"Uncongenial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seeing a beard, denotes that some uncongenial person will oppose his will against yours, and there will be a fierce struggle for mastery, and you are likely to lose some money in ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... that implacable man, not content with forcing an uncongenial marriage upon this helpless damsel, requires that you immediately resign your high post in the king's service, and live upon the pittance he settles upon you ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... transferred beyond her borders; strenuous as were the efforts of Prussia, Scharnhorst's means were slender, and he could not work miracles. All told, the allies had at the moment only seventy thousand men ready for the field. Wittgenstein was for the moment commander-in-chief. The monarchs, utterly uncongenial, were struggling to act in harmony, but double weakness is not strength. They had only a single advantage—excellent horses in abundance for both cavalry and artillery. "The worse the troops, the greater the need of artillery"; "great battles are won with artillery"; these ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... time when very few women taught, but I am the mother of him you call Thomas A. Edison. I studied and read and wrote and in degree I educated myself. I had great ambition—I thirsted to know, to do, to become. But I was hampered and chained in an uncongenial atmosphere. My body struggled with its bonds, so that I grew weak, worried, sick, and died, leaving my boy to struggle his way alone. My only regret at death was the thought that I was leaving my boy. I thought that through my marriage I had killed my career—sacrificed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... behind the wainscot. In a few minutes the light was extinguished and the two men, thus strangely brought together again, lay a few feet from one another; the mind of each turning in the stillness of the night, to the link which had bound them, nay, which still bound them in a forced and uncongenial union. ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... grounds, and begged him to rejoin himself in the practice of the law. Thanking his father for his thoughtfulness, Lanier justified his own course in these earnest words: "My dear father, think how, for twenty years, through poverty, through pain, through weariness, through sickness, through the uncongenial atmosphere of a farcical college and of a bare army and then of an exacting business life, through all the discouragement of being wholly unacquainted with literary people and literary ways — I say, think how, in spite of all these depressing circumstances and of a thousand more which ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... for his extensive ideas. He, therefore, took a larger piece of ground in Lambeth Marsh, where he soon assembled the largest collection of British plants ever brought together into one place. But there was something uncongenial in the air of this place, which made it extremely difficult to preserve sea plants and many of the rare annuals which are adapted to an elevated situation,—an evil rendered worse every year by the increased number of ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... buried his wife, and four of his children, was deposed from the ministry because his Lutheran doctrines offended the Elector Frederick, and finally retired as a simple arch-deacon to a small parish in Lubben, where he preached, toiled, and suffered amid a rough and uncongenial people till he died, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... with Nature in our uncongenial climate, Cuddling plants and coaxing 'em, and oh, the weary time it Takes to get a slender crop—we toil the Summer through; England, needing quick returns, is looking now ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... men at once began to speculate on his fall. The noble presence of the Crown Prince, his cheerful and kindly manners, his known attachment to liberal ideas, his strong national feeling, the success with which he had borne himself on the uncongenial field of battle, all had made him the hope of the generation to which he belonged. Who was so well suited to solve the difficulties of internal policy with which Bismarck had struggled so long? Hopes never to be fulfilled! Absent from his father's deathbed, he returned to Berlin a crippled and ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... of the old and distinguished Fieschi family, was born in 1447. Notwithstanding her decided wish to enter a convent, and in spite of her repeated protestations, she was compelled to marry, at the age of seventeen, Julio Adorno, a man of tastes uncongenial to her. On account of her slender figure and her delicate health, her parents had felt warranted in their refusal to allow her to become a nun, but the husband of their choice proved a greater trial to her strength and temper ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... pulpit, people not only wondered where he came from, but who his tailor was. And if they had seen his hat, they would have been solicitous as to its manufacturer. The more elaborate portion of the "church" pulled uncongenial features at the young block-printer's appearance, thought him too rough, too unreclaimed, too outspoken, and too vehement; the plain people, the humble, hard-working, unfashionable folk liked him, and said he ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... question is without an answer, and like the falsity of woman, like the weakness of man, like life itself, a cruel, cruel riddle." 'Une Crime d'Amour,' one of his most popular novels, deals with a woman who, being married to an uncongenial husband, falls in love with a brilliant, heartless society man, with the usual result. The crime is the hero's inability to understand the meaning of genuine love. 'Mensonges' (Lies) is a striking picture of the endless ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Even if she kissed me, I thought she did it with a purpose; if she smiled up at me as of old, I fancied the smile to be only a concealment of its opposite. By degrees we became shy of each other. We were like uncongenial intimates, forced to occupy the same house, forced into a fearful knowledge of each other's personal habits, while we knew nothing of the thoughts that make up ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... he gravely, "is the most serious part of the business. To live in a dull place is bad enough—to live with dull people is bad enough; but to have one's thoughts perpetually occupied with an uncongenial subject, and one's energies devoted to an uncongenial pursuit, is just misery, and nothing short of it! In fact 'tis a moral injustice, and one that no man should be ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... had had very little opportunity for the work that he loved. With the patience of the Oriental, he had toiled at an inferior art; now opportunity had come, and so eager was he to grasp it, that a twenty-mile ride on an uncongenial animal, in the night, did not deter him. Not that he was afraid of the dark as we like to think the Chinese are. Li Yow had a philosophy, old when the Christian philosophy was born, which amply ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... to his spontaneous impulses, even though it might be for the last time of asking. To his surprise, Cook was delighted with his article, and henceforward he was able to write freely, without hampering himself by the attempt to satisfy uncongenial canons of journalism.[68] ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... when upon our first embarkation, as infants in arms, her violent rolling—in after life unperceived—makes every soul of us sea-sick? Does not this show, too, that the very air we here inhale is uncongenial, and only becomes endurable at last through gradual habituation, and that some blessed, placid haven, however remote at present, must be ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... this experiment a fuller chance. But so far as it has gone, the experiment has been entirely in favor of legislation for admitting women to the ballot-box. And I do not believe that in putting these higher responsibilities upon women we degrade their character, that we subject them to uncongenial pursuits, that we injure their moral tone, that we tarnish their delicacy, that we in any way make them less noble and admirable as women, as wives, and mothers. I believe that by realizing the intention of the Constitution, which uses words that are so fully explained by our courts ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... young woman well brought up undertakes to do chamber-work; she is obliged to associate with the other girls, no matter how uncongenial they may be, what may be their language or personal habits or table manners. If she tries to keep to herself, the rest think she is taking airs, and combine to make her ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... conventional barriers; there is more personal independence and a wider sphere for its exercise; the soul is warmed in the sunshine of a true social equality; we are not brought into the rough and disgusting contact with uncongenial persons which is such a genuine source of misery in the common intercourse of society; there is a greater variety, of employment, a more constant demand for the exertion of all the faculties, and a more exquisite pleasure in effort, from the consciousness that we are ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... I remained motionless, the bird forgot altogether his uncongenial occupation of watchman, and launched himself into the air toward me, soaring round and round me, letting fall such a flood, such a torrent, of liquid notes that I thought half a dozen were singing,—and then dropped into the grass. Soon others appeared here and there, and sang it mattered not how ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... a station, or the field of a farm, were too uncongenial a range for such a spirit as his. To breathe the fresh forest air—to range deserts where man was not to be seen—to pursue the wild deer and buffalo—to trap the bear and the wolf, or beside the still pond, or the unexplored stream, to catch otters and beavers—to ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... they might wear a certain wig which was fashionable in Amsterdam at that time. They spoke of their troubles, but without murmuring over them, with a truly Christian resignation; their goods had been confiscated; they were obliged to follow uncongenial trades in order to maintain themselves; and they hoped, they said, with the aid of God always to make enough to keep ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... for the year 1803, and 6,500,000 for the year 1808. I might go farther, and affirm that the constant insecurity of life and property in all but the central parts of the republic is such as to keep down the natural increase of a population never prolific, being made up of a combination of uncongenial races—whites and Indians, whose intermixture leads ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... and the reading in Saint Paul's was over for that day. But it was too soon to go back to the bosom of that uncongenial household which Agnes called home; for Mistress Winter was generally extra cross—and the ordinary exhibition was enough without the extra—if Agnes presented herself before she was expected. The now deserted steps of the Cross were the ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... personal history. They were the utterances of a man who had stood for years at the 'mules,' catching, when he could, through the coarse panes of factory glass, the dim blue outlines of distant moors. Here were noise, crowd, coarse jesting, mean tyrannies, uncongenial company—everything which a nervous, excitable nature, tuned to poetry in the English way through religion, most loathed; there was beauty, peace, leisure for thought, for holiness, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... florid complexion, his restless dark eyes, and his profusely curling black hair. The other was a middle-aged woman in frowsy garments; tall and stout, sly and sullen. The smart young man stood behind the uncongenial-looking person with whom he had associated himself, using her as a screen to hide him while he watched the travellers on their way to the train. As the bell rang, the woman suddenly faced her companion, and pointed to ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... reality. For many and various were the difficulties which Layard had to contend with during the following months as well as during his second expedition in 1848. The material hardships of perpetual camping out in an uncongenial climate, without any of the simplest conveniences of life, and the fevers and sickness repeatedly brought on by exposure to winter rains and summer heat, should perhaps be counted among the least of them, for they had their compensations. Not so the ignorant and ill-natured opposition, open ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... came. She wondered if Nancy Ellen would be compelled to put off her wedding and teach the home school in order that it might be taught by a Bates, as her father had demanded. She wondered if Nancy Ellen was forced to this uncongenial task, whether it would sour the wonderful sweetness developed by her courtship, and make her so provoked that she would not write or have anything to do with her. They were nearly the same age; they had shared rooms, and, until recently, beds, and ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... months more of the uncongenial drudgery from which he had been so glad to escape? Besides, he could hardly hope to drag the pea-pod up on the beach and regain his bunk without attracting the notice of somebody in the cabin. He could imagine the talk of the others when he ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... An elderly woman in fussy black silk stood there, waiting for a streetcar; she was all of a globular modelling, with a face patterned like a frost-bitten peach; and that the approaching gracefulness was uncongenial she naively made too evident. Her round, wan eyes seemed roused to bitter life as they rose from the curved high heels of the buckled slippers to the tight little skirt, and thence with startled ferocity to the Malacca ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... not that of Giorgione's last works. Rather must we conclude that, like the "Aeneas and Evander," and several other pictures yet to be mentioned, Giorgione stopped short at his work, unwilling to labour at an uncongenial task (as, perhaps, in the present case), or from some feeling of dissatisfaction at the result, nay, even despair of ever realising his ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... natural that I should not be quite accustomed to the loss of my darling yet. Three or four hours were not a long time after years. But my mind dwelt so much upon the uncongenial scene in which I had left her, and I pictured it as such an overshadowed stony-hearted one, and I so longed to be near her and taking some sort of care of her, that I determined to go back in the evening only to look up at ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... happens that the much-desired carabina is graciously conceded to an unfortunate pollito, or very young gentleman, who has been unable to secure a partner. Tunicu often avails himself of a pollito when he happens to be afflicted with an uncongenial partner, or one whose manner of dancing ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... or rhea, was kept at the house, and as long as we remained indoors or seated in the verandah he would hang about close by, but would follow us as soon as we started off to the orchard. He was like a pet dog and could not endure to be left alone or in the uncongenial company of other domestic creatures—dogs, cats, fowls, turkeys, and geese. He regarded men and women as the only suitable associates for an ostrich, but was not allowed in the rooms on account of his inconvenient habit of swallowing metal objects such as scissors, ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... this germ of an idea spread over my uncongenial life during the years we lived at that savage place, where my two immediate predecessors had gone mad, and the third had ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... nice quiet time generally; back Monday morning in season for biz!" This was certainly satisfactory as far as it went, but I added, by way of parenthesis, "and who else will be present?" knowing well enough that one uncongenial spirit might be the undoing of us all. To this Bartholomew responded, "No one but ourselves, old fellow; now don't be queer." He knew well enough my aversion to certain elements unavoidable even in the best society, and how I kept very much to myself, except on Monday nights ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... suffered most severely in childbirth, and died a few weeks afterwards. Templeton at first was inconsolable, but worldly thoughts were great comforters. He had done all that conscience could do to atone a sin, and he was freed from a most embarrassing dilemma, and from a temporary banishment utterly uncongenial and unpalatable to his habits and ideas. But now he had a child,—a legitimate child, successor to his name, his wealth; a first-born child,—the only one ever sprung from him, the prop and hope of advancing years! On this child he doted with all that ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... but none came, for the cap'n, with dim eyes, was staring blankly into a future so lonely and uncongenial that he had lost the power of speech—even of that which, at other crises, had never failed to afford him relief. The mate gazed at him curiously for a moment, and then, imitating the example of the cook, ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... his pipe, lit it, and began to smoke. "I talked like that because I wanted that idle young scamp, Ned, to devote his fingers to the task. I had not the most remote idea that it would make a young lady commence such an uncongenial pursuit." ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... prisoners are commonplace and rude; He says he cannot relish uncongenial prison food. When quite a boy they taught him to distinguish Good from Bad, And other educational ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... Leicester's found this increased activity decidedly uncongenial. He had no real patriotism in him. He played cricket well, but he ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... cheap boarding-house, after their things were taken and sold. The company into which she was here thrown, was far from being agreeable; but this would have been no source of unhappiness in itself. Cheerfully would she have breathed the uncongenial atmosphere, if there had been nothing in the conduct of her husband to awaken feelings of anxiety. But, alas! there was much to create unhappiness here. Idle days were more frequent; and the consequences of idle days more and more serious. From his work, he would come home sober ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... churchman, with his hand upraised, denounced the mockery of such a couple coming to God's altar. Quiet waters in landscapes, with the sun reflected in their depths, asked, if better means of escape were not at hand, was there no drowning left? Ruins cried, 'Look here, and see what We are, wedded to uncongenial Time!' Animals, opposed by nature, worried one another, as a moral to them. Loves and Cupids took to flight afraid, and Martyrdom had no such torment in its painted ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... given to the entertainment and encouragement of serious young evangelical clergymen. He was again, he said, 'upon the world, having found the air of a cathedral town, and the very nature of cathedral services, uncongenial to his spirit'; and then he sat awhile, making firm resolves as to his manner of parting from the bishop, and also as to his ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... seem like real Russians. He was thoroughly homesick for his beloved Ukraine; and it is significant that his short stories of life in Little Russia, truthfully depicting the country customs, were written far off in a strange and uncongenial environment. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... blandest smile, after reading them, "Very well, very pretty indeed! My dear, don't you think, before you write poetry, you had better learn grammar?" a suggestion which sent me crestfallen to a diligent study of Lindley Murray. But grammar is perfectly uncongenial matter to me, which my mind absolutely refuses to assimilate. I have learned Latin, English, French, Italian, and German grammar, and do not know a single rule of the construction of any language whatever. More over, to the present ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... You're the business man made, but not born. By nature you're a boulevardier, or what the newspapers call a 'clubman.' I admire you more than I can say—everybody admires you—for making such a success of a work that must always have been uncongenial at the least." ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... cement is wanting—the sense of security and permanence, without which the body of affection cannot be consolidated, nor the heart commit itself to its whole capacity of emotion. I believe that many a brother and sister spend their days in uncongenial wedlock, or in a restless faintly expectant-singlehood, who might form a "comfortable couple" could they but make up their minds early to take each other ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... and had to school himself to become able to put up with the terrible inflictions of uncongenial fellowships. We must go to his poems to get at his weaknesses. The clown of the first edition of "Monadnoc" "with heart of cat and eyes of bug," disappears in the after-thought of the later version of the poem, but the eye that recognized him and the nature that recoiled ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the only member of the Bumpus family who did not find uncongenial such distractions and companionships as were offered by the civilization that surrounded them. The Bagatelle she despised; that was slavery—but slavery out of which she might any day be snatched, like Leila Hawtrey, by ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... wonder and regret that the Wartons, the intimate friends both of his better and darker days, have left no particular memorials of him. He had a sister, lately, if not still, living, from whom, though of a very uncongenial nature, something might surely have been gathered. But there is a familiarity which, by destroying admiration, destroys the perception of what will interest others. There are few of our poets of rare genius, of whose private life and character much is known. Little is known of Spenser, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... however, has not seemingly regretted the inability of Byron to trammel his muse with the uncongenial fetters of Pope's metre, and has certainly never quarrelled with Tom Moore for not assuming the manners and diction of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to Type," "Semi-Parasitism," and "Parasitism" belong to the more practical order; and while one or two are intermediate, "Biogenesis," "Death," and "Eternal Life" may be offered to those who find the atmosphere of the former uncongenial. It will not disguise itself, however, that, owing to the circumstances in which they were prepared, all the papers are more or less practical in their aim; so that to the merely philosophical reader there is little ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... whole, it could not be fairly said that his appearance was unprepossessing; indeed, to the congenial, it would have been doubtless not uncongenial; while to others, it could not fail to be at least curiously interesting, from the warm air of florid cordiality, contrasting itself with one knows not what kind of aguish sallowness of saving discretion ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... tentative remarks to the nearest miner, and receiving only short, gruff replies, the traveller resigned himself to uncongenial silence, staring moodily out of the window at ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was charged with having a sharp tongue, a sarcastic wit, and a shrewish temper, over which perilous traits she had no control. It is related that her sister, Mrs. Edwards, opposed the match, from a belief that the two were utterly uncongenial, and later on this came to be the accepted belief of the people at large. That Mrs. Lincoln often severely harassed her husband always has been and always will be believed. One would gladly leave the whole topic veiled in that privacy which ought always ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... in calling order. Among the contributors, we find the name of Gilbert Burnet (afterwards Bishop) as giving L.1 half-yearly. They had an hospital erected in Blackfriars Street; but experience soon proved that confinement to a charity workhouse was altogether uncongenial to the feelings and habits of the Scottish poor, and they speedily returned to the plan of assisting them by small outdoor pensions, which has ever since been adhered to. In those days, no effort was made to secure permanency ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... marvellously; but without love and its joy she could not live, in any real sense. In uncongenial society, her whole mental faculty had frozen; when love came, her mental world, like a garden in the spring sunshine, blossomed and budded. When she lost me, the Present vanished, or went by her like an ocean that has no ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... "scrap" had entirely left us, for Bennett and I had before us one of the most uncongenial tasks that an officer can have. The news has to be broken by someone when a wife is suddenly made a widow, and the task is generally taken on by the dead man's platoon commander, who sends back home ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... result of our ignorance, great possibilities lie undeveloped in nearly all men. Self-expression is smothered in uncongenial toil. Parents and teachers, groping in the dark, have long been training natural-born artists to become mechanics, natural-born business men to become musicians, and boys and girls with great aptitudes for agriculture and horticulture to become ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... who watched over him as a lioness over her young. Delacroix, who was frail, sensitive, feverishly carried away by his work, needed just the careful intervention which this woman imposed to save him from the depressing influences of every-day life. She kept all uncongenial visitors from him. He was fastidious to a degree,—could not use a spoiled palette, and Jenny learned to prepare his palette, colors, and brushes with the nicest care. Delacroix began with a masterpiece. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... did not lack society. Mrs. Abbott, whom, without change of feeling, she grew accustomed to see frequently, introduced her to the Langland family, and in Mrs. Langland she found a not uncongenial acquaintance. This lady had known many griefs, and seemed destined to suffer many more; she had wrinkles on her face which should not have been there at forty-five; but no one ever heard her complain or saw ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... hard work for perhaps the first time, in his idle, irresponsible young life. He had been prepared to put on the screws if necessary. There had been no need. Ted had applied his own screws and kept at his uncongenial task with such grim determination that it almost alarmed his family, so contrary was his conduct to his usual light-hearted shedding of all obligations which he could, by hook ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... respected by all whose regard was of value, and loved with a true affection which scorned the question of individual rights, her lot seemed indeed a happy one. Shielded from the severe struggles of life, freed from the cares of business, released in a great measure from uncongenial work and from the dangers attending exacting labor, with the disagreeable things in life kept from her as much as possible, always seeing the best of every man's character and manners, and, more than all, being supreme in her natural domain, the home, ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... arrangements, and as much comfort is to be found as is compatible with throng and publicity. Still the domestic charm of private life is wanting, and its absence renders the system of constant residence most uncongenial to English habits and feelings. An unsocial reserve lies on the surface of English character, and the love of privacy, or at least of a retirement which can be closed and expanded at will, is an extensive and deep-seated feeling. Yet the Anglo-American, ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... take his pleasures sadly. The gallant bands that have from time to time gone forth to a bloodless campaign in the icy north, have always managed to keep their Christmas right joyously. Certainly they could not complain of uncongenial skies or unseasonable temperatures; while, so far as snow and ice are necessary to thorough enjoyment, the supply in the Arctic regions is on a scale sufficient to satisfy the most ardent admirer of an old-fashioned Christmas. The frozen-in Investigators ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... countersign petitions, I make out the public accounts; I write hosts of letters, but what illiterary productions they are! Sometimes—but how seldom I get the opportunity—I complain to Euphrates about these uncongenial duties. He consoles me and even assures me that there is no more noble part in the whole of philosophy than to be a public official, to hear cases, pass judgment, explain the laws and administer justice, and so practise in short what the philosophers do but teach. But he never ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... into Frankfort just as the calliope went screaming down Main street at the head of the circus parade. Getting rid of his disagreeable freight and his uncongenial companions as soon as possible, he elbowed his way along the crowded sidewalk, looking for some of the neighbour boys. Mr. Wheeler was standing on the Farmer's Bank corner, towering a head above the throng, chaffing with a little ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... mothers. But this attraction is quite misunderstood if it is regarded as a peculiarly sexual attraction. Indeed, the whole point of the attraction is that the inverted boy vaguely feels his own feminine disposition and so shuns the uncongenial amusements and society of his own sex for the sympathy and community of tastes which he finds concentrated in his mother. So far from such association being evidence of sexual attraction it might more ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now,—nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air—and nearly as thin. I began to distinguish ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... being a Brahmin, had, in an uncongenial atmosphere, reached the perfect condition of Nirvina, reminded us all of the ancient sages; and we queried whether a world that could produce such as he, and could, beside, lengthen a man's years to one hundred and thirteen, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... long before Louis would listen to the proposition of his marriage with Hortense. His affections still clung to the lost object of his idolatry, and he could not, without pain, think of union with another. Indeed a more uncongenial alliance could hardly have been imagined. In no one thing were their tastes similar. But who could resist the combined tact of Josephine and power of Napoleon. All obstacles were swept away, and the maiden, loving the hilarity of life, and its gayest scenes ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... trying to look as if they occupied it under protest, and preserving the most stately gravity and silence. They evidently felt that their magnificent outward adornments were exhibited in a very unworthy locality, and among a very uncongenial company. ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... home in Virginia, and started life anew in what was then regarded as the less civilized country to the south. Several explanations have survived as to the cause of his departure, one being that his interest in the rising tide of Methodism had made him uncongenial to his Church of England relatives; in the absence of definite knowledge, however, it may safely be assumed that the impelling motive was that love of seeking out new things, of constructing a new home in the wilderness, which has never forsaken his descendants. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... distant beauty of the forests and their radiant clouds with the nakedness and desolation here, I gave up looking from the window with a determination to be gone as soon as possible from a country so uncongenial. ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... touch of colour and richness to a vista otherwise somewhat cold and bare. This was St. George's Church, whose vestry, in the days when it required some degree of heroism to be an Episcopalian in that uncongenial atmosphere, had founded St. George's Hall. The present edifice, though numbering seventy-five years of life, was young compared with the First Church; and the lapse of time had not served to alter their respective positions in the community. In Warwick the Episcopalians ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... to fall back on revelations and disclosures. Here again I find the American atmosphere singularly uncongenial. I have offered to reveal to the Secretary of State the entire family history of Ferdinand of Bulgaria for fifty dollars. He says it is not worth it. I have offered to the British Embassy the inside story of the Abdication of Constantine for five dollars. They ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... exigencies not very long before. He had no difficulty in deciding how to use this money. His mother's desire to live in London had in him the force of an inherited motive; as soon as possible he released himself from his uncongenial occupations, converted into money all the possessions of which he had not immediate need, and betook himself ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... philosophy. A philosophy of mere experience is not tolerant of miracles; its doctrines exclude them; but, what is of even greater force than its doctrines, the subtle and penetrating atmosphere of feeling and intellectual habits which accompanies it is essentially uncongenial and hostile to them. It is against the undue influence of such results of experience—an influence openly acting in distinct ideas and arguments, but of which the greater portion operates blindly, insensibly, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... BLUNDER.—Don't shrink from contact with anything but bad morals. Men who affect your unhealthy minds with antipathy, will prove themselves very frequently to be your best friends and most delightful companions. Because a man seems uncongenial to you, who are squeamish and foolish, you have no right to shun him. We become charitable by knowing men. We learn to love those whom we have despised by rubbing against them. Do you not remember some instance of meeting a man or woman whom you had never previously known or cared to know—an individual, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... he should chance to be rejected at the poll, he will publicly profess that he is delighted to be relieved of an uncongenial burden, whilst assuring his friends in private that the country in which able and honest men are neglected must be in a very bad way. He will, however, publish an address to the electors, in which ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... as mentioned above—one fighting and manoeuvring on paper—making plans in his office, unfamiliar with every thing constituting a genuine military, scientific or practical soldier—to whom field and battle are uncongenial or improper—to whom grand and even small tactics are a terra incognita—such a chief is at best but an imitation of the English military organization, and certainly it is only in this country that obsolete English routine is almost ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... head-quarters, became quite the managing director of the Allison mansion. John Allison, with a party of fellow-magnates, was on a long tour of inspection over the southernmost of the transcontinental lines, and, finding home life a trifle uncongenial just now, owing to some discussions with Aunt Lawrence, finding, too, that the wives and daughters of other magnates were to accompany them on the trip, sojourning days at a time in many of the charming resorts among ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... awoke the next morning; feeling like one whirled away by enchantment, and suddenly dropped from the clouds into a remote and unknown land, widely and completely isolated from all he had ever seen or known before; or like a thistle-seed borne on the wind to some strange nook of uncongenial soil, where it must lie long enough before it can take root and germinate, extracting nourishment from what appears so alien to its nature: if, indeed, it ever can. But this gives no proper idea of my feelings at all; and no one that has not lived such a retired, ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... is sixteen," said Mrs. Bebberly Cumble severely, "one talks of things being impossible which are merely uncongenial. It is not only possible but it is desirable that Betsy Mullen should move into smaller quarters; she has scarcely enough furniture ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... patrician birth have in common with a Mrs. Mortlock or a Mrs. Dredge? Alas! however, Miss Slowcum was poor—she was very poor, and she was a great deal too genteel to work. The terms at Penelope Mansion were by no means high, and in order to live she was obliged to put up with uncongenial company. She was a very tall and angular person—her face was long and thin, her eyes small, her mouth undecided, but in her heart of hearts she was by no means wanting in good nature; and when, the night before, Jasmine, ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... busiest avocations. His life is like working in a rose-garden: beautiful images are always before him. His time is his own: he can arrange his own hours for study, rest, and recreation. Especially he can avoid the friction and annoyance of dealing with rude and uncongenial people. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... pulpit.—"Awake, thou that sleepest!" Why, the text is quite opposed to DOZINESS! But what of this, if the preacher be addicted to drawling, the weather unobligingly sultry, and you yourself have gradually been dwindling from an uncongenial state of wakefulness into a sleepy calm? 'Tis too much ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... of annoyance was caused in getting about from place to place through the uncongenial presence of a couple of hostile high velocity guns which were commonly known as "Quick Dick" and "Silent Sue," his consort. They were so named on account of the rapidity with which the shells arrived, and there was little ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... looking forward to the cricket practice; moreover, she hated sewing. But there was no appeal. Each house-mistress had authority to suspend games, if necessary, so she was compelled to pass a weary afternoon at a most uncongenial occupation. ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the 'Province of Jurisprudence Determined,' were celebrated, and Lord Brougham used to say: 'If John Austin had had health, neither Lyndhurst nor I should have been Chancellor.' He entered the army, and was in Sicily under Lord William Bentinck; but soon quitted an uncongenial service, and was called to the Bar. In 1819 he married Sarah, the youngest daughter of John Taylor of Norwich, {1} when they took a house in Queen Square, Westminster, close to James Mill, the historian of British India, and next door to Jeremy Bentham, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... desire its more luxuriant growth. Those of us who have ardent feelings towards our friends know that we are often worse than cold towards those we do not fancy. We sometimes, alas, take a certain pride in our sensitiveness in this particular. We justify our hatred for uncongenial people till we have fairly faced the truth that love is the law of our being, and that we must love our neighbor. Then, though we cannot change our temperament, yet by the doing of prosaic duties, the germ of love may be made to bud and blossom. ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... most oppressively hot they had ever experienced. The gradations of spring, autumn, and twilight, are there scarcely known, and the sudden transition from summer to winter is as trying to the health of an European as that from day to night is uncongenial to the taste. Here, too, I repented at leisure, and amended with no small difficulty and labor, my neglect of those accomplishments to which my dear mother had so often vainly solicited my attention. The pencil was profitless; I had ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... possibility of such a position, by crushing her self-respect and individual ambition. A true Christian marriage is a sacred union of soul and sense, and the issues flowing from it are eternal. All obstacles in the way of severing uncongenial marriages should be removed, because such unions are unnatural, and must be evil in their results. Divorce in such cases should be honorable, without subjecting the parties to the shame of exposure in the courts, or in the columns ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... reminded of soap—to devote himself to the History of the Thebaid, when this cousin died suddenly and precipitated responsibilities upon him. In the frankness of conviviality, Moggs bewailed the uncongenial task thus thrust into his hands, and my uncle offered to lighten his burden by a partnership then and there. They even got to terms—extremely muzzy ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... of a firm resolve to preserve a philosophic calm, and of an enormous underlying energy which spent itself in labour, "ohne Hast, aber auch ohne Rast." He found the conventional atmosphere of Cambridge uncongenial, and with a friend he established the Round Hill school at Northampton, Mass. This was the first serious effort made in the United States to elevate secondary education to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Christianity should be exclusive or even dominant in the occupation of the American soil. From one point of view the American colonies will present a sorry aspect. Schism, mutual alienation, antagonism, competition, are uncongenial to the spirit of the gospel, which seeks "that they all may be one." And yet the history of the church has demonstrated by many a sad example that this offense "must needs come." No widely extended organization of church ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Lansdowne and the rest laboured under, of ever personally attaching a single young man, in all the excitement of that exciting time, to the leaders of the party. It was quite a delight to me, as I listened, to recall my own dislike of his style of speaking, his fishy coldness, his uncongenial and unsympathetic politeness, and his insufferable though most gentlemanly artificiality. The shape of his head (I see it now) was misery to me, and weighed down my ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... been so great. He had suffered so much about it last time, probably, that was why he took it so easily now; or was it because his trust in the chapter of accidents had grown greater since he was more dependent on it? or because of the generally expanded sense of living in him which made anxiety uncongenial anyhow? Whatever the cause was, this was the effect. A momentary disappointment when he saw how little James's draft was—then a sense of that semi-intoxication which comes upon a poor man when a sum of money falls into his hands—gradually invaded his soul. He tried to settle down ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... amply with it ever to excel as an oarsman. The sun was burning hot, the water was smooth as oil, and very weighty—it seemed to resist every stroke of his clumsily wielded blades. Altogether it was hard, uncongenial work,—and, being rendered somewhat flabby and nerveless by his previous evening's carouse with Macfarlane's whisky, Mr. Dyceworthy was in a plaintive and injured frame of mind, he was bound on a mission—a holy and edifying ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... broach such a scheme without going at once into all the details of the chief cause of her sorrows. The consequence was that in the windings of his imagination the squire found himself perpetually turning in a vicious circle; but since the exercise concerned Mrs. Goddard and her welfare it was not uncongenial. He founded all his vague hopes upon one expression she had used. When in making his proposal he had spoken of her as being a widow, she had said, "Would to God that I were!" She had said it with such vehemence that he had felt sure that if she had indeed ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... Fathers, at their death, would will the bulk of their property to the eldest son, with the proviso that the mother was to have a home with him. Hence it was not unusual for the mother, who had brought all the property into the family, to be made an unhappy dependent on the bounty of an uncongenial daughter-in-law and a dissipated son. The tears and complaints of the women who came to my father for legal advice touched my heart and early drew my attention to the injustice and cruelty of the laws. As the practice of the law was my father's business, I could not exactly ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... distasteful lecture field. His two subjects were "The Argonauts" and "American Humor." His letters to his wife at this time tell the pathetic tale of a sensitive, troubled soul struggling to earn money to pay debts. He writes with brave humor, but the work was uncongenial ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... than the mere narrative of the chances and occurrences that make up the every-day natural existence.' Naomi is a woman of artistic genius and passionate character, becalmed in the stagnation of conventional life, who, throwing off the fetters of an uncongenial and inconsiderate marriage, attempts to find happiness and independence in the cultivation of her own powers. She is eminently successful as prima donna, is brilliant and self-sustained—but fails to attain the imagined happiness, the Love-Eden ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... it, then, you carping, skeptical creature? It's all perfect. An uncongenial, tiresome husband—and she need have no self-reproach about him, either—finally out of the way; a reverential adorer at hand; youth still theirs; money; a delightful ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... ride I met a hunter with an elk packed on his horse, and he told me not only that the Edwardses were at the cabin yesterday, but that they were going to remain for two weeks longer, no matter how uncongenial. The ride did seem endless after darkness came on. Finally the last huge range was conquered, the last deep chasm passed, and with an eeriness which craved for human companionship, I rode up to "Mountain Jim's" den, but no light shone ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... extended over four or five months. After this long recess De Quincey was placed in the grammar school at Manchester, his guardians expecting that a three years' course in this school would bring him a scholarship at Oxford. However, the new environment proved wholly uncongenial, and the sensitive boy who, in spite of his shyness and his slender frame, possessed grit in abundance, and who was through life more or less a law to himself, made up his mind to run away. His flight was significant. Early on a July morning he slipped quietly off—in ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... precarious and chimerical? Why should we abandon our firesides, and every thing associated with the dear name of home—undergo the fatigues of a perilous voyage, and expose ourselves, our wives, and our little ones, to the deleterious influences of an uncongenial sun, for the enjoyment of a liberty divested of its usual accompaniments, surrounded with circumstances which diminish its intrinsic value, and render it indeed "a dear earned morsel"? * * * ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... life was the destruction of every vestige of Dutch independence, Dutch self-government and Dutch influence in Africa. Those who thus maligned him applied themselves to make him unpopular and to render his task so very uncongenial and unpleasant for him that he would at last give it up of his own accord, or else become the object of such violent hatreds that the Home Government would feel compelled to recall him. Thus they would be rid of the presence of a personage possessed ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... select congenial people. Dinners are very often flat failures conversationally because guests are invited at random. Choosing the lesser of two evils, it is better to run the risk of offending than to jeopardize the flow of talk by inviting uncongenial people. When dinners are given to return obligations it is not always easy to arrange profitably the inviting and seating of guests. But the judgment displayed just here makes or mars a dinner. A good way out of the difficulty, where hosts have obligations to people of different tastes and ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... another experiment for conciliation, and to this end proposed Jay as especial envoy to Great Britain. His nomination was opposed in the Senate, but prevailed by a vote of eighteen against eight. The mission was not desired by him. Uncongenial as were absence from home and diplomatic cares, this exile and duty were, in all private respects, opposed to his tastes and wishes; he foresaw the difficulties, anticipated the result, but, once convinced that he owed the sacrifice of personal ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... where four lines of dingy, two-storied brick houses looked out into a small railed-in inclosure, where a lawn of weedy grass, and a few clumps of faded laurel bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden and uncongenial atmosphere. Three gilt balls and a brown board with JABEZ WILSON in white letters, upon a corner house, announced the place where our red-headed client carried on his business. Sherlock Holmes stopped in front of it with his head on one side, and looked ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... an uncongenial guest is this: Alexander Smith wrote a "Life Drama," full of sparkling poetic gems, which at once made him popular, apparently with justice enough. I asked him down to Albury, made much of him, praised warmly sundry morceaux of his (which I ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the nineteenth century, epochs as diverse in character as the Venice of 1400 and the Paris of 1800. In him died the last great painter whose art was moulded by the instincts and traditions that made Titian and Veronese, and the greatest artist whose eyes have opened on the, to him, uncongenial and freezing life of the nineteenth century. In our time we have a new ideal, a new and maybe a higher development of intellectual art, and as great a soul as Titian's might to-day reach farther towards the reconciled perfections of graphic art: but what he did no one can now do; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... of industry for the raw materials of these countries involved the employment of labour on a very large scale; but the native disliked unfamiliar toil, and as his wants were very few, could easily earn enough to keep him in the idleness he loved. Slavery was the customary mode of getting uncongenial tasks performed in Africa; but against slavery European civilisation had set its face. Again, the ancient unvarying customs whereby the rights and duties of individual tribesmen were enforced, and the primitive societies held together, were often inconsistent with Western ideas, and ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... in my daughter's life (let me say nothing of the change in my life) has come: they were married yesterday. The manse is a desert; and sister Judith was never so uncongenial a companion to me as I feel her to be now. Her last words to the married pair, when they drove away, were: "Lord help you both; you have all ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... opposite wall—the portrait of an elderly gentleman stiffened over a corresponding volume, which he held in invincible mortmain in his rigid hand, and apparently defied posterity to take from him—seemed to offer a not uncongenial companionship. Yet the greenish light of the shade fell upon a young and pretty face, despite the color it extracted from it, and the hand that supported her low white forehead over which her full hair was simply parted, like a brown curtain, was slim and gentle-womanly. ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... suspicions; but I did not mind, for my mission in that house was almost ended, and I intended, as soon as I could resume my real character, to renew my acquaintance with you, as Mrs. Stewart, and see if I could not persuade you to leave that uncongenial atmosphere and come ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... some situations, capable of some strong feeling, poetry is natural to most persons at some period of their lives. And any one whose feelings are genuine, though but of the average strength,—if he be not diverted by uncongenial thoughts or occupations from the indulgence of them, and if he acquire by culture, as all persons may, the faculty of delineating them correctly,—has it in his power to be a poet, so far as a life passed in writing unquestionable poetry may ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... general habits of play and idleness, which might seem to indicate a certain absence of reflection and feeling, there were moments when the youthful poet would retire thoughtfully within himself, and give way to moods of musing uncongenial with the usual cheerfulness of his age. They show a tomb in the churchyard at Harrow, commanding a view over Windsor, which was so well known to be his favourite resting-place, that the boys called it "Byron's tomb;"[34] and here, they say, he used to sit for hours, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... Indianapolis; the cities of the Blue Grass lands, which made Kentucky the goal of the pioneers; and the cities of that young commonwealth, whom the Ohio river by force of its attraction tore away from an uncongenial control by the Old Dominion, and joined to the ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... Gilmour's leading thoughts was unquestionably the unspeakable value of time, and this intensified with years. There was not a shred of indolence in his nature; it may be truthfully said that he never wilfully lost an hour. Even when the college work was uncongenial, he never scamped it, but mastered the subject. He could not brook the idea of skimming a subject merely to pass an examination, and there were few men of his time with such wide ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... Ethelinda had carelessly thrown across it, and patiently straighten out the confusion of books and papers on the table they shared in common. Although there were no more frozen silences between them their conversations were far from satisfactory. They were totally uncongenial. But after the first week, that part of their relationship did not affect Mary materially. She was too happily absorbed in the work and play of school life, throwing herself into every recitation, every excursion and every experience with a zest that left no time for mourning over what ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... success. The Belgian and the Dutch people had nothing in common and their king, William of Orange (the descendant of an uncle of William the Silent), while a hard worker and a good business man, was too much lacking in tact and pliability to keep the peace among his uncongenial subjects. Besides, the horde of priests which had descended upon France, had at once found its way into Belgium and whatever Protestant William tried to do was howled down by large crowds of excited citizens as a fresh attempt upon the "freedom of the Catholic ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... that after my death, should it occur, Kate is to remain with her for six months, as a final test of their ability to live happily together, and for the benefit of the schools in this city. At the end of that time, if these two well-meaning but uncongenial people decide that it is wisest to part, 'Kitty Quixote' will be sent to you, to do with as you see fit. In any case, she will be no pecuniary charge to any one; her own mother's little fortune, with such a portion of mine as is justly hers, being ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... exertions of his own, was to him a source of constant irritation. He was wearied with the imperceptible growth of his crops, and complained that he made his eyes ache by watching their daily progress. He was not likely to excel in occupations so entirely uncongenial. The old people in the neighbourhood of Treverry speak with wonder of the fearlessness he displayed on different occasions, but shake their heads at his management as a farmer. They have no difficulty in accounting for his fortune. While he lived at Treverry, a swarm of bees found an entrance over ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... confined to the stately evening hour in the drawing-room, had never listened to anything approaching to this style of conversation, nor seen her brother to so much advantage in society. Hitherto she had only beheld him neglected in his uncongenial home circle, contemning and contemned, or else subjected to the fretting torment of Lucilla's caprice. She had never known what he could be, at his ease, among persons of the same way of thinking. Speaking scarcely ever herself, and her fingers busy ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the day, but she had drawn new strength and steadfastness from his kindly counsels. He understood both the big tragedies of life—which often hold some brief, perfect memory to make them bearable—and those incessant, gnat-like irritations which uncongenial ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... ability, and certainly he was to be congratulated since he had been married for love alone, Truletta knowing full well his unfortunate and straitened circumstances.... Yes, her people lived in Michigan but were uncongenial. Still, there was good blood in the family only it was a long ways back, probably as far back as the age of spear fighting, and he relied upon Beatrice, his old playmate, to sympathize ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... His career Lord Salisbury was forced to yield to the democratic spirit so far as to "go on the stump" and address popular audiences in great towns. It was an uncongenial employment. His myopia rendered the audience invisible, and no one can talk effectively to hearers whom he does not see. The Tory working men bellowed "For he's a jolly good fellow"; but he looked ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... as eccentric, and when occasions arose that would have provided him with congenial and much-desired employment on active service for his own country, his name was passed over, and the best soldier in England was left in inglorious and uncongenial inactivity. This was regrettable, but natural. The most heroic cannot pose as being too elevated above their fellows, or they will be left like ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... attainment of gain; moreover the European Traveller in that country has to contend with the combined influence of the native jealousies of its inhabitants, their hereditary barbarism, obstinate ferocity, and above all, an uncongenial climate. To surmount these difficulties, commerce is the most certain medium to inspire its Chiefs and Natives with confidence, and to obtain a facility of intercourse with the Interior country. Sanctioned by that pursuit, I have been favoured with information from a large circle of Native ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... circumstance. But now he was called back to the work that more properly belonged to an officer of Her Majesty's North West Mounted Police and his soul glowed with the satisfaction of those who, having been found faithful in uncongenial duty, are rewarded with an opportunity to do a bit of work which they particularly ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... Napoleon, with whom they spent two evenings. 'Her Majesty,' wrote Mrs. Reeve on November 4th, 'is a clever, original woman, speaking four tongues perfectly well, conversant with literature and politics, and finding in them consolation for an uncongenial family.' The sittings of the Judicial Committee, which began on November 10th, called Reeve back to town, where, on the 27th, he had the sad news of the death of his old friend Colonel Ferguson of Raith, and, for the last three ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... Between the latest specimens and their surroundings there was an incongruity which proved them to be aliens and strangers on the scene, and was fatal to all reverence; an incongruity which the modern Romans have only intensified by raising them on pedestals of most uncongenial forms, and crowning them with hideous masses of metal, representing the insignia of popes or other objects equally unsuitable. We see in the oldest obelisks a wonderful ease and an exquisite finish of execution, a maturity of thought and skill which none of the later ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the luster of the court by his accomplishments.[12] It was of course understood that the Gerusalemme, when completed, should be dedicated to the Duke and shed its splendor on the House of Este. Who was happier than Torquato now? Having recently experienced the discomforts of uncongenial service, he took his place again upon a firmer footing in the city of his dreams. The courtiers welcomed him with smiles. He was once more close to Leonora, basking like Rinaldo in Armida's garden, with golden prospects of the fame his epic would achieve ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... wandering and unsettled spirit, which he is thought to have communicated to one at least of his pupils. After an attack of confluent small-pox, which scarred him for life, Oliver was transferred from the care of this not-uncongenial preceptor to a school at Elphin. From Elphin he passed to Athlone; from Athlone to Edgeworthstown, where he remained until he was thirteen or fourteen years of age. The accounts of these early days are contradictory. By his schoolfellows he seems to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... The college student, if she does not take up a definite line of work, is apt, for a time at least, to be unquiet. That quality so lovingly described by Peacock as "stayathomeativeness" is her least noticeable characteristic. The smiling discharge of uncongenial social duties, which disciplines the woman of the world, seems to her unseeing eyes a waste of time and opportunities. She has read little, and that little, not for "human delight." Excellence in literature has been pointed out to her, starred and double-starred, ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... of this same kind that led the apostles of the Netherlands school and their Italian pupils to follow the physical trend of all Italian art rather than struggle to impose upon it the shackles of an uncongenial intellectuality forged in the canonic shops of Ockeghem and his disciples. The seed of beauty had been sown by the mighty Josquin des Pres what time he was a Roman singer and a Mantuan composer. ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... of him, who meaned her destruction. The animation that dwells in the features of virtue, is mild and friendly and lambent; but the sparkles that flash from the eye of enterprising guilt, are momentary, and unrelenting, and impetuous. The gentle and the inoffensive instantly feel how uncongenial they are to their dispositions, and start back from them with aversion and horror. Such were in some measure the sensations of Imogen, upon the re-appearance of her betrayer. She turned from him with unfeigned dislike, and was reluctantly kept in ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... extreme measures for complete independence than he could take; the lowlanders would be angry at the attitude of sympathy with his old friends which he must assume. In a spirit of self-sacrifice, therefore, he made ready to exchange his comfortable exile for one more uncongenial and of course ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... his spies. Never have men taken longer chances than did the faithful few who at this time furnished us with information as to events in Insurgent territory. Discovery meant prompt and cruel death. For a long time Major F. S. Bourns had performed the uncongenial task of directing the spies. He was then the chief health officer of Manila, and as all sorts of people were compelled to consult him on sanitary matters, visits to his office aroused no suspicion. He spoke Spanish, and this was imperatively necessary. Our ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... uncle's will, an annuity of fifty pounds. He had the look, too, of one who denied himself small pleasures, not only on religious grounds, but because they cost money. Somehow, I never doubted that he owned a balance at the bank, or that, after a brief interval spent in demonstrating that our ways were uncongenial, he would retire on a competence and await translation to join my uncle in an equal sky—equal, that is, within the fence of the elect. But not a bit of it! I had been adjured in the will to look after him: and at first I supposed that he clung to me against inclination, from a conscientious resolve ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
