"Disconcerting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... respectfully to Bernard Shaw, Wall Street, Downing Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and even to the New York Sun, that vast machine for laughing at a world down in its snug quarters in Park Row—that the saint with ruddy cheeks is a totally new and disconcerting fact in our modern life. He is the next fact the honest pessimist ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... among a mass of boulders on a cliff. Once one has discovered it, one can see nothing else. In vain Honora dropped her eyes; some strange fascination compelled her to raise them again until they met those of the other woman: Did their glances meet? She could never quite be sure, so disconcerting were the lights in that regard—lights, seemingly, of laughter ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was his disconcerting reply. "You can see their green-gray uniforms. I counted sixteen ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... fighting it out side by side; and, if we may trust Strzygowski, from the end of that century dates the beautiful church of Kodja-Kalessi in Isauria. The century in which the East finally dominated the West (350-450) is a period of incubation. It is a time of disconcerting activity that precedes the unmistakable launch of art upon the Christian slope. I would confidently assert that every artistic birth is preceded by a period of uneasy gestation in which the unborn child acquires the organs and energy that are to carry it forward ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... drew back. The beach was impassable; here was no wide and easy road to the east, such as he had thought to find; to gain the sandbar he had now to thread a tortuous and uncertain way through the bewildering dunes. And the prospect was not a little disconcerting; afraid neither of wind nor of cold, he was wretchedly afraid of going astray in that uncertain, shifting labyrinth. To lose ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... the hearty and easy manner which he always assumes with those he has been told are distinguished Americans and with that quizzical expression in his sharp eyes which, though attractive, is described as most disconcerting, replied. ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... has had nothing like this since Mahomet and, accepted literally, it claims for the Kaiser the divine attributes attributed to the Caesars. Even the Caesars, in baser and more primitive times, found posing as a divine superman somewhat difficult and disconcerting. Shakespeare subtly suggests this when he makes his Caesar talk like a god and act with the ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... smile of patience and resignation, which soon was like a pained expression of weariness, crept across his handsome face. Yes, he was really handsome, though a little disconcerting, with his large eyes, which women must have adored, his drooping moustache, his tender, distant air. He seemed to be one of those gentle people who think too much and do evil. You would have said that he was above everything and capable of everything. Listening ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... would be given every opportunity to establish his innocence, but he could not rid himself of the ugly disconcerting belief that a man hunt was on, and that he, the hunted creature, was to be driven from cover to cover while the state drew its threads of testimony about him strand by strand, until they finally reached his very ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... forgotten, which was disconcerting. To cover up my own doubts I asked him with affected confidence and cheerfulness whether he was not afraid to risk this journey "down below," that is, ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... was thin and high-pitched, a small voice for such a big man, as we thought, and he had an abrupt manner of withdrawing attention that was to us rather disconcerting until we got used to it. His pockets were bulging with newspapers and memoranda, scrawled in the curiously obscure handwriting which I subsequently found much difficulty in learning to read, though ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... their usual expression of abstraction. It was very rarely that the Wonder allowed his intelligence to be exhibited by that medium. When he did, the effect was strangely disconcerting, blinding. One received an impression of extraordinary concentration: it was as though for an instant the boy was able to give one a glimpse of the wonderful force of his intellect. When he looked one in the face with intention, and suddenly allowed one to realise, as it were, all the dominating ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... further comment. He had a disconcerting habit of dropping into sudden silences. It took possession of him now, and they finished their refreshment ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... said Clovis; "it's all right while you're doing it, but the after-effects are sometimes so disconcerting—the mute reproachful looks of the people you've aided and abetted in matrimonial experiments. It's as bad as selling a man a horse with half a dozen latent vices and watching him discover them piecemeal in the course ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... are quite sure of that, Mr. Armstrong,' said the lady, 'we can pursue our talk in peace; but there is nothing so disconcerting as to dread an eavesdropper when one ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... fell with a soft and disconcerting plop upon the top of his head, cannonaded thence against the window-sill, and shot out into the night again. He came back with a start to his reality: that he had promised the children an Extra Day, that for twenty-four hours, in spite of the paradox, Time should cease its driving hurry—and ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... was the one surprised, not we. She probably thought she had spiked our guns in that part of the world forever, and the sight of us coming laughing from the very office where we should have been made glum must have been disconcerting. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Sherman made an attack for the purpose of carrying the north end of Missionary Ridge. His success was not complete, although at the time it was reported throughout the army to be so. It had the effect of disconcerting Bragg, however, and caused him to strengthen his right by withdrawing troops from his left, which circumstance led Hooker to advance on the northerly face of Lookout Mountain. At first, with good glasses, we could plainly see Hooker's troops driving the Confederates up the face of the mountain. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... came an interruption, unexpected and disconcerting to the well-laid plans of Hrihor. The voice of Pharaoh Shabako ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... both compounded and torn asunder by all the principal conflicting forces of a period of historic transition. He was a victim of the manifold division of impulses, the ill-related patchwork of impressions, and the disconcerting refractions of vision, which characterized his contemporaries. It is in the fact that he united in himself the principal factors which made up the complexion of his age, to an extraordinary degree, that he has his strongest claim upon ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... particular time. I had not pictured such circumstances as these, I had never thought of him in connection with Lord Redcar and our black industrial world. He was in that distant other world of Checkshill, the world of parks and gardens, the world of sunlit emotions and Nettie. His appearance here was disconcerting. I was taken by surprise. I was too tired and hungry to think clearly, and the hard implication of our antagonism prevailed with me. In the tumult of my passed emotions I had thought constantly of conflicts, confrontations, deeds of violence, and now the memory of these things took possession ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... was thanked for my kindness in chaperoning her daughter on her matrimonial adventure; an adventure which would have subjected her to much criticism had I not been along. Also Mr. Thorne. The unexpectedness of these thanks was disconcerting and, with an expression that was hardly appreciative of the pose she was assuming, I finally rescued myself from her arms and, drawing off, looked at her for explanation. Mrs. Swink is not a person I care to ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... she turned her face towards the new comer, Sir Philip suddenly felt himself abashed. It was not that she was so beautiful—in those first few moments he scarcely thought her beautiful at all—but that she produced on him an impression of serious, virginal grace and innocence which was almost disconcerting. Her pure complexion, her grave, serene eyes, her graceful way of moving as she advanced a little to receive him stirred him to more than admiration—to something not unlike awe. She looked young; but it was youth in perfection: there was some marvelous ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... round her ears a little white frill. The solemnity and youth and quaintness of her are very attractive, and I could easily love her if it weren't for this madness about Deutschland. She is as mad as any of them, and in her it is much more disconcerting. We will be discoursing together gravely—she is always grave, and never knows how funny we both are being really—about amusing things like husbands and when and if I'm ever going to get one, and she, full of ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... next Congressional term with no delusions. He polished his armour until it was fit to blind his adversaries, tested the temper of every weapon, sharpened every blade, arranged them for immediate availment. In spite of the absorbing and disconcerting interests of the summer, he had followed in thought the mental processes of his enemies, kept a sharp eye out for their new methods of aggression. Themselves had had no more intimate knowledge of their ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... shell's wail swung over its long parabola, there came with the detonation, across the roofs, the rumble of falling masonry. Once I passed a house quietly burning, and on the pavement were lopped-off trees. The impartiality with which those far-off gunners distributed their attentions was disconcerting. Peering down one of the up-and-down streets before crossing it, as if a shell were an automobile which you might see and dodge, you would shoot across and, turning into a cosey little side street, think ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... first time in a descending lift. Fifteen quiet years had elapsed since the death of her husband's partner William Twemlow, and a quarter of a century since William's wild son, Arthur, had run away to America. Yet Uncle Meshach's letter seemed to invest these far-off things with a mysterious and disconcerting actuality. The misgivings about her husband which long practice and continual effort had taught her how to keep at bay, suddenly overleapt their artificial barriers ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... were holes in his memory (Always? Don't be silly, pal!), but it was disconcerting to find an area that was as riddled as a used machine-gun target. The whole fabric had been punched ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... it is so easy for one to get a supply of ready-made knowledge that it is hard to keep from applying it indiscriminately. We make incursions into our neighbor's affairs and straighten them out with a ruthless righteousness which is very disconcerting to him, especially when he has never had the pleasure of our acquaintance till we came to set him right. There is a certain modesty of conscience which would perhaps be more becoming. It comes only with ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... very disconcerting to the I.N.C. They knew that on the hills outside Rieka were large numbers of Italian troops, which had come overland from Istria. But how to get them in? Rieka had not been ascribed to the Italians by the London Treaty.[16] ... On November 15 a detachment of Serbian troops arrived, under ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... Malcolm Sage suddenly looked up, flashing that keen, steely look through his gold-rimmed spectacles that many men had found so disconcerting. "Ordinary visit?" he queried. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... drew in her breath and gave a little gasp of exasperation. This unfailing faith in her goodness of heart, and unhesitating belief in her desire to "help everybody" was most disconcerting, and sometimes most annoying. At the same time it was a most difficult thing to disclaim—under the circumstances, especially with Pollyanna's happy, confident eyes full ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... Brignolles and le Muy, striking the Mediterranean at Frejus. En route he was inveigled into a controversy of unwonted bitterness with an innkeeper at le Muy. The scene is conjured up for us with an almost disconcerting actuality; no single detail of the author's discomfiture is omitted. The episode is post-Flaubertian in its impersonal detachment, or, as Coleridge first said, "aloofness." On crossing the Var, the sunny climate, the romantic outline of the Esterelles, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... to you, eh?" Cueto nodded his approval, although his smile was disconcerting. "An admirable sentiment! It does you honor! But speaking on this subject, I am reminded of that dispute with Jose Oroz over the boundary to La Joya. He is a rascal, that Oroz; he would steal the sap out of your standing cane if ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Columbus had given him a commission as Vice-Governor of Darien, so that as Darien was clearly within Diego Columbus's jurisdiction, Balboa was strictly under authority. The news in Zamudio's letter was very disconcerting. Like every Spaniard, Vasco Nunez knew that he could expect little mercy and scant justice from a trial conducted under such auspices as Pedrarias's. He determined, therefore, to secure himself in his position by some splendid achievement, which would so work upon the {36} feelings of the ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... eyes were smiling as if at some agreeable thought or reminiscence. He had apparently assumed that Anne had recovered, not only from her headache, but from its cause. To Anne, tingling with the tension of a nervous crisis, this attitude was disconcerting. It seemed to reduce her and her crisis to insignificance. She had expected him to be tingling too. He had more ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... whereabouts of the Glow-worm. Mrs. Watterson merely smiled ambiguously. Sahwah looked at her with instant suspicion. "Who are you?" she demanded. "And where are you taking me?" Mrs. Watterson smiled again, somewhat uncertainly this time. There is something about Sahwah's direct gaze that is a trifle disconcerting. ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... would be harmful. Before I could answer her we were startled to hear quite close to us a faint cry. I got up and looked around, and so did Devaka, for she is brave, my wife. But we could not find anything to account for the disconcerting sound. ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... an unpleasant shock when he turned out of his bunk at daybreak one morning. The barometer stood at 29.41'. For two or three days the vessel had encountered dirty weather, but there had been signs of improvement when he turned in, and it was decidedly disconcerting to find that the glass had fallen. His vessel was a small one, and he was a little uneasy at the prospect of being caught by a cyclone while in the imperfectly-charted waters ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... courtship tales. You never saw a volume of its size, more packed with love, which is shown leaping walls, laughing at locksmiths and generally making the world go round in its proverbial fashion. The pace of the revolutions may be found a little disconcerting. You will perhaps be inclined to amend the title and call the collection "Love on Short Leave," to mark the regularity with which the respective heroes and heroines fall into each others' arms at the end of every dozen pages or so. As a matter of ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... Brett felt that Winter was not so greatly to blame. The sudden appearance on the scene of a portly and respectable stranger was disconcerting, but could hardly serve as an excuse for leaving Jiro's trail at ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... they were, moreover, parodies, rather than imitations, of his writings, for I invented new species, with sapphire spots and crimson tentacles and amber bands, which were close enough to his real species to be disconcerting. He came from conscientiously shepherding the flocks of ocean, and I do not wonder that my ring-straked, speckled and spotted varieties put him out of countenance. If I had not been so innocent and solemn, he might have fancied I ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... Cary's eyes, which in the beginning of his speech had been bent on a letter held in her hand lest the laughter in them be seen, were raised, and she was now looking at him with a steadiness which was disconcerting, and the ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... disconcerting fact that the editor has been influenced by and has followed the example of Schuch by the adoption of his system of numbering the recipes. We do not approve of his inclusion of the excerpts of Vinidarius in ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... was so like this capable child of hers to be arranging the future, at nineteen, ready to be a mother to herself in case her natural mother failed her. But as she got quickly into the dress laid out for her, her hands shook a little. It is disconcerting to discover that one is no longer the parent of children, ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... half-darkness. As they passed Torrence Hall, however, an open window on the first floor sent a flood of light across the walk, and Tom, crossing the narrow strip of turf that divided building from pavement, raised himself on his tiptoes and looked into the room. The next instant a face appeared with disconcerting suddenness within a foot of his own and the occupant of the room, who had been reclining on the ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... hot water from the huge tanks with unlimited supply, provided at each station; the buying of the day's provision from the peasants who crowded to the platforms with eggs, butter, and milk; the reading aloud of some Russian book in the Slavonic surroundings, which contributed so much to make its disconcerting unexpectednesses seem the natural ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... through the next day to set his snares, the Harn was prepared to test his snakeproof pants. They held, which was disconcerting to the Harn, but it was a hard creature to convince, once thoroughly aroused. Ed was not too sure of how well the pants would stand up to persistent assault himself. After the third ambush, he took to spraying suspicious looking spots with ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... of his ignorance was that he never tried to conceal it. He looked at it with surprise and discussed it with disconcerting frankness. He was no more abashed in learning new and better ways of conducting himself than he would have been in learning a new language. He laughed good-humoredly at his mistakes and seldom committed the same one a second time. His limitations were ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Midmore with immense feeling; but once again he held his tongue. They were a queer community; yet when they had stamped and jingled out to their horses again, the house felt hugely big and disconcerting. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... he said, looking down at me with his clear, disconcerting gaze, "do you know that I have just grasped the situation? There was such a noise that I did not hear your name, and I am only realizing now that you are my hostess! I don't know why I got the impression that this ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... precisely the same attitude that he had assumed when first placed in the bunk; indeed, the two men agreed that, so far as they could see, he had not moved a limb from that moment. While they stood there together, discussing the man's disconcerting condition, faint rustling, as of garments, outside the cabin door, accompanied by light footsteps upon the companion ladder, apprised them of the fact that Miss Trevor was moving, and had gone on deck; whereupon ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... agitation disconcerting, and she withdrew a little from the yellow-stained fingers which had ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was all the more disconcerting for Charles, because of the speedy abatement of the enthusiasm that had hailed his first appearance. What had happened to him was what generally happens to a conqueror who has more good luck than talent; instead of making himself ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Washington rounded out the play thoroughly, and the company returned to New York on the morning of January 25, 1893. Now came a characteristic example of Frohman's resource. At noon it was discovered that the new electric-light installation was not yet complete. Added to this was the disconcerting fact that the paint on the chairs was scarcely dry. Sanger, Harris, and Rich urged Frohman to postpone the opening. "It will be useless to open under ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... wholesale prices, and grinned in a most tiresome way whenever he caught sight of Anastasia. The Rector patronised her insufferably; and though old Mr Noot was kind, he treated her like a small child, and sometimes patted her cheek, which she felt to be disconcerting at eighteen. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... the gardens below. It was an easy climb, she thought, with a boyish grin—far easier than many she had achieved successfully when the need of a solitary ramble became imperative. But the East was inconvenient for solitary ramble; native servants had a disconcerting habit of lying down to sleep wherever drowsiness overcame them, and it was not very long since she had slid down from her balcony and landed plumb on a slumbering bundle of humanity who had roused half the hotel with his howls. She leant far over the rail, trying to see into ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... to a similar question on the twenty-third ultimo," answered the Private Secretary loftily. for a rich reward he could not have said where he had been or what he had done on the twenty-third ultimo, but to the Poet the reply was new and disconcerting. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... I go out to join my guests at table, and with assumed seriousness to discuss the current magazines and the silly doings of the world's day, whipping every trick and ruse of controversy through all the paces of paradox and persiflage. And, when the whim changes, it is most easy and delightfully disconcerting to play with the respectable and cowardly bourgeois fetishes and to laugh and epigram at the flitting god-ghosts and the ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... small, and his nose delicately shaped. He had big teeth, but they were white and even. His mouth was large, with heavy moist lips. He had the neck of a bullock. His dark, curling hair had retreated from the forehead and temples in such a way as to give his clean-shaven face a disconcerting nudity. The baldness of his crown was vaguely like a tonsure. He had the look of a very wicked, sensual priest. Margaret, stealing a glance at him as he ate, on a sudden violently shuddered; he affected her with an uncontrollable dislike. He lifted his eyes slowly, ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... and he liked the arched bridge of her nose and the generous curve of her mouth. Yet had he stopped to analyze her, he would probably have said that the woman spirit in her was expressed through character rather than through emotion—a manifestation disconcerting to one whose vision of her sex was chiefly as the irresponsible creature of drama. The old shackles—even the shackles of that drama whose mistress and slave woman had been—were out of place on the spirit which was incarnated in Susan. Amid the cramping customs of the period, she moved ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... him a number of questions she wanted answered, but she refrained. He suddenly turned and looked at her full in the face. He had been gazing fixedly at the sea, and these movements of quickness were disconcerting, especially as Tamara found herself caught in the act of ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... riding full-tilt at a thousand men, may look like a trifle, but they are disconcerting. What they hit, they kill; and if they succeed in striking home, they play old Harry with formations. And Risaldar Mahommed Khan did strike home. He changed direction suddenly and, instead of using up his horses' strength in outflanking ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... snapped to second, a game may be won or lost just on this play alone. If the opposing team finds that it can make second in safety by going down with the pitcher's arm, it will surely take full advantage of the knowledge. To have a man on second is disconcerting to the pitcher as well as a difficult man to handle. It therefore follows that a catcher who cannot throw accurately to the bases becomes a serious disadvantage to his team. In the old days a catcher had ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... as composed as usual when she joined Mrs. Kinnaird, her thoughts were busy for some time afterward. The man, she admitted, had done no more than was warranted, but there was no disguising the fact that his supporting grasp had had a disconcerting effect on her. Then she dismissed the thoughts of that, and remembered with compassion how lean and worn he looked. There was also something that stirred her sympathy in the idea of his saddling himself with the care of a helpless comrade who had ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... his audience on one occasion a veteran of the platform, and was on that account anxious to do his best. This situation, as all new speakers know, is very disconcerting, and after the young aspirant had rushed through his opening argument pretty well, as he thought, lo, his memory slipped a cog and he waited in silence, what seemed to him an age, until it caught again. Then he continued to the ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... like a metal tube a couple of inches in diameter, a foot or so in length, passably heavy. He fumbled with it impatiently. "However the dickens," he wondered audibly, "does the infernal machine work?" As it happened, the thing worked with disconcerting abruptness as his untrained fingers fell hapchance on the spring. A sudden glare again smote him in the face, and at the same instant, from a point not a yard away, apparently, an inarticulate cry rang ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... tried to catch sight of the Countess or find means of communicating with her without arousing suspicion. He had other motives too for shrinking from such expressions of friendliness as he had reason to anticipate from his host. But he did not expect anything so disconcerting as the proposal which the Count actually laid before him when ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... he replied, "I'm still a little bit dizzy. I've been on my beam ends so long that to suddenly fall on my feet, like this, is disconcerting. I've sort of lost ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... come strolling over, always alone, a little before a meal-time, take a chair, and talk and eat with us like an old family friend. Gilbertine etiquette appears defective on the point of leave-taking. It may be remembered we had trouble in the matter with Karaiti; and there was something childish and disconcerting in Tembinok's abrupt 'I want go home now,' accompanied by a kind of ducking rise, and followed by an unadorned retreat. It was the only blot upon his manners, which were otherwise plain, decent, sensible, and dignified. He never stayed long nor drank much, and copied our ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... face. Never had he seen such disconcerting pallor. It was not the waxen hue of the convalescent, not the lifeless grey of the perfume-or snuff-maker, it was a prison pallor of a bloodless lividness unknown today, the ghastly complexion of a wretch of the Middle Ages shut up till death in a ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... irreverent as "Barking" Thompson, a nickname bestowed because of his peculiar habit of gradually puffing up, like a frog, under religious excitement, and then bursting forth in an inarticulate shout, disconcerting to the uninitiated. During Baxter's speech and the singing of the hymn his expansive red cheeks had been distended like balloons, and his breath came shorter and shorter. Mr. Perley had arisen and was holding up ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... if he had nothing to conceal. Already the car was at the door with the luggage aboard and its engine humming invitingly. As the boy listened to the sound he could not but rejoice that the purring monster could tell no tales. How disconcerting it would be should the scarlet devil suddenly shout aloud: "Well, Steve, don't you hope we do not get stalled to-day the way we did going to Torrington?" Mercifully there was no danger of that. The engine might puff ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... Watch were again on the hill itself, blazing away at the rocks as vigorously as ever. Then at last between us and them up gallops a section of guns, and the little puff balls begin to burst along the rock edge in a way which we could see was very disconcerting for the Boers, who were rapidly finding the place too hot for them. A little after, some one sings out, "Here comes the attack!" and true enough we can make out the little khaki dots in long loose strings moving forward round ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... first sight disconcerting to find Pepys no less impatient of The Merry Wives of Windsor. He expresses a mild interest in the humours of "the country gentleman and the French doctor." But he condemns the play as a whole. It is ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... And the disconcerting strangeness of it was in this: that though she was no longer the woman child, yet with one flash of her gold-curtained eyes had she reduced me to my ancient schoolboy clumsiness. She was a woman, but, I was again an awkward, stammering ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... silence whose length would have been disconcerting to any other than an old-timer owning a knowledge of the Indian ways, Cochise called a squaw, who picked up the firearms at his bidding and took them away with her. Then these two men of parts settled down to ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... spoken, the hearer was informed that good music, real music, music worthy the name, was a thing that no sane person would expect to hear at Mrs Willoughby's "At Homes." She was really the most terrifying and disconcerting of old ladies, and Claire heartily repented the impulse which had brought her to her side. A pretty thing it would be if she were left alone on this sofa for ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... were disheartened; they had started with the idea that this was to be a surprise attack, and it was disconcerting to find the garrison armed at all points. Gradually they edged to the door, and a ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... one of his grim disconcerting smiles, and a cynical light played over his face; and the black monkey behind him grinned and hugged himself like his familiar. The disappointed gentleman thought he ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... it is obvious that the compilers of Genesis had access to the Babylonian stories. In a word, the Hebrew Genesis shows unequivocal evidence of Babylonian origin, but, in the words of Professor Sayce, it is but "a paraphrase and not a translation." However disconcerting such a revelation as this would have been to the theologians of an elder day, the Bible scholars of our own generation are able to regard ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... coming through, and Blowout was to be a city with that mysterious and rather disconcerting abruptness with which tiny Western villages do become cities ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... for the kettle, ma'am?" said Cudmore, with a voice that startled the whole room, disconcerting three whist parties, and so absorbing the attention of the people at loo, that the pool disappeared without any one being able to account for ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... a little disconcerting. He looked as if he had been fattened on popular fiction; and his fat was full of optimistic creases. The Professor seemed to see him bowing into his office a long train of spotless heroines laden with the maiden tribute of the hundredth ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... corner, Henry heaved a sigh at the perversity of youth in the flaunting neglect of sleep and death, which ever are vital to middle years. We both looked out to the white courtyard, heard the snarl of another plane, obviously French, but still disconcerting, saw the slow even pace of the lovers, unaffected by the approaching growl of the plane, and it came to me to quote one wiser even than Solomon: "O death, where is ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... petticoat and the pink cotton jacket—which, instead of being neatly buttoned over at the neck, fell loosely open, disclosing the girl's throat, firm and round as a pillar—and so on till they reached her face; then suddenly drooped before the disconcerting gaze of another pair of eyes, ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... wants to have put into writing. Dictating is not an easily acquired accomplishment in business—as many a man will testify. Modern office practice has intensified the difficulty. It may be rather disconcerting to deliver well-constructed, meaningful sentences to an unresponsive stenographer, but at any rate the receiver is alive. But to talk into the metallic receiver of a mechanical dictaphone has an almost ridiculous ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... turned more fully towards them, and for a moment Geoffrey stood still in blank astonishment. The average man would find it disconcerting to be brought, without warning, suddenly face to face in a strange country with a woman who had discarded him, and Thurston showed ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... on both sides was magnificent. Yet Kernstown itself was a very small affair. Little more than ten thousand men had been in action: seven thousand Federals under Shields against half as many Confederates under Stonewall Jackson. The point is that Jackson's attack, though unsuccessful, was very disconcerting elsewhere. From Kernstown the area of disturbance spread like wildfire till the tactical victory of seven thousand Federals had spoilt the strategy of thirty times as many. Shields reported: "I set to work during the night to bring together all the troops within my reach. ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... dawn, when (as extremes meet) the rake, reeling home from his midnight cups, and the hard-handed artisan leaving his bed to resume the premature labours of the day, jostle, not unfrequently to the manifest disconcerting of the former, for the honours of the pavement. It is the time when, in summer, between the expired and the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, the kennels of our fair metropolis give forth their least satisfactory odours. The rake, who ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Crudely disconcerting, these scientific discoveries. Or is it not rather hard to be dragged to earth in this callous fashion, while soaring heavenward on the wings of our edifying reflections? For the rest—the old, old story; a simple, physical explanation ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the revelation of the complex vision abruptly stops. It stops with that peculiar and disconcerting suddenness with which it seems to be its nature to stop, whenever it reaches the limit of its scope in any direction. It stops here, with regard to the soul, just as it stops when confronted with the conception of limitlessness, both with regard to space and with regard to time. But the soul at ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... later, they arrived at the outskirts of the forest, there was no sign of them, and no response to Inaguy's repeated calls in several different Indian dialects. It was not only a puzzling but also a disconcerting circumstance; for the failure of the strangers to reply seemed to indicate a hostile disposition; and for the party to plunge into the depths of the forest with a band of hostile Indians dogging their footsteps, or ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... just going off to sleep when I heard noises above. Graham was up in a minute, thrust on his clothes, and hastened, lantern in hand, up the ladder into the loft where he found a poor rat caught in a trap. We will leave the rest. This sort of thing is just a little disconcerting as you are getting off to sleep. Another night he was catching the wood-lice creeping over our bedroom walls, and must have caught fifty. I am rather thankful when he is too tired for these raids. The houses ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... beneath it was enough. That particular bill had grown painfully familiar during the last few months. It was from Lahore, and its total was no less than three hundred rupees. Her husband's waiting silence was more disconcerting than speech. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... informed him. "Violet objects very much to these abrupt separations. This week, too, I was shooting at Saxthorpe, and I had also several other engagements of a pleasant nature. Besides, I have reached that age when I find it disconcerting to be called out of bed in the middle of the night to answer a long distance telephone call, and told to embark on a White Star liner leaving Liverpool early the next morning. It may be your idea of a pleasure trip. ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... effect the monosyllable had upon him. The mask which he carried always with him fell suddenly away. He turned upon her with an abruptness almost disconcerting. His eyes were lit with fire, and there was a ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... at sight of him. It was his friend the Alien. Philip was quite surprised to see his madman of last night; and what was more disconcerting still, in the self-same grey tweed home-spun suit he had worn last evening. Now, nothing can be more gentlemanly, don't you know, than a grey home-spun, IN its proper place; but its proper place Philip Christy felt ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... added, "remember Tom was always harum scarum, and you must make allowances for this daughter of his. Her very name is—ah—disconcerting. I haven't seen him for years, and as for her...." A shrug epitomised his apprehension. He smiled with an effort at wit. "Just the same, they're as much your family as mine. If he is my brother, he is your uncle. And if she's my niece, ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... returned to the convent, but not in order. At the door Teresa felt her arm taken possession of by a strong hand with which she had had more than one disconcerting encounter. ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... ears were growing longer every day, heard them once and began to bellow suddenly in that disconcerting way of his. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... before Flockart by his shabby friend was a somewhat disconcerting one. On the one hand, Lady Heyburn had urged him to leave the Riviera, without giving him any reason, and on the other, he had the ever-present danger of Gabrielle, in a sudden fit of sentimental self-sacrifice, "giving him away." If she did, what then? The mere suggestion caused ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Schoenberg. It is, in fact, a quite elemental succession of intervals of the second, all produced by adding the ninth to the common chord—thus: C, G, C, D, E—with certain enharmonic changes. Its simplicity gives it, at a first hearing, a placid, pastoral aspect, somewhat disconcerting to the literalist, but the discerning will not fail to note the mutterings beneath the surface. It is first sounded by two violas and the viol da gamba, and then drops without change to the bass, where it is repeated ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... has his first serious confabulation with the author, then at once the play begins to assume new shapes—contours undreamt of by the author till that startling moment. And even if the author has the temerity to conduct his own rehearsals, similar disconcerting phenomena will occur; for the author as a producer is a different fellow from the author as author. The producer is up against realities. He, first, renders the play concrete, gradually condenses its ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... paining him—it was as though sharp, malicious fingers were compressing the spine at the base of his brain. That, and the profound weariness which swept over him, were disconcerting; he was so seldom ill, so rarely tired, that those unwelcome symptoms bore an aggravated menace; it was the slight, premonitory rusting, the corrosion of time, upon the ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... with disconcerting suddenness, and Mr. Redman uttered a loud grunt as he landed on the ground, flat on his back. With a spring he lifted himself up, and the next instant he had thrown the slight figure of the Pony Rider Boy so heavily that everything about ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... disconcerting, this request to point out those regions where adventure could be found, very much as a visitor from the provinces might ask a New York hotel clerk to tell him where he could see the Bohemian life of which he had read in the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... knowing just what to say, when voices were heard outside and heavy steps; then the door opened and in came three men, the first carrying under his arm a barrel-shaped bundle. The presence of the Preacher was obviously disconcerting to the new-comers. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Mr. Knight brought the lad to the Charing Cross Hotel. There, having taken his ticket and made all other necessary arrangements, he left him, returning himself to Essex by the evening train. Their farewell was somewhat disconcerting, at any rate to ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... this old Karoo farm that weighed on her courage and paralyzed her senses. So, instead of stirring, she lay very still in the darkness, the loud, uncertain beats of her heart adding themselves to all the other disconcerting sounds. ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... ever, and am I to connive at such outrages under my own windows because the chief offender is something of a handsome young gentleman who has the tact to apologise for a disturbance in my domestic affairs that must, as he puts it, be disconcerting to a man at my age? A man of my age—there's France!—toujours la politesse, if you please! At ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... He was ordinarily a young man of sufficient self-possession, but this young woman's directness was disconcerting. She surveyed ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... Willard's breathed easier and took hope. Over on third base Carpenter was poised, ready to speed home as fast as his long legs would carry him. Willings, who had so far pitched a remarkable game, suddenly went "into the air." Perhaps it was the coaching back of third, perhaps it was Carpenter's disconcerting rushes and hand-clapping. At all events, the Durham first baseman, who was a cool-headed youth, waited politely and patiently and so won the privilege of trotting to first on four balls. Fearing, Willard's catcher, walked down to Willings, and the two held a whispered ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... this one book, a sort of inevitable and scarcely necessary sequel to it. They range themselves along the line of a somewhat erratic development, from Baudelaire, through Goncourt, by way of Zola, to the surprising originality of so disconcerting an exception to any and every order ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... chained to his feet, a work of Piero Jacopo Tacca, made in 1617-1625, is something; though I confess those chained robbers at the feet of a petty tyrant who was as great a robber, he and his forebears, as any among them, are in this age of sentimental liberalism, from which who can escape, a little disconcerting. Ferdinand has his best monument in the city itself, which he founded to take the place of Porto Pisano, that in the course of centuries had silted up. In order to populate the new port, he proclaimed ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... possession of the room which, at that time, did duty as a church. Since those days a permanent church has been built. Goats and cattle coming home, and taking short cuts to their quarters, were a little disconcerting to the preacher, inexperienced in interruptions of the kind, but the regular congregation took it as a ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin |
