"Unsatisfactory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out 'true to life,' I had no time to ask myself whether what I was writing would be pleasant to read! But indeed there was no kind of language, no kind of ideas which I really liked, except these. My feverish and unsatisfactory attempts were themselves a token of my love, a love which brought me no pleasure, but was, for all that, intense and deep. And so, when I came suddenly upon similar phrases in the writings of another, that is to say stripped of their familiar accompaniment of ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... time as many as 270 of the 400 regular soldiers were prostrated. The recurring night alarms added to the fatigues of the troops and the anxieties of the seven officers. The situation was indeed so unsatisfactory that Colonel Parsons was ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... House of Lords. The woman correspondent was of an age when human passion is supposed to be extinct, and her counsel was attempting to prove that fact to relieve her from the charge. The testimony of the aged Countess, who was herself over seventy-five years of age, was very unsatisfactory, and the court put this question to her demanding an ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... police are, however, kept very busy, for the regulation as to carrying papers is being rigorously enforced, and the belated pedestrian is invariably challenged by a cavalry patrol or by the ordinary police. If his answers are unsatisfactory, he undergoes a more searching examination ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... secrets that it was impossible to doubt that a glowing sensuality must be concealed underneath this religious ash. Adultery could not be proved, she must have for one reason or another avoided it, and that her impotent husband was unsatisfactory was now indubitable. The supposition that she wanted to get rid of him in order to marry somebody else was now inevitable; and as this somebody else was looked for and discovered, the adduction of evidence of her guilt was ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... Uganda spear alone shall do it." Hearing this bravado, the Kamraviona, the pages, and the elders, all rose to a man, with their sticks, and came charging at their king, swearing they would carry out his wished with their lives. The meeting now broke up in the usual unsatisfactory, unfinished manner, by the king rising and walking away, whilst I returned with the Kamraviona, who begged for ten more blue eggs in addition to my present to make a full necklace, and told my men to call upon him in the morning, when he would give me anything ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... to the House of Representatives, with his objections to it, as specified in the veto message referred to this committee; and, after a rigid analysis and course of argument, pronounces them "feeble, inconsistent, and unsatisfactory;" after which ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... professional salesman makes the best appearance of which he is capable. Surely you can do that, too. You can train yourself to grace and ease in your bearing. However unsatisfactory your features may be, you certainly are capable of looking pleasant, and therefore of being attractive. It is possible for you to have well-kept hands and hair; to wear suitable, clean clothes; to ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... encroaching upon its area of meaning on the one side, and "civilization" encroaching on the other, the word "barbarism," as popularly apprehended, is left in a vague and unsatisfactory plight. If we speak of Montezuma's people as barbarians one stage further advanced than Mohawks, we are liable to be charged with calling them "savages." Yet the term "barbarism" is a very useful one; indispensable, indeed, in the history of human progress. ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... problem; one upon which I had but little time, just at present, to bestow thought. The drama in the library had been interrupted at its most crucial stage. It was all-important that at least one phase of the case be brought to a termination, however unsatisfactory that termination might be, before anything ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... close. The decisive stand which the President had taken, and which he calmly, firmly, and persistently maintained against the extreme measures of some of the most prominent Republicans in Congress, was unsatisfactory. It was insinuated that his sympathies on important measures had more of a Democratic than Republican tendency; yet the Democratic party maintained an organized and often unreasonable, if ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... of the Bauddha doctrine that destruction takes place without a cause, and the latter alternative would involve the uselessness of the Bauddha instruction as to the 'path'[401]. As therefore both alternatives are open to objections, the Bauddha doctrine must be declared unsatisfactory. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... philology is not very profitable. After all, what one wishes to know is not where the architect got his materials, but what he made of them. And what he made was a play abounding in admirable scenes, but ending in a rather unsatisfactory manner. With even less violence to the inner logic of the piece than was necessary in the case of 'Fiesco', 'Cabal and Love' might have been given a happy ending. The whole tragedy hangs by a thread in the fifth act. Lady Milford has fled and is no longer ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... treatises which have come down to us seem to indicate the trend of the researches respecting what must have been in those times unsatisfactory inks. Scattered through them appear a variety of formulas which specify pyrites (a combination of sulphur and metal), metals, stones and other minerals, soot, (blue) vitriol, calxes (lime or chalk), dye-woods, berries, plants, ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... inconveniencies, console yourself by reflecting that no profession is without them; and that all the importunities and perplexities of business are softness and luxury, compared with the incessant cravings of vacancy, and the unsatisfactory expedients of idleness. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... was not going to carry everything before him at Ronleigh as he had done among the small fry at Horace House, The Upper Fourth voted him a "bounder," and nicknamed him "Moke." After morning school he repeated his attempt to ally himself with his former foes, but the result was decidedly unsatisfactory. ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... of the two attorneys for the plaintiffs asked a few questions, but the replies were so unsatisfactory to their side, that they soon passed the witness. During the cross-questioning, however, the sheriff had approached the judge and whispered something to his honor. As there were no further witnesses to be examined, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... give some rough idea of the labour spent on the work. (The reader unacquainted with Zoology will find some account of the more interesting results in Mr. Romanes' article on "Charles Darwin" ('Nature' Series, 1882).) The state of knowledge, as regards the Cirripedes, was most unsatisfactory at the time that my father began to work at them. As an illustration of this fact, it may be mentioned that he had even to re-organise the nomenclature of the group, or, as he expressed it, he "unwillingly ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... in the first place, suffer from the fact that Ibsen was a relentless destroyer of documents; they are all written by him; not one single example had been preserved of the correspondence to which this is the reply. Then Ibsen's letters, as revealers of the unseen mood, are particularly unsatisfactory. With rare exceptions, he remains throughout them tightly buttoned up in his long and legendary frock-coat. There is no laughter and no tears in his letters; he is occasionally extremely angry, and exudes drops of poison, like the captive scorpion which he caught when he was in Italy, and ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... Serbia went on to suggest that if Austria was not entirely satisfied with the reply, the points still in dispute should be referred to the international tribunal at The Hague. This reply the Austrian government considered unsatisfactory. Forty-five minutes after the Serbian note had been placed in the hands of the Austrian minister to Serbia that official handed a notice to the Serbian government stating "that not having received a satisfactory answer within the time limit set, he was leaving ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... proceedings, and that was after a short cross-examination by the judge himself. Whether it was a mere matter of form or not, the judge had asked each witness a number of questions on the evidence which had been given, and as Paul listened to those questions, they seemed utterly unsatisfactory to him. He remembered Judge Bolitho's career, remembered, too, that when he was practising at the Bar, he was said to be one of the most severe cross-examiners on the Northern Circuit. But now his queries seemed to be trivial and unworthy. The questions he asked might have been those ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... hundred dollars—afterwards increased to five hundred, at the insistence of Mr. Shackford's cousin—had been offered by the board of selectmen for the arrest and conviction of the guilty party. Beyond this and the unsatisfactory inquest, the authorities had done nothing, and were plainly not equal ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... main-yard of Marryatt's verbose carpenter was "precarious and not at all permanent." He was provided with a pole, with which he pushed the bucket down through a hole cut in the upper end of the "case," whence it was drawn out by the chaps on deck full of spermaceti. It was a weary, unsatisfactory process, wasting a great deal of the substance being baled out; but no other way was apparently possible. The grease blew about, drenching most of us engaged in an altogether unpleasant fashion, while, to mend matters, the old barky began to roll and tumble about in an aimless, drunken sort of ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... grounds, we may suppose that it took its rise from some Nymph, who wandered so far into the woods as to be unable to find her way out again; and from the fact that those who went to seek her, hearing nothing but the echo of their own voices, brought back the strange but unsatisfactory intelligence that the Nymph had been changed ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Wrights controlled these warping sections by means of a cradle occupied by the aviator, so that the cradle would move or rock, dependent on the tilt of the machine. This was what was termed automatic control. This was found to be unsatisfactory, and the control has now been placed so that it connects with a lever and is operated by the aviator, and is called ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... might help in some,' said Helen; 'but then I have very little time; I have to draw, and to practise, and to read French and Italian and history to Mamma, and to write exercises; but then Mamma has not always leisure to hear me, and it is very unsatisfactory to go on learning all alone. At Dykelands there ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prevented from doing either by demonstration of Thomas; appointed as successor to Bragg; expected to assume aggressive; objects; prolonged discussion; lack of enterprise; bent on defensive campaign; demands reinforcements; unsatisfactory relations with Davis; forces opposed to Sherman; skilful avoidance of battle in the open; fails to anticipate McPherson's move; fortifies Resaca, abandons Dalton; evacuates Resaca; careful defensive; decides to give battle near Adairsville; ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... and mocked at herself. "I shall wait till the heats are over," she said, "and then stay on to see the end of the November fogs; then I can go north to winter at Aberdeen or some such delightful place." But these late London days, while her mind was in this unsatisfactory state, studying to deceive itself, had one great pleasure —the letters which came at intervals of two or three days from her loved friend. Even to her eyes they looked beautiful. The girl of the period, when she writes to her friend, usually ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... was unsatisfactory, for he drew back, allowing the bushes to come together, and muttered some impatient expression. Looking angrily at Jack, he extended his arm and finger so as to point away from the stream, and signified by gesture that the youth ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... west to Wokingham Creek, thence via Sesbania to Hughenden. There was no date stamp supplied to the office, but by writing "Pelican Water-holes" and the date across the stamps, the post mark was made, and the stamps cancelled. This was found to be very slow and unsatisfactory. ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... And the pathetic appeal of the smart fashionable for lump sugar, on the ground that her darling Fido cannot be expected to catch a spoonful of Demerara from the end of his nose, leaves the grocer cold. A dairyman charged with selling unsatisfactory milk has explained to the Bench that his cows were suffering from shell-shock. He himself is now suffering from shell-out-shock. At Ramsgate a shopkeeper has exhibited a notice in his window announcing that "better days are in store." ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... seems to have gone wrong. Yesterday I got unsatisfactory in history, and in arithmetic to-day I couldn't get a single sum right. I'm frightfully worried about missing that gymnastic lesson. It will be all right if Mother gives me the money to-morrow, for if she goes herself she will ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... now comes down on business; the girl fails to explain to him the unsatisfactory relations between her and Edwin: Grewgious is to return to her "at Christmas," if she sends for him, and she does send. Grewgious, "an angular man," all duty and sentiment (he had loved Rosa's mother), ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... arts and industry I must refer to the collections, however meagre and unsatisfactory they are; a condition for which I have already apologized. Nowhere did I find a trace of iron nor of copper, although they used the latter for ornaments (bracelets, etc.), and there can be no doubt that they had the former metal also,—after the Spanish conquest, ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... unsatisfactory to Cecilia, who could frame to herself no possible reason for a visit so extraordinary, and so totally inconsistent ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... possible to prepare a font of separate types for the various elements of the compound glyphs we find in the texts; but after having such a font made a number of years ago, and printing a couple of pages of the Dresden Codex, the result was unsatisfactory; it became evident that the proper Maya font of type must be both separate and composite, as is used in Chinese, and not separate only as we have for Egyptian. The type for the text cards of this edition have therefore been made ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... successful in bringing buffaloes, without which the dance, excellent as it was, would have been but an unsatisfactory affair. Black Tom had been prudently shut up in the tool-house, and Jowler tied up to a tree hard by, so that, when it became expedient for buffaloes to appear, the house of Black Tom was opened, and Jowler was ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... good, but it did not apply to Sam's case, since he had no coat to pawn. It will easily be understood, therefore, that it proved unsatisfactory to him. He didn't reply, but finished his sweeping, and then, putting on his hat, he went to ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... contained some objectionable hymns. As soon, however, as the Brethren had recovered from the errors of the Sifting-Time, Count Zinzendorf published a revised Hymn-book in London (1753-4); and then, a little later, an extract, entitled "Hymns of Sharon." But even these editions were unsatisfactory. They contained too many hymns by Brethren, too many relics of the Sifting-Time, and too few hymns by writers of other Churches. But the edition published by Gregor was a masterpiece. It contained the finest hymns of Christendom from nearly every source. It was absolutely ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... came in again, leading his wife and children with an old-world gallantry that was apparent even in these unsatisfactory circumstances. He had a slow impressive way of speaking that made even his unimportant words appear important. In the present case, as soon as he began to speak most of the people in the car came ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... and anchors, and professed contempt for wind and sails, the boys looked upon these last as of chief importance, and preferred a slow progress with the wind to even a more rapid one by means of so unsatisfactory a method of ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... the Art afterwards arrived,' though he is introduced in an argument to show that 'the daily food and nourishment of the mind of the Artist must be found in the works of his predecessors.' There is something surely very wavering and unsatisfactory in all this. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... wrongly, I now feel as a weight upon it; and without a permanent residence one does not become really acquainted with poor people in their prosperity as well as adversity; one only does a desultory unsatisfactory sort of good. I have not seen Dickens's letter about the ragged schools of which you speak. What you say of the devotion of the Roman Catholic priests to the charities of religion reflects shame on ours of a purer faith, but ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... followed the example of Mr. Payne and have translated in its entirety the Tale of Khalifah the Fisherman from the Breslau Edit. (Vol. iv. Pp. 315-365, Night ccxxi- ccxxxii.) in preference to the unsatisfactory process of amalgamating it with that of the Mac. Edit. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... depressed, no flags, no bands, and although there is a notice posted up in the town to say that the Crown Prince has achieved another victory, there is evidently something unsatisfactory in the background to counterbalance this. I draw deductions from the "Frankfurter Zeitung," which has a bitter article entitled "Torheiten" (Folly), and which speaks of the "Kindische Freudengeheul" (childish ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... books V.-X. remain, and those in a mutilated and unsatisfactory condition, so that we are unable to form a clear idea of the value of the whole. Moreover, much of what we have is rendered useless, except for antiquarian purposes, by the extremely crude notions of etymology displayed. Caelum is from cavus, or from chaos; terra from teri, quia teritur; ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... unsatisfactory altercation followed. Bert expounded the Bun Hill theory of the relations of grub to efficiency in English, the bird-faced man replied with points about nations and discipline in German. The Prince, having made an estimate of Bert's ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... consider me that kind of so-called 'spiritualist' whose enlightened intelligence and heaven-aspiring aims are demonstrated in the turning of tables and general furniture-gyration. I am, however, hopelessly deficient in such knowledge. I should make a most unsatisfactory conjurer! Moreover, whatever you may have heard concerning me in Paris, you must remember I am in Paris no longer. I am a monk, as you see, devoted to my vocation; I am completely severed from the world, and my duties and occupations ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... furnishes a definite amount of carbon dioxide and throws no light whatever upon the ability of the apparatus to determine the other two factors, water-vapor and oxygen. Some of the earlier experimenters have used burning candles, but these we have found to be extremely unsatisfactory. The necessity for an accurate elementary analysis, the high carbon content of the stearin and paraffin, and the possibility of a change in the chemical composition of the material all render this method unfit for the most accurate testing. As a result of a large number ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... those not compiled by Johnson, but by Oldys), a very small part of it relates to the person who is the subject of the book; and, in that, there is such an inaccuracy in the statement of facts, as in so solemn an authour is hardly excusable, and certainly makes his narrative very unsatisfactory. But what is still worse, there is throughout the whole of it a dark uncharitable cast, by which the most unfavourable construction is put upon almost every circumstance in the character and conduct of my illustrious friend[91]; who, I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of days' unsatisfactory work, the water dropped so low in Big Squaw creek that there was only sufficient pressure to use one scraper. Bruce discharged all the crew save Smaltz, Banule, and Porcupine Jim, who labored in the kitchen—a living insult to the Brotherhood ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... had got into trouble for nothing; that the satisfaction of drinking the firewater was very unsatisfactory in the end. He had sense enough left to see that disgrace and degradation awaited him, and he dreaded the prompt action of Captain Kendall, as exhibited in the case of McDougal. While still suffering from the effects ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... crown. He dented the crown until the hat had that rakish appearance dear to the heart of the cowboy. Then he took the foot-square looking-glass from the wall and studied the effect at various and more or less unsatisfactory angles. Again he knelt—after depositing the hat on the bed—and emerged with a pair of gorgeous leather chaps that glittered with the polished silver of conchas from waist-band to heel. Next he drew on a pair of elaborate gauntlets embellished with hand-worked silk roses of crimson. Then he ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... them here. Suffice it to say that the mission of home demands family religion. Its interests cannot be secured without it. Let our homes be divorced from piety, and they will become selfish, sensual, unsatisfactory, and unhappy. Piety should always reign in our homes,—not only on the Sabbath, but during the week; not only in sickness and adversity, but in health and prosperity. It must, if genuine, inspire and consecrate the minutest interests and employments of the ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... applied to the scientific acquisitions of the time, produced the philosophy of the century and the doctrines of the Revolution.' Even if we substitute geometric or deductive spirit for classic spirit, the proposition remains nearly as unsatisfactory. What were the doctrines of the Revolution? The sovereignty of the people, rights of man, liberty, equality, fraternity, progress and perfectibility of the species—these were the main articles of the new creed. M. Taine, like too many ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... correspondence with Mr. Grayson, calling upon him to apologise for his language. This correspondence continued from October until the time the duel was fought—the meeting being the consequence of the unsatisfactory results of the communications between the parties. They met at a place called Knot's Hole, near the shore by the Aigburth-road. Mr. Sparling was attended by Captain Colquitt, commanding the Princess frigate, then in the river. Mr. Grayson's second was Dr. MacCartney. After the fatal shots ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... Redmayne seemed to have inveigled the Master, whose part was taken by Jack, to a race-meeting, to be introducing him to the Most unsatisfactory company, to force him to put money on certain horses, to evade the payment of debts incurred, to be detected in the act of absconding, and to leave the unfortunate Master to bear the brunt of public indignation. Guthrie ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... gunpowder, and the circulation of the blood; but I challenge any of his admirers to show me in all his writings a complete account of the spleen. Does he not also leave us wholly to seek in the art of political wagering? What can be more defective and unsatisfactory than his long dissertation upon tea? and as to his method of salivation without mercury, so much celebrated of late, it is to my own knowledge and experience a thing very little ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... and contradictions of the foregoing statement, we may gather how very unsatisfactory this so-called sacred science was. And perhaps we may be brought to the conclusion to which Dr. Shuckford, above quoted, was constrained to come, after his wearisome and unavailing attempt to coordinate ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... was at last re-engaged by her old employers, her supplanter having proved unsatisfactory, and as the work lay in a distant street, she usually took the kid with her, thus leaving no one to spy on Tammy's movements. Reddy's reward for not playing him false, however, did not reach her as soon as doubtless she would ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... 39: The speech of Lord Aberdeen, to which the Queen here refers, had created a very unsatisfactory impression. On the 19th of June the venerable Lord Lyndhurst had denounced the aggressive policy and the perfidy of Russia; in the debate which followed, Lord Aberdeen spoke coldly, in a strain of semi-apology for Russia, and with ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... he, "the dismal and unsatisfactory letter I wrote you? I would not disobey you twice in the same manner, and I could not till now ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Blackbeard, a Bristol man, who had begun his piratical career in the spring of 1717; the most sinister figure in the annals of piracy. Pirate captains were, as a rule, chosen by their crews, and if their conduct was unsatisfactory to the rovers, they were deposed and sometimes put to death or marooned; but Teach, as fearless as he was merciless, ruled his crew by terror. As an instance of his savage humour, it is related that on one occasion, in a drinking bout, he blew out the light and fired two ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... in transplanting herbs than in resetting other plants, but unless a few essentials are realized in practice the results are sure to be unsatisfactory. Of course, the ideal way is to grow the plants in small flower pots and when they have formed a ball of roots, to set them in the garden. The next best is to grow them in seed pans or flats (shallow boxes) in which they should be ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... consoling Junius to the best of its ability,—and in a decidedly-unsatisfactory way, if the truth must be told,—far away, amid the thunder and patter of jubilation, in the golden dust of the all-conquering sun, gleaming with purple, darkling with laurel athwart the undulating streams of abundant incense, with majestic leisureliness, like an emperor marching ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... moss ground, and a crop of white clover for which no seeds were sown is the consequence, the explanation that the seeds have been dormant there for an unknown time, and were stimulated into germination when the lime produced the appropriate circumstances, appears extremely unsatisfactory, especially when we know that (as in an authentic case under my notice) the spot is many miles from where clover is cultivated, and that there is nothing for six feet below but pure peat moss, clover seeds being, moreover, known to be too heavy to be transported, as many other seeds are, by ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... parable. "This weird figure, clothed in skins, and feeding upon nothing more satisfying than locusts and wild honey, is a type of all those who are set apart for the difficult and unsatisfactory lot of heralds and forerunners. They see the good time coming, and make ready the way for it, knowing all the while that its fuller light and wider freedom are not for them; they lead their fellows to the very borders of the promised land, conscious that their ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... no unsatisfactory rooms," was the answer, followed by: "Front 625 and 6," and fresh pages and bellboys fell upon the yellow baggage, and Marjorie, in a hot confusion of counting her property and wondering how to resent the young man's impertinence, turned ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... maintain a profound silence about its own secrets. Besides all this, Walter bitterly and sorrowfully felt that for some reason, which he was unable to fathom, the whole school was just then in an unsatisfactory state, and that Charlie, for whom his whole heart yearned with brotherly love and pity, would be exposed to severe temptations in whatever house he should be placed. He hoped too that, as Charlie would always have the run of his and of Power's study, it would make little difference ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... now glad to retire with my friend, and ask seriously for some explanation of all this. It was in the highest degree unsatisfactory. He confirmed all that had been stated to me; assuring me that I had not only been assiduous in my endeavours to seduce a young lady of great beauty, which it seemed I had effected, but that I had taken counsel, and got this supposed, old, false, and forged grant ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... I am not unmindful how little can be done toward it in a mere treatise on Logic, or how vague and unsatisfactory all precepts of Method must necessarily appear when not practically exemplified in the establishment of a body of doctrine. Doubtless, the most effectual mode of showing how the sciences of Ethics and Politics may be ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... c. 6. Sulpicius Severus, ii. 31. By comparing their unsatisfactory accounts, Mosheim (p. 327, &c.) has drawn out a very distinct representation of the circumstances and motives ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... well-to-do and wealthier ranks, a nervous, spiritual look. They are not invalids, but they are delicate, and are kept under a constant and chafing restraint from want of strength to carry out the plans they set before them, and they give an unsatisfactory prospect for the coming generations. Our census reports are very trustworthy oracles; these give us dark omens, and it is ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... more wisdom than other races would exhibit under the same circumstances. Besides, the willingness to work depends, with whites as well as blacks, somewhat upon the nature of the inducements held out, and the unsatisfactory regulation of the matter of wages has certainly something to do with the instability of negro labor which is complained of. Northern men engaged in planting almost uniformly pay wages in money, while southern planters, almost uniformly, have contracted with their laborers ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... by 25, while the most imposing in size of all yet laid open, the great hall of Sennacherib at Koyunjik, shows a length of fully 180 ft. with a width of 40. It is scarcely probable that the old builders, who in other points have shown so much artistic taste, should have selected this uniform and unsatisfactory shape for their state apartments, unless they were forcibly held to it by some insuperable imperfection in the means at their disposal. That they knew how to use proportions more pleasing in their general effect, we see from the inner open courts, of which ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... asked some questions of him; but as he spoke in the native tongue he was unintelligible to our travellers, whose spirits were not cheered by the scowling looks of the armed men. Whatever the question was, the answer appeared to be unsatisfactory, for the Hater of Lies immediately turned to his men, and pointing with the silver spear to the three strangers, gave ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... Europe have proved unsatisfactory because they killed at 20 to 25 below zero. It was discouraging to have a ten or fifteen year old tree killed outright by an unusual winter. But it was just these conditions that led to the discovery of the Schafer walnut. This tree survived the winters of 1936 and 1937 in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... I had studied medicine and law without being able to decide on either of the two professions; I had worked for a banker for six months and my services were so unsatisfactory that I was obliged to resign to avoid being discharged. My studies had been varied but superficial; my memory was active ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... impossible under such a theory to account for the appearance of the thinking, self-regulating life distinctly human." Thus, according to some of the best thinkers, the explanation of the moral and spiritual nature of man as a development of the animal nature, is quite insufficient and unsatisfactory. The theory of natural selection in the struggle for existence cannot explain the cause of the higher nature of man. We cannot say that a theory is complete because it explains many facts. On the contrary, if it fails to explain a single fact, then it is proved ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... were situated for diet, their position in other respects was unsatisfactory. This was ascertained by the captain, who, with Mr Banks, one day started on a long walk northward, partly to obtain a view of the country, but chiefly to take note of appearances seaward. After traversing the country about eight miles, they ascended a high hill, and were soon convinced that the ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... maze of confusion and uncertainty. Were the trials of the day never to end? First her unsatisfactory strife and pleading with her husband; then the undignified contest with her own slave into which she had been betrayed; and now came this old man—her father, to be sure—but so much the more mortifying to her, as his vulgarity, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... spirit that I used to have; and I began to realize that I had never been liked for myself, but for what I gave, and for the atmosphere of amusement which I helped to create by nearly always being gay and enjoying myself. As you yourself said of society, it is absolutely unsatisfactory. I never knew a purely society woman yet who wasn't somewhat or sometimes dissatisfied. First, they can't go as much or everywhere they want; and soon after they have all the opportunities they desire, they find that isn't sufficient, ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... obtained fowls, rice, and farinha. It not unfrequently happened, that we were obliged to kill, with stones, the poultry for our own supper. When, thoroughly exhausted by fatigue and hunger, we timorously hinted that we should be glad of our meal, the pompous, and (though true) most unsatisfactory answer was, "It will be ready when it is ready." If we had dared to remonstrate any further, we should have been told to proceed on our journey, as being too impertinent. The hosts are most ungracious and disagreeable in their ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... prettiest and the happiest and the best dressed of the young wives of Summerfield, was walking toward the Catholic Church. She was going to consult the old priest as to her duty to an unsatisfactory servant; for Agnes Barlow was a conscientious as well as a pretty and a ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... to me on that subject, gave me the first hint of this initial, merely out of doors, connection. "The girl was quite a child then," he continued. "Later on she was removed out of Mrs. Fyne's reach in charge of a governess—a very unsatisfactory person," he explained. His wife had then—h'm—met him; and on her marriage she lost sight of the child completely. But after the birth of Polly (Polly was the third Fyne girl) she did not get on ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... from the widely different results arrived at by men, all deeply versed in the black-letter books, old plays, pamphlets, manuscript records and catalogues of that age, but also from the fallacious and unsatisfactory nature of the facts and assumptions on which the evidence rests. In that age, when the press was chiefly occupied with controversial or practical divinity,—when the law, the church and the state engrossed all honour and respectability,—when a degree of disgrace, 'levior quaedam infamiae ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... absent in London, Morton had charge of the ship. He seldom or never went on shore. As soon as the frigate reached Spithead he got Glover to write to his cousin, Mrs Edmonstone, to inquire for the Armytages. Her answer was unsatisfactory; she had heard nothing of them for several months. She, indeed, knew no more of their movements than did Ronald himself. His mind was racked with the most painful doubts and fears. He could not even conjecture where they were. He had expected to have ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... Collection of what was most remarkable in the Customs and History of the Countries which he visited. But a very small Part of his Collection has reached us. That we are so unhappy as to have only mutilated and unsatisfactory Fragments of an Author of such Veracity, and in such curious Matters, must be imputed to the want of Printing in most of the eastern Nations, and the Ignorance of this ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... experience to be a most useful exercise to fit the men for the arduous work they had to perform. Before going to London to take command of and reorganise the brigade which then went by the name of the London Fire-Engine Establishment, and was in a very unsatisfactory condition, Mr Braidwood had, for a long period, been chief of the Edinburgh Fire Brigade, which he had brought to a state of great efficiency. Taking the requirements and conditions of the service in Edinburgh into consideration, he had come to the conclusion ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... sympathize with our griefs, vanquish our enemies, and abolish death: and equally so that he should be coequal with God in order to procure salvation for the lost world by the merit of his atonement; otherwise his obedience must have been imperfect, his sufferings unsatisfactory, and his mediatorial character, by which he was allied to both ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... although, thank God, he didn't know it. I expect, too, that he was pretty dissatisfied with his knight-errantries. His impassioned devotion to Vera had led to nothing at all, his enthusiasm for Russia had led to a most unsatisfactory Revolution, and his fatherly protection of Markovitch had inspired apparently nothing more fruitful than distrust. I would like to emphasise that it was in no way from any desire to interfere in other people's affairs that young Bohun undertook these Quests. He had none of ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... is undoubtedly unsatisfactory and essentially provisional, so far forth as the subject of the trial is capable of being dealt with by due process ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... and employment of this unripe time of half-awakened manhood is, however, unsatisfactory enough. There is much reminiscence of early Edinburgh days, with their law studies, and tutoring, and translating, in Teufelsdroeckh's desultory period. The climax of it is in those scornful sentences about Aesthetic Teas, to which the hungry lion was invited, that he might feed on chickweed—well ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... easy to be accounted for that the statistics of no Christian communion in America are so defective, uncertain, and generally unsatisfactory as those of the most solidly organized and completely systematized of them ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... for another old willow-tree, checked in its struggle towards the sky by axe and saw like the first one. They circled about him many times, flew away and came again, took their landmarks, considered his position in regard to birds of prey and winds, found him rather unsatisfactory, but nevertheless decided in his favor, because he stood so near to the river and to the tufts of sedge, their larder and storehouse. One of them shot swift as an arrow down into his upstretched hand and laid his ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... close, Patty's impatience began almost to get the better of her. No thirteen weeks had ever appeared so long. She felt as if she had been away from home for years, and she yearned for a sight of all the loved faces. Letters, though very well in their way, were unsatisfactory things, especially the children's, which contained little news for the amount of paper covered, and consisted mostly of wishes for her return, with a whole page of crosses meant to represent kisses at the end. Now at last, however, ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... sick has generally been unsatisfactory, although in chronic cases and those occurring late in the fall beneficial results have followed. If the animal is constipated, a drench containing 1 pound of Epsom salt dissolved in 1 quart of water should be administered, followed by sulphate of quinin ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... 712, "Sewage Disposal on the Farm." The box privy is always a nuisance from many points of view, and is undoubtedly dangerous as a breeder of flies which may carry the germs of intestinal diseases. The dry-earth treatment of privies is unsatisfactory. No box privy should be permitted to exist unless it is thoroughly and regularly treated with some effective larvicide. Since the fecal matter in such privies is seldom used for fertilizing purposes it may ...
— The House Fly and How to Suppress It - U. S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 1408 • L. O. Howard and F. C. Bishopp
... tell you what we've done," Alice smiled. "Chris went to see her Sunday, and they had a long talk. He tells me that she was just as vague and unsatisfactory as ever, but calmer, and she finally admitted that all she really wanted to do was to befriend this niece of Kate Sheridan. Of course Chris and I think Mama has one of her funny notions about it, but if the child's mother had befriended Mama, for example, a thousand ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... bald statement of Mactavish's uncle. He is a baillie, an elder and a drysalter. He wrote to Mactavish:—"I regret that the attendance at the Kirk on Sunday was most unsatisfactory. The younger members of the congregation were all watching the disembarcation of the Cossacks. I understand that the Established Kirk held no services at all. I did not feel it consistent with a proper observance of the Sabbath to go and watch them myself, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... by Hawthorne to the heretic Hilda, but not to the child of its own bosom. Hawthorne, if he indicates through Kenyon his ideas, seems to advise, as elsewhere, letting the dead past bury its dead while Donatello and Miriam should go on to what self-sacrificing life they can find. Unsatisfactory as the story is, merely as a tale, it is less vague than the central truth, the moral theme which it embodies. The truth is that after all, in the ethical sphere of the story, Hawthorne has given no more than his meditations, very much at random, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... left England he was still a rather lazy and unsatisfactory undergraduate. I was curious to know how he had developed. Do you know what his ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... amid a motley debris of trees, bushes, and railings, the charred and shattered remains of a man. These, at the inquest, proved to have belonged to Augustin Myers, an obscure little French Anarchist, but despite the usual lengthy and unsatisfactory routine of police inquiries, searches, and arrests, practically nothing could be ascertained concerning him or the circumstances attending his death. All that was certain was that the deceased man had in his possession an explosive machine, evidently destined for some deadly work, and that, ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... heart was once or twice upon the point of falling back into the fresh impulses of its early humanity, when the trial of tomorrow threw him once more into a gloom, that settled him down into a resentful but unsatisfactory determination to discharge the duty ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... the subject," there is a somewhat unsatisfactory sentence. "It contributes to the 'goodness' of the picture," "if it avoid uniformity and positions that are too symmetrical; if it distribute the light well; if by means of it the groups pyramid and unite well; and if it give value to all the parts of the picture by means of each other, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... you as you wake in the night that it is Mr. B.'s store which is on fire, and not yours, or that it is yours and not his. This is not only a convenience to you and a relief to your wife and family, who will thus be spared your excursions to unavailable and unsatisfactory fires, and your somewhat irritated return,—it will be a great relief to the Fire Department. How placid the operations of a fire where none attend except on business! The various engines arrive, but no throng of distant citizens, men and boys, fearful of the destruction of their all. They have ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... manifest this more fully that God permitted him thus to act. God "left him," says the inspired writer, "to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart[4]." Let us take David as another instance of the great danger of prosperity; he, too, will exemplify the unsatisfactory nature of temporal goods; for which, think you, was the happier, the lowly shepherd or the king of Israel? Observe his simple reliance on God and his composure, when advancing against Goliath: "The Lord," he says, "that delivered me ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... these I noticed that Jimmie admired the pearl-studded cigar-cases and match-safes most, but for some reason I waited to make my purchase in London, which was one of the most foolish things I ever have done in all my foolish career, and right here let me say that there is nothing so unsatisfactory as to postpone a purchase, thinking either that you will come back to the same place or that you will see better further along, for in nine cases out of ten you ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... comfortable income, at an age when many young men are dependent. I have thus started you fairly in life, and may claim that you should cease to be a drag upon me further. Long engagements are proverbially unsatisfactory, and in the present case the prospect seems interminable. What interest, pray, do you suppose I have that I could get a living for you? Can I go up and down the country begging people to provide for my son because he has taken it into his ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... tamely submitting under the impression apparently that the other was a perfect darling. I indeed seemed to be the only person who really understood what a little beast she was—and possibly the author, who finally allotted to her the beautiful unsatisfactory young man with the emotional tenor. Commended for easy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... of the Geographical Society are some of the more recent works published in Lisbon on the topography of that country, but they are generally very meagre and unsatisfactory. In a periodical published in Lisbon in numbers, on the plan of the Penny Magazine, there is a good deal of information, with engravings, regarding many places of interest in Portugal. I think it is called The Album, but I am sorry I have not at present the power ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... come to the end of my line? My eyes so pained me, and had been so tried, that I strove to persuade myself that the evanescent forms resulting from my unsatisfactory experiment must be optical illusions. I determined to let matters rest as they were until the next day, when my brain would be less heated and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... for household use could not be satisfied; telephone density is 11 per 100 persons; international connections are made via satellite, land line, microwave, and outdated submarine cables, and are generally unsatisfactory; the international gateway switch in Moscow handles international traffic for the other former Soviet republics as well as for Russia; broadcast stations - 1,050 AM/FM/SW (reach 98.6% of population), 310 TV (580 repeaters) (reach 98% of population); ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... time he was probably the most unsatisfactory President we ever had in the White House to those who must necessarily come into personal contact with him. He was quite a public speaker, and the story has often been told of him that if he should address ten thousand men from a public platform, ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... moved from the bank of the river was in many ways unsatisfactory to Ni-ha-be, and so was the next and the next. Nothing went to suit her, whether in camp or ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... front of them, watching another convict placing brushes and implements before them. Suddenly the warder spoke to the end man, an elderly stalwart fellow, obviously from the North. The reply was evidently unsatisfactory, perhaps insolent, for the warder suddenly seized the grey beard of the convict, tugged his head violently from side to side, shook him, and then smote him hard on either cheek. The elderly convict gave no sign of having felt either the pain ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... to find him in. That was about all we found. Our interview was most unsatisfactory. For my part, I could not determine whether he was merely anxious to avoid any notoriety in connection with the case or whether he was concealing something ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... of belligerents, are matters which have been totally misunderstood. To those who have grasped the significance of the exhaustive preceding account of the Republic in travail, this statement should not cause surprise; for China has been in no condition to play anything but an insignificant and unsatisfactory role in world-politics. ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... was all done by Saturday, when Hillock pulled up with a big load of slabs. Slabs are a very unsatisfactory kind of wood for most purposes. Being the outside cut, they are usually very irregular and weak in spots. In many places they are almost clear bark. Of course, had our pocketbooks permitted, we would have ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... readings is often enough to remove obscurities which the uncertain light of conjectural criticism would never have illuminated. However, an abundance of manuscripts is an embarrassment rather than a help when the work of grouping them has been left undone or done badly; nothing can be more unsatisfactory than the arbitrary and hybrid restorations which are founded on copies whose relations to each other and to the archetype have not been ascertained beforehand. On the other hand, the application of rational ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... studied public sentiment in this country for any period knows how easy it is to generalize from a few facts, and yet, if the subject be more thoroughly investigated, it becomes apparent how unsatisfactory such generalizations are apt to be; not that they are essentially untrue, but rather because they express only a part of the truth. If a student should ask me in what one book he would find the best statement of ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... the theory of truth will, I am sure, have appeared obscure and unsatisfactory to most of you by reason of us brevity. I shall make amends for that hereafter. In a lecture on 'common sense' I shall try to show what I mean by truths grown petrified by antiquity. In another lecture I shall expatiate on the ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... Socialism, which had found a suitable field for action in the unsatisfactory condition of the working class, had evolved a theory of government which, although common to some extent to the Socialists of other countries, was nowhere carried to such lengths as in Italy. Socialism in theory has everywhere adopted an attitude ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... unsatisfactory to you to know that Americans—both those long domiciled here and those in transit—applaud the appointment of the new Chief ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... immediately took the man by the shoulder and asked him, in language more forcible than polite, what he was doing there. The man proved to be Swinton, the "historian," and his replies to the question were evasive and unsatisfactory, and he was warned ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... This was very unsatisfactory to Bob in his anxious frame of mind. But he had learned that Eskimos must be left to bide their time, and that no amount of coaxing would hurry them, so he tried to await their moods in patience. He understood the reluctance of the men to go away during one of the best hunting ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... too largely with both of them to be anything but unsatisfactory in his reply. Laura gazed longingly out of the window towards the thin dusty line of Hussars, now smalling towards the Mellstock Ridge. 'I,' she said, 'who should have been in their van on the way to London, am doomed to fester in a hole in ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... in this unsatisfactory state till the close of the year 1145, when Edessa, the strong frontier town of the Christian kingdom, fell into the hands of the Saracens. The latter were commanded by Zenghi, a powerful and enterprising monarch, and, after his death, by his son Nourheddin, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... taken. Her mother would never dream of allowing such an errand, as Derette well knew; but she comforted herself, as others have done beside her, with the reflection that the excellence of her motive quite compensated for the unsatisfactory details of her conduct. Wedged as she was in the midst of the family group, and encumbered with her basket, she could not hope to get away before they reached home; but she thought she saw her chance directly afterwards, when the baskets should have been discharged of their contents, ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... over Fatty had forty-two marbles and they had only nine apiece. Altogether it was very unsatisfactory. ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... the miserable sense or nonsense of the author into English, but chiefly owing to the innate stupidity and gross ignorance of the poor anchorite, that the present editor was much inclined to have expunged the whole as unsatisfactory and uninteresting: But it seemed incumbent to give the whole of this most important voyage to the public. The Editor however, has used the freedom to compress the scrambling detail of the original of this section into a smaller compass; to omit the uselessly prolix titles of its subdivisions; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... on the wrapper of their paper and would send in the renewal price without any kind of reminder. In those days Miss Wilde and her assistant would go over the books twice a year and send a reminder to all who had not renewed. As the list grew larger, this plan seemed unsatisfactory to both the subscriber and the paper. Since people were at liberty to start a subscription at any time in the year, it was plain that a year's subscription would run out at the same time the following year, and since this was going on twelve months in the year, ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan
... had no help for it. 'My chaplain, Dr Gwynne,' said he; 'my present chaplain, Mr Slope.' he certainly made the introduction as unsatisfactory to the chaplain as possible, and by the use of the word present, seemed to indicate that Mr Slope might probably not long enjoy the honour which he now held. But Mr Slope cared nothing for this. He understood ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... decoration, which is so striking a feature of the temple, is also carefully subordinated to purpose and idea. No part of the structure which bears a strain, if we except one or two early and unsatisfactory experiments, was decorated. The business of column and architrave was to bear weight; and if they were ornate they would seem less well adapted to that purpose. Only in parts of the building which were from the point of view of construction otiose, such as pediment and metope, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... took notice of his preoccupation and after a series of unsatisfactory visits he beckoned Lucy outside the door with a solemn jerk of ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... was owing to mere novelty and intoxication, how much to a yet unanalysed disappointment, how much to May's having thrown her upon the more frivolous Blanche, could not be guessed. The effect was unsatisfactory to her mother, but a certain relief, for Nuttie's aid would have been only mischievous in the household difficulties that weighed on the anxious conscience. Good servants would not stay at Bridgefield Hall for unexplained causes, which their mistress believed to be connected with Gregorio, or with ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the methods used for removing carbon deposits from gas engine cylinders were very impractical and unsatisfactory. The job meant dismantling the motor, tearing out all parts, and scraping the pistons and cylinder ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... to your elder brother, a moderate sum being devoted to the expenses of your education. I regret that the investment of the small property accruing to yourselves has been less successful than could have been wished. As you probably know, the conduct of your brother has been from first to last unsatisfactory—most unsatisfactory.' ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... evening before on the best of terms. Stoller had expected Burnamy twenty-four hours earlier, and had shown his displeasure with him for loitering a day at Leipsic which he might have spent at Carlsbad; and Burnamy had been unsatisfactory in accounting for the delay. But he had taken hold so promptly and so intelligently that by working far into the night, and through the whole forenoon, he had got Stoller's crude mass of notes into shape, and had sent off in time for the first steamer the letter which was to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Cardinal Peter of Pavia, had authority to lay all Henry's dominions under an interdict if he did not consent to an immediate marriage. The attitude of the young Henry was also one to cause anxiety, and his answers to his father's messages were unsatisfactory. One occasion of delay after another, however, postponed Henry's crossing, and it was the middle of August before he landed in Normandy. We hear much less of the army that actually went with him than of ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... with insight is to find them full of the rarest qualities in fiction. If their author has a great capacity for unsatisfactory writing he has capacities not less great for writing that is satisfactory in the highest degree. He has the tragic instinct and endowment, and he has the comic as well; he is an ardent student of character and life; he has wit of the swiftest, the most comprehensive, the most luminous, and humour ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... demand upon a friend. It indicates the keen desire in Priestley to proceed with experimental studies, though surroundings and provisions for such undertakings were quite unsatisfactory. The spirit was there and very determined was its possessor that his science pursuits should not be laid totally aside. His attitude and course in this particular were admirable and exemplary. Too often the lack of an abundance of equipment and the absence of ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... unsatisfactory even to those who originated them, and doubly so to her whom they were intended to comfort, more than two hours passed; and Lady D—— was beginning to hope that the fated term might elapse without the occurrence ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... However, the world must not suppose that she disapproved of his wife, and she was grateful to the unmeaning words amiable and ladylike, especially when she had to speak to Mr. Wingfield. He observed on the lady's beauty, and hoped that the affair was as little unsatisfactory as possible under the circumstances, to which she fully agreed. They proceeded to parish matters, on which they had so much to say to each other, that Violet thus reflected—'Ah! it is just as Mr. Martindale used to sit with me in the window at home! She ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... other hand, if the writer attempts to read the thoughts of the brute or the thing, the difficulty at once presents itself that he can only guess at the mental processes of the one, and that the other is incapable of thought; so that in either case the result is unsatisfactory. One exception to this statement must be made: Kipling, in his "Jungle Book" stories, seems to have achieved the impossible and read for us the very thoughts of the brute creation. Unfortunately it is not given us to know how ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... feet in the air. Only the treble hum of the air turbine could be heard faintly through the transparent walls of the observatory constructed of the annealed clersite, which has taken the place of the unsatisfactory glass used by our forefathers. The toughness and tensile strength of this element, comparable to the best chrome steels, combined with its crystal clarity, made an ideal warfare observation unit. It was practically invisible and ...
— The Sword and the Atopen • Taylor H. Greenfield
... be found. He says (p. 59) that he thought himself 'obliged out of respect to his country and family to conceal both, it being but too common, though unjust, to censure them for the crimes of private persons.' The excuse seems unsatisfactory, for he tells enough to shew that he came from the South of France, while for his family there was no need of care. It was, he writes, 'ancient but decayed,' and he was the only surviving child. Of his father and mother he had heard nothing ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... education, there are some plausible arguments in favor of such qualifications, but they are all alike unsatisfactory, illogical and unjust. A limited suffrage creates a privileged class, and is based on the false idea that government is the natural arbiter of its citizens, while in fact it is the creature of their will. In the old days of the colonies when the property qualification ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... for more library delinquency than the average citizen imagines. Many a librarian is deservedly condemned for the unsatisfactory condition of his institution when his fault is not, as his detractors think, failure to see what should be done, or lack of ability to do it, so much as inability to raise funds to do it with. This is doubtless a fault, and its possessor should suffer, ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick |
