"Unvarnished" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my country in this way as a soldier, and as a volunteer yeomanry cavalry man too, I must entreat the indulgence and particular attention of the gentle reader, while I give a faithful narrative, an unvarnished tale, of the whole affair. This being the solitary instance in which I was called into the field of battle while I was in the service, I must entreat those who do me the honour to read my Memoirs, to extend their forgiveness to me if I should prove somewhat ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... Tables from rubbing against Walls, and to hold Doors open. Footstools. Sweeping Carpets. Tealeaves. Wet Indian Meal. Taking up and cleansing Carpets. Washing Carpets. Straw Matting. Pictures and Glasses. Curtains and Sofas. Mahogany Furniture. Unvarnished Furniture; Mixtures for. Hearths and Jambs. Sweeping ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... often have wondered whether a Christmas dinner ever was so fearfully and wonderfully constructed, and under such novel circumstances, as the one to which I sat down on Christmas Day, 1879, I have decided to relate—in the truthful, unvarnished style that one always looks for in the old railway man—the incidents in which I was fortunate enough to participate on ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... would have said, and he was hanging him. Nor was it possible to see his lordship, and acquit him of gusto in the task. It was plain he gloried in the exercise of his trained faculties, in the clear sight which pierced at once into the joint of fact, in the rude, unvarnished gibes with which he demolished every figment of defence. He took his ease and jested, unbending in that solemn place with some of the freedom of the tavern; and the rag of man with the flannel round his neck was hunted gallowsward ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... however—here he rose and laid his hand consolingly on my shoulder—take these things too much to heart. The most bitter remedies—and unfortunately the truth was such—are generally the wholesomest, and for my sick, dreaming nature, he thought, after earnest, mature consideration, that the unvarnished truth was the only means of ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... point of view, and that there is probably much to be said on the other side. The unhappiest feature of drifting into a habit of positive and continuous talk is that one has few friends faithful enough to criticise such a habit and tell one the unvarnished truth; if the habit is once confirmed, it becomes almost impossible to break it off. I know of a family conclave that was once summoned, in order, if possible, to communicate the fact to one of the circle that he was ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... you an unvarnished statement with regard to myself, and I should feel obliged by your informing me at your earliest convenience if myself, wife and son can be admitted by my investing two hundred dollars for the furnishing of the apartment assigned to us. Are there any Wesleyans with ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... to harvest, praying the Lord of the harvest to arm and send forth more laborers, because they are too few, I ask an indulgent public to allow my deep and abiding sympathies for the oppressed and sorrowing of every nation, class, or color, to plead my excuse for sending forth simple, unvarnished facts and experiences, hoping they may increase an aspiration for the active doing, instead of saying what ought to be done, with excusing self for want of ability, when it is to be found in Him who is saying, "My grace is ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... and only the meaner effusions of his mind as emblematic of the true man, is both unreasonable and uncharitable. Nor, I think, will that reader grasp the way to see the truth who cannot teach himself what has in Cicero's case, been the effect of daring to tell to his friend an unvarnished tale. When with us some poor thought does make its way across our minds, we do not sit down and write it to another, nor, if we did, would an immortality be awarded to the letter. If one of us were to lose his all—as Cicero lost his all when he was ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... puzzled, and in his be-puzzlement retired within himself to concoct a plan of action. Having definitely failed in this attempt, he resolved to go off at once without preparation, and ask at the hotel for Miss Perzio, and then a round, unvarnished tale deliver. This resolution formed, he started at once and hurried, lest it should break by the way. Lilian and he were within twenty yards of each other, neither of them knowing it, when his cab rushed up to ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... interest, Tom and Bob left the office, not, however, without a feeling of commiseration for Mr. Sullivan, whose frail rib and her companion in iniquity, now that the tables were turned against them by the injured husband's "plain unvarnished tale," experienced a due share ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night—of the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told, in her own quiet way a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rabidly devoured the ideal;—I pronounced judgment ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... of following the exploits of this black son of the desert, who in his person unites the great virtues of his people, magnanimity and bravery, with the gift of poetic speech. Its tone is elevated; its coarseness has as its origin the outspokenness of unvarnished man; it does not peep through the thin veneer of licentious suggestiveness. It is never trivial, even in its long and wearisome descriptions, in its ever-recurring outbursts of love. Its language suits its thought: choice and educated, and not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... be deflected so that it sped at first through the canon of the upper Dry Creek, and following a natural course be brought with little expense to Dry Valley. Ettinger's proposition was no fanciful dream; it was hard, unvarnished fact. And, as so often happens when a man sees a radiant possibility, he wondered that he had not seen it for himself ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... come to an end somewhere, let it be here. To quote Lord Bacon again, take my "round, unvarnished tale," and perhaps the world will yet acknowledge that some good ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... crowded round, listening greedily, just as everybody devours certain public prints without ceasing to impeach their veracity. Lacking newspapers at which to pish! and pshaw! they listened to Windy Jim, disbelieving the only unvarnished tale that gentleman had ever told. For Windy, with the story-teller's instinct, knew marvellous enough would sound the bare recital of those awful Dawson days when the unprecedented early winter stopped the provision boats at Circle, and starvation stared the over-populated Klondyke ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... but oftentimes he would be carried away by the sentimental side of his past struggles. Then he would unburden himself of a great deal of unvarnished history. On such occasions I would obtain from him a veritable treasure of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... unconsidered act, she was forcing upon him, at the least, a public recognition of their marriage; an acknowledgment that might make further separation difficult, if not impossible, for the present. All her pride and independence of spirit revolted against this unvarnished statement of fact; and the memory of Michael's random remark heightened her nervous apprehension. Yet, on the other hand, Love—who is a born peace-maker—argued that, after all, he might not be ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... by the constant collision of tempers rudely provoked, and equally disposed to violence Though he "set down naught in malice," it is certain that he did "nothing; extenuate," in the account he rendered. The whole of the facts were laid before the Rover in the direct, unvarnished language ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... he growled, leering into the drawing-room at a tiny grand piano cased in unvarnished ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... delicate cases. He should not wait for his accuser to get in all his case if the substantial part of it is already before the court, because his answer ought not, as in a court of law, to cover the complaint simply and no more. It ought to contain a plain unvarnished tale of the whole transaction, and not those parts only which the accusation may have touched, because his object is not only to wrest a verdict of "not proven" from his judges, but to satisfy even the timid and ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... in which Ruskin gave vent to his extreme opinions. It seems to be no effort to him, but as if it were a matter of course that every one should give expression to the faith that is in him in the same unvarnished way as he does himself, not looking for agreement, but for conversation and discussion. 'It is strange,' Ruskin said, 'being considered so much out of harmony with America as I am, that the two Americans I have known and loved best, you and Norton, should give me such a feeling of friendship and ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... had quite done with his unvarnished tale, and when Mr. Smoothbore had given him a parting nod in sign that he had done with him, Sergeant Balais rose, for the first time, with an uplifted finger, as though, but for that signal of delay, the honest landlord ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... rosier. He was not used among his docile Canadians to any such speech as this. The unvarnished fashions of New England ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... they were no better than humbugs, and I was none too pleased at their copying my beard. If there were any use in their noise, if the talking did any good to the public, I should not have a word to say against them: but, to tell you the plain unvarnished truth, I have more than once looked out from my peep-hole ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... the unvarnished truth. A mysterious power dealt the cards for me with unfailing instinct; a fortunate combination of events placing in my hands, precisely at the moment of their greatest value, clear opportunities that none but a hopeless blunderer could have disregarded. What men call Chance operated in ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... degree to which human intercourse is carried on, not by men's habits or ways at their commonest, but by the touching of their extremes. A definition of Fielding's genius has been made with some accuracy in the saying, that he shows common propensities in connection with the identical unvarnished adjuncts which are peculiar to the individual, nor could a more exquisite felicity of handling than this be any man's aim or desire; but it would be just as easy, by employment of the critical rules applied to Dickens, to transform it into matter of censure. Partridge, Adams, Trulliber, Squire ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Saviour, that made the primitive Christians victorious alike over inward sinful affection and outward persecution. To every one who reads the gospel narratives in the exercise of his sober judgment, it is manifest that they are intended to be plain unvarnished statements of facts. The question is, Are these statements reliable? Here new arguments can hardly be expected; the old are abundantly sufficient. Reserving for another place those general arguments which apply to the gospel system as a whole, let us here briefly consider the character ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... gone well since her departure, and where she found Adam more tractable and reasonable than she had had reason to anticipate. He listened to all Joan's messages, agreed with her suspicions and seemed contented to abide by her decision. The plain, unvarnished statement which Mrs. Tucker gave of the misery and gloom spread over the place affected him visibly, and her account of the two girls, and the alteration she had seen in them, did not tend to dispel ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... one,—reckless, defying, and apparently heartless, showed more deference for Mr. Regulus, more solicitude for his attention, than I had ever seen her manifest for another's. Was it possible that this strange, wild girl, was attracted by the pure, unvarnished qualities of this "great grown boy," as Dr. Harlowe called him? It is impossible to account for the fascination which one being exercises over another; and from the days of Desdemona to the present hour, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... death-blow. I hope, my dear cousin, you will forgive me for being very candid on this point, but I really do not think that anybody in England had any idea of the real state of affairs here. The sooner therefore that they are put in possession of the truth unvarnished the better. The great and imperative necessity is that the four Powers of Europe should strike together, otherwise things will become much worse than they are even at present. Everybody is very civil and obliging to me, the Sultan ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Years Before the Mast"] is a classic because it took no thought of being a classic. It is a plain, unvarnished tale, not loaded up with tedious descriptions. It is all action, a perpetual drama in which the sea, the winds, the seamen, the sails—mainsail, main royal, foresail—play the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... down decently. It is a point, which it takes the key of the play—Lord Bacon's key, of 'Times,' to put in. It wants but a comma, but then it must be a comma in the right place, to make English of it. Plain English, unvarnished English, but poetic in its fact, as any prophecy ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... realism, it cannot be called crude as a work of poetic art. In rhyme and rhythm it is quite regular, and the impression which it leaves upon the mind is that it was the work of an educated man, keenly interested in the unvarnished life of a Yorkshire farm, keenly interested in the vocabulary and idioms of his district, and determined to produce a poem which should bid defiance to all the proprieties of the ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... The unvarnished facts, as they were then recorded substantially from the lips of Jim, and as they are here reproduced, comprise only a very meagre part of his sadly interesting story. At the time Jim left his master and mistress so unceremoniously in Philadelphia, some excitement ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... his cheek, his speech will alter and be broken, and he will feel himself unable to turn it off lightly, as a thing of no impression and validity. In this way the erroneous man, the man nursed in the house of luxury, a stranger to the genuine, unvarnished state of things, stands a ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... roof on the little flames, which were leaping like earth spirits from the ground. His wife stood below and called on him in forcible language to descend from such a dangerous place. The crowd jeered at her fears, and she spoke her mind to them in frank and unvarnished terms. It was St. John the Baptist's Day. Some of the men had been celebrating the feast by drinking. One of them, out of the fulness of his heart, cried out: "Oh, how happy I am! I'm drunk, and there's a fire, and all at the same time!" ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... one of these unhappy women ventured to write a plain, unvarnished, but poignant, description of her inner life, where would she find a publisher daring enough to let his name appear on the ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... may cite the epithets "ye rascals, ye rude slaves," addressed to a crowd by a porter in Henry VIII., and that of "lazy knaves" given by the Lord Chamberlain to the porters for having let in a "trim rabble" (Act 5, Sc. 3). Hubert, in King John, presents us with an unvarnished picture of the common people receiving the ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... deep-rooted, his self-respect so great, that he respects all other dignitaries: the Senators are his "very noble and approved good masters." Every word weighed and effectual. Admirable, too, is the expression "round unvarnished tale." ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... far from solution as ever. But it would be all the better for the State if we could keep the questions raised by Crabbe in his wonderful pictures more continually in view,—lacking in taste as they may sometimes seem to weak stomachs, coarse, unvarnished narratives though they be of a life which is really ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... repeatedly broken, as was plainly stated by Secretary Hughes before the full Committee on Far Eastern Affairs, and repeated at a plenary session of the Conference. His statement was one of the most remarkable, by reason of its directness and unvarnished truth, in the history of American diplomacy. After reviewing the correspondence between the two governments and the reiterated assurances of Japan of her intention to withdraw from Siberia, assurances which so far had not been carried out, Mr. ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... of Christian missions arises from the vices and sins of Christendom; fifthly, an acknowledgment of the indirect influences of Christianity through legislation and civilization; sixthly, the newly awakened perception of the duty of making exact, unvarnished, impartial statements on this subject; seventhly, the testimony borne by missionary experience to the common elements and essential principles of the ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... reader; but they cannot appear more so to him than they did to the author at the time. He has stated such matters just as they occurred, and leaves every one to form his own opinion concerning them; trusting that his anxious desire to speak the unvarnished truth will gain for him the confidence ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... sent His servants to rebuke sin, both in the world and in the church. But the people desire smooth things spoken to them, and the pure, unvarnished truth is not acceptable. Many reformers, in entering upon their work, determined to exercise great prudence in attacking the sins of the church and the nation. They hoped, by the example of a pure Christian life, to lead the people back to the doctrines of the Bible. But the Spirit of God ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... chundering old bump—I mean the blundering old chump?" spluttered Harry Rattleton. "Didn't stop to say a word? Well, somebody ought to say something to him! I'd like the privilege. It would do me good to give him an unvarnished piece ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... other grizzled chroniclers to whom I had listened in other parts of the West. Some of their tales came back to me, straightforward simple stories of the days before the farmers, barbed-wire fences, and branch railroad lines; and I marveled at the richness of a lore whose plain unvarnished narratives of fact stand out with values exceeding those of most adventure fiction, more vivid and colorful than the anecdotes of the Middle Ages which the French chronicler set down for all ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... Chauxville," he said, without lookup, "your epigrams are lost on me. I know most of them. I have heard them before. If you have anything to tell me about Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, for Heaven's sake tell it to me quite plainly. I like plain dishes and unvarnished stories. I am a German, you know; that is to say, a person with a dull palate ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... that to the historian in search of unvarnished records of actual fact these documents are useless, without most drastic criticism. They were compiled long after the time of their subjects, from tales, doubtless at first, and probably for a considerable time, transmitted by oral tradition. It would be natural that there should be much cross-borrowing, ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... imperious words that crowded to his lips. These were plain unvarnished facts, and he must bow to the inevitable, however distasteful it might be. For the present then, Ramabai should be permitted to go unharmed. But Ramabai might die suddenly and accidentally in the recapture of the Colonel Sahib. An accidental death would certainly extinguish any volcanic fires ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... of men exactly as they are, the expression of the plain, unvarnished truth without regard to ideals or romance—the tendency was at first thoroughly bad. The early Restoration writers sought to paint realistic pictures of a corrupt court and society, and, as we have suggested, they emphasized vices rather than virtues, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Point-of-Rocks, whose boat goes down to within two or three miles of the Gloria bridge. Goodloe, at Little Butte, reports that there was nothing moving on the main line after the passing of the midnight freight east; and Shaughnessy, the track-walker, is just a plain, unvarnished liar: he knows a lot more than he ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... single-handed fighting linger in the American imagination still. Typical pamphlets are Mary Rowlandson's thrilling tale of the Lancaster massacre and her subsequent captivity, and the loud-voiced Captain Church's unvarnished description of King Philip's death. The King, shot down like a wearied bull-moose in the deep swamp, "fell upon his face in the mud and water, with his gun under him." They "drew him through the mud to the upland; and a doleful, great, naked dirty beast he looked like." ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... excused themselves as they do today. "Who could abide such a fanatical, fiery fool? such an uncompromising character? Nobody could work with him, or he with them!" (What a lie! Jesus did, and they got on well together.) A tactless enthusiast, who considered it his business to tell every man the unvarnished truth regardless of consequences. He won his degree hands down, and without a touch of the spur. A first-class one, too—that of the headman's axe—next best to that of ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd
... one to rhapsodise and to quote poetry; the other to shock his friend with his plain, unvarnished remarks, while his eyes and thoughts crossed the valley, and followed the moonlight which lightened up the old grey house looking down ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... to be sensational, but a plain, unvarnished tale of truth—some parts hard and very sad. It is a narrative of my personal experience, and being in no sense a literary man or making any pretense as a writer, I hope the errors may be overlooked, for it ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... plain, unvarnished truth that this accomplished and semi-historical personage raced a horse of his own, which turns out now to have been the famous Rainbow, an animal of such marvellous speed, courage, and endurance that as many legends are current about him as of Dick Turpin's ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... had this very literary conversation with my honorable director, I rang at the door of the small house in the Rue Desbordes-Valmore where Pierre Fauchery lived, in a retired corner of Passy. Having taken up my pen to tell a plain unvarnished tale I do not see how I can conceal the wretched feeling of pleasure which, as I rang the bell, warmed my heart at the thought of the good joke I was about to play on the owner of this ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... the raw-boned lady, imagined himself telling the raw- boned lady the simple, unvarnished truth, and the raw-boned lady's utter disbelief of every word of it. An inspiration came to ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... friendship, as most people imagine, consists in telling one truth—unvarnished, unadorned truth—he is indeed a friend: yet, hang it, I must be candid, and say I have had many other, and more agreeable, proofs of Hobhouse's friendship than the truths he always told me; but the fact is, I wanted him ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... is best you should have a plain unvarnished account. You remember the promise I made you at Hale? Well, I tried my utmost to keep that promise. I hunted up the man I spoke of—a man who had been an associate of your brother's; but unluckily, there had been no correspondence between them after Mr. Lovel went abroad; in short, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... upon a sound knowledge of bodily needs and functions. It is only in the sphere of sex that there remains an unfounded fear of presenting without the gratuitous introduction of non-essential taboos and prejudice, unbiased and unvarnished facts. ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... of the bigot or the fanaticism of the enthusiast. It is the concentration of a broadly gifted masculine mind, devoting its unstinted energies to depicting certain aspects of society and civilization, which are powerfully representative of the tendencies of the day. "Here is the unvarnished fact—give heed to it!" is the unwritten motto. The author avoids betraying, either explicitly or implicitly, the tendency of his own sympathies; not because he fears to have them known, but because he holds it to be his office simply to portray, and ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... any attempt to disentangle the twain would be idle indeed. The passages where she is most insistent upon the due sequence of events, most detailed in observation are not impossibly purely fictional, the incidents related without stress or emphatic assertions are probably enough the plain unvarnished happenings as she witnessed them. That the history is mainly true admits of little question; that Mrs. Behn has heightened and coloured the interest ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... precious time. I have nothing to explain to you which you are not already perfectly well acquainted with by my late letters. I was fully aware at the time I was writing them that I should afford you little satisfaction, for the plain unvarnished truth is seldom agreeable. But I now repeat, and these are perhaps among the last words which I shall ever be permitted to pen, that I cannot approve, and I am sure no Christian can, of the system which has lately been pursued in the large sea-port cities of Spain, and which the Bible Society ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... particularly so after just wading through the mire of a speech of a French infidel who boldly affirmed that of all of the millions of prayers uttered every day, not one is answered. We should like to have any candid skeptic confronted with Mr. Muller's unvarnished story of a life of faith, and see how he would on any principle of' compound probability' and 'accidental coincidences,' account for the tens of thousand's of answers to believing prayer! The fact is that one half of the infidelity in the world ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... will tell you, all that you have any need to know. As I happen to have been first on what you may call the scene of action, it stands in the fit order of things that I should speak first. You will just permit me to mix a little more of the elixir of life, and then, as the poet says, my plain unvarnished ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... and discreditable, but at the same time historically instructive, since it shows to what a point the noblest of the Florentines had fallen. All Pitti's invectives against the Ottimati, bitter as they may be, are justified by the unvarnished narrative we read upon the pages of Varchi and Segni concerning this most vicious, selfish, vain, and brilliant hero of historical romance. Married to Clarice de' Medici, by whom he had a splendid family of handsome and vigorous sons, he was more than the rival of his wife's princely relatives ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... gossip takes t' handlin' her name lightly. That girl's put in my care by Billy, an' Billy an' me have stood by each other through many a gale. An' now, Mark Tapkins, I'd like t' hear what ye've got t' say out plain an' unvarnished. I don't want no gibin'. I only got one way o' hearin' an' talkin'." Mark drew back from the calm, ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... Gaynor, flushed up because Mark King said in blunt, unvarnished fashion: "I like you very much." The grave sobriety went out of her eyes; they shone happily. When they reached the "funny little store" she was humming a snatch of a bright little waltz tune. And she was thinking, without putting the thought into words: "And I like you very much. You are quite ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... jovial in these responses. Tom Reade knew men well enough to recognize this fact. Moreover, Tom knew the plain, unvarnished, honest and deadly-in-earnest men of these south-western plains well enough to know the genuine ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... either of the "Hawarden Kite" or the Home Rule split, much less to disclose his opinions—they are emphatic and deliberate—of the men who made mischief at that crisis. I leave also untouched the plain, unvarnished account he gives, on unimpeachable authority, of a subsequent and not less discreditable phase in the annals of the Liberal party. There are reasons, obvious to everyone who gives the matter a moment's thought, that render it inadvisable in the interests of the political cause with which ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... others, we rarely obtain an unvarnished picture of character from the near relatives of distinguished men; and, interesting though all autobiography is, still less can we expect it from the men themselves. In writing his own memoirs, a man will not tell all that he knows about himself. ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... his account of the Indians (p. 18 of this text) compare with modern accounts? Is he apparently a novice, or somewhat skilled in writing prose? Does he seem to you to be a romancer or a narrator of a plain unvarnished tale? ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... Signet, who prepared the work for the Press, would have asked three times the space to record one-half the adventures. 'I sunk upon it with my forks and brought it with me'; 'We obtained thirty-three pounds by this affair'—is there not the stalwart flavour of the epic in these plain, unvarnished sentences? ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... wanness of his features, and the slightly wearied look he bore, were all imparting intelligence to me—the knowledge I craved for so much ever since I heard the words, 'Take what you want, but find Livingstone,' What I saw was deeply interesting intelligence to me and unvarnished truth. I was listening and reading at the same time. What did these dumb witnesses ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... would lose not an instant in broaching the important subject. He was happy to think he had a friend in the old lady. Perhaps she might bring about the desired interview. But although this thought was encouraging, he could not but tremble when he remembered the very plain and unvarnished way she had ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... upper layer belonged to the Roman period, and contained Roman tiles and a coin. The second layer, followed over a surface of 25,000 square feet, was 6 inches thick, and lay at a depth of 10 feet. In it were found fragments of unvarnished pottery and a pair of tweezers in bronze, indicating the bronze epoch. The third layer, followed for 35,000 square feet, was 6 or 7 inches thick and 19 feet deep. In it were fragments of rude pottery, pieces ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... charm of naivete, that recalls the unvarnished simplicity of the Italian painters before Raphael. But who shall say that he discovers that 'spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling,' which a great poet has made the fundamental element of poetry? There are too few melodious progressions; ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... arts which spring from the composition of language. Here the art of logic, aiming solely at conviction, addresses the understanding with cool deductions of unvarnished truth; rhetoric, designing to move, in some particular direction, both the judgement and the sympathies of men, applies itself to the affections in order to persuade; and poetry, various in its character and tendency, solicits the imagination, with a view ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... with drawn face, in dread of the hours. He felt the racking nerve-tension of a life in which the father went forth each day leaving his family in fear that he would not return. Then, under the spell of the unvarnished recital, he seemed to witness the crisis when the man, who had dared repudiate the lawless law of individual reprisal, paid the ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... family. I heard of their proposed arrival some months before, and wrote to Mrs. C—— to beg they would leave their elder children in England, and only bring the babies with them, for the little ones thrive well enough at Sarawak. I also gave a plain unvarnished account of the place. But Mr. C——, having made up his mind to bring all his family out, put the letter in his pocket; and we were very sorry when they arrived, a party of nine, having lost one ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... to be perhaps the best contribution to the literature of the war that has yet been written. It is a plain soldierly narrative of what the writer actually did and saw, set down in unvarnished language, yet in English which it is a pleasure to read for its ...
— Mr. Edward Arnold's New and Popular Books, December, 1901 • Edward Arnold
... other kinds of knowledge. As the streets of Hannibal in those early days, and the printing-offices of several cities, had taught him human nature in various unvarnished aspects, so the river furnished an added course to that vigorous education. Morally, its atmosphere could not be said to be an improvement on the others. Navigation in the West had begun with crafts of the flat-boat type—their navigators rude, hardy men, heavy drinkers, reckless fighters, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... already began to busy himself with the condition of 'our roadside arabs,' as he calls them. We fear Mr. Smith in prosecuting this good work of his is doomed to perform a serious act of disenchantment. The ideal Gipsy is destined to be scattered to the winds by the unvarnished picture which Mr. Smith will cause to be presented to our vision. He does not pretend to show us the romantic, fantastically-dressed creature whose prototypes have long been in the imaginations of many of us as types ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... "Othello," and during the first act he looked not only a veritable Moor, but, what was far greater, he seemed to be Shakespeare's own "Moor of Venice." The splendid presence, the bluff, soldierly manner, the open, honest look, as the "round unvarnished tale" was delivered, made one understand, partly at least, how "that maiden never bold, a spirit so still and quiet," had come at last to see "Othello's visage in his mind, and to his honour and his valiant ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... this plain, unvarnished account of an Oriental battle might feel inclined to criticise Santa Coloma's tactics; for his men were, like the Arabs, horsemen and little else; they were, moreover, armed with lance and broadsword, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... to remember, Garth, that every word I write, is the simple unvarnished truth. If you look back over your remembrance of me, you will admit that I am not naturally an untruthful person, nor did I ever take easily to prevarication. But, Garth, I told you one lie; and that fatal exception proves the rule of perfect truthfulness, which has always otherwise ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... be those who will object that the plain, unvarnished tale of my friend "Hy" Smith, which follows, is lacking in the robust qualities that truth alone can bring; to them I recommend the attitude of the Injun. But I must add this: Heaven forbid that I should have to ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... most of whose leading members maintain business or social relations, more or less active, with one or another section of the English population of the great British metropolis. Perhaps, if we could get a plain, unvarnished account from some member of one of these colonies, of England and English life as they appear to him and to his compatriots, Englishmen might be as much confounded as I have known very intelligent and well-informed Frenchmen to be, by the notions of French ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... those Cossacks who drag the steamer off the sand-banks, and are often entertaining companions. Many of them can relate from their own experience, in plain, unvarnished style, stirring episodes of irregular warfare, and if they happen to be in a communicative mood they may divulge a few secrets regarding their simple, primitive commissariat system. Whether they are ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... a pathos about this plain, unvarnished story that appeals to every heart. That a man, no matter what his crimes, should have his nervous system thus cruelly undermined; that his physical and mental faculties should be slowly but surely filched from him in this deliberate fashion, is an idea not to be borne with composure by ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... not the best thing that could happen, and the thing that will have to happen some day, be the disintegration of the existing organisations in order to build up a more perfect habitation of God through the Spirit? I do not wish to exaggerate. God knows there is no need for exaggerating. The plain, unvarnished story, without any pessimistic picking out of the black bits and forgetting ail the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a penitent, nor give grace to a striving soul. That antiquated pulpit! Those plain old pews! That queer-looking gallery! Oh, yes; the pews are very comfortable; the singing sounds most admirably; the preaching is God's unvarnished truth quickened by divine love and mercy. Oh, how it would melt one's soul if it was only in a fashionable church. And then the minister. He is such a plain man, and says such plain things; he is all the time talking ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... preface that it is "as disagreeable to see a Satyr Cloath'd in soft and effeminate Language, as to see a Woman scold and vent her self in Billingsgate Rhetorick in a gentile and advantageous Garb." But as Harte certainly realized, The Dunciad differed greatly from unvarnished abuse, and thus required different ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... hopelessly lost, as the handsome, smiling, accomplished, popular, viceless Greek, Tito Melema. Yet is he the very reverse of what is called a monster of iniquity. That which gives its deep and awful power to the picture is its simple, unstrained, unvarnished truthfulness. He knows little of himself who does not recognise as existent within himself, and as always battling for supremacy there, that principle of evil which, accepted by Tito as his life-law, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... their short journey to the landlord's, commenced, in her own way, a lecture upon agricultural economy, which, though plain and unvarnished, contained excellent and practical sense. She also pointed out to him when to speak and when to be silent; told him what rent to offer, and in what manner he should offer it; but she did all this so dexterously and sweetly, that honest Peter thought the new and corrected views which ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... the red carpeted stairs they went as far as the attic flight, and from that point tramped plain unvarnished and well worn "treads" which Dozia took ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... a gleam. "But don't you think, if the unvarnished truth may be whispered, that it's becoming the merest trifle too ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... to be able to add that I heard the burglary discussed on adjacent couches before I left I certainly listened for it, and was rather disappointed more than once when I had held my breath in vain. But this is the unvarnished record of an odious hour, and it passed without further aggravation from without; only, as I drove to Sloane Street, the news was on all the posters, and on one I read of "a clew" which spelt for me a doom I was ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... of degeneration; witness the eroticism that is to be found in our literature. Unless a book appeals to the degenerate tastes of its readers it might just as well never have been published. This is not cynicism; it is plain, unvarnished truth. Again, turn to the stage, and we find the same thing. The tragedies and comedies of Shakespeare are shelved, while immoral "society plays" and "living pictures" and "problem plays" hold the boards. Salacity, with only sufficient and that is, degeneration. That which ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... second a great temptation assailed Caroline. She stood there in the doorway, with the power of happiness or unhappiness in her hands, knowing perfectly well that she had only to tell the actual, unvarnished truth as it had actually happened for Godfrey's chance of a rich wife, and Laura's chance of a probably successful marriage to vanish in less time than you could open and shut ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... their fertile imaginations are ever ready to conjure up spectres, ghosts and hobgoblins; or otherwise, where others see a mouse, they behold an elephant; and to their distorted visions, a mole-hill is magnified into a mountain. We look in vain to such writers for a plain, unvarnished, common sense statement of facts, for sound arguments, or logical deductions. Such authors have nothing to do with facts, or things as they exist among us. Their imaginations are ever ready to furnish facts, on which to base their preconceived inferences and conclusions. They ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... set over against these fables, in as abridged form as I can, the unvarnished statements of Bannatyne and Smeton, the latter of which was published in reply to Hamilton who first gave shape to these charges, and which hitherto has been deemed a conclusive ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... impression of his history and exploits more or less at variance with the bare facts as seen by a contemporary outsider. The scientific Goethe, though truthful enough in the main, certainly fails in his reminiscences to tell a plain unvarnished tale. And Falstaff was not habitually truthful. Indeed, that Western American, who wrote affectionately on the tomb of a comrade, 'As a truth-crusher he was unrivalled,' had probably not given sufficient attention to Falstaff's claims in this matter. ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... From the historical standpoint, however, and as a picture of the old barbaric Celtic culture, and as a pure expression of elemental passion, it is of more importance to have the genuine tradition as it developed amongst the people, unvarnished by poetic art and uninfluenced by the example ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... expect my little act of self-abasement for the instruction of my sex to have this merit: the picture I will show you is not dim with age, and not cut and cramped to fit the frame of a special case. The colours are hardly dry, and both picture and tale are quite unvarnished. ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... interest common to a strenuous age, appears galvanised into some fleeting semblance of vitality by the extravaganza presented to it, for the language of hyperbole is the natural expression of Eastern thought, and penetrates into mental recesses unknown and unexplored by the relater of unvarnished facts. The quick response of the native mind to Nature's teaching, and the wealth of tradition woven round flower and tree, mountain and stream, foster the love of marvel and miracle in those whose daily wants are supplied by the prodigality of a tropical climate, for the innate poetry ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... polled; tonsured; unadorned, literal, undisguised, unvarnished, unqualified; uncorroborated, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... been wont to think the only place unconscious beauties abounded was in high-flown, unreal novels; but here was one in real life, and that the exceedingly unvarnished existence of Noonoon. Not that I would have thought any the less of her had she been conscious of her physical loveliness, for beauty is such a glorious, powerful, intoxicating gift that had I been blessed with it I'm sure I would have admired myself all day, and the wonder to me ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... his wife was accustomed to say when she spoke of her husband's labours; or went into trade, and kept a shop, as was more generally asserted by those of the Mackenzie circle who were wont to speak their minds freely. The actual and unvarnished truth in the matter shall now be made known. He, with his partner, made and sold oilcloth, and was possessed of premises in the New Road, over which the names of "Rubb and Mackenzie" were posted in large ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... delightful pages have not been marred by discussion of the causes or conduct of the great struggle between the States. There is no theorizing or special pleading to distract our attention from the unvarnished ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... had I been tempted to romance in any form; never but once had sentiment interfered with a passionless transfer of scientific notes to the sanctuary of the unvarnished note-book or the cloister of the juiceless monograph. Nor have I the slightest approach to that superficial and doubtful quality known as literary skill. Once, however, as I sat alone in the middle of the floor, classifying my isopods, I was not only astonished but totally unprepared to find myself ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... The two unvarnished braggarts followed the valorous Dona Gorja with their eyes; and then with a despicable gesture drew their knives across their sleeve as though wiping off the blood there might have been, sheathed them at one and the ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... here it seems to lie in the contrast with Wilson's actual habits, which were very simple. For instance, he gives us a gorgeous description of the apparatus of North's solitary confinement when writing for Blackwood; his daughter's unvarnished account of the same process agrees exactly as to time, rate of production, and so forth, but substitutes water for the old hock and "Scots pint" (magnum) of claret, a dirty little terra-cotta inkstand for the silver utensil ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... little more than infants, in other words, he had committed his tender doves to the charge of almost the worst man and woman whom he could have selected. There were just two vices of which His English Majesty was not guilty, and those were cowardice and hypocrisy. He was a plain, unvarnished villain, and he never hesitated for a moment to let people see it. Queen Isabelle had been termed "the Helen of the Middle Ages," alike from her great beauty, and from the fact that her husband abducted her when betrothed elsewhere. She can hardly be blamed for this, since she was a ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... impossible relative in the person of an aunt came to spend the month of August with Sara—her father's sister. She was a true, unvarnished Gooch. Booth shuddered at times when she emerged flat-foot from the background and revelled in the Goochiness that would not stay put, no matter how hard she tried to subdue it. She was a good soul,—much ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon |
