"Unsatisfying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the striking of the clock; and have found myself able to wake at the proposed time, almost without one failure in twenty instances where I have made the trial. But my sleep was obviously unsound, and certainly unsatisfying. The desire to awake at a certain moment or period, seemed to buoy me above the usual state of healthy sleep, and render me liable to awake at the slightest disturbance. Were it not for sacrificing the ease of others, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... meeting was in good humour in spite of his incomprehensible address and unsatisfying answers, till a small section of the young bloods of the opposite party, who had come to disturb, felt that this peace must be put an end to. Mr. Samuel M'Turk, lawyer's clerk, who hailed from the west country and betrayed his origin ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... maids brought tea and sugary cakes, green tea like bitter hot water, insipid and unsatisfying. It was a shock to see the girls' faces as they raised the tiny china teacups. Under the glaze of their powder ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... dream over the disgraceful conduct of children or friends, will bring you unsatisfying hopes, and worries will harass you. To be in disgrace yourself, denotes that you will hold morality at a low rate, and you are in danger of lowering your reputation for uprightness. Enemies are also ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... "Finit," for even those nearest could not catch the word distinctly, as the devil, afraid doubtless of perpetrating a barbarism, spoke through the nun's closely clenched teeth. This being all decidedly unsatisfying, the magistrates insisted that the examination should continue, but the devils had again exhausted themselves, and refused to utter another word. The priest even tried touching the superior's head with the pyx, while prayers and litanies were recited, but it ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... minutes without feeling so intensely melancholy, that I do not know what to do with myself. At Brightstone, in my Eden days, he was with me, and I was overwhelmed with the deep sense which possessed him of yearning which nothing could satisfy and of the unsatisfying ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... side that made her sad. If occasionally she was moved by a little bitterness about her brief existence, it was rather because the kind of things with which her outstretched hand had been filled were so dismally unsatisfying. She counted the men she had been compelled to refuse. They numbered only two, but there were at least three others whom she had never allowed to get as far as ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... narrow, but which he was told were safe? Now that Stephen was settled, it was open to him to return to St. Elizabeth's College, but the young soul within him revolted against the repetition of what had become to him unsatisfying, unless illumined by the brightness he seemed to ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the mysteries of the war. News from that city was brief and unsatisfying in the main. Great things, however, were done there, and none greater than those accomplished by the British. Some of these accomplishments are told in ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... soul. And this might be enough to convince you, that your souls are quite out of course, and altogether wandered from the way of happiness because they are poured out on such a multiplicity of insufficient, unsatisfying things, every one of which is narrow, limited and empty, and the combination and concurrence of all being a thing either impossible or improbable to be attained. But we may conceive that men's affections put themselves into three great heads of created things, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... near-millionaire, you cannot possibly keep up with the many and various changes demanded by current fashion. Then why worry yourself by trying? Why spend your small income upon the unattainable, or upon that which, even if you could attain it, you would find unsatisfying and incomplete? ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... closed his eyes. "I have always regretted," said Cortlandt, "that I was not born a thousand years later." "Were it not," added Ayrault, "that our earth is the vestibule to space, and for the opportunities it opens, I should rather never have lived, for life in itself is unsatisfying." "You fellows are too indefinite and abstract for me," said Bearwarden. "I like something tangible and concrete. The utilitarianism of the twentieth century, by which I live, paradoxical though it may seem, would be out of place in space, unless we can colonize the other ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... dined on pop-corn, and as it was very light and unsatisfying, they had to eat a long time. They were all the after-noon dining. Right after dinner the King wrote out his royal decree that all the inhabitants should that year plant pop-corn instead of any other grain or any vegetable, and that as soon as the ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... desire to be wanted; that's perfectly right and natural. There's nobody who doesn't share it. And I understand what you say about mere friendship. It's unsatisfying and impermanent. It's like a meal snatched at a restaurant; none of the dishes or napkins or tables or chairs belong to you. They've been used by other people before you and they'll be used by other people ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... most widely distributed and sedulously cultivated. This noble vegetable exudes a kind of invisible gum, which may be detected by applying to the bark a piece of gold or silver. The metal will adhere with remarkable tenacity. The fruit of the itching palm is so bitter and unsatisfying that a considerable percentage of it is sometimes given away in what are known ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Another restless, unsatisfying day and a lonely evening dragged by. Texas and Pat she had not seen for a week. Even Abe had not been near her since her father left. To-morrow, she told herself, she would find them at their work and demand a ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... on earth who have carried the doctrine of incarnation (Avatar) to such excess of imaginings as to create such abundantly grotesque and fanciful appearances of their many divinities. Normally, then, the Mohammedan faith, at its very core, must be unsatisfying and even repulsive to the tropical Hindu mind. It was brought here at the point of the sword; and, for centuries, it was the faith of a ruling power whose custom was to tax heavily all people who did not conform, outwardly at ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... within is hushed. She rises and goes forth like one who is prepared for any trial—who is endued with strength by a mighty though unseen power, and sustained by a love which has none of the imperfect and unsatisfying elements that must always mingle with the purest earthly affection. Meek, confiding, and gentle as ever, she is yet not the same. She meets reproach even from the High Priest himself with calmness. She returns ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... now stirs. A holy peace steals over the mountains and settles in the valleys. The snow mountains no longer look cold, hard, and austere. Their purity remains as true as ever. And they still possess their uplifting power. But they now speak of serenity and calm—not, indeed, of the unsatisfying ease of the slothful, but of the earned repose of high attainment. Great peace is about them—deep, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... "ferrins" could be. Nobody seemed to resort to them, except in the direst need. Upon inquiry, we found out that they were boiled ferns. I have always noticed that even insects of all kinds pass by ferns. I suspect that even the hungriest man would find them rather unsatisfying, but this light diet seemed to have kept them in the most ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... dramatist has his moments. I knew a young man who married somebody else's mother, and was allowed by her fourteen gardeners to amuse himself sometimes by rolling the tennis-court. It was an unsatisfying life; and when rash acquaintances asked him what he did he used to say that he was reading for the Bar. Now he says he is writing a play—and we look round the spacious lawns and terraces and marvel at the run his last one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... found him sitting on the soft grass, underneath a large tree. He seemed to have been trying to carve his name; for a large E and half of an N were there. But he was tired of that; and a book he had brought with him seemed to have proved equally unsatisfying; for it was lying closed at his feet. He seemed very much surprised at seeing Arthur; but all he said, when he came near was: "Well?" Arthur did not quite know what to say himself, but he ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... was smiling a little as he walked down the corridor. He wondered why Dr. Parkman cared anything about slaving for so senseless and unsatisfying a world. ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... ajar into a larger world. The church gave him an orthodox gospel in terms of divinity and its environment rather than humanity on earth, but stirred vaguely his aspirations for a fuller life. He has sounded the depths of rural existence and found it unsatisfying. He wants to learn more, to do more, ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... unsatisfying in it self, but the Desire of it lays us open to many accidental Troubles which those are free from who have no such a tender Regard for it. How often is the ambitious Man cast down and disappointed, if he receives no Praise where he expected ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... out upon his forehead, for on the title-page he read the name of his mother as the author. Her thoughts were continually upon her lost son, and in her mind's eye she often traced his downward career. She imagined him worn and weary, his days spent in unsatisfying folly, and his moments of reflection embittered by remorse; unconsciously, in writing this little book she had drawn from her own feelings and addressed one in this situation. She pointed to him the falseness ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... with feminine curiosity, followed sniffing at Higgs, who looked over his shoulder. Taking off his battered helmet, he threw it at the beast, hitting her on the head. She growled, then seized the helmet, playing with it for a moment as a kitten does with a ball of wool, and next instant, finding it unsatisfying, uttered a short and savage roar, ran forward, and crouched to spring, lashing her tail. I could not fire, because a bullet that would hit her must first pass through ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... thy slain, All misery weighing nothing in the scale Against thy short-lived fame: or thou dost load With cowardice and crime the groaning land, A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self! 245 Ay, art thou not the veriest slave that e'er Crawled on the loathing earth? Are not thy days Days of unsatisfying listlessness? Dost thou not cry, ere night's long rack is o'er, "When will the morning come?" Is not thy youth 250 A vain and feverish dream of sensualism? Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease? Are not thy views ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Things that I minded and shrank from then, I never notice now. I have got used to them, as you said. It frightens me when I think of it." Poor child!—neither fright nor warning have stayed her course since then. A ceaseless thirst for excitement, an endless round of unsatisfying pleasure—so called,—a weary, old, disappointed look on the young face; broken engagements, forgotten promises, a wasted life,—this is what it has all come to. "Hard upon dancing"? yes, I certainly ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... our friends at the end of their search after pleasure, having forgotten their God and Saviour, and see them disappointed, and utterly destitute of any thing to make them happy forever, and all because they would not forego their chase after unsatisfying pleasure,—there is many a faithful Christian friend, whose example and advice they disregarded, who could then reply, "Did I not say unto you, ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... and wrath, while the eyes of the handsome brown Bedouins who use it remain unsearchable in their Oriental languor and pride; Jerusalem becomes to us more and more a symbol and epitome of that which is changeless and transient, capricious and inevitable, necessary and insignificant, interesting and unsatisfying, in the unfinished tragi-comedy of human life. There are times when it fascinates us with its whirling charm. There are other times when we are glad to ride away from it, to seek communion with the great spirit of some antique prophet, or to find the consoling presence of Him who ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... wandering in primaeval forests; I see the grimy millions who slave for industrial production; I see some who are extravagant and yet contemptible creatures of luxury, and some leading lives of shame and indignity; tens of thousands of wealthy people wasting lives in vulgar and unsatisfying trivialities, hundreds of thousands meanly chaffering themselves, rich or poor, in the wasteful byways of trade; I see gamblers, fools, brutes, toilers, martyrs. Their disorder of effort, the spectacle of futility, fills me with a passionate desire to end waste, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... sculpture. A Western mind can have little sympathy with the art which has moved most on mystic lines, the art of India, which in such efforts has abandoned the search for beauty, and so given up the really artistic point of view. Mere prettiness no doubt is an unsatisfying ideal: but a loftier beauty, in harmony with the world around us and the soul within ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... effort, she was powerless to escape. Also, for weeks now she had received no letter from Guy, and that fact disheartened her more than any other. She had never before had to wait so long for word from him. Very brief, often unsatisfying, as his letters had been, at least they had never failed to arrive. And she counted upon them so. Without them, she felt bereft of her mainstay. Without them, the almost daily, nerve-shattering scenes which her step-mother somehow managed to enact, however discreet ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... pursuing what we want and pursuing we-know-not-what must affect the ardor of the chase. Even if we take the future on trust, and follow Spenser to the end, we cannot look back on a book of the "Faerie Queene" as on part of a good story: for it is admittedly an unsatisfying and ill-constructed story. But my point is that an ordinary reader resents being asked to take the future on trust while the author luxuriates in casual beauties of speech upon every mortal subject but the one in ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
