidewalk Gossip." All through her journalistic career similar qualities of originality characterized her pen. She was editor of Demorest's magazine for twenty-seven years, and ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... are dead, but Slavery is dead also, partly through their labors and sacrifices. Their unpretentious, patient, earnest lives were not in vain. They contributed to the final triumph ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... catalogue, either of the liver, or of the fraise, or of the ears, which also share the honour of appearing at our tables. Where is the man not acquainted with calf's liver a la bourgeoise, the most frequent and convenient dish at unpretentious tables? The fraise, cooked in water, and eaten with vinegar, is a wholesome and agreeable dish, and contains a mucilage well adapted for delicate persons. Calf's ears have, in common with the feet and cervelles, the advantage of being able to be ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... town is very small, There's no cathedral nor a club, In fact the township, all in all, Is just one unpretentious pub; And there, from all the stations round, The local sportsmen can ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... than thirty, she had gentle eyes, a twitching forehead, and lips ever ready for a sympathetic smile. Her attire, a little shabby, a little disorderly, well became the occupant of furnished lodgings, at twelve and sixpence a week, in the unpretentious suburb of Acton. She was the daughter of a Hammersmith draper, at whose death, a few years ago, she had become possessed of a small house and an income of forty pounds a year; her two elder sisters were comfortably married to ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... private offices, a special reception-room, furnished in Chinese style—stiff chairs and rigid tables—for Chinese guests, and his living-rooms. It was characteristic of the man that these were the most unpretentious ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... Songs and Sonnets. After reading this with ever-growing surprise and delight, Rose never had another doubt about the writer's being a poet, for though she was no critic, she had read the best authors and knew what was good. Unpretentious as it was, this had the true ring, and its very simplicity showed conscious power for, unlike so many first attempts, the book was not full of "My Lady," neither did it indulge ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... rear line of his lot and rented to negroes; and the fact that a negro family was now in process of "moving in" was manifested by the presence of a thin mule and a ramshackle wagon, the latter laden with the semblance of a stove and a few other unpretentious household articles. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... girls; but they had never ventured to urge its withdrawal, and after his wife's death Sir Thomas never alluded to the subject. Popham Villa it was, therefore, and there the words remained. The house was unpretentious, containing only two sitting-rooms besides a small side closet,—for it could hardly be called more,—which the girls even in their mother's lifetime had claimed as their own. But the drawing-room was as pretty as room could be, opening on to the lawn with folding ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... R. A. West, for my guide, we came into a quiet locality where the ancient landmark reared its steeple, like the finger of faith pointing heavenward. Few indeed must be the fashionable Christians who worship under its unpretentious roof, but there is an air of antiquity surrounding it which interests every visitor who enters its ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... bright, pleasure-loving nature which had come to her as an inheritance, had yet had the courage to deliberately put from her the greatest happiness which she could have known, in order to devote herself to the care of others. The simple, unpretentious manner in which the tale was told, made so light of the incident that it might have involved little or no suffering; but Mademoiselle knew better, and her voice trembled with sympathy as she put ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... vitally human, too affectionate, too bitter, and he has, moreover, springs of humor which bubble up continually. (You cannot imagine an archangel with a sense of humor.) But it is this very mixture in the man that holds the character student. Lloyd George is quite unpretentious, loves children, will join heartily in the chorus of a popular song, and yet there is concealed behind these softer traits a stark and desperate courage which leads him always to the policy of make or break. He is flamingly sincere, and yet no subtler statesman ever walked the boards at ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... explain or to apologize for a book. I shall do neither: I have tried to explain my meaning simply and clearly in the book itself, and I am optimistic enough to think that my favourite game is too popular to require an apology for increasing its literature, however unpretentious the attempt may be. Moreover, I am still too much affected by the "brilliant and feverish glow" of enthusiasm to dream ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... do not know what it is to make up a story. THE ENGINEER'S THUMB (God forgive me) was narrated as a piece of actual and factual history. Nay, and more, I who write to you have had the indiscretion to perpetrate a trifling piece of fiction entitled THE BOTTLE IMP. Parties who come up to visit my unpretentious mansion, after having admired the ceilings by Vanderputty and the tapestry by Gobbling, manifest towards the end a certain uneasiness which proves them to be fellows of an infinite delicacy. They may be seen to shrug a brown ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... being of light draught, they handle so well that they can turn a complete circle in their own length. While unable to sail as close to the wind as a yacht, their chief point is in running, when with huge sails set on either side they will tear along at a pace perfectly astounding for craft of their unpretentious build and rig. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... building chosen by the Grand Monarch to occupy the site at the end of the north arm of the canal of Versailles. Ambitious to extend his domain, the King had purchased and razed a shabby little village named Trianon, and on its somewhat dreary site erected for Madame de Montespan a villa so unpretentious as to arouse the comment of courtiers accustomed to the ruler's profligacy at Versailles. The vases of faience that shone among the figures of gilded lead, the walk ornamented with Dutch tiles, ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... lighted up the barren waste. Here and there a simple wooden cross indicated a grave, the burial place of some lone traveler who had been murdered and robbed by banditti, and over whose body a Christian hand had reared this unpretentious emblem. As we got further and further southward, the graceful pepper tree, with myriads of red fruit, began to appear, and afterwards became a prominent ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... ball. Mexican Town had been increased by half a dozen new families during the last few years, and the Mexicans had put up an adobe dance-hall, that looked exactly like one of their own dwellings, except that it was a little longer, and was so unpretentious that nobody in Moonstone knew of its existence. The "Spanish boys" are reticent about their own affairs. Ray Kennedy used to know about all their little doings, but since his death there was no one whom ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather |
