"Unsuitable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they feel obliged to accept; and finally Harry invites Tom and Dick, with like result; so that these three men have poured down their throats several glasses of burning stimulants, perhaps in the morning, perhaps just before the midday meal, or at some other especially unsuitable time, with results more or less injurious to each ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... before the appointed time, and that if I did so, I should be in the hands of the Conference, and they could do with me what they thought best. This was considered sufficient, and I was accepted. As it happened I did marry before the appointed time. I had had such unsuitable lodgings found me where I had been stationed, and I had suffered so much in consequence, that I felt justified in taking a wife and providing accommodations for myself, I took for my wife a woman of exemplary character, of amiable ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... only event in connection with the governorship which is worthy of being mentioned is the change that was made by the abandonment of the old Government House, at Fredericton, as the residence of the lieutenant-governor. This building had become antiquated, and in other ways unsuitable for the occupancy of a lieutenant-governor, and its maintenance involved a very large expenditure annually, which the province was unable to afford. It was therefore determined that in future the lieutenant-governor should provide ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... no man ask History to explain by cause-and-effect how the business proceeded henceforth. This battle of Mountain and Gironde, and what follows, is the battle of Fanaticisms and Miracles; unsuitable for cause-and-effect. The sound of it, to the mind, is as a hubbub of voices in distraction; little of articulate is to be gathered by long listening and studying; only battle-tumult, shouts of triumph, shrieks of despair. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... could hardly keep from tears, of pain, or of joy, or of both, when he saw the great change which trial had wrought in her. What touched him most was the utter disappearance of that majesty of mien, which once was hers, a gift, so beautiful, so unsuitable to fallen man. There was instead of it a frank humility, a simplicity without concealment, an unresisting meekness, which seemed as if it would enable her, if trampled on, to smile and to kiss the feet that insulted her. She had lost every vestige of what ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... intersected by innumerable brooks, is the land of Pan. Its inhabitants were long devoted to the pursuits of the herdsman and the shepherd, and its ancient government was apparently monarchical. The Dorian irruption spared this land of poetical tradition, which the oracle of Delphi took under no unsuitable protection, and it remained the eldest and most unviolated sanctuary of the old Pelasgic name. But not very long after the return of the Heraclidae, we find the last king stoned by his subjects, and democratic institutions established. It was then parcelled out into small states, of which ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Whatever she undertook was done thoroughly and with an untiring industry, which often claimed the watchful care of her parents from the fear lest she should overtax her strength. It was evidently difficult to her to avoid an unsuitable strain on her physical powers, whatever might be the nature of her pursuit,—whether her own private reading or other intellectual occupation. At one period her time and energies were closely occupied for some months in the formation ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... where Africaner dwelt being quite unsuitable for a permanent mission-station, on account of the scarcity of water, it was determined to take a journey northward to examine a country on the border of Damaraland, where it was reported that fountains of water abounded. There was, however, only one waggon and ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... espousal with the young daughter of the latter was celebrated with much splendor. The youthfulness of the beautiful boy was well pleasing to Sadaijin; but the bride, who was some years older than he was, and who considered the disparity in their age to be unsuitable, blushed when she thought ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... drastic denunciation of the Serbian authorities. They have, like most of us, sufficient to regret—for example, the person whom they sent to Pe['c], when they wanted the land to be distributed, was King Peter's Master of the Horse. He was thoroughly unsuitable, and caused a great deal ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... for the temples and palaces of Chaldea. Cedar was brought from the mountains of Amanus and Lebanon, and other trees from Elam. The palm could be used for purely architectural purposes, for boarding the crude bricks of the walls together, or to serve as the rafters of the roof, but it was unsuitable for doors or for the wooden panels with which the chambers of the temple or palace were often lined. For such purposes the cedar was considered best, and burnt panels of it have been found in the sanctuary of ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... name of Rome to a modern American town seems almost ridiculous. Certainly one would have always to be very careful to add "Georgia, U.S.A." in addressing letters there. The United States has several of these towns bearing old historic names. Paris as the name of an American town seems almost as unsuitable as Rome. ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... 4: The numbers and names in italics are those given in Stanley's Catalog, No. 34. Some of these names, as "plane-iron," are survivals from the days of the wooden plane and are obviously unsuitable now.] ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... character of less force and solidity, than her own. The women who were now standing about the prison-door stood within less than half a century of the period when the man-like Elizabeth had been the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex. They were her countrywomen; and the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not a whit more refined, entered largely into their composition. The bright morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was 'taken up into heaven' in 1850 upon which (according to a Tradition which I am compelled to reject) Ṣubḥ-i-Ezel succeeded to the Supreme Headship. The appointment would have been very unsuitable, but the truth is (pace Gobineau) that it was never made, or rather, God did not will to put such a strain upon our faith. It was, in fact, too trying a time for any new teacher, and we can now see the wisdom of Baha-'ullah in ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... NaHO. It may be purchased in sticks, which should be kept in a well-corked bottle. It is sometimes called "caustic soda." It is a strong alkali. It is used for neutralizing acid solutions and for separations where ammonia is unsuitable. Make a 5 per cent. ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... grow anywhere; indeed, it will often yield a profitable return on land which is unsuitable for any other crop, but to insure a fine sample it requires a deep friable loam and an open situation. We have grown immense crops on a strong deep clay, but it is not a clay plant, because it soon suffers from any excess of moisture. ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... you listen to the words of the games which children play in school yards, on sidewalks, and in the streets on pleasant evenings, you will find that most of them, to say the least, border closely on vulgarity; that they are utterly unsuitable to childhood, notwithstanding that they are played with great glee; that they are, in fine, common, rude, silly, and boorish. One can never watch a circle of children going through the vulgar inanities of "Jenny O'Jones," "Say, daughter, will you get ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... not be far from the truth to say that children can read anything. They can, and do, even now when they have a literature of their own; for persons who would be shocked at the idea of turning a child loose in an adult library, where things unsuitable might pass harmlessly over its head, think nothing of taking a book off a counter and presenting it to their little ones, they themselves knowing no more than the man in the moon what it contains, although certain that the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... the capacity of the aeroplane to alight in awkward places without injury to its pilot, many lives might have been lost through descents in which motors have failed. Aviators have been obliged to land in most unsuitable places: on the roofs of houses, for instance, in small gardens, and frequently on the tops of trees. If he finds his engine fail him when he is over a wood or forest, and there is no chance save to descend upon ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... blue crab which today constitutes a resource worth about $5,000,000 a year to Virginia crabbers and packers, had to wait even longer than fish and oysters did for development. Salting and pickling were unsuitable to this delicate food and expeditious handling methods did ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... this experiment: the find has been treated just as though it lay on soil unsuitable for burial. The fall is the result of an attempt to transport ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... exaggerated, was a bad stumbling-block; although he was free from the snigger of Voltaire and of Sterne, you could not prevent him, as Horace Walpole complains of his distinguished sire, from blurting out the most improper remarks and stories at the most inconvenient times and in the most unsuitable companies; while his very multiscience, and his fertility of thought and imagination, kept him in a whirl which hindered his "settling" to anything. Although in one sense he had the finest and wisest critical taste of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... to the following purpose:—My lords, I am so far from being convinced by the arguments of the noble duke, that the bill now before us ought to be committed without farther opposition, that, in my opinion, nothing can be more unworthy of the honour of this house, or more unsuitable to the character which those who sit on this bench ought to desire, than to agree to any vote which may have the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... or instinct of bees is sometimes at fault, for we often hear of their adopting the strangest and most unsuitable tenements for the construction of cells. A hussar's cap, so suspended from a moderate sized branch of a tree, as to be agitated by slight winds, was found filled with bees and comb. An old coat, that had been thrown over the decayed trunk of a tree and forgotten, was filled with comb ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... have in Miss Fitz Gerald a new singer of considerable ability and vigour of mind, and it serves to remind us of the splendid dramatic possibilities extant in life, which are ready for poetry, and unsuitable for the stage. What is really dramatic is not necessarily that which is fitting for presentation in a theatre. The theatre is an accident of the dramatic form. It is not essential to it. We have been deluded by the name of action. To think ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... unctuous brother of the cloth had said, in his far from subtle hint. For the moment John Meredith had had a perfectly unbelievable desire to rush madly away and propose marriage to the youngest, most unsuitable woman it was possible ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of the picturesque," he would return solemnly, "and anything ugly or unsuitable would jar on me. I like subdued tints and mellow rich tones; that is why I bind my books in buff-coloured Russian calf. They harmonise so splendidly with the dark oak and the faded russet and brown and blue of the rug. Take my advice, Anna, cultivate your eye, and you will add much to the pleasures ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... pumps, utterly unsuitable for a trip to the country. Over them she wore spats of the kind affected by ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... horseback or in sedan-chairs, with great retinues attending them, as they proceeded in haughty dignity through the streets of the city in which they lived as rulers. Such places were therefore rejected as unsuitable. ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... until then, which will suffice for the invention of a suitable toilet. Alexis, tell me what sort of dress I shall wear. What color best becomes me and in what shall I please the soldiers? The toilet, my Alexis, is often decisive in such cases; an unsuitable costume might cause me to displease the conspirators, and lead them to give up the enterprise. You must aid me, Alexis, in choosing a costume. Come, let us repair to the wardrobe, and call my women. I will try on all my dresses, one after the other; then you shall decide which is ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... birth arise from widely different causes, of which diseases of bone, including rickets, diseases of joints, and affections of the nervous system attended with paralysis, are amongst the commonest. Other deformities are produced by unsuitable clothing, such as a tight corset, or ill-fitting shoes distorting the toes, prolonged standing in growing subjects overstraining the mechanism of the foot and giving rise to the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... nations, and it is under the terms of these that the intercourse between Japan and the nations of Europe and America is still conducted. They provided for the opening of the ports of Ni-igata and Hyogo, and for the closing of Shimoda, which had been found unsuitable, and the opening in its place of Kanagawa.(278) They fixed dates for the opening of the cities of Yedo and Osaka, and provided for the setting apart of suitable concessions in each of them for residence and trade. They provided that all cases of litigation in which foreigners ...
— Japan • David Murray
... to strengthen his influence, were celebrated, all on the same day, with great festivities and rejoicings. The people looked on moodily, jealous and displeased, though they had no open ground of displeasure, except that it was unsuitable to have such scenes of gayety and rejoicing among the high officers of the court while the young monarch himself was lying upon his dying bed. They did not yet know that it was Northumberland's plan to raise his new daughter-in-law to ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Apostles to Preach, he forbad them "to carry Gold, and Silver, and Brasse in their purses, for that the workman is worthy of his hire:" (Mat. 10. 9,10.) By which it is probable, their ordinary maintenance was not unsuitable to their employment; for their employment was (ver. 8.) "freely to give, because they had freely received;" and their maintenance was the Free Gift of those that beleeved the good tyding they carryed about of the coming of the Messiah their Saviour. To which ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... the first, it is necessary to explain that while Christ is on earth a dispute between Justice and Mercy, such as is often represented by the theologians, takes place in heaven. We must allow the unsuitable fiction attributing distraction to the divine Unity, for the sake of the words in which Mercy overthrows the arguments of Justice. For the poet unintentionally nullifies the symbolism of the theologian, representing ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... Tournament, in which, he understood, Mr. Garnet was to be his opponent. If it would be convenient for Mr. Garnet to play off the match on the present afternoon, Professor Derrick would be obliged if he would be at the Club House at half-past two. If this hour and day were unsuitable, would he kindly arrange others. The ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... with the English reader's memory in no readier way than by the fact, That he was younger brother, one year younger, of a certain "Anne of Cleves;"—a large fat Lady, who was rather scurvily used in this country; being called, by Henry VIII. and us, a "great Flanders mare," unsuitable for espousal with a King of delicate feelings! This Anne of Cleves, who took matters quietly and lived on her pension, when rejected by King Henry, was Aunt of the young Lady now in question for Preussen. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... shoot at them when I caught sight of them, which I did not succeed in doing until after daylight. We set off two sky-rockets but they did not go up well because they were bruised or because the sticks we attached to them were unsuitable. When the first rocket exploded it made the blacks laugh; at the explosion of the second we did not hear them do so, as they had probably retired to some distance. After the conduct of the blacks last night, and as they approached Gregory's party in a similar way ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... "As the reason assigned in these passages for not addressing Sita in Sanskrit such as a Brahman would use is not that she would not understand it, but that it would alarm her and be unsuitable to the speaker, we must take them as indicating that Sanskrit, if not spoken by women of the upper classes at the time when the Ramayana was written (whenever that may have been), was at least understood by them, and ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... great, either where they were not until lately attached to any particular state, or where the state has been less provident, that the officers have solicited even to be supplied with the clothing destined for the common soldiery, coarse and unsuitable as it was. I had not power to comply with ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... no sense, and put in unsuitable men, and the people rebelled, since it is a sad thing for a country parish to have a minister who is not ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... the demand to the character of the seasons. It was slowly realized that there were parts of the province where the harvests were so precarious that even a very moderate fixed cash assessment was unsuitable. Various systems of fluctuating cash assessment have therefore been introduced, and one-fourth of the total demand is now of this character, the proportion having been greatly increased by the adoption of the fluctuating principle ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... in the Puritans; it is the thing I pity—praising only the spirit which had rendered that inevitable! All substances clothe themselves in forms: but there are suitable true forms, and then there are untrue unsuitable. As the briefest definition, one might say, Forms which grow round a substance, if we rightly understand that, will correspond to the real nature and purport of it, will be true, good; forms which are consciously put round a substance, bad. I invite ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... very unsuitable to London Streets—but then these were raw Scotch fisherman, who had not yet learned how absurd it is to suppose ourselves come from anything greater than ourselves, and had no conception of the liberty it confers on a man to know that ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... pounds weight, and added to these there may be a torpedo outfit as well. The exigencies of fighting ships at sea and in all weathers seems to have pronounced against the monitor type with its low freeboard as unsuitable for use on the open sea, while the enormous advances in modern guns and armor have made a totally different problem of the distribution of means offensive and defensive. Again, the monitor type was never intended for long cruising, or indeed for other service than the defence of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... itself to noble purpose, the growing soul, tries more than is proper for its nourishment in its search for sustenance, but rejects all that is unnecessary or injurious, as water creatures without intelligence reject any unsuitable substance they collect with ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... nobody is in an ill-temper, nobody is the worse for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word, nobody appears depressed, nobody is weeping, and down upon the deck in every corner where it is possible to find a few square feet to kneel, crouch, or lie in, people, in every unsuitable attitude for ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... successor. The selection must be approved both by his clan and by his nation; but as their sentiments were generally known beforehand, this approval was rarely withheld. Indeed, the mischief resulting from an unsuitable choice was always likely to be slight; for both the national council and the federal senate had the right of deposing any member who was found ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... deterred from saying either if they were in his place, a lady of personal attractions,—(he bowed and I bowed,)—how sorry they all were to see a young Fraulein with these advantages, filled at the same time with opinions and views that were not only highly unsuitable to her sex but were also, in any sex, so terribly wrong. Every lady, he said, should have some knowledge of history, and sufficient acquaintance with the three kinds of politics,—Politik, Weltpolitik, and Realpolitik, to enable her to avoid wrong and frivolous ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... limiting conditions arising not only out of the principle of construction employed, but out of the physical properties of the very material we employ. A treatment that is suitable and expressive for a stone construction is quite unsuitable for a timber construction. Details which are effective and permanent in marble are ineffective and perishable in stone, and so; on and the outcome of all this is that all architectural design has to be judged, not by any ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... this was that John was so extremely feeble and infirm that he seemed to be wholly unfit to reign over such an empire. Besides various other maladies under which he suffered, he was afflicted with epilepsy, a disease which rendered it wholly unsuitable that he should assume any burdens whatever of responsibility ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... one kind or another follow. Borrow's Lieutenant P—— seems unluckily to have been of the latter kind, and was, if I mistake not, recommended by the authorities to withdraw from a situation which, to him, was evidently a false and unsuitable one. With this Borrow could not away. He gravely chronicles the fact of his reading an "excellent article in a local paper on the case of Lieutenant P——"; and with no less gravity (though he was, in a certain way, one of the first humorists of our day) ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Sylvia's acquaintance with the man must have ripened rapidly, for he was well informed of her movements; but this was no concern of his. He had thought for some time that a match between her and George would be unsuitable. For a while he and Bland talked about indifferent matters, and then the latter turned to him with ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... hearsay" against which Paine himself has so urgently warned us. Of course Mr. Roosevelt, who is both intellectual and broad-minded, knows better than that today. But it is astonishing how that ridiculous and unsuitable epithet—(a "trinity of lies" as one historian has styled it)—has stuck to a memory which I am sure is sacred to any angels ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... sober, soberer than her friends liked. They noticed with sorrow that the sunshine wore off as the day rolled on; that though ready to smile upon occasion, her face always settled again into a gravity they thought altogether unsuitable. Mrs. Lindsay fancied she knew the cause, and resolved to break ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... drawing which he had learned while watching his son at work during the previous six years. What, therefore, seems to the physician to be a painful recovery of previous aptitude, is, in fact, the imperfect endeavour of a novice entering a new and unsuitable career. "For the father the experience is by no means an unprofitable one. He would certainly, sooner or later, have resumed existence upon earth in the flesh, and it is as well that his return ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... and uniform. And then she saw Snagsby in his alpaca jacket running towards the house from the gates. Of course he was running only very slightly indeed, but still he was running, and the expression of distress upon his face convinced her that he was being urged to unusual and indeed unsuitable tasks under the immediate personal supervision of Sir Isaac.... Then from round the corner appeared the under butler or at least the legs of him going very fast, under a pile of shirt boxes and things ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... a formal visit from a minister, a few general questions, and a prayer, with or without the sacrament, calm the mind of a dying person, whose life has been unsuitable to the Christian profession; no doubt, could we penetrate the veil, we should see him wafted across the river in the boat of Vain-hope, and meeting with the awful doom that is here described. From such fatal delusions, good Lord, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... you into depths unsuitable, I fear, for a rapid lecture. Such difficulties as these have to be teased out with a needle, so to speak, and lecturers should take only bird's-eye views. The practical upshot of the matter, however, so far as I am concerned, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... with the place; and early in 1804 he carried off all the people, and resolved to abandon Port Phillip in favour of the Derwent. He landed at Risdon on the 15th February, and, after a short examination, came to the conclusion that the situation was unsuitable. Next day he went in search of a better place, and chose a little bay on the opposite side, some six miles nearer the mouth of the estuary, and thither the whole settlement was soon after removed. There, at the very foot of the lofty Mount Wellington, Hobart Town began ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... the Millionaire, who based his fortune on knowing the right people in every walk of life, was arranging to have his house taken over by the Red Cross authorities. In a week's time the house was to be found unsuitable and restored to him, but henceforth the Iron King was to have the honor of entertaining ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... appeared, she remarked a change in my looks. I was not willing to alarm her by the information which I had to communicate. Her health was in that condition which rendered a disastrous tale particularly unsuitable. I forbore a direct answer to her inquiries, and inquired, in my turn, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... quite joking, my child. There is no knowing what altogether unsuitable things men will do!—Who can blame them when they see how women consent to many ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the superiority of Madge. His best hope already for Stella was that she would change when surrounded by better influences—that her faultless taste in externals would eventually create repugnance to modes of thought and action unsuitable in a higher plane of life. He did not question his love for her, but he felt this morning that it was a love which was becoming disenchanted early, and into which the elements of patience and tolerance might have ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... conduct of the will and the government of the passions. Doing right is opposed to overdoing the thing, and to underdoing it. Doing right is taking what it suits a rational nature to desire, and eschewing what is unsuitable under the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... the daughter of my father's gardener, the connection was unsuitable. But have you no fear that marrying the child of a non-commissioned officer, who is in the same corps with yourself, will have the effect to lessen your consequence in ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... to London, and had sought relief from a state of solitude by attempting the composition of song. An old Scottish melody,[7] sung by an eccentric female, an attendant on Lady Balcarres, was connected with words unsuitable to the plaintive nature of the air; and, with the design of supplying the defect, she formed the idea of writing "Auld Robin Gray." The hero of the ballad was the old herdsman at Balcarres. To the members of her own family Lady Anne only communicated her new ballad—scrupulously concealing ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... course, she was quite unable to look the part. If she had done the Capital Housekeeper, or the Cheerfully Philanthropic, she might have married a middle-aged Rector. She threw away her chances by choosing an unsuitable pose. At the same time the reasons for your choice should never be obvious. There was another case, which amused me slightly—a dark girl, with fine eyes. She was originally intended to be a beauty, but she had some accident in her childhood that had crippled her. She had to walk with a stick, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... he reflected in a sudden panic, to be intrusted with this secret. If in his hap-hazard, callow folly he should turn informer, he was almost too young to be amenable to the popular sense of justice. He might, too, by some accident rather than intention, divulge the important knowledge so unsuitable to his years and his capacity for guarding it. He began to share the miller's aversion to the introduction of outsiders to the still. He felt a glow of indignation, as if he had always been a party in interest, that the common ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... &c 83; intrusive, incongruous; disproportionate, disproportionated^; inharmonious, unharmonious^; inconsonant, unconsonant^; divergent, repugnant to. inapt, unapt, inappropriate, improper; unsuited, unsuitable; inapplicable, not to the point; unfit, unfitting, unbefitting; unbecoming; illtimed, unseasonable, mal a propos [Fr.], inadmissible; inapposite &c (irrelevant) 10. uncongenial; ill-assorted, ill-sorted; mismatched, misjoined^, misplaced, misclassified; unaccommodating, irreducible, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... name but leaving a blank in place of the girl's. Poor, pinched, expressionless-looking little creatures, both of them were; for, as Uncle George explained to the crestfallen Donald, the babies were really ill at first, from exposure and unsuitable feeding. Then there were the two tiny papers containing each a lock of hair, and these also were marked, one, "The boy, Donald," and the other simply "The girl." Donald's had only a few pale little brown hairs, but "the girl's" paper disclosed ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... concerning whom I shall discourse more fully elsewhere. However, it is but fit to set down here the reasons wherefore Herod had these Essens in such honor, and thought higher of them than their mortal nature required; nor will this account be unsuitable to the nature of this history, as it will show the opinion men had ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... equal proportions of the three primitive colors in equal intensity, is the color of despair. As mourning, it is only suitable for those who despair of the future of their friends; but it is preeminently unsuitable to be worn for those who die in Christian faith with a Christian hope. Despite its gloomy hue, it has almost become a sacred color among Christian nations, being worn as the dress of the priest in his ministerial office, and doubly hallowed from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sentiment that Balzac was a thorough legitimist. He does not believe in the vitality of the old order, any more than he believes in the truth of Catholicism. But he regrets the extinction of the ancient faiths, which he admits to be unsuitable; and sees in their representatives the only picturesque and really estimable elements that still survived in French society. He heartily despises the modern mediaevalists, who try to spread a thin varnish over a decaying order; ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... insisted on calling him March, for no other reason than that he was born in the month so named. Mary was obliged to consent, and at last came to congratulate herself that the child had been born in March, and not in April or October, or any other month equally unsuitable for a Christian name. After the first year, Obadiah Marston treated his wife badly, then brutally, and at last he received a sound drubbing from his brother-in-law, the blacksmith, for having beaten poor Mary with a ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... following the 1st of September may be recommended in preference to July and August. For there is no inconvenience arising from the season which, to such a person, would not be amply compensated by the autumnal appearance of any of the more retired vallies, into which discordant plantations and unsuitable buildings have not yet found entrance.—In such spots, at this season, there is an admirable compass and proportion of natural harmony in colour, through the whole scale of objects; in the tender green of the after-grass upon the meadows, interspersed with islands ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... undertake a journey to Bristol, Liverpool, and Lancaster, where he should reside for a time to collect further light upon this subject; and that if others should feel their occupations or engagements to be such as would make such a journey unsuitable, I would undertake it myself. I begged, therefore, the favour of the different members of the committee, to turn the matter over in their minds by the next meeting, that we might then talk over and decide upon the propriety of ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... what the point of rest really is. Further, if the glass is twisted one way first and then the other way, the point of rest moves in a manner which shows that it is not influenced by the last deflection alone: the glass remembers what was done to it previously. For this reason spun glass is quite unsuitable as a torsion thread; it is impossible to say what the twist is at any time, and therefore what ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... kinds of fowl.—FISH is less nourishing than flesh, because it is gross, phlegmatic, cold, and full of watery superfluities: but under certain restrictions, it may be safely used as a part of our general diet. It is unsuitable to cold phlegmatic constitutions, but very well adapted to such as are hot and choleric. The white kinds of fish, which contain neither fat nor oil, are preferable to the rest; such as whitings, turbot, soles, skate, haddock, flounders, smelts, trout, and graylings. These are easier ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... in bonding material are often encountered in deposits where there is insufficient overburden to give enough additional binder or where the overburden is of a material unsuitable for binder. Such materials may be utilized by adding binder in the form of clay after the gravel has been placed ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... that engaging honesty which I have mentioned—Bastin's letter went on to set out all his own disabilities, which, he added, would probably render him unsuitable for the place he desired to fill. He was a High Churchman, a fact which would certainly offend many; he had no claims to being a preacher although he was extraordinarily well acquainted with the writings of the Early ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... were similar, and these furnished the legitimate excuse for frequently bringing us together. The friendly liberality of your disposition enlarged the privileges of the acquaintance, and, without meaning it at first, I abused them. I sought your dwelling at unsuitable periods. Unconsciously, I did so, just at those periods when you were most likely to be absent. I first knew that my course was wrong, by discovering the unwillingness which I felt to encounter you. This taught me to know ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... carried standardisation to a high degree of efficiency, as is shown in another chapter. At a later date France appreciated the wisdom of the German practice, and within a short time after the outbreak of hostilities promptly ruled out certain types of machines which were regarded as unsuitable. In this instance the process of elimination created considerable surprise, inasmuch as it involved an embargo on the use of certain machines, which under peace conditions had achieved an international reputation, and were held to represent ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... do not take off their hats at a lunch party even in the country. They take off their gloves at the table, or sooner if they choose, and either remove or turn up, their veils. The hostess does not wear gloves, ever. It is also very unsuitable for a hostess to wear a face veil in her own house, unless there is something the matter with her face, that must not be subjected to view! A hostess in a veil does not give her guests the impression of "veiled beauty," but the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... building unfinished. As the first buildings were temporary, they were unsuitable for students to occupy another Winter, which would be the eleventh Winter our school had been in successful operation. Brother Patchin, our principal, was called to another field as pastor and teacher, and would go if the new building was not ready for use by the following academic ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... to go up to London and set her forth with finery. 'Twas but rarely he went up to town, having neither money to waste, nor finding great attraction in the more civilised quarters of the world. He brought her back such clothes as for richness and odd, unsuitable fashion child never wore before. There were brocades that stood alone with splendour of fabric, there was rich lace, fine linen, ribbands, farthingales, swansdown tippets, and little slippers with ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Scripture when one is not certain that it is contrary to strictly universal truths. It is agreed that there are cases where one must reject a literal interpretation that is not absolutely impossible, when it is otherwise unsuitable. For instance, all commentators agree that when our Lord said that Herod was a fox he meant it metaphorically; and one must accept that, unless one imagine with some fanatics that for the time the ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... lies the Botanic Garden, which has been laid out, at great expense, on the declivity of a mountain. The terraces, which had to be artificially cut, are supported by masonry and filled with earth. Why such an unsuitable place was chosen I cannot imagine; the less so as I saw only a few rare plants and shrubs, and everywhere nothing but grape-vines; I fancied myself in a vineyard. The most remarkable things in this garden are two vine- stocks, whose stems were each a foot ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... Marriage. The passion of love seems so overpowering that it may be thought folly to try to direct its course. But plain facts do not confirm this view. Social influences of all kinds have immense power in the end, and they are very various. If unsuitable marriages from the eugenic point of view were banned socially, or even regarded with the unreasonable disfavour which some attach to cousin marriages, very few would be made. The multitude of marriage restrictions that ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... occasional employment, by mendicancy, but principally, perhaps, by the assumption of that unlawful power, which commerce with spirits of evil was supposed to procure, and of which their sex, life, appearance, and peculiarities, might seem to the prejudiced neighbourhood in the Forest to render them not unsuitable depositaries. In both, perhaps, some vindictive wish, which appeared to have been gratified nearly as soon as uttered, or some one of those curious coincidences which no individual's life is without, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... separate volcanic peaks standing in a row, form chains; but it is more common to find them scattered, to the great perplexity of geologists, without visible cause, in places where the formation seems quite unsuitable. Spacious valleys, surrounded by high walls of rock, over the very ridge of which passes the railway, are common. Look below, and it will seem to you that you are gazing upon the studio of some whimsical Titanic sculptor, filled with half finished groups, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... of the records would be more difficult. Ordinary books and papers would clearly be unsuitable for long keeping; though for comparatively limited periods they might answer if securely packed in airtight waterproof cases. Nothing liable to spontaneous decay should be admitted. Stereotype plates of metal would be even more open to objection than printed sheets. ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... was recently allowed in our old friend Notes and Queries in a singularly unsuitable case, 10th ser. ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... to maintain the high standard that the Service has set for itself. We recommend, too, that during the hours set apart for children there should be a complete absence of features that can fairly be regarded as being unsuitable for or injurious to ...
— Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee • Ronald Macmillan Algie
... one being immediately occasioned by the other, the humbling effect here attributed to the bodily infirmity could not have been produced on the apostle's mind, because the cause assigned would have been unsuitable and inadequate to such an effect. It is true that every affliction, bodily or otherwise, has a tendency to produce a feeling of humiliation, but it does so only in so far as it cuts away the ground on which we are disposed to build up matter ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... faults of the desk and seat leading to these malpositions are unsuitable shape of the back of the seat, too great a distance between the seat and the desk, and the incorrect slope ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... till after 11 o'clock at night.—I now attend eight meetings every week. Sunday mornings at nine o'clock, exposition of the Word, and in the afternoon at two we meet for the breaking of bread. The dear brethren have gone back to these unsuitable hours. On Monday afternoon at three the exposition of the Scriptures to those who meet together to knit for the missionaries, and on Monday and Wednesday evenings from 8 to 10 o'clock, Scripture reading meetings, with the saints only who break bread. On Tuesday and Thursday evenings from eight ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... 1572, distracted Tycho's attention from astronomical matters. He fell in love. The young girl on whom his affections were set appears to have sprung from humble origin. Here again his august family friends sought to dissuade him from a match they thought unsuitable for a nobleman. But Tycho never gave way in anything. It is suggested that he did not seek a wife among the highborn dames of his own rank from the dread that the demands of a fashionable lady would make too great an inroad on the ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... not know was that she had fallen in love with Gerald La Touche at five-and-twenty and had never fallen out,— keeping her feelings to herself during the years that he was espoused to another, very unsuitable lady. Our own sentimental experiences, however, had sharpened our eyes, and we divined at once that Dr. La Touche, a scholar of fifty, shy, reserved, self- distrustful, and oh! so in need of anchor and harbour,—that he was the only husband in the ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... throwing yourself away," said Nugent; "to my mind it's a most unsuitable match in every way. She's got no money, no looks, no style. Nothing but a good kind heart rather the worse for wear. I suppose you know ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit." This doctrine, so comfortably applied to Texas in 1848, seemed unsuitable for the Confederate States in 1861. But possibly the point lay in the words, "having the power," and "can," for the Texans "had the power" and "could," and the South had it not and could not; and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... will be maintained as public forests and will be cut as the timber becomes merchantable. This movement has called attention to the practicability of establishing town or community forests on cheap land unsuitable for tillage, as a source of income to the community. Communal forests have existed in Europe for many centuries, and at the present time form 22 percent of the forests in France. A movement has now commenced for the ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... likely to be encountered, can be reliably ascertained, as this portion of the work cannot be otherwise estimated, and as it may bear a very large proportion of the total expense of construction, and in certain cases may demonstrate that the site is altogether unsuitable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various |
