"Unready" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came the Danes 783 Who caused the Saxons aches and pains. They sailed right up our rivers broad, Putting the natives to the sword. "Danegeld" For centuries our sadly fated 991 Towns by them were devastated. Etheldred the 'Unready Toff' By 'Danegeld' ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... should be. The Turks at that time were inclined to make reforms and concessions; they had an inclination to ease the pressure on their Christian subjects in the Christian provinces. Perhaps knowing—perhaps not knowing—that they were unready for war themselves, but feeling that the Balkan States were preparing for war, the Turks were undoubtedly willing to make great concessions. But whatever concessions the Turks might have offered, war ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... be your watchword, so that the blow, if it is coming, may not come upon you as a thief in the night, and may not find you unready and taken by surprise." Such had been Lord Randolph's warning. It was now learnt, with feelings in which disgust and indignation were equally mingled, that Lord Randolph's son was bent on coming to Belfast, ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... His ideas of order were of the loosest kind, and hence the noise at times was such that even the older pupils found it unbearable; but when the hour for recitation came, somehow a deathlike stillness fell upon the school, and the unready shivered with dread apprehension. And yet he never thrashed the boys; but his fear lay upon them, for his eyes held the delinquent with such an intensity of magnetic, penetrating power that the unhappy wretch felt as if any kind of ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... herself nervously unready. All the little opening speeches she had prepared for the interview deserted her suddenly, driven away by her shocked realisation of the transformation which the few days since she had last seen him had wrought in ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... the curious feeling I had that my father was gone, that he had vanished while my back was turned, leaving me to face someone else. Then, as I stared at him, still unready and speechless, the light died out of his eyes, his lips relaxed, and his hand went up to arrange the lace ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... the end without consideration of the means and degrees, pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them—like an unready horse, they will ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... to another's account; the doctrine of supererogation is wholly false.[1165] The Bridegroom's condemnatory disclaimer, "I know you not," was equivalent to a declaration that the imploring but neglectful ones, who had been found unready and unprepared, did ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... starting up, with clenched right-hand, Lasource having done: and descends from the Mountain, like a lava-flood; his answer not unready. Lasource's probabilities fly like idle dust; but leave a result behind them. "Ye were right, friends of the Mountain," begins Danton, "and I was wrong: there is no peace possible with these men. Let it be war then! They will not save the Republic with us: it shall ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... man, content to live in the present and to devise immediate remedies for immediate ills, it may come sweet as a challenge upon reserves of energy. The American frontier subsequent to the civil war was so vast, yet so rapid, in its motive that to the weak or the unready it was merely appalling. The task was that of creating an entire new world. So confronted, some sat down and wept, watching the fabric grow under the hands of others. Some were strong, but knew not how to apply their strength; others ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... performed his usual monthly office, and has spread the Table for the Lord's Supper, but it dawns upon us, friends, how useless, how empty is the symbol since it was only ordained 'until He should come.' He has come, and we, the unready, have ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... Sergius and Irina dwelt, in circumstances a little better than those of their friends. They kept the rent of their rooms paid; and, moreover, it was a rare thing for a starving youth to drop in on them and find their samovar cold, or their welcome unready. Sergius was himself, indeed, the heart and soul of his branch of the brotherhood; and from him had emanated none knew how many screeds and pamphlets upon his favorite theme. Irina, relying on him as the last protector of her family, questioned none of his plans, but found in his manner of life ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the thing I was. But the feeling put me on my guard. And I was not unready for the remark which followed a more exhaustive scrutiny ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... the goods and estate would be seized (after suicide) Fears some will stand for the tolerating of Papists Greater number of Counsellors is, the more confused the issue He that will not stoop for a pin, will never be worth a pound In my nature am mighty unready to answer no to anything It may be, be able to pay for it, or have health Lady Castlemayne do rule all at this time as much as ever No man was ever known to lose the first time She loves to be taken dressing herself, as I always find her The devil being too cunning to discourage ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... gladness in the usually patient voice that struck even Rachel, though she was usually too eager to be observant, but she was still unready with talk for the occasion, and Ermine continued: "We had heard so much of the Major before-hand, that we had a sort of Jupiter-like expectation of the coming man. I am not sure that I shall not go ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... worldly prelacy, while the olive, vine, and fig, with which the author contrasts it, are the contemplative Orders. In this, no doubt, we may see an allusion to the thorns which Bishops were not always unready to thrust on ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... escorted by Richelieu, one's old friend in a sense: "Is Trajan pleased?" whispered Voltaire to his Richelieu; overheard by Trajan,—who answered in words nothing, but in a visible glance of the eyes did answer, "Impertinent Lackey!"—Trajan being a man unready with speech; and disliking trouble with the people whom he paid for keeping his boots in polish. O my winged Voltaire, to what dunghill Bubbly-Jocks (COQS D'INDE) you do stoop with homage, constrained by ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... follow you to the misty heights whither our nature tends, or dive with you into the muddy depths whence it springs. I have heard from my brother John, and now expect almost hourly to see him. The Spanish revolution, as he now sees and as many foresaw, is a mere vision. The people are unready, unripe, unfit, and therefore unwilling; had it not been so they would have done their work themselves; it is as impossible to urge on the completion of such a change before the time as to oppose it when the time is come. John now writes that, all hope of rousing the Spaniards being ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... her, in few words, of his brave deed. In some lone mountain way, far from the court, He saw a knight almost unhorsed by fraud, And springing quickly to the knight's relief, Unarmed, unready, without thought of self, He had been trampled by the maddened horse, Whose master he had saved unfair defeat. The leech had tended him with greatest care, Promised him life, but never more, alas! The power to wield his sword, or wear his arms, The strength to walk, or run, or live ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... Sir Pertinax With indignation red of face did wax. The needful word his tongue was vainly seeking, Since what he felt was quite beyond the speaking. Though quick his hand to ward or give a blow, His tongue all times unready was and slow, Therefore he speechless looked upon the maid, Who viewed him 'neath her lashes' dusky shade, Whence Eros launched a sudden beamy dart That 'spite chain-mail did reach and pierce his heart. And in that instant Pertinax grew wise, And trembled 'neath this ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... Rose. It was not so very late, the babies kept Rose and Harry up until almost eleven. She thirsted suddenly for Rose, for Rose's beautiful, pure little face, her puzzled, earnest blue eyes under black eyebrows, her pleasant, unready words that were always so ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... deny that either, although I did not believe it. How should I, or any one, know what passed after Ranjoor Singh had been sent for by the Intelligence officers? I was his half-friend in those days, sahib. Worse than his enemy—unwilling to take part against him, yet unready to speak up in his defense. Doubtless my silence went for ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... something like this: "See, Lord, I am dull and stupid, and care for nothing: take thou care of everything for me, heart and mind and all. I leave all to thee. Wilt thou not at length draw me out of this my frozen wintery state? Let me not shrink from fresh life and thought and duty, or be unready to come out of the shell of my sickness when thou sendest for me. I wait thy will. I wait even the light that I feel now as if I dared not encounter for weariness of ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... singularly ungainly saddle, moreover, with holster-like appendages to it—while he watched her, wholly charmed, curious and shy, carried indeed a little out of himself, waiting for her to make further disclosures, since he felt absurdly slow and unready ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... deft, lively, swift, brisk, active, spry. Antonyms: slow, sluggish, clumsy, dilatory, unready, dull, heavy. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the Presbyters. Some were clapped up to-day, and strict watch is kept in the City by the train-bands, and letters of a plot are taken. God preserve us! for all these things bode very ill. So home, and after going to welcome home Sir W. Pen, who was unready, going to bed, I staid with him a little while, and so to my lodging and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Only the events since your arrival here. The rest counts for nothing. We are all on the ground here and I propose to act quickly. I learned some matters in Calcutta which have greatly enlightened me." The facile tongue of the renegade was slow to do the bidding of his unready brain. "Damme! But she's a cool one!" the ex-officer concluded, as he caught his breath. But, conscious of her watchful eye, he related all his adventures, with a judicious reserve as to Justine Delande. The burning eyes of Berthe Louison were steadily ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... Goldsmith according to his true merits as a writer and thinker, and he was repaid by an affectionate devotion that was never worn out during the later years when the Dictator was too ready to make a butt of the unready Irishman. Goldsmith now joined the group of literary friends who gathered frequently at the shop of Tom Davies, the bookseller, where Johnson and Boswell first met, and he was one of the famous Literary Club which grew ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... girls of a club; the president warned me in her invitation that the children were exceptionally undisciplined, but my previous experiences with similar gatherings led me to interpret her words with a moderation which left me totally unready for the reality. When I faced my audience, I saw a squirming jumble of faces, backs of heads, and the various members of many small bodies,—not a person in the room was paying the slightest attention to me; the president's introduction could scarcely be ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... Principle which you profess to un- [25] derstand and love, demonstrates Truth. Never absent from your post, never off guard, never ill-humored, never unready to work for God,—is obedience; being "faith- ful over a few things." If in one instance obedience be lacking, you lose the scientific rule and ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... or two out of the few who got back to the German lines. Most of the Prussians stayed in the ploughed field. Karl Heinz's scream had frozen the blood of the English soldiers, but it had also ruined the major's plans. He and his men, caught all unready, clumsy with the burdens that they carried, were shot to pieces; hardly a score of them returned. The rest of the force were attended to by an English burying party. According to custom the dead men were searched before they were buried, and some singular relies of the campaign were ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... unready or unwilling to execute the sentence—for she had bitterly resented Arthur's secession from nursery rule—the boy clung desperately with both his arms round his step- mother's waist, and the shriek of "Mother mother!" half fury, half ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... school he cannot grasp the broader and deeper meanings of religion; but he can during this period be led into the doing of right acts and deeds, and thus have his religious habits started. At a time when his brain is yet unripe, and hence unready for the more difficult truths or the more exalted emotions of religion, the child is at his best in the matter of habit-forming. For habits grounded in early childhood are more easily formed and more deeply imbedded than those acquired ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... late? One fierce blow at the unsuspecting horseman at his side, one cry to his French troops, one desperate charge upon the unready lines before him, and these rebellious Barons might rue the day they dared to thwart his plans! A bolder hand might have turned the game even at that point. Had it been a Richard there! the cup of liberty might have been dashed from England's ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... of strange, dark, desirous things was the look she encountered. Abruptly he rose—he was coming toward her, and she struggled suddenly to her feet, battling against the cold terror which held her dumb and unready. She flung one arm out before her and found it grasped by hands that were hot and burning. The touch shot her with a fierce rage that cleared her ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... eyes, heavy-lidded, twinkled under their bushy brows with a queer, kind cynicism. As a young man he had sown many a wild oat; but he had also worked and made money in business; he had, in fact, burned the candle at both ends; but he had never been unready to do his fellows a good turn. He had a passion for driving, and his reckless method of pursuing this art had caused him to be nicknamed: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... caricature or the bewilderments of a dream. She felt as if in some long-previous existence she had seen this man as he dismounted at the gate and came up the path with his saddle-bags over his arm. But it was not until he mustered an unready, unwilling smile, that had of good-will and geniality so slight an intimation that it was like a spasmodic grimace, did she perceive how time had deepened tendencies to traits, how the inmost thought and the secret sentiment had been chiselled into the ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... person, and in the flower of his age—yet inanimate in expression, dull-eyed, heavy-browed, inactive and sluggish in all his motions, and so slow in resolution, that the soubriquet of one of his ancestors was conferred upon him, and he was very generally called Athelstane the Unready. His friends, and he had many, who, as well as Cedric, were passionately attached to him, contended that this sluggish temper arose not from want of courage, but from mere want of decision; others alleged that his hereditary vice of drunkenness had obscured his faculties, never of a very acute ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... four gaping watchers in the stockade on the headland beheld the great ship creep forward under the rising cloud of smoke, her mainsail unfurled to increase her steering way, and go about close-hauled to bring her larboard guns to bear upon the unready fort. ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... back before Etheldred the Unready wants me," he answered, bounding off with an elasticity that caused his mother to say the boy was made of india-rubber; and then putting his head in by the window to say, "By-the-bye, if there's any pudding owing to me, that little chorister fellow of ours, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... from the base of the hill El-Safra, oozing out in trickling veins bedded in soft dark mud. It can be greatly increased by opening the fountains, and economized by a roofing of mat: we tried this plan, which only surprised the unready Arab. After swinging to the left bank and running for a few yards, it sinks in the sand; yet on both sides there are signs of labour, showing that, even of late years, the valley has seen better ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... due, and since the organisation of these forces is uniform this "more or less" of readiness exists in precise proportion to the sense of duty which animates the several Armies. Where the spirit of duty and self-sacrifice is low the troops are unready and inefficient; where, as in Prussia, these qualities, by the training of a whole century, have become instinctive, troops really are ready to the last button, and might be poured down upon any one of her neighbours with such rapidity that the very first collision must ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... too. It was silly to be unready for surrender. She realized that if she lost him. . ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... letters, he was always esteemed as a most sympathetic companion; timid, reserved, unready, if taken by surprise, but highly cultivated, and ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... Purbeck Island. It is a picturesque ruin, and full of interesting associations. It was here that Edward, the dupe of the wily Dunstan, was murdered in the year 979, at the instigation of Elfrida, the widow of Edgar, and Edward's mother-in-law, who wished to have her own son, poor "Ethelred the Unready," upon the throne. A far more interesting event connected with it was the defence made by Lady Bankes, the wife of the owner, in 1643, against the Parliamentary forces. It must have been in those days a very strong place, for Lady Bankes, with her daughter and ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... everything. He was of an unreserve concerning his ignorance which his solicitor felt sometimes almost struck one in the face. Now and then it quite made one jump. He was singularly free from any vestige of personal vanity. He was also singularly unready to take offense. To the head of the firm of Palford & Grimby, who was not accustomed to lightness of manner, and inclined to the view that a person who made a joke took rather a liberty with him, his tendency to be jocular, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... like all the vehicles and mouthpieces of radicalism, other than those of the Socialists, unready to take the first step necessary in any conflict; namely, to decide who is the enemy. Unless defended by definite groups in the community, "the rule of property," could be ended in a single election. Nor can the group that maintains capitalist government ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... such good people as his father and mother, but it was not the notion of shame to himself that greatly troubled him; it was the new feeling about his mother. He did not think of her as one to be blamed, but as one too trusting, and so deceived; he never felt unready to stand up for her. What troubled him was that she must always know that unspoken-of something between her and her son, that his mother must feel shame before him. He could not bear to think of it. If only she would ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... said in conclusion, "has been to point out how seriously our national military strength falls behind our requirements, and how unready we always are, in spite of our huge expenditure. My second object was to show that what we want most is, not a great and expensive increase of the regular army, but an endeavour to make the best possible use of what we have already, by proper organization and by utilizing to the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... little unready, cast about at his storied halls; any illusion to the "exposure" of the objects they so solidly sheltered was obviously unpleasant to him. But then it was as if he found at a stroke both his own reassurance and his daughter's. "How ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... mist. When last seen, one of them was dismasted and the other was laboring in grave peril. The Revenge loomed as a spectral shape while Blackbeard was endeavoring to get her running free in pursuit of the Plymouth Adventure. But slovenly, reckless seamanship had caught him unready. His sails were blowing to ribbons, ropes flying at loose ends, and it was with great difficulty that the vessel could be made to mind ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... hold more than 1,200 unwounded British prisoners, a number that bears a disgraceful proportion to the casualty lists, and a very unsatisfactory relation to the number of Dutchmen that we have taken. All this is mainly the result of being unready. That we are unready is largely due to those in England who have endeavoured by every means in their power to hamper and obstruct the Government, who have scoffed at the possibility of the Boers becoming the aggressors, and who have represented every precaution for the defence of the colonies as ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... had been pressing their attack on Cyprus and were besieging the city of Nicosia. If the Christians had been moved by any united spirit they could have relieved Nicosia and struck a heavy blow at the Turkish fleet, which lay unready and stripped of its men in the harbor. But Gian Doria, who inherited from his great uncle his great dislike of Venetians, and who probably had secret instructions from his master, Philip II, to help as little ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... the throne of England on the death of his father Ethelred the Unready in 1016, but reigned only seven months; he struggled bravely, and at first successfully, against Canute the Dane, but being defeated, the kingdom ultimately was divided between ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... little disconcerted at the unexpectedness of the meeting, and returned the salutation in a confused way. The attempt which he had made to prevent Lord Blandamer from entering the choir was fresh in his memory, and he stammered some unready excuses. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... denied me. Our aim in the world is beauty and happiness; but we are late in learning that they exist in the will and imagination, and not in this or that accredited and venerable thing or circumstance that is mechanically obtruded on our unready attention. If you were put down in the Garden of Eden, and told that you might stay there an hour and no more, what would you do? How would you "improve" your time? Would you run to and fro, and visit the ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... was King Ethelred nicknamed The Unready. The name stands not as meaning that he was unprepared, but that he was without counsel, or "redeless". His advisers were few and, for the most part, traitorous and unworthy; they swayed him and directed him just as it suited their own ends, and he had not the manly strength of will ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... to the no small alarm of all spectators.[521] Unfortunately, however, the intellectual and moral development of the young prince had by no means kept pace with the growth of his physical powers. The sluggishness of his dull and unready comprehension had, at an earlier date, been noticed by the Venetian Marino Cavalli, while, with a courtier's flattery, he likened him to those autumnal fruits that are more tardy in ripening, but are of better quality ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... vehemently, as if his idea was to take her in his arms and stifle her outbreak that way. But something in her eyes, cold, unready, yet ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... bush, without being observed by the sleepy guards, made a sudden rush with loud yells among the cattle, and succeeded in driving off ten cows with which they swam the river without a shot being fired by the unready soldiers. (On this occasion the guards must have run away at the first onset ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... island the last great Prince of the Saxon race, Edward, son of Ethelred the Unready, found Dunstan's little brotherhood of Benedictine monks, who were living in mud huts round a small stone chapel. Out of this insignificant beginning grew a mighty monastery, the West Minster, dowered with ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... all at breakfast, with the same unready eyes and lips that Mr. Linden had seen before. It was odd how Faith seemed to have put off the full realization of Thursday till Thursday came. After breakfast she was making her escape, but was detained before she reached the staircase. What it was that Mr. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... me out and kindled the ashes to fire, so that I cheered myself thereat. And since now the flame is like to go out again, and the Master's teaching to be choked and concealed beneath that same ash-mountain, I pray God that He inspire my unready quill to set down a true picture of the Man ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... among the "sand hills of Jutland." And so business continued brisk with this curiously matched pirate firm—a giant and a boy—until, under the cliffs of Kinlimma, in Friesland, hasty word came to the boy viking that the English king, Ethelred "The Unready," was calling for the help of all sturdy fighters to win back his heritage and crown from young King Cnut, or Canute the Dane, whose father had seized the throne of England. Quick to respond to an appeal ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... motion of concupiscence, so unguarded in thine outward senses, so often entangled in many vain fancies, so much inclined to outward things, so negligent of internal; so ready to laughter and dissoluteness, so unready to weeping and contrition; so prone to ease and indulgence of the flesh, so dull to zeal and fervour; so curious to hear novelties and behold beauties, so loth to embrace things humble and despised; so desirous to have many things, ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... Madame de la Baudraye, side by side in the rickety old chaise, had recrossed the Loire, they both were unready to speak. In these circumstances, the first words that break the silence are full ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the Unready, and afterwards of Canute, designed and embroidered many church vestments and altar-cloths, and Editha, wife of Edward the Confessor, embroidered the King's ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... prejudiced idea that if Sile were to meet one of them he would be in a manner helpless—a mere ignorant, green, untaught, unready, white boy, not the son of a Nez Perce chief, nor skilled in the wiles and ways of Western warfare. As for himself, he felt quite confident that all he needed wherewith to meet and overcome anything or anybody ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... shall I have no longer respite? I may say Death giveth no warning: To think on thee, it maketh my heart sick, For all unready is my book of reckoning. But twelve year and I might have abiding, My counting book I would make so clear, That my reckoning I should not need to fear. Wherefore, Death, I pray thee, for God's mercy, Spare me till I be provided ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... amiable lady bids us welcome, with a heartiness as though she were only too glad to see us, although it would appear as if her hands were full enough of housework already, without the additional care of looking after a couple of helpless, unready new-chums. But strangers are so rare up here, that much must be made of them when they do come; therefore, the fatted calf is killed, so to speak, and we are ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... themselves the best measures to secure the peace of the world. Alas! the whole of the fabric was destroyed, the fair prospects hopelessly clouded over, by the intemperate ambition of the Kaiser, who, just because he believed that the Balance of Power was favourable to himself, that Russia was unready, that France was involved in serious domestic trouble, that England was on the brink of civil war, set fire to the magazine and engineered the present ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... concluded, his father said: "Truly, Edgar, you have been fortunate indeed, which is another way of saying that you have skilfully grasped the opportunities that presented themselves. The man who bemoans ill-fortune is the man too apathetic, too unready, or too cowardly to grasp opportunity. The man who is called fortunate is, on the other hand, he who never lets a chance slip by, who is cool, resolute, and determined. During the time that you have been away you have made friends ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... this stammering, purple-faced gentleman come to prepare her? Her heart gave a cry of anguish, while her eyes rested with apparent calmness on Sir Felix's unhappy face. Of course it was Mustapha. Would he never speak? Why could they not have found a better messenger than this unready inarticulate gentleman? ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... and not think; content that another should think for him, and tell him what was the mind of his Father in heaven. Again I say, let the person who can be so satisfied be so satisfied; I have not to trouble myself with him. That he can be content with it, argues him unready to receive better. So long as he can believe false things concerning God, he is such as is capable of believing them—with how much or how little of blame, God knows. Opinion, right or wrong, will do nothing to save him. I would that he thought ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... house, like a being lethargic after long revelry, clad in torn and stained garments, seemed unready for mirth. Andrew was highly antagonistic. The hound had bristled, growling, at ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... the science of navigation sufficiently to obtain them was a problem. Though he held a British navigator's license, he did not appear to be an Englishman. None of us ever knew, I think, from what country he originally came. His rough, mumbling, unready speech might have been picked up in any of the seaports of the English-speaking world. His manners smacked of the forecastle, and he was altogether so difficult to classify that I used to toy with the theory that he had murdered the real Captain ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... address. But the young man's bodily presence, as now close beside her, exercised an emotional influence quite unforeseen and unreckoned with. Under it her will wavered. She ceased to see her way clearly, to be sure of herself. She grew timid, bewildered, unready both of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... regiments of horse, biting his lip till the blood ran down his chin. Leslie thought to surprise Cromwell; Cromwell surprised Leslie, crossed the Broxburn on the low level, before dawn, and drove into the Scots who were all unready, the matches of their muskets being wet and unlighted. The centre made a good stand, but a flank charge by English cavalry cut up the Scots foot, and Leslie fled with the nobles, gentry, and mounted men. In killed, wounded, and ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... in the dusk of a wet night of early June, with the sea in a tumble and the wind blowing fretfully from the west of north, that the mail-boat made our harbour. For three weeks we had kept watch for her, but in the end we were caught unready—the lookouts in from the Watchman, my father's crew gone home, ourselves at evening prayer in the room where my mother lay abed. My father stopped dead in his petition when the first hoarse, muffled blast of the ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... arranged our bivouac. When the sun sets in the East, it is like turning off the gas; you are left in darkness suddenly, without any intervening twilight. As a fact one knows this perfectly well; but habit is stronger than reason, and day after day I went on being perplexed, and often unready for the "early-closing" system. ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... proves that "make-up" of a certain kind flourished at the Restoration. "To the King's house," says Pepys, "and there going in met with Knipp, and she took us up into the tireing-rooms;[A] and to the women's shift, where Nell (Gwyne) was dressing herself, and was all unready, and is very pretty, prettier than I thought. (Imagine the gloating eyes of the old hypocrite.) And into the scene-room, and there sat down, and she gave us fruit: and here I read the questions to Knipp, while ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... and degrees; pursue some few principles, which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... with a rather bewildered expression, but his large gray eyes were full of gratitude for her supposed kindness, even if his unready tongue was slow ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... horseback. Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short, and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with the world, for his education was merely reading, writing, and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day. His time was employed ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... ground, waiting for the resurrection time, the call of God to come forth in beauty! What a difference it would make in the working, and getting, and hustling, and learning, and enjoying if everybody remembered how near the lying-quiet time might be! How unready some might be to lie down and feel that it was all over! How much difference it must make what one had done with the time over there in the city, when the stopping time came! How much better it would be if one could live remembering the ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... of the individual and which therefore are in accord with his stage of development and his experience. Forced attention is necessary when the neurone tracts used by the attention are for some reason unready to act. Situations to which attention is given through fear of punishment, or when the activity involves a choice of ideal ends as opposed to personal desires, or when some instinctive tendency must be inhibited or its free activity is blocked or interfered ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... were unready. The cruisers, on duty as sentinels, were not where they should have been, and so the gallant Pisani scuttled the hulks across the harbor entrance and caught the bold marauders like rats in a trap. The fleet of the enemy was paralyzed, particularly as another river's mouth, ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... wall overcome by the horror of the conviction which had burst upon him, and unnerved by the imminence of the peril. At all times he was an unready man, I fancy, more fit, courage apart, for the college than the field; and now he gave way to despair. Perhaps the thought of his wife unmanned him. Perhaps the excitement through which he had already gone tended to stupefy him, or the suddenness ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... naval superiority the results she might have expected in this war—the first act in a forty years' drama—and they give military officers a lesson on the necessity of having their minds prepared and stocked, by study of the conditions of war in their own day, if they would not be found unready and perhaps disgraced in the hour of battle.[89] It is not to be supposed that so many English seamen misbehaved through so vulgar and rare a defect as mere cowardice; it was unpreparedness of mind and ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... I have no lenger respite? I may say Death giveth no warning: To think on thee it maketh my heart sick; For all unready is my book of reckoning: But, [for] twelve year and I might have abiding, My counting-book I would make so clear, That my reckoning I should not need to fear. Wherefore, Death, I pray thee for God's mercy, Spare me, till I be provided ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... a pause, not because Ringfield was unready on these occasions nor because of any fear lest his special kind of intercessory gastronomic prayer might fail to carry conviction with it, but on account of the intrusion of two belated arrivals down ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... The Germans were in full preparedness except that their rifle was inferior to the French chassepot; they were in overwhelmingly superior numerical strength in every encounter save two with French regular troops, and they had on their banners the prestige of Sadowa. Their adversaries were utterly unready for a great struggle; the French army was in a wretched state in every sense of the word; indeed, after Sedan there remained hardly any regulars able to take the field. In August 1805 Napoleon's ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... purpose, to judge from the number of snail-shells to be found about; and yet the gardeners complain quite as much of damage to their gardens, especially in the fruit season, by Blackbirds and Thrushes, as the English gardeners and seem equally unready to give these birds any credit for the immense destruction of snails, which, if left alone, would scarcely have left a green ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... became President, his instinctive commitment to the necessity of being prepared had been stoutly reinforced by his experience in what he called "the war of America the Unready." His first message to Congress was a long and exhaustive paper, dealing with many matters of importance. But almost one-fifth of it was devoted to the army and the navy. "It is not possible," he said, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... great original superiority conferred by our geographical nearness and immense resources,—due, in other words, to our natural advantages, and not to our intelligent preparations,—the United States is wofully unready, not only in fact but in purpose, to assert in the Caribbean and Central America a weight of influence proportioned to the extent of her interests. We have not the navy, and, what is worse, we are not willing to have the navy, that will weigh seriously in any disputes with those nations whose ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... family. Celestina looked quite composed; though so very quiet and silent a child, she was neither shy nor awkward. She was too little taken up with herself to have the foolish ideas which make so many children bashful and unready: it never entered her head that other people were either thinking of or looking at her. So she was free to notice what she could do and when she was wanted, and her simple kindly little heart was always pleased to render ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... fine, and well supplied with handsome books. I find him speak very slightly of the late victory: dislikes their staying with the fleet up their coast; believing that the Dutch will come out in fourteen days, and then we with our unready fleet, by reason of some of the ships being maymed, shall be in bad condition to fight them upon their own coast: is much dissatisfied with the great number of men, and their fresh demands of twenty-four victualling ships, they going out the ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... enemy at the outset of the war had his fleet in two principal divisions: one still somewhat formless and as yet unready, but of very considerable power, was in the ports of the Peninsula; the other—Cervera's—at the Cape Verde Islands, a possession of Portugal. The latter was really exceptional in its qualities, as our Italian author has said. It was exceptional ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... how it was done!" The wondering exclamation forced itself from Thorpe's unready lips. He bent forward a little, and took a new visual hold, as it were, ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... France. On the night of August 6 he received telegraphic news of the Battles of Woerth and Forbach, whereupon he exclaimed, "Poor Emperor! I pity him, but I have had a lucky escape." Austria also drew back, and thus left France face to face with the naked truth that she stood alone and unready before a united and triumphant Germany, able to pour treble her own forces through the open portals of Lorraine and ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... honest fairy for his care, and the child for his beauty, and the mother for a happy woman. In brief, christened he was, at the which all this good cheer was doubled, which made most of the women so wise, that they forgot to make themselves unready, and so lay in their clothes; and none of them next day could remember the child's name but the clerk, and he may thank his book for it, or else it had been utterly lost. So much for the birth ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... expect to change mankind at once, or even "in three generations," by arrangement of groups and series, or flourish of trumpets for attractive industry. If these attempts are made by unready men, they ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... here; some of them coarse and ludicrous enough: the real surname being seldom noticed, but the nickname sometimes introduced, with an alias, even in a law instrument. And why are not Poden, Muz, Listing, &c., as good as "the Bald," "the Fat," "the Simple," &c., of the French kings; or "the Unready," "the Bastard," "Lackland," "Longshanks," &c., of our own? A lad named Edmund, some generations back, attended his master's sons to Rochdale school, who latinised his name into "Edmundus;" then ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... battles is at hand. But be of good cheer, for I shall not die till the end of the fight, and once more I shall be a man's help unto you. Now the first of the Romans we meet shall not be able to stand before us, for they shall be unready, and when their men are gotten ready and are fighting with us grimly, ye of the second battle shall hear the war-token, and shall fall on, and they shall be dismayed when they see so many fresh men come into the fight; yet shall they stand stoutly; ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... resources were unready, unwieldy, unknown. The first embarrassment was the panic ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... some conversation on the affairs of Christendom, they broke up for that time. The general was not negligent in sending his demands in writing to the noblemen, as they were mostly drawn up before coming ashore, being not unready for ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... little cloud in the east like a man's hand today, and rather like that mailed fist which our sweet peaceful friend in Germany is so fond of talking about. But it will spread over the sky, I tell you, like some tropical storm. France is unready, Russia is unready; only Germany and her marionette, Austria, the strings of which she ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... the Earl in the same low tone, "that there are quiet corners in Heaven where weary men and women may lie down and rest a while at our Lord's feet. I feel unfit to take a place all at once in the angelic choir. Not unready to praise—I mean not that—only too weary, just at first, to care ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... Unready, from his accession, after the murder of his innocent brother, until the scene depicted in the nineteenth chapter of the tale, was a tragedy ever deepening. Its details will seem dark enough as read herein, but how utterly dark they were can only be appreciated by those who study the contemporary ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... though interesting, cumber science wofully.' This is sheer nonsense, and comes very ill from an observer whose successes in science have been due entirely to the employment of methods of observation which would have had no existence had others been as unready to think out the meaning of observed facts as he appears ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... will forget all the misery that human folly has so recently allotted you. Oh! listen to me, my prince. I do not jest. I have a heart, and mind, and soul, and can read your own,—aye, even to its depths. I will not take you unready for your task, in order to cast you into the crucible of my own desires, of my caprice, or my ambition. Let it be all or nothing. You are chilled and galled, sick at heart, overcome by excess of the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the South with many Southern pastors, and nowhere have we heard more appreciative words respecting our work than from good people of the South who have acquainted themselves with what we are doing and how we are doing it. That multitudes are still unable to see and unready to prophesy does not count. The day of appreciative recognition has not fully come, but it has dawned, and will ...
— American Missionary, Volume 50, No. 8, August, 1896 • Various
... in preparing the reports of his battles, which had been called for by the Commander-in-Chief. They were not compiled in their entirety by his own hand. He was no novice at literary composition, and his pen, as his letter-book shows, was not that of an unready writer. He had a good command of language, and that power of clear and concise expression which every officer in command of a large force, a position naturally entailing a large amount of confidential correspondence, must necessarily possess. But the task now set ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... had thwarted Germany's murderous plan against an unready world, were a sad little army when they reached the Yser about mid October. It was not what they had endured that contributed most to break their spirit; but what they ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... instant decision, men whose mental equipment is all in order, ready to be used on the instant. Yes and no, right and wrong, we must have them labelled and ready to pack to go anywhere, to do anything at any time, or to know why we refuse to do it, if it is something we will not do. Ethelred the Unready died helpless a thousand years ago. The unready are still with us, but the strenuous century will grant ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... did not know those things at that time of life, though I thought it right for every man to be brave and good; and I could not help asking who the young lady was, as if that were part of the heroism. The Sawyer, who never was unready for a joke, of however ancient quality, gave a great wink at Firm (which I failed to understand), and asked him how much the young lady was worth. He expected that Firm would say, "Five hundred thousand dollars"—which was about her value, I believe—and Uncle Sam wanted me to hear it; not that ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... the yard the sun was gay upon the thinly frosted-stones, but in the shadow of the garage the glass and brass of seventy or eighty cars glowed in a veiled bloom of polish. Only the Rochet-Schneider, which had been to Verdun, stood unready for the inspection, coated from wheel to hood with white Meuse mud. There was nothing to be done with her until she had been under ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... examine his own conscience when he finds himself unready. For all such as through the goodness of God have received faith, and then wrestling with sin, consent not unto it, but are sorry for it when they fall, and do not abide nor dwell in the same, but rise ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... think there is no hale man, howsoever desperate and careless of life, but who, faced with sudden, violent death, will not of instinct blench and find himself mighty unready to take the leap into that dark unknown whose dread doth fright us one and all; howbeit thus was it with me, for now as I stared from the pistol muzzle to the merciless eyes behind them, I, that had hitherto esteemed death no hardship, lay there in dumb and sweating panic, and, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... accomplished his exploration, hastened back to Stadacone, where he set about making preparations for spending the winter. A fort was hastily built at the mouth of the St. Croix. But the exiles were unready for the violent season that soon closed in upon them, almost burying their fort in drifting snow and casing the ships in an armour of glistening ice. Pent up by the biting frost, and eking out a wretched existence on salted food, their condition grew deplorable. A terrible scurvy assailed ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... delinquent from so high an office—this day, so much wished, has seemed to me, to the last moment, so distant, that now—now that it Is actually arrived, it takes me as if I had never thought of it before—it comes upon me all unexpected, and finds me unready!" ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... 1006, probably built to stop the passage of the Danish pirate boats. Indeed, Snorro Sturleson, the Icelandic historian, tells us that when the Danes invaded England in 1008, in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (ominous name!), they entrenched themselves in Southwark, and held the fortified bridge, which had pent-houses, bulwarks, and shelter-turrets. Ethelred's ally, Olaf, however, determined to drive the Danes from the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... require to have mass formation to keep their courage up to the necessary pitch. And still better they had the training that would make them reliable in judgment when sudden and unexpected conditions arose. Perry's policy to have a goodly number of men always in training at headquarters so that unready recruits should not have to go out to face emergencies, was being approved by events as highly statesman-like. But he was right in constantly keeping before the Government the need for increasing the numbers of the Force, because, although the men ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... into Abbott's always unready ear, "That isn't La Gonizetti. Wonder what this means? La Gonizetti is much more of a woman than this one, and she doesn't wear a mask, or much of anything else. La Gonizetti doesn't care who sees her. Why, this is ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... before at Port Hudson. But against a weight, a volume, and a velocity of water such as had to be encountered here, it was now plainly seen that something else would have to be tried. No emergency, however great or sudden, ever finds a man of his stamp unready. As soon therefore as the collapse showed him the defect in his first plan, he instantly set about remedying it by dividing the weight of water to be contended with. At the upper fall three wing-dams were constructed. Just above the rocks a stone crib was laid on the south side, and directly ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... some curiosity as to what would come of the proposed consultation between unready Oscar and precise Mr. Sebright—and I accordingly arranged to take my walk alone, towards eight o'clock that evening, on the road that led to the ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... bond-slave in Esthonia; then come his adventures as a Viking and his raids upon the coasts of Scotland and England, his victorious battle against the English at Maldon in Essex, his being bought off by Ethelred the Unready, and his conversion to Christianity. He then returns to Pagan Norway, is accepted as king, and converts his people ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... evaded the question,—wished to leave the subject. Perhaps he did not regard the poor old schoolmaster as a practical judge of practical matters. All his life he had called him thriftless and unready. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... exposure. His father after all had stood for the living world to him. Whilst his father lived Gerald was not responsible for the world. But now his father was passing away, Gerald found himself left exposed and unready before the storm of living, like the mutinous first mate of a ship that has lost his captain, and who sees only a terrible chaos in front of him. He did not inherit an established order and a living idea. The whole unifying idea of mankind seemed to be dying with his father, the centralising ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... for wall. Be brave and strong, I say, for otherwise we are but dead men." When Hengist ceased heartening his comrades, the knights arrayed them for the battle. They moved against the Britons as speedily as their horses might bear them, for they hoped to find them naked and unready, and to take them unawares. The Britons so misdoubted their adversary that they watched in their armour, both day and night. As soon as the king knew that the heathen advanced to give battle, he ordered his host in a plain that seemed good for his purpose. He supported the spearmen ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... not see this. All he saw, in the blinding rage which suddenly possessed him, was a horse down, unready for duty, and beside her a horse standing, ready for duty, but restrained by the other. Stringing out a volley of oaths, he stepped to the side of the mare and jerked at her head, but she refused stubbornly to get ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... grave, he was somewhat too young and of too noble a mind to fall upon that stupid symptom, observable in divers persons near their journey's end, and which may be reckoned among the mortal symptoms of their last disease; that is, to become more narrow-minded, miserable, and tenacious, unready to part with anything when they are ready to part with all, and afraid to want when they have no time to spend; meanwhile physicians, who know that many are mad but in a single depraved imagination, and one prevalent decipiency, and that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Gravina's Spanish fleet and a French battleship, the "Aigle." Again the Spaniards were mostly unready for sea, but six of them and the "Aigle" joined Villeneuve when he sailed out into the Atlantic steering for the West Indies, now at the head of eighteen ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... kept on working for his people, and it was in the fatigue of travelling from one plague-stricken town to another that he caught the pest. Among all the kings of Christendom there was never a better, or nobler, or more luckless, an Alfred with the fortune of "Unready" Ethelred. ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... honoured to meet you, Mr. Mallock," he said. "I have had His Majesty's instructions very particular in your regard. I am ashamed that you should find me so unready; but I will not keep you above five minutes, if you will sit down for ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... years, you have seen twelve fools bamboozled by a knave, you have heard a friend of yours grossly insulted, and you ask me what's the matter." The car swung round a corner, and Lady Touchstone, who was unready, heeled over with a cry. "I wish Mason wouldn't do that," she added testily, dabbing at her toque. "So subversive of dignity. What was I saying? Oh yes. A change. We'd better ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... have his pupil easy to please, but ill to satisfy; ready to enjoy, unready to embrace; keen to discover beauty, slow to say, "Here I ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... paces off, the dyspeptic Judge was discussing 'the situation' with his host—a large unwieldy man, so nervous of his own bulk and unready wit that only the discerning few discovered the sensitive, friendly spirit very completely hidden under a bushel. Roy, who had liked him at sight, felt vaguely sorry for him. He seemed a fish out of water in his own home; overwhelmed ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... initially expensive but ultimately repaying, apparatus, it effected enormous economies in wholesale production and distribution. Before the new methods of business the old gilds stood as helpless, as unready, as bowmen in the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... constable, not at all satisfied with this abrupt close of the conversation, but too unready to prolong it. He went on his own way slowly, looking back often, till he saw the door open, after which he seemed better satisfied, and ambled out ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Abbeville, and then more drinks. And so on. The atmosphere was warm and genial, but Peter wondered inwardly why he liked it, and he did not like it so much that Pennell's "Well, what about it? Let's go on, Graham, shall we?" found him unready. The two said a general good-bye, promised madame to look in again, and ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... full vision of the Divine Glory and Goodness and Love is reserved for the final stage of existence in Heaven where nothing that defileth shall enter in, whereas this Intermediate Life is one with many imperfections and faults, quite unready for that vision of glory. But for all that St. Paul believed that the presence of Christ was vouchsafed in that waiting land, in some such way we may suppose as on earth long ago. Only an imperfect revelation of the Son of God. And yet—and yet—oh, how one longs for it! Think of being near Him, ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... is broken down," yet few are aware that the words are translated from an old Norse song, and fewer still could say who broke down the bridge. The story goes that this was accomplished by the other Olaf, afterwards known as St. Olaf. He and his Vikings had allied themselves with Etheldred the Unready against the Danes, who held the Thames above London Bridge. The bridge itself, which in those days was a rough wooden structure, was densely packed with armed men, prepared to resist the advance of the combined fleets. But Olaf drove ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... sun, You can drink wine, and eat: Good-bye. I must gird myself and run, 10 Though with unready ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... until He come whose right it is, and I will give it Him.' Let as pray for His coming. And in the mean time have we a care that our loins be girded about, and our lamps burning; that when He cometh and knocketh, we may open unto Him immediately. We shall be unready to open immediately, if our hands be overfull of worldly matters. It were not well to have to say to Him, 'Lord, let me lay down this high post, and that public work, and these velvet robes, and this sweet cup, and this bitter one—and then I will open unto Thee.' I had rather mine hand ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... whose name we have so often had occasion to mention as the builder of castles and churches, founded the collegiate church of St. Alkmund; and Athelstan established a mint here. It is evident that the "Athelstan the Unready," mentioned in Ivanhoe, must have very much degenerated from the ancestor who established a mint ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... action. In 1776 he was suddenly spurred to decide by the circumstance that Barrington had written to propose a joint work on natural history. "If I publish at all," said Gilbert White to his nephew, "I shall come forth by myself." In 1780 he is still unready: "Were it not for want of a good amanuensis, I think I should make more progress." He was now sixty years of age. Eight years later he was preparing the Index, and at last, in the autumn of 1789, the volume ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... maid turned as white as the snow which hung on the rocks above her, and she looked at the water and then at me, and she cried, "Oh dear! oh dear!" And then she began to sob aloud, being so young and unready. But I drew her behind the withy-bushes, and close down to the water, where it was quiet and shelving deep, ere it came to the lip of the chasm. Here they could not see either of us from the upper valley, and might ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... great sexual centers are not even awake. True, even in a child of three, rudimentary sex throws strange shadows on the wall, in its approach from the distance. But these are only an uneasy intrusion from the as-yet-uncreated, unready biological centers. The great sexual centers of the hypogastric plexus, and the immensely powerful sacral ganglion are slowly prepared, developed in a kind of prenatal gestation during childhood before puberty. But even an unborn child ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... immediately succeeding the Revolution, there were large bodies of the population of these same settlements, including very many of their popular leaders, whose own attitude towards the Union was, if anything, even more blameworthy. They were clamorous about their rights, and were not unready to use veiled threats of disunion when they deemed these rights infringed; but they showed little appreciation of their own duties to the Union. For certain of the positions which they assumed no excuse can be offered. They harped continually on the feebleness of the Federal authorities, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a small British population; but the riverine colony of Canada proper, with its centre at Quebec, was still purely French, and was ruled by martial law. Accustomed to a despotic system, and not yet reconciled to the British supremacy, the French settlers were obviously unready for self-government. But the Quebec Act of 1774, by securing the maintenance of the Roman Catholic religion and of French civil law, ensured the loyalty of the French; and this Act is also noteworthy as ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... king, though an honest and well-intentioned man, was totally unfit to guide a country through a dangerous crisis. His courage was passive, his manners were heavy, dull, and shy, and, though steadily industrious, he was slow of comprehension and unready in action; and reformation was the more difficult because to abolish the useless court offices would have been utter starvation to many of their holders, who had nothing but their pensions to live upon. Yet there was a general passion for reform; all ranks alike looked to some ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all perhaps was presented by the orthodox camp. For, in proportion as the Modernist attack developed, was the revival of faith among those hostile to it, or unready for it. For the first time in their lives, religion became interesting—thrilling even—to thousands of persons for whom it had long lost all real savour. Fierce question and answer, the hot cut and thrust of argument, the passion of honest fight on equal terms—without ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was our condition, and these were our habits, when we were rudely awakened from our dreams of peace by the roar of cannon and the clash of arms. What wonder that the startling summons found us all unready for such a crisis? What wonder that our early preparations to confront the issue thus forced upon us without note of warning were hasty, incomplete, and quite inadequate to the emergency? Is it discreditable to us that we were slow to appreciate the bitterness and intensity of that hatred, which, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... and spoke to the postboy and gave him some money, and patted the neck of his horse. Whether he made some movement that scared it or not, there was very nearly a nasty accident, for the beast started violently, and the postilion being unready was thrown and lost his fee, as he found afterwards, and the chaise lost some paint on the gateposts, and the wheel went over the man's foot who was taking out the baggage. When Lord Saul came up the steps into the ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... me down upon a green bank-side, Skirting the smooth edge of a gentle river, Whose waters seemed unwillingly to glide, Like parting friends who linger while they sever; Enforced to go, yet seeming still unready, Backward they wind their way in many ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... "I'll be sure the death o' Black Dennis Nolan. Aye, so help me Saint Peter. I'll send 'im to hell, all suddent un' unready, for the black deed ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... what I expected and I was unready. I stammered in my reply. 'It's because I am a patriot that I want peace. I think that ... ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... talk is like the driest of all imaginable dry champagnes. Sleight of hand and inimitable quickness are the qualities by which he lives. Athelred, on the other hand, presents you with the spectacle of a sincere and somewhat slow nature thinking aloud. He is the most unready man I ever knew to shine in conversation. You may see him sometimes wrestle with a refractory jest for a minute or two together, and perhaps fail to throw it in the end. And there is something singularly engaging, often instructive, in the simplicity ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... let us suppose, of our second month of war. The fleet has been neglected, and has been overwhelmed, unready and unprepared. We have been beaten twice at sea, and our enemies have established no accidental superiority, but a permanent and overwhelming one. The telegraph cables have been severed, one and all; these islands ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... time of the church, when the days are closing and the nights lengthening? Have we not been used to hear of special efforts being made for the rescue of perishing souls, and ingathering of those who are in danger of dying unready? ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... idea, disguised under the name of grace, round which everything now clings. You complain that you did not experience sensible joys after your communion; this simply proves that you were not careful enough, or that, tired by the excess of the evening before, your imagination showed itself unready to play the infatuating fairy story you expected from yourself after ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... of Richard, Duke of Normandy, when she was wife to Ethelred the Unready, and again during her second marriage to Canute, gave the finest embroideries to various abbeys and monasteries. Canute, being then a Christian, joined her in these splendid votive offerings. To Romsey ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... sure that Montgomery would think the compliment to his ready hand an excuse in full for the allusion to his unready tongue, and omitted ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Germans would never have got fifty miles into either France or Belgium. They would have been held at Liege and in the Ardennes. Five hundred thousand men would have held them indefinitely. But the Allies had never worked trench warfare; they were unready for it, Germans knew of their unreadiness, and their unreadiness it is quite clear they calculated. They did not reckon, it is now clear that they were right in not reckoning, the Allies as contemporary soldiers. They were going to fight ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells |
