"Unbusinesslike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But, in his unbusinesslike way, Sir Mark did nothing. Home was calm and pleasant again, and he had his little dinners, and his friends; and to him the existence of James Barron, alias Dale, at The Foreland became less and less clear. He was buried, as it were, in a living tomb, and there was no need to think ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... had been superintending the storing of goods, arrived on the late afternoon train. He was a wiry little old man of sixty, abrupt, nervous, irritable and given to sharpness of speech which, he was profoundly convinced, hid from outside perception a heart given to unbusinesslike tenderness. He busied himself noisily about the shelves for a few minutes, then suddenly stuck his head through the door of the little office ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... State-papers either from rough drafts in his own possession, or from copies preserved in the public archives, and that, from whichsoever source he drew, the names in that source had not been preserved: a striking comment on the rhetorical unbusinesslike character of the Royal and Imperial Chanceries of that day, in which words were deemed of more importance than things, and the flowers of speech which were showered upon the performer of some piece of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... of the methods designated would be like resolving to invest in city lots and then buying properties as you encountered them, with no regard for expenditure, for value in general, or for special serviceability to you. Surely such procedure would be unbusinesslike. If you pay out good money, you meditate well whether that which you receive for it shall compensate you. Likewise if you devote time and effort to gaining ownership of words, you should exercise foresight in determining whether they ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... excitement of writing down snatches of his secret story as it came to him, and the passion of tearing up the thing that he wrote, and the delight of finding that he could not tear it out of his heart. He was a silent person, and a rather neglected person, and unbusinesslike, and unsuccessful, and uncultured, and unsociable, and unbeautiful. So there was nothing worse than emptiness where his secret story used to be. He had not found it worth while to fill the space. He had not found it worth while ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... business it is well to possess one's soul in patience. A more unbusinesslike set of people is hard to be found, yet in driving a bargain they are remarkably shrewd, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... when rightly managed can be made a successful business or it can be turned into a liability through careless, unbusinesslike methods and insufficient or unwise planning. Properly handled it will pay well for the investment of time and money, and offer opportunity for the disposal of surplus home-canned, home-grown, homemade and home-prepared products of ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... shape, he found it took a much more practical form. He was in debt seven pounds to Mr Frampton. It never occurred to him to wonder whether Mr Halgrove had been telling him the truth or not, nor to his unbusinesslike mind did it occur that his guardian, as the trustee responsible for what money he once had, was liable for the debt, however much he ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... looked at her placid back, which, indeed, she gave him unceremoniously enough, with a hopeless contempt. Womanhood had earned, it appeared, his profoundest scorn as unbusinesslike and incompetent. Nunhood simply ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... world who is eagerly expecting a letter from me, who is watching for the postman as he comes on his rounds, who is constantly disappointed, who lapses finally into a sullen acquiescence, who considers me unbusinesslike—and all because you saw a letter which didn't please you, and so you tidied it away. After all, it's my writing-table, and in future I won't have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... on: "Mind you, this is a business offer that I am making you, and even though I might give you double or treble what your land would fetch in the open market at the present time, I should still look to get a fifty-per-cent return on my invested capital, although I suppose it is very unbusinesslike of me ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... that amount—nobody contends. Lockhart's account, based on presumably accurate information, not merely from his father-in-law's papers, but from Cadell, Constable's partner, is that the losses were due partly to the absolutely unbusinesslike conduct of the concern, and the neglect for many years to come to a clear understanding what its profits were and what they were not; partly to the ruinous system of eternally interchanged and renewed bills, so that, for instance, sums which Constable nominally ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... Sarah read aloud, pausing to bestow a softened glance upon him. "'I can not wait for your return to say how proud I am of you. Your noble and generous action in regard to the aged widow Crane's property has just come to my ears, through a laughing complaint of your father about your unbusinesslike methods in dealing with those who have been unfortunate. In spite of his whimsically expressed disapproval, he feels that you are an honor to him. Your sister Nellie cried in her pride and love of you when ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... the office. Jim dined down town, and not until after dinner did he think of Harvey and his leave of absence. He would need his secretary to-morrow, and it would not do to have him out of reach. But the moments of reminiscence that afternoon came to Harvey's rescue, and Jim in the most unbusinesslike way decided to get on without his secretary. "He can't go through that ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... smile—only to find the door already closed. The rebuff was like a cold shower; it made her catch her breath. Had she made a bad impression on the man? Did he consider her rather confiding simplicity unbusinesslike? She resolved hastily to cultivate a severer demeanour ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... November 15th (December 15th). I conclude that the force to be given to Sir George White was fixed by Lord Lansdowne at haphazard, and that the calculations of the military department were put on one side, this unbusinesslike way of playing with National affairs and with soldier's lives being veiled from the Secretary of State's mind by the phrase, "political reasons." But the "political reason" for exposing a Nation's troops to unreasonable risks and to needless loss ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... to say a good word for these involuntary, helpless, wistful facts that keep tagging a man's mind around. I know that I am exposing myself in standing up for them to the accusation that I have a mere irrelevant, sideways, intellectually unbusinesslike sort of a mind. I can see my championship even now being gently but firmly set one side. "It's all of a piece—this pleasant, yielding way with ideas," people say. "It goes with the slovenly, lazy, useless, polite state of ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... same principle as ladies' papers publish visits to dressmakers. The present system of noticing Messrs Tooth's and not noticing Messrs. Pears' is to me wholly illogical; and, to use the word which makes every British heart beat quicker—unbusinesslike. But with business I have nothing to do—my concern is with art; and if the noticing of dealers' shows were not inimical to art, I should not have a word to say against the practice. Messrs. Tooth & MacLean trade in Salon and Academy pictures, so the notices the Press prints are the equivalent ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... an authority on ministers—ministers and babies. And it was a baby that had kept her away from church this Lilac Sunday; a little, merry, red-headed boy baby that had come in the early morning to make glad the heart of unbusinesslike Billy Evans and his neat businesslike wife. For several hours Doc Philipps and Grandma had despaired of both baby and mother, but when the pink dawn came smiling over the world's rim Billy's little son was born alive and unblemished and Billy's wife crept back from the Valley ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... cows, morning and evening. I have heard Jim Meagher, the chief poultry boy, boast of a single day's gathering of four hundred and sixty-eight eggs; but eggs, save when stolen, pricked, and sucked raw, never figured in our bill of fare. At first glance this might appear unbusinesslike, but the prices obtainable for these things were good, as they still are and always have been in Australia; and the various items of our dietary—treacle, bread, oatmeal, tea, and corned beef—could of course be ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson |
