|
|
|
More "Polite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, their scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learned. And he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... was really no way to save them," Mrs. Farmer went on in her polite way; her voice was low and round, like her daughter's, different from the high, tight Western voice. "So I hope you don't let yourself ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... dolls and not thinkin' of the chair, and then Katie saw it and sat in it. And right aways I wanted to set in it, too, and I made her get off. But you saw it and you told me I must not be selfish, but must be polite and let her set in it. My, I ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... fired at us from Santa Cruze Fort was obliged to come to an Anchor and to send a Boat to the Fort to know the Reason of their firing, who it seems had no orders to let us pass, without which no Ship can go to Sea. This surprized me not a little, as I had but this very morning received a very Polite Letter from the Vice-Roy (in answer to one I had wrote some days ago), wherein he wishes me a good voyage. I immediately dispatched a petty Officer to the Vice-Roy to know the reason why we was not permitted to ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... John, in a curiously polite way; "I know that; but it was due yesterday, and it ought to have been paid.—'Ginny, write a note to the Misses Mimpriss with my compliments, and say I shall be obliged by their sending ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... becoming a sailor for the sake of trying to find Jack. Her countenance expressed as much scorn as its sweetness would allow, as she answered, "Oh! I feared that you did not care for him, and am certain that you do not care for me. Here is the book you were polite enough to lend me, and I suppose that you will not very often come over to the Tower, as we shall have no longer that subject to ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... always even that) evolutions on paper with a black-lead pencil; profitless alike to performer and beholder, unless as a matter of vanity, and that the smallest possible vanity. If any young person, after being taught what is, in polite circles, called "drawing," will try to copy the commonest piece of real work—suppose a lithograph on the title-page of a new opera air, or a woodcut in the cheapest illustrated newspaper of the day—they will find themselves entirely beaten. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... jested in a wilful, merry, and coquettish fashion with Arkhipov, who answered her in a polite, serious, and punctilious manner. He was unable to carry on a light, witty conversation, and was acutely conscious of his own awkwardness. From a mere trifle, something Kseniya Ippolytovna said about fortune-telling at Christmas, there arose an old-standing dispute ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... very indignant at the impoliteness of men, who, as I supposed, constantly treated me with neglect; but, as I grew older and reflected on everything, putting aside coquetry, and observing things without taking any part in them myself, I perceived this much—that if men are not always polite, women ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... in the garden all this time, as I found when I turned my eyes in that direction. Three mice and an uncle, (it would not be polite to call Uncle Jack a rat, and yet if a mouse's uncle is not a rat, what is he, I should like to know?) and John and Thomas, and three dogs and two horses and a donkey, there were enough to make things lively, ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... admitted even by their Chinese enemies to possess a very strict code indeed of domestic regulations. The Lolos being eliminated, the Si-fans remained; and before we had been many days in their neighbourhood, stories were told us of their conduct which a polite pen refuses to record. It is enough to say that Marco's account falls rather short of the truth, and most ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... corporal picked up hat and sword in turn, and handed them to the irate officer, whose temper was in no wise sweetened by this last upset. "Ha! thank you, Mr Leigh, you are very polite all at once," he cried sarcastically, as he stared at the corporal, who stood before him drawn up stiff as a ramrod, but representing nothing but a blurred figure before the inflamed optic of the lieutenant. "Well, sir! Now, sir! perhaps ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... more grinned at his guests, who themselves turned sheepish and polite; for Mrs. Westfall came in, brisk and hearty, and set the meat upon the table. After that, it was she who talked. The guests ate scrupulously, muttering, "Yes, ma'am," and "No, ma'am," in their plates, while their hostess told them of increasing families upon ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... you could tell me," she said, with her wistful little face uplifted. "It's if you think it would be polite to ask my father to put me to bed instead of Marie—just unbutton me, you know, and pray me. I was going to ask my mother to-morrow night if my father did to-night. I thought—I thought"—the Child hesitated for adequate words—"it would be the lovingest ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... of folks wantin' to palaver," he said lowly. "An' no one is crowdin' me. That's polite an' proper. Seems you all sort of guessed there's plenty of room, an' crowdin' ain't necessary. I'd thank every specimen to hook his thumbs in the armholes of his vest—same as though he's a member of the pussy-cafe outfit ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... not, for pity's sake, make me discontented; here am I in Abbeychurch, and must make the best of it. I must be as polite and hypocritical as I can make myself. I must waste my time ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Nicholas Stepanovitch" (my great-grandfather's name was Stephen, and the commandant used the Russian form of polite address)—"tell me why is it that you Poles are always looking for trouble? What else could you expect from ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... by some one at home who had found out that she was on the Riviera. Vanno, misunderstanding her change of expression, said no more, though he had begun his story with the intention of leading up to this. They parted with polite thanks from Mary for his information, thanks which seemed banal, a strange anti-climax coming after the story of the lovers. Yet they went away from one another with an aftermath of their first unreasoning happiness still lingering ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... polite assistant who received her order slip, and took her seat on the waiting line until her ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... paid a call on the Duchess; he made a point of standing behind her and leaving the front seat to Emilio next the Duchess. He made a few trivial remarks, without sarcasm or bitterness, and with as polite a manner as if he were ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... DEVEREUX BLAKE said there is no aspect of this question that strikes us so forcibly as the total ignoring of women by public men. However polite they may be in private life, when they come to public affairs they seem to forget that women exist. The men who framed the last amendment to the constitution seemed to have wholly forgotten that women existed or had rights.... Huxley said in reply to an inquiry as to woman ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Grandfather Frog. It landed close by his nose with a great splash, and it was almost half as big as Grandfather Frog himself. It was plump and looked so tempting that Grandfather Frog forgot all about his full stomach. He even forgot to be polite and thank Little Joe Otter. He just opened his great mouth and seized the fish. Yes, Sir, that is just what he did. Almost before you could wink an eye, the fish had started down Grandfather ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... glorious ends, Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise, To fall with dignity, with temper rise; Formed by thy converse, happily to steer From grave to gay, from lively to severe; Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease, Intent to reason, or polite to please. Oh! while along the stream of time thy name Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame, Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale? When statesmen, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... spreads along as well as up—well, the time came to begin. The players came out on the stage, a-speakin' of their parts and abrandishin' of their arms as they do, when all at once a gentleman sitting behind Becky Boozer leaned forward and asked her—ever so polite—'Madam,' sez he, 'please be so good as ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... I consider it the most interesting expedition I ever made. The total absence of anything like want among the people; their joyous, though polite and respectful demeanour; the combination of that sort of neatness and finish which we attain in England By the expenditure of great wealth, with tropical luxuriance, made me feel that at last I had found something which ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... into the stone passage, but nobody came. He gave a loud cough; he had never been there before, and did not know where to knock. He scraped his feet, and as there was still no sign of anybody he called out in a polite voice, "May I come in? Hallo! ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... have in large measure a sense of humor, that clarifying quality which Prussianization has destroyed in the Germans, must have smiled when they heard the German envoys expatiate on the beauties of neutrality, and, although they are a polite people, they must have found it hard to keep from laughing when the agents of Dr. Bethmann-Hollweg, who had just declared that a treaty is only a scrap of paper, to be torn up at pleasure, tried to impress upon Italy ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... dreamer, leaving the practical Englishman dumbfounded at his never having thought of this simple expedient. But before he could adopt it the door was thrown open again by Pinchas, who had got out of the habit of knocking through Raphael being too polite to reprimand him. The poet, tottered in, dropped wearily into a chair, and buried his face in his hands, letting an extinct cigar-stump slip through his fingers on to the literature ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the coffee-houses, in every pamphlet, argument on the origin of evil, on the goodness of God, and the constitution of the world was rife. Into the prevailing topic of polite conversation Bolingbroke, who returned from exile in 1723, was drawn by the bent of his native genius. Pope followed the example and impulse of his friend's more powerful mind. Thus much there was of special suggestion. But the arguments or topics of ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Sydney; but they say they are publishing very little at present, as times are depressed. To James & James, Melbourne; returned. And unread, I am sure; the package had hardly been touched. To Brown & McMahon, Melbourne. A most polite note, but they do not care to publish so long a story. Shortened it, and copied again (July, 1898). Sent again to Brown & McMahon. A printed refusal: 'Regret cannot use.' December, 1899, posted to ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... passing between two rows of antique gabled houses, and under the chancel of the little parish church, conducts one to the almost interminable flight of stone steps leading to the gateway of the monastery. Upon ringing the bell a polite lay brother opens the iron-studded door, and we are admitted into a solemn, vaulted hall, with another stone staircase opposite. Here we go up and up, to a second vaulted hall, where, in olden times, we should have had to give up ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... had the master been regarding us he would have seen no reason for mortification in the manner of his servant. The man was extremely polite and attentive, suggesting various refreshments, such as wine and biscuits, and I never was treated by a lackey with ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... of the polite society of the neighbourhood of Roxham were divided into two camps. The men all thought that Angela had been shamefully treated, the elder and most intensely respectable ladies for the most part inclined to the other side of the question. It not being their habit to look at matters ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... days when man still walked hand in hand with nature. The history of the past is at once a storehouse of stirring themes ready to the hand of the artist, and the surest safeguard against both flatness and exaggeration in his work. [Footnote: See Essays xiii., xiv., xx.; Present State of Polite Learning, in particular, chap. xi.] It offers, moreover, the truest schooling of the heart, and insensibly "enlists the passions on the side of humanity". "Poetry", Byron said, "is the feeling of a former world, and future"; [Footnote: ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... secret sorority felt satisfied or otherwise with the result of the shuffle, etiquette forbade them to show anything but polite enthusiasm. Each took her buddy solemnly by the hand and vowed allegiance. Peachy then produced what she called "the loving cup," a three-handled vase of brown pottery brought by Jess from Edinburgh and with the motto "Mak' yersel' at hame," on it in cream-colored letters. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Vice-Chancellor of England, and, if so, has been trained in a good school of taste as well as scholarship. But whether his hexameters have been published, does not appear: the writer had not heard of them before; and he begs to thank Mr Shadwell for his polite attention. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... good reason, bad words. It is a pure convention; it has little or nothing to do with the actual meaning, because for every one of these bad words there is a paraphrase or synonym considered to be quite suitable for polite ears. Hence the feeblest creature can always produce a sensation by breaking the taboo. But women are learning how to undo this error of theirs now. The word 'damn,' for instance, is, I hear, being admitted freely into the boudoir and feminine conversation; ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... munching Limberger cheese with evident satisfaction when it occurred to him that he ought to offer some to his neighbor, who very coolly declined. "You think it unhealthful to eat that?" inquired the German in polite astonishment. "Unhealthful?" exclaimed the Hidalgo, with a withering look and a gasp for a more adequate word; "No, sir: I think ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... indulge in cider and gingerbread, an ambitious hotel, with cupola and verandas, now crested the summit, among churches built in the Grecian and Gothic styles, showing the great increase of piety and polite taste in the neighborhood. As to Dutch dresses and sun-bonnets, they were no longer tolerated, or even thought of; not a farmer's daughter but now went to town for the fashions; nay, a city milliner had recently ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... see anything so funny," said Roger huffily. "Perhaps she didn't know, but she was polite enough not to laugh and said the place to get ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... wondering, came to the place where this "made" ground was in process of making. Here was a great hole, perhaps two city blocks square, and with long files of garbage wagons creeping into it. The place had an odor for which there are no polite words; and it was sprinkled over with children, who raked in it from dawn till dark. Sometimes visitors from the packing houses would wander out to see this "dump," and they would stand by and debate as to whether the children were ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... minds my method of giving more advanced instruction, and will show in what spirit I have educated my own daughters, even to the highest point of musical culture, without using the slightest severity. It will, indeed, cause great vexation to the ill-minded and even to the polite world, who attribute the musical position of my daughters in the artistic world to a tyranny used by me, to immoderate and unheard-of "practising," and to tortures of every kind; and who do not ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... between book-publishers and authors, between book-publishers and the public, were from earliest days most friendly. There was much polite exchange of compliments; the intelligence of the public was always mightily flattered and shown up in a very civil fashion in such ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... selfish man hard and griping—the vain man desires to shine, to please, to make himself agreeable; and this amiable feeling works to the outside of suavity and charm of manner. The French are the vainest people in Europe, and the most polite. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... were drifting against her face through the cold darkness on Harwich quay. Then, after what seemed like a great loop of time spent going helplessly up a gangway towards "the world" she had stood, face to face with the pale polite stewardess in her cabin. "I had better have a lemon, cut in two," she had said, feeling suddenly stifled with fear. For hours she had lain despairing, watching the slowly swaying walls of her cabin or sinking with closed ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... went on that errand, I met two Christian Commission men walking leisurely, admiring the light of the rising sun on the old buildings, and told them of the urgent demand for help, and chicken broth or beef broth and water up in that room. They were polite, and promised to go as soon as possible to the relief of that distress; but when I returned and up to the last knowledge I had of the case, they had ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... this an execution?" "It is, mum," says Fixem. The lady looked at him as steady as ever: she didn't seem to have understood him. "It is, mum," says Fixem again; "this is my warrant of distress, mum," says he, handing it over as polite as if it was a newspaper which had been ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... often, in later times, been very thankful. For although I found my amusement in rough adventure and my companionship for the most part among seamen and fishermen, it hurts no boy or man to be as well grounded in the tenets of polite society as in ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... know his mother very well. When we were in England we were a week with them down at their beautiful place in ——shire,—the loveliest time! You see she was over here with Mr. Carleton once before, a good while ago; and mamma and papa were polite to them, and so they shewed us a great deal of attention when we were in England. We had the loveliest time down there you can possibly conceive. And my dear Fleda he wears such a fur cloak!—lined with ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... and pulled his moustache, as he might have done if a lady had spoken to him in polite Sanscrit. Rupert looked gravely out of the carriage window. Neither answered, and nobody spoke another word, till Mrs. ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... passing over a section of rough road just then, and they swayed against each other several times, with polite apologies on Mary's part. Then as the woman finished skewering her hair into a tight knot she relaxed into friendliness far enough to ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Colonel to make any arrangements for the meeting which, he had no doubt, it was his Lordship's intention to demand, and which the circumstances of the morning had rendered inevitable. Captain Macmurdo begged Lord Steyne, in the most polite manner, to appoint a friend, with whom he (Captain M.M.) might communicate, and desired that the meeting might take place with ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you do, sir?' said Mr Lillyvick—rather sharply; for he had not known what Nicholas was, on the previous night, and it was rather an aggravating circumstance if a tax collector had been too polite to a teacher. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... said, with her roguish, indolent smile. "While I don't object to helping the great cause along, I am not yearning to become a polite entertainer. I'd probably be a most impolite one before the end of a week, if I had to rush freshies as a steady task. I am afraid few of them would turn out to be as amiable, beautiful, jolly, delightful, agreeable and companionable as good ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... breakfast, and, as usual, headed for the Foger home. He almost disliked to ask Mrs. Foger if her son had yet returned, for Andy's mother was so polite and so anxious to know whether any danger threatened that Tom hardly knew how to answer her. But he was saved that embarrassment on this occasion, for as he was going up the walk from the lake to the residence he met the gardener and from him learned that ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... the larger and more unsympathetic the policeman seemed to him. Still, if you couldn't remember what your hotel was yourself it was only sensible to ask guidance on the question. His mind reacted suddenly toward grotesqueness. One had to be very polite to large policemen. The politeness should, naturally, increase as the ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... side whiskers. The other two were young and well dressed. The girl was of our best patrician type—the type that may know little, think little, say little, and generally amount to little, and yet carry its negative qualities with so used an air of polite society as to raise them by sheer force to the dignity of positive virtues. From head to foot she was faultlessly groomed. From eye to attitude she was languidly superior—the impolitic would say bored. Yet every feature ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... fellow Hun do in my place?" I said to myself. "Knowing the breed as I do, he would certainly overdo the patriotic John Bull business, he would be a little too polite to everybody, and he would eat ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... human nature here is somewhat similar. The Hawaiians are pleasing in form and feature, graceful, polite, fond of music and dancing and wreathing themselves with flowers, and possess withal a deep fund of poetry, which finds expression in their own names, the names they have bestowed upon waterfalls and valleys and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... draperies as a polite intimation that she had heard. But just then her attention was diverted by the conversation of two ladies and a gentleman, who were, sitting together in a window on her right. The gentleman was Mr. St. John, the ritualistic ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... asking questions for quite a while, but obtaining no polite answer became angry and froze ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... was a man of some humor, and he enjoyed Sam's evident embarrassment. He took pains to be ceremoniously polite. Sam, who was used to the free and easy ways of a restaurant, hardly knew how to act. Henry Martin, though now thrown upon his own exertions, had been well brought up, and ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... take the lantern, Sam," went on the surgeon to the carter, "and search about for them. Of course, even give the Ugly Leap a call, and make inquiry for them; and when I've played the polite man, and seen the doctor well on his way with these young ladies, I'll join you—two heads are better than one even in the matter of looking up two boys that we're not sure are ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... waterman answer the polite interrogation "Who are you?" correctly, and designate at the same ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... Midsummer vacation approached, no indecent manifestations of joy were exhibited by the leaden-eyed young gentlemen assembled at Doctor Blimber's. Any such violent expression as 'breaking up,' would have been quite inapplicable to that polite establishment. The young gentlemen oozed away, semi-annually, to their own homes; but they never broke up. They would ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... having been expended to procure the secrets of our enemies—that a request of an inquiry into the expenditure of the civil list should be refused, is to me most extraordinary. Does the King of England want to build a palace equal to his rank and dignity? Does he want to encourage the polite and useful arts? Does he mean to reward the hardy veteran who has defended his quarrel in many a rough campaign, whose salary does not equal that of some of your servants? Or does he mean, by drawing the purse-strings of his subjects, to spread corruption through ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Drassilis. In their opinion the Hon. Hugo Drassilis had married beneath him—not so far beneath him as to make the thing a horror to be avoided in conversation and thought, but far enough to render them coldly polite to his wife during his lifetime and almost icy to his widow after his death. Hugo's eldest brother, the Earl of Westbourne, had never liked the obviously beautiful, but equally obviously second-rate, daughter of a provincial solicitor whom Hugo had suddenly presented to the family one memorable ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... de Cadignan wrapped herself, with coquettish motions, in a large shawl, and rose. Blondet and Rastignac were too much men of the world, and too polite to make the least remonstrance, or try to detain her; but Madame d'Espard compelled her friend to sit down again, ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... lieutenant was prancing around back of the line, flourishing his saber in gallant style. He accosted me, and demanded why I was standing back, doing nothing. I replied that I did not belong on his—line, and made some comments perhaps not strictly polite. This added wrath to his excitement. I think this must have been the first time he had smelled gunpowder, except at a distance, and he supposed they were doing grandly. There was no telling how much effort it had cost him to get his ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... on Hallowe'en when first I saw him. Early in the morning I had received a telegram from my college chum Jack: "Lest we forget. Am sending you a remarkable pup. Be polite to him; it's safer." It would have been just like Jack to have sent an infernal machine or a Skunk rampant and called it a pup, so I awaited the hamper with curiosity. When it arrived I saw it was marked "Dangerous," and there came from within a high-pitched ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... miles of them to a single army corps. There were strings of mules and horses with weirdly shaped burdens on their pack saddles. There were motor cars bearing "Brass Hats," gentle looking individuals, excessively polite, yet somehow getting men to jump when they spoke, and everywhere ambulances, silent and swift moving, before whose approach the stream parted in recognition of the right of way of these messengers of mercy over all the enginery ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... promptly. "Madame, here is a polite young gentleman who desires to make his adieux. Permit me, madame—he is here in the dark. Sepp! fall back! Loisel, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... talk of it any more," he said. "It's all right, and nothing in the world to worry about. So good-night, old lady. I'll be polite enough to him, never fear—if we happen to ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... POLITE JUDGMENT.—A correspondence has been going on in the St. James's Gazette as to what six Gentlemen seated in a first class railway carriage ought to do if a Lady insists on thrusting herself upon them. Truth says, let her stand, unless she has been invited, and adds, that anyhow she, as an ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... what correct observance of essentials there was, he even came quite round, into a high state of satisfaction with this Heretic King, in the course of a few years. Friedrich and the Pope were very polite to each other thenceforth; always ready to do little mutual favors. And it is to be remarked, Friedrich's management of his Clergy, Protestant and Catholic, was always excellent; true, in a considerable degree, to the real law of things; gentle, but strict, and without shadow of hypocrisy,—in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... did better: ipse venit. He was, however, so polite as to wave his privilege of nil mihi rescribas[18], and wrote from Edinburgh, as follows:—'Your very kind and agreeable favour of the 20th of April overtook me here yesterday, after having gone to Aberdeen, which place I left about a week ago. I am to set out this day for ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... together behind his back, and he looked as if he had been treated rather badly. However, there was a grin upon his face as he approached, and ducked his head in what was intended to be a polite bow to ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... spoken each of the languages above named with a precision, fluency, and grace, rarely equaled by a foreigner. In consequence of this proficiency, the intercourse with the higher classes was to a great extent in his hands. Persian gentlemen, polite and courteous in the extreme, appreciated the dignified yet simple ease and grace with which he met them. Having gone out alone, he was united in marriage June 13, 1844, to Miss Catherine E. Myers, who joined the mission in 1843, and was then engaged in teaching. After twenty years his health ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... said please, hey? A scout is supposed to be polite," he said. I just had to sit back and laugh, right there on the roof of that car. Cracky, but ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... before him a man of about forty years, with a polite and shrewd face, dressed in a short coat, and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... lamps that have survived to us from the age of stone. Still they are capable of holding oil and retaining a wick. Further on we have lamps from the age of bronze, and at last from the age of iron. Polite antiquity had its silver lamps, its copper lamps, and in a few instances its lamps of gold. The palaces of kings were sometimes lighted from golden reservoirs of oil. Such may be seen among the relics preserved to us from the civilizations of Western Asia. The palace of Priam, ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... evil. Law restrains actions. Ethics proclaims principles which it has no power to realise. It shows men a shining height, but leaves them lame and grovelling in the mire. Education casts out the demon of ignorance, and makes the demons whom it does not cast out more polite and perilous. It brings its own evils in its train. Every kind of crop has weeds which spring with it. The social and political changes, which are eagerly preached now, will do much; but one thing, which is the all-important thing, they will not do, they will not change the nature of the individuals ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... was pleasing to the sight: Gallant, good-humoured, airy, and polite, And ev'ry way his humble birth belied; A handsome person, nor was sense denied; He showed it well, for when the youth beheld, With eyes of love, the queen, who all excelled, And ev'ry effort anxiously had made, To stop the flames that would ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... I don't mind you knowing.... You know what Meredith is, well—I mean—oh, you know, the usual stuff. He wanted me to meet him out for a walk to-morrow. I told him in polite language to ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... sutures. Yet kindness is not of itself politeness. Its spontaneous expressions may be rude and awkward; or they may take forms not readily understood and appreciated. There are conventional modes of polite demeanor no less than of courteous speech. These modes may have no intrinsic fitness, yet they acquire a fitness from their long and general use; and while the mere repetition of stereotyped formulas whether in word or deportment is justly offensive, he who would have his politeness recognized ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... nice when I was asleep, I am afraid," said Ruby, "It was n't very polite of me to go ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... of a sea-gull and the body of a kingfisher; now she climbed to the top of a tree and brought down a crow's nest. She could walk miles upon miles with no fatigue. She grew up like a boy, which is only another way of saying that she grew up healthy and strong physically. Probably polite society was shocked at Dr. Hosmer's methods. Would that there were many such fathers and mothers, that we might have a vigorous race of women, and consequently, a vigorous ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... mountains. The chestnuts, growing scanter, were replaced by dark firs and pines. Streams came winding down like icy crystal threads; the little rivers we crossed looked blue and glacial; pale-pink roses and mountain flowers showed themselves as we approached the peaks. A polite official, entering, examined our papers; and with snow surrounding us and cold clear air blowing in at the window, we left Bardonnecchia, the last of ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... smiled her forgiveness, and the major became more polite and attentive than before. But his attentions were not wholly agreeable. Something in the expression of his eyes as he looked at her produced an unpleasant repulsion. She was constantly remembering some of the cautions spoken by Hartley in reference to this man, and she wished scores of times ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... rag babies, while nothing could dim the glory of Ernst's great spiritual eyes, as they gratefully and wistfully followed Dennis's every movement. Cronk was in a very dilapidated and famished state, and endured many and varied tortures in his efforts to be polite while he bolted sandwiches at a rate that threatened famine. Christine still wore the woollen dress she had so hastily donned with Dennis's assistance on Sunday night, and the marks of the fire were all over it. Around her neck the sparks had burned a hole here and there, through which her ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... this country, where the Jews are reprobated and despised, to have for an interpreter a Christian; the prince also, when he heard that I had thus offered my services, expressed himself much gratified, and I received a very polite message from him. The next day we started from Tangier, in the morning at ten o'clock. The army halted east of Arzilla, in the plains: the prince sat down under the shade of a tree to dinner, Dr. Bell and myself under another tree, about 100 yards distant. The Prince sent ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... Revolutionary Committee, little Vishniak, tried to persuade the girls to remain. He was effusively polite. "You have been badly treated," he said. "The telephone system is controlled by the Municipal Duma. You are paid sixty rubles a month, and have to work ten hours and more.... From now on all that will be changed. The Government intends to put the telephones ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... consistent in his own statements. Upon one page he describes Mrs. Prevost, about the time of her marriage, as "the beautiful Mrs. Prevost"; a few pages farther on he says she was "not beautiful, being past her prime." He informs us that it is the fashion to underrate Jefferson, that the polite circles and writers of the country have never sympathized with him,—and in the very same paragraph he remarks that "Thomas Jefferson has been for fifty years the victim ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... among all ranks of people; whenever therefore an object of this appears it is as sure of attracting a croud in the assemblies of the polite as in those ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... purpose of drawing funds which he had in Philadelphia. He found him an exceedingly obliging man, and, to show his appreciation, invited him to dine here. Thus he became acquainted with Mrs. Brian and myself. He was a man of about forty, of medium height, ordinary looking, very polite, but not refined in his manners. The first time I looked at his light yellow eyes, I felt disgusted and frightened. I read in his face an expression of base vice. The impression was so strong, that I could not help telling M. Elgin how sure I was this man would turn out a bad man, and that he ought ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... be three o'clock," he said, with polite surprise, "and the house is like a barn. You ought not to be running around with your arms uncovered, Mrs. Wilson. Surely you could have ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... explore the region between the Gabun and Lake Chad. But his real object was to anticipate Stanley on the Congo. The international character of the association founded by King Leopold was never more than a polite fiction, and the rivalry between the French and the Belgians on the Congo was soon open, if not avowed. In October 1880 de Brazza made a solemn treaty with a chief on the north bank of the Congo, who claimed that his authority extended over a large area, including territory on ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... state that I was own brother to Lord Burleydon, had an income of two thousand a year, could speak all the polite languages fluently, was a powerful swordsman, a good shot, and could ride anything from an elephant to a clotheshorse, I really think I have said enough to satisfy any feminine novel-reader of Bayswater or South Kensington that I was a hero. My brother's wife, however, did not seem ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... have been plundered, as the robbers had paid him a visit. He had removed our tents and baggage to his own house for protection. Not only had he thus protected our effects, but he had taken the opportunity of delivering the polite message to Mek Nimmur that I had entrusted to his charge—expressing a wish to pay him a visit as a countryman and friend of Mr. Mansfield Parkyns, who had formerly been so well received ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... King rubbed his hands and was very polite indeed, and asked Peter in to breakfast, and Peter went. So they all three sat down together, the King, ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... me, and me at him. Says he, 'I think I have seen your face before, my man.' Very civil; as civil as a orange, as folks say. 'I think you have,' I says. 'Could you step up-stairs for a minute or two?' says he, very polite; 'I'll find a boy to take charge of your horse.' And he slips a arf-crown into my ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... offended surprise at my burst of irrepressible merriment that I suddenly stopped, and letting what was boiling below my laughter come to the surface, I exclaimed, in language far more shocking to ears polite than Planchette's own: "And do you really think that Satan, the great devil of hell, in whom you believe, is amusing himself with telling you such truths as those, through a bit of board on wheels?" "Really," replied the woman of genius, in a ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... relations. The natural starting-point of social culture is the Family. But this educates the child for Society, and by means of Society the individual passes over into relations with the world at large. Natural sympathy changes to polite behavior, and this to the dexterous and circumspect deportment, whose truth nevertheless is first the ethical purity which combines with the wisdom of the serpent the ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... stationed there at the time, and wore blue of a little different shade from our uniform. Seeing a soldier in blue on this log, I rode up to him, commenced conversing with him, and asked whose corps he belonged to. He was very polite, and, touching his hat to me, said he belonged to General Longstreet's corps. I asked him a few questions—but not with a view of gaining any particular information—all of which he answered, and I ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... it. But that is not to be thought of. And then, my dear Murray, a little private affair of my own, which has put me out sadly. I wrote, when I first came home, to Lady Rogers, asking leave to pay a visit at Halliburton Hall. I got an answer from Sir John, very kind and very polite. At the same time, he gave me to understand that he considered it better I should not make my appearance there; in other words, that I wasn't wanted. I fancied that Lucy had begun to care for me, and so ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... totally eradicated in the packet; but as I heard of a misunderstanding between England and Spain; I thought it my duty to remain with that vessel. I mention this circumstance for no other reason than to express my gratitude to the above officers for their polite attention to me during my short ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... reputations. A Prince-Rupert's-drop, which is a tear of unannealed glass, lasts indefinitely, if you keep it from meddling hands; but break its tail off, and it explodes and resolves itself into powder. These celebrities I speak of are the Prince-Rupert's-drops of the learned and polite world. See how the papers treat them! What an array of pleasant kaleidoscopic phrases, that can be arranged in ever so many charming patterns, is at their service! How kind the "Critical Notices"—where small authorship ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... intercourse with the surface of society. There is by far too much pliability about him for principle of any kind, unless indeed it be a principle to please, no matter how. No one, who has deeply seated opinions of right and wrong, will ever abandon them, even in the courtesies of polite intercourse: they may be silent but never acquiescent: in short, my dear, the dread of offending our Maker ought to be so superior to that of offending our fellow creatures, that we should endeavor, I believe, to be even more unbending ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... said, as calmly as he could. "You have not forgotten me, I am sure." Lira looked more and more amazed as he observed the cool courtesy with which he was accosted. But his polite manner did not desert him even then, for he raised ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... so polite to each other that even the beggars in the streets bow to each other in the most ceremonious fashion, but at this festival the bowing is redoubled. There is a special form of greeting for this occasion, and not a bow is to be missed ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... dawdler and a trifler and a do-nothing. He had been told by a stern old man who was a man that he was a disgrace to his name. He had never done anything but dance and smoke and drink and make pretty speeches which were polite lies and which were accepted as such. And now a minor note, as thin as a low-toned human voice heard faintly through the deep music of a cathedral organ, something seemed to call to him telling him again ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... the Somali country is the Mogasa of the Gallas, the Akh of El Hejaz, the Ghafir of the Sinaitic Peninsula, and the Rabia of Eastern Arabia. It must be observed, however, that the word denotes the protege as well as the protector; In the latter sense it is the polite address to a Somali, as Ya Abbaneh, O Protectress, would be to ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... and said grace with his wife and children around him, just as his predecessors had done before him." "An uniform method of thinking and acting prevailed, and nothing could be more criminal than for one person to be more learned, religious, or polite than another."[123] ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... surged through his brain. His heart leaped with primitive savagery of love, and every fibre in him rebelled fiercely against the decrees and limitations of modern courtship. He had failed in the game as governed and modified by the rules of polite society and high finance. The primogenital man-spirit in him cried out for its inning. Mr. Strumley, as umpire, hearkened ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... you won't; you'll live very happily in a nice little flat, with two servants and a polite ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... again, and Russian instead of Austrian officers quartered at their house. How much more polite the Russians were—so much more gallant and kind-hearted! They didn't treat you as though you were a servant—"Do this. Do that." They brought some of their wounded to the farm, and Miss Morowski helped ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... philanthropy do not trend in such practical directions; if they did, the philanthropic person would probably be too amenable to flattery to escape the pushful patentee and too sensitive to avail himself of criticism (which rarely succeeds in being both penetrating and polite), and it will probably be many years before the cautious enterprise of advertising firms approximates to the economies that are theoretically possible to-day. But certainly the engineering and medical sorts of person will be best able to appreciate ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the drawing-room and Kitty and Vandeloup both sang, and treated one another in a delightfully polite way. Madame Midas and Calton were both clever, but how much cleverer were the two young ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... the spurs on each side, while the Pioneers descended down the centre. So sudden and unexpected was their arrival that the inhabitants were caught in the village, and naturally expressed their extreme delight at this unexpected visit—so polite of them, wasn't it? They also said that they would be glad to help us in any way we desired. They were taken at their word, and sent back next day to bring on the guns, while that night they were politely requested to clear ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... rear of the house, where, with a flourish, the cover is removed from a box the expressman has just delivered, to disclose a shining five-pound bass reposing upon its bed of packed ice—even then, hands in pockets, Sandford merely surveys and expresses polite congratulation. Certainly it is a fine fish, a noble fish, even; but for the sake of one like it—or, yes, granted a dozen such—to leave the office, the sanitary-tiled office, deserted for four whole days (especially when Dr. Corliss on the floor below ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... who she could be, thus sporting the polite graces of a reception-room in the midst of these squalid huts. What was her strange life-story? How ever came such a woman, with charm of face, and grace of manner, to be acknowledged leader over such a people? It was not ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... subjects. [13] Whatever might be the value of his criticisms, that of his example cannot be doubted. The courtiers, with the quick scent for their own interest which distinguished the tribe in every country, soon turned their attention to the same polite studies; [14] and thus Castilian poetry received very early the courtly stamp, which continued its prominent characteristic down to the age of its ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... BOTTOM. A polite term for the posteriors. Also, in the sporting sense, strength and spirits to support fatigue; as a bottomed horse. Among bruisers it is used to express a hardy fellow, who will bear ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... she walked up the steps very deliberately, and was very polite to him when they met an hour later, which politeness was the foundation for a feud lasting forty-eight hours; she determined that his punishment should be nothing less than that; it would teach him not to make her a laughing ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the talk," grunted Jim Hickey, who, like his mates, styled himself "soldier of fortune." But, alas! that high-sounding title in his case, as in many others, was simply a polite way of disguising his true calling, to-wit, that of an unscrupulous adventurer, whose object was to line his own pockets. A fashion has arisen of late of writing about soldiers of fortune as if they were ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... at the expense of his dwindling circle of intimates, to do it. He took his degree, and plunged into London. There, for a time, he was lost to public sight. But I know that he went through the usual contest. Rejected manuscripts poured back into his room. Polite, but unaccommodating Editors, found that they had no use for vapid imitations of ADDISON, or feeble parodies of CHARLES LAMB. Literary appreciations, that were to have sent the ball of fame spinning up the hill of criticism, grew frowsy and dog's-eared ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... so everlastin' fast, it ain't no easy matter to say what they mean; but it sounds like "good bye," you'd better turn round and make 'em a bow, for they are very polite people, is ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... territorial, with wrinkled face and an effort at a military mustache, who came out of his sentry box at a control post squinting by the light of a lantern held close to his nose at the bit of paper which gave the bearer freedom of the army and nodding with his polite word of concurrence, was a type who might have stopped a traveler in Louis XIV.'s time. All the farmers sleeping in the villages who would be up at dawn at their work, all the people in Amiens, knew that the hour was near. The fact was in the air no less than in men's minds. Nobody ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... seem crazy about your lobster, and you were hardly more than polite to our hostess. Sorry to have butted in. But why have you kept ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... as well as a Tory, a spendthrift, and a bigot, which is the one I usually meet in society, mamma. But please do not let us quarrel. I always try to be polite to your mixtures. For Mr Gresham's sake, be ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... said, and drew him through the throng toward a door, where he was presented to a tall and strikingly handsome girl and made his bow and a civil speech, to which the young lady responded with one equally polite and important. Other men were pressing around her, to all of whom she made apt and cordial speeches, and Floyd fell back and rejoined his little girl, whose face lit ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... lie to certain misconceptions—which is an extremely polite word—especially the one which holds that the various blocs or groups within a free country cannot forego their political and economic differences in time of crisis and work ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... about that I wished to speak." Richard paused, and Blondin watched him with polite interest. "You have held your knowledge of Mrs. Carter as a sort of weapon for some months," Richard said. presently, "to use it when you saw fit. I have always been ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... to those whose polite sensibility has laboured under such distress to be assured, that they need never henceforward fear to be reduced to similar dilemmas. They may be insured for ever against such dangers at the slight ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... good excuse to wipe it off the local map. He was the Law, and behind him were the range riders, who would be only too glad to have the nest of rustlers wiped out and its gang of ne'er-do-wells scattered to the four winds. Indeed, he had been given to understand in a most polite and diplomatic way that if this were not done lawfully they would try to do it themselves, and they had great faith in their ability to handle the situation in a thorough and workmanlike manner. This would not do in a law-abiding community, as he called the town, and so he had replied ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... scoffed the manager in disgust. "If these Herringport tabbies had the toothache they would register only polite anguish—in public. They are the most insular and self-contained and self-suppressed women I ever saw. These Down-Easters! They could walk over fiery ploughshares and ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... then ran his fingers lightly through his hair; the other imitated his action; the lad opened his coat and seemed to be searching for a pin; the man opened his, took out a pin and handed it to him with a polite bow. ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... to join in the crude but brilliant revels of the castle. The winter carnival, then, as now, afforded merriment to a gay company, the King's representative being as keen a pleasure-seeker as the rest. On Frontenac's suggestion, private theatricals were added to the polite diversions of Quebec. The Marquis de Tracy's ball far back in 1667 had given grievous offence to the Jesuits, and the unholy acting of plays was now declared an open profanity. Nicomede and Mithridate were condemned as immoral; but when Tartuffe, Moliere's mordant satire upon ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... disappointed, though he was too polite to say so. In politics he was a granite-headed Radical; and on several questions, such as the Church and Free Education, the two men ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... bishop! Doesn't he look like a martyr? I'm sure he's delightful—in his own library, or at his friends' dinner-tables—but he hates this sort of thing. He's beautifully polite, but he's bored. My only hope is that Con will revive ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... of his desires the man in grey experienced no difficulty. The staff of the Post-Office is unvaryingly polite and obliging to the public. An order was procured, and he soon found himself with a guide traversing the mysterious regions underneath the splendid new building where the great work of postal telegraphy ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... was married to the French king, where I lived with a person of quality, who was an acquaintance of my father's. I spent my time in learning those things necessary to give young persons of fashion a polite education, and did neither good nor evil, but day passed after day in the same easy way till I was fourteen; then began my anxiety, my vanity grew strong, and my heart fluttered with joy at every compliment paid to my beauty: ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... the 18th at Cangrejos (Santurce) with 3,000 men, and demanded the surrender of the city. Governor Castro, in polite but energetic language, refused, and hostilities commenced. For the next thirteen days there were skirmishes and more or less serious encounters on land and sea. On the morning of the 1st of May the defenders of the city were preparing a general ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... therefore he does not care for them, and is less spoilt by their company; he is not yet of an age to feel its charm. I have taken care not to teach him to kiss their hands, to pay them compliments, or even to be more polite to them than to men. It is my constant rule to ask nothing from him but what he can understand, and there is no good reason why a child should treat one sex differently from the other.] On our way, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the character of your great-grandfather, he was a noble specimen of the Irish gentleman—impulsive-warm-heartedness being his most characteristic trait. He was polite and hospitable, his countenance cheerful, his conversation sprightly and humorous. Sweet is the memory of the times when his children and friends gathered around his plentiful board. Often have we seen him entering ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... but you both know it's true, and you cannot deny it. Harmon barely scraped through college, but he is considered a gentleman's son, and understands the ways of polite society. Mark my words, his career will be followed with great interest, and everything he does will be noted and favourably commented upon. It will not be long before he will be an Archdeacon, or a Dean, ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... of this society should be to encourage polite learning, to polish and refine the English tongue, and advance the so much neglected faculty of correct language, to establish purity and propriety of style, and to purge it from all the irregular additions that ignorance and affectation have introduced; ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... esteemed woman in the place; for, with the exception of our chief-justice's wife, who sees no one now, she is the only woman who knows how to hold a salon; she is the queen of Arcis. Madame Beauvisage has tried to make her refusal polite, that's all." ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... servants and MAITRES D'HOTEL, with his dashing clothes and polite but seigniorial ways. Emma Edwardovna started nodding her head willingly, just like an old, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... what I have written, but I know it must be bad MS.; all which I ought in good manners to rectify, or re-write. I think you in America think more of Calligraphy than we here do: a really polite accomplishment, I always maintain: and yet 'deteriora sequor.' But you know that my eyes are not very active: and now my hand is less than usually so, possessed as I am with a Devil of a Chill (in spite, or in consequence, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... said little. But they were always extraordinarily polite and courteous to each other. They never neglected their prayers, even under ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... was a better piece of work, however, for that very reason, as Crane knew. It is far from flawless. It has been remarked that it bristles with as many grammatical errors as with bayonets; but it is a big canvas, and I am certain that many of Crane's deviations from the rules of polite rhetoric were deliberate experiments, looking to ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... dark firs and pines. Streams came winding down like icy crystal threads; the little rivers we crossed looked blue and glacial; pale-pink roses and mountain flowers showed themselves as we approached the peaks. A polite official, entering, examined our papers; and with snow surrounding us and cold clear air blowing in at the window, we left Bardonnecchia, the last of ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... very stones that rattled under my feet appeared alive and friendly. Olalla! Her touch had quickened, and renewed, and strung me up to the old pitch of concert with the rugged earth, to a swelling of the soul that men learn to forget in their polite assemblies. Love burned in me like rage; tenderness waxed fierce; I hated, I adored, I pitied, I revered her with ecstasy. She seemed the link that bound me in with dead things on the one hand, and with our pure and ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fifty oars to watch the proceedings of Cyrus, and finally deputed Latrines, a Spartan of distinction, to inform the monarch of the Persian, Median, and Lydian empires, that any injury to the Grecian cities would be resented by the Spartans. Cyrus asked with polite astonishment of the Greeks about him, "Who these Spartans were?" and having ascertained as much as he could comprehend concerning their military force and their social habits, replied, "That men who had a large space in the middle of their city for the purpose of cheating one another, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... satisfied with the supply of real grievances which life affords, and goes off hunting up imaginary ones, like a blame old gormandizing French hog that leaves a full trough to root through the woods for truffles, you still want to be polite; for when you fire a man there's no good reason for doing it with ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... short to gaze at her with pained reproach. "I am Youth! Incarnate Youth, just eighteen. No doubt to your dulled materialistic vision I appear to wear a coat and hat. Is that true?" with polite, tolerant patience. ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... thirst and reposed themselves in the shade of some trees. Sitting there, and finding no better subject of conversation, one of them asked the others, whether they did not remark how particularly the soldier had distinguished him by his polite salutation. "You!" said another; "it was not you that he saluted, but me." "You are both mistaken," says a third; "for you may remember that when the soldier said, 'Dandamarya!' he cast his eyes upon me." "Not at all," replied the fourth; "it was ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... of Napoleon's approach). Quite true, Lieutenant, quite true. You are all like innkeepers now in France: you have to be polite to everybody. ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... was most polite. He'd listen to their complaints—and they were always complaining, that's part of the regime—with a puzzled face, trying to understand, but he couldn't. He hadn't a nerve in his body. Once, when one of the dining-room girls dropped a tray of dishes and half the women ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... gladly, Mr. Idler, be informed what to think of a shopkeeper, who is incessantly talking about liberty; a word, which, since his acquaintance with polite life, my husband has always in his mouth: he is, on all occasions, afraid of our liberty, and declares his resolution to hazard all for liberty. What can the man mean? I am sure he has liberty enough; it were better for him and me ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the chief officer cordially, but did not receive a very polite response to his attempts to draw him into conversation about his recent experiences, and was cut short in a sailorly fashion by being told if he wanted any information about experiences, as he called them, to go and ask "that —— fool of ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... the end, for the captain, after he clubbed his ship, took the Spray in tow up the harbor, clear of all dangers, and sent her back again, in charge of an officer and three men, to her anchorage in the bay, with a polite note saying he would repair any damages done. But what yawing about she made of it when she came with a stranger at the helm! Her old friend the pilot of the Pinta would not have been guilty of such lubberly work. But to my great delight they got her into a berth, and the ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... that there is no hope of police interference, and so before time is called he inserts his sword into his being and dies while the polite American audience puts on its overcoat and goes out, looking over its shoulder to see that Brutus does not take advantage of this moment, while the people are going away, ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... nation, and the most ardent zeal for its glory and happiness. Assurances of gratitude, which I beg leave to present to your excellency, are much too inadequate to my feelings, and nothing but such sentiments can properly acknowledge your kindness towards me. The polite manner in which Mr. Franklin was pleased to deliver that inestimable sword, lays me under great obligations to him, and demands my ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... Boulevard Malesherbes, to cook onions in. I don't know what he didn't say to me in his effervescent state. For my part, I was naturally vexed to be spoken to in that insolent tone. The least one can do is to be polite to people whom one neglects to pay, deuce take it! So I retorted that it was too bad, really; but, if the Caisse Territoriale would pay what they owe me, to wit my arrears of salary for four years, plus seven thousand francs advanced by me to the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... keenly. At the first word he detected an enemy. Mr. Lane had been gravely polite and non-committal in his manner. This man ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... else. We are perpetually blaming our heads of Government Bureaus for their poor knowledge of character,—their subordinates, we say, are never pegs in the right holes. If we understood our civilized system of introductions, we could not rationally expect anything else. The great mass of polite mankind are trained not to know character, but to take somebody else's voucher for it. Their acquaintances, most of their friendships, come to them through a succession of indorsers, none of whom may have known anything of the goodness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... name," said the boy with a polite flourish of his helmet; "and I hear," glancing round at them all with an amused twinkle in his eyes, "that none of ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... a very different kind from the freethinker last named.(629) Instead of the polished scholar, the polite man of letters, and the historian, like Gibbon, we see in him an active man of the world, educated by men rather than books, of low tastes and vulgar tone, the apostle alike of political revolution and infidelity. Though a native of England, his earliest life was spent in America at the time of the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... preoccupation excluded all others of the positive and practical order; they talked, instead of acting. But, in this limited circle of speculative reason and of pure literary forms, it excelled; writings and how to write furnished the ordinary entertainment of polite society; every idea uttered by a thinker caused excitement in the drawing-room: the talent and style of authors were shaped by its taste;[4150] it was in the drawing-rooms that Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert, the Encyclopedists, great and little, Beaumarchais, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... ear and then Pewt he said he was sorry kind of mad like and Mister Purington lifted him up agen til Pewt he stood on his tip toes and his face was all onesided and his eyes all squinty and then he had to say it over agen polite. and then Mister Purington he led Pewt home all the way by the ear. i thougt i shood die. it sirved Pewt jest rite. father laffed when i told him how the hornet stung me and ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... Spain, was obliged by the fury of a sudden tempest, to take refuge in the harbour of Weymouth. He was received on shore, and accommodated by Sir Thomas Trenchard, who invited his relation, Mr. John Russel, to wait upon the Archduke. Philip was so much pleased with the polite manners and cultivated talents of Mr. Russel, who was conversant with both the French and German languages, that on arriving at court, he recommended him to the notice of Henry VII., who immediately sent for him to his palace, where he remained in great favour till the king's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... make her talk at all. I never saw such reticence before or since. As if she were determined "to die and make no sign," she sat, bowing and smiling, and amounting to nothing, one way or another,—giving no opinion, if asked, and asking no question. She was passively polite, but so very near nothing that I was rejoiced when Mr. Remington entered with my husband, and proposed that we should go into the dining-room. He carelessly introduced Mrs. Remington, but further than that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... was made. The reply was addressed to William's secretary, Sir Robert Roultwell, as Boileau could not acknowledge the prince as king, and was too polite to hurt his feelings by a denial of the royal title. He expressed great surprise at the summons he had received, and said that he hoped to merit the good opinion of the Prince of Orange better by a vigorous defence, than ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... Margaret Gore, another pleasant neighbour, to drink tea; a convenient fashion, which saves time and trouble, and is much followed in these parts during the summer months. A little after eight I made my appearance in her saloon, which, contrary to her usual polite attention, I found empty. In the course of a few minutes she entered, and apologised for her momentary absence, as having been caused by a London gentleman on a visit at the house, who arriving the evening before, had spent all that morning at the side of Loddon fishing, (where, by ...
— The London Visitor • Mary Russell Mitford
... morning constitutional in pyjamas on the boat deck, to the Bridge four after dinner in the smoke-room, and, besides, it was plain that Pere Etienne was not likely to have much in common with any of us. So we were polite at a distance, like Englishmen everywhere. Even I, who, by virtue of my cloth, might have been supposed to make advances, was shy of beginning. I was young in those days, and for one thing spelt Rome always with ...
— The Priest's Tale - Pere Etienne - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • Robert Keable
... apologize. He began instead to tell her some things that might interest her, about what Drummond, his best man, and he, had done in Manchuria, just as if nothing had happened; but naturally Estelle wouldn't be interested. She was first polite, then bored, then captious. Winn looked at her rather hard. "Are you trying to pay me back for falling asleep?" he asked with a queer little laugh. "Is that what you're ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... flattery, dissimulation, diligence, and dexterity, in undermining each other, which the satirical wit of men hath charged upon courts; together with all the rage and violence, cruelty and injustice, which have been ever imputed to public assemblies; are with us (so polite are we grown) to be seen among our meanest traders and artificers in the greatest perfection. All which, as it may be matter of some humiliation to the wise and mighty of this world, so the effects thereof may, perhaps, in time, prove very different ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... man outside the window, as he flattened his nose against the glass, "an is it polite to kape yer own first mate rappin' the skin off his ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mr. Harvie, the lawyer, who arrived at noon, meant little but disappointment for Alan. After a few polite words of congratulation, the lawyer dived into business, explaining Alan's position as the result of his uncle's deed of gift, and reciting a short list of securities ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... and, with regard to the Police in our metropolis, he says, "A more respectable and finer-looking body of men it would be difficult to find in any country. A stranger may apply to one for information, with a certainty of receiving a polite and intelligent answer," &c.—I only quote the last paragraph, in case Mr. Matt. Ward should see these pages, and that he may know how the Police behave towards those who know how ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... and Peter's most exhausting sometimes. I shouldn't like to carry him round the house on my back. Dorothy's perfectly insatiable for stories; it's always 'Tell us another!' How funny Oswald is at present. He's grown so outrageously polite all of a sudden. I suppose it's because he's in the Sixth now. He was very different last holidays. He's getting quite ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... showed more clearly that I was in for trouble. To invite a visitor, as Kellen had done, to remove his menore first, was, of course, a polite and courteous thing to do if one wished to communicate by speech; to remove the menore before greeting a visitor wearing one, was a tacit admission of rank enmity; a confession that one's thoughts ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... John replied with bland smiles and polite bows, hoping that the effects of the interview might not render him feverish, and reminding him that if it did he was in a better position than most men for cooling himself at ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... Take it not amiss if this is a wretched letter. I am eaten up with business. Every day this week I have had some business impediment - I am even now waiting a deputation of chiefs about the road - and my precious morning was shattered by a polite old scourge of a FAIPULE - parliament man - come begging. All the time DAVID BALFOUR is skelping along. I began it the 13th of last month; I have now 12 chapters, 79 pages ready for press, or within an ace, and, by the time ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... English," Pearl said, a sudden light breaking in on her. "Ma says when ye git a nice Englishman there's nothing nicer, and pa knowed one once that was so polite he used to say 'Haw Buck' to the ox and then he'd say, 'Oh, I beg yer pardon, I mean gee.' It wasn't ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... tell you, M. Sandt, not very polite ones. You have hitherto seen little of the world, and you speak rather the language of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... breaks down, as attempts to mitigate evil by compliance and to make compromises with sinners usually do. The only one of the whole family who had some virtue in him, was too timid to take up a position of uncompromising condemnation. He thought it more polite to go part of the way, and to trust to being able to prevent the worst. That is always a dangerous experiment. It is often tried still; it never answers. Let a man stand to his guns, and speak out the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the same polite smile. 'Nawtin' for sale. I come back when you gone.' His voice was sweet as sugar, but he slammed the door. I would have followed him in and put some better manners into him with a kick, but the ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... gave the world a number of volumes, and, if the writing was not always "strong"—his style is usually mediocre—the subjects were often too strong for polite nostrils. As Henri Massis, the author of an interesting book, How Zola Composed His Novels, says, "he founded his work on a theory which is the most singular of mistakes." The "experimental" novel is now a thing as extinct ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... his weight upon his wings; and these, beating the fleeting air, now here, now there, bearing about inquisitively, while his tail served as a rudder to steer him, he came to a gourd; then with a handsome bow and a few polite words, he obtained the required seeds, and carried them to the willow, who received him with a cheerful face. And when he had scraped away with his foot a small quantity of the earth near the willow, describing a circle, with his beak he planted ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... turning in imagination to other lands, it is curious to consider that the Church which possesses the only Lamp of Truth, and who by the help of its light pronounces all these zealous worshippers alike, to be but "Infidels and Turks," and says to all, in language not quite so polite as that of Touchstone, "Truly, shepherds, ye are in a parlous state," herself makes no such public demonstration of her faith. To an Eastern infidel travelling in the West, she would even appear, to outward eye, a tenfold greater infidel than her neighbours. Except ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... the publisher of the Variations on "La ci darem la mano," to whom he had sent also a sonata and another set of variations. Haslinger received him very kindly, but would print neither the one nor the other work. No wonder the composer thought the cunning publisher wished to induce him in a polite and artful way to let him have his compositions gratis. For had not Wurfel told him that his Concerto in F minor was better than Hummel's in A flat, which Haslinger had just published, and had not ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... bringing him a fresh team of horses. The lawyer inside had generally his wits about him even when asleep; the first thing he did after learning the cause of the excitement was to produce a large red pocketbook. Meantime, Dominicus Pike, being an extremely polite young man, and also suspecting that a female tongue would tell the story as glibly as a lawyer's, had handed the lady out of the coach. She was a fine, smart girl, now wide awake and bright as a button, and had such a sweet, pretty ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... possessed herself a very true discernment of the qualities in mediaeval art which were justly deserving of praise, but had unusually clear understanding of the degree in which she might expect to cultivate such discernment in the general mind of polite travelers; nor have I less admired her aptitude in collation of essentially illustrative facts, so as to bring the history of a very widely contemplative range of art into tenable compass and very graceful and serviceable form. Her reading, indeed, has been, with respect to many very interesting ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... after perhaps some small flutterings of effort, the foundation of some ridiculous little academy of literary busybodies and hangers-on, the public recognition of this or that sociological pretender or financial "scientist," and a little polite jobbery with picture-buying, relapse into lassitude and a contented acquiescence in the rivalry of Germany and the United States for the moral, intellectual and material leadership of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... was that stir which announced the arrival of some public figures; and Donnegan with big George behind him came into the room. This evening he went straight to the table to Nelly Lebrun. Milligan, a little uneasy, rose. But Donnegan was gravely polite and regretted that he ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... began puffing away, he seemed to recollect himself, and drew out a cigar, which he offered with a polite gesture to ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... studiously formal, but every expression of it betokens grief and thoughts of the great martyr whom the woman she was writing to had wronged. There is not a syllable of open reproach, though there runs through it a polite, withering indictment that must assuredly have cut deeply into the callous nature of this notorious Austrian Archduchess who had played ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... that Comstockery has us to designate our legs, limbs, though not at the present time with any legal penalty for not doing so; it prescribes the word stomach for polite usage in describing that part of the body which lies subjacent to the actual stomach, anterior to the spinal column and posterior to the abdominal wall; it forbids a visible bifurcated garment for ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... ask'd her," says my landlady, "how she, as she liv'd, could possibly find so much employment for a confessor?" "Oh," said she, "it is impossible to avoid vain thoughts." I was permitted once to visit her. She was cheerful and polite, and convers'd pleasantly. The room was clean, but had no other furniture than a matras, a table with a crucifix and book, a stool which she gave me to sit on, and a picture over the chimney of Saint Veronica displaying ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... There were many rules printed upon it: "All fishes under nine inches must be gently restored to the water. No instrument of capture must be used except the angle in the hand. The card of legitimation must be produced and exhibited at the polite request of any of the keepers of the river." Thus duly authorised and instructed, I sallied forth to seek my ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... with ways polite, A Country Mouse invited To sup with him and spend the night. Said Country Mouse: "De—lighted!" In truth it proved a royal treat, With everything that's ...
— Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks - From the French of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... more mystified. Why should she send them to Minsterham? And what was the child afraid of? Mrs Carbonel had more notion. Minsterham was the assize town, and going thither was a polite form of mentioning the being before a ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mighty commendation! But 'twas a fox who spoke the oration. Foxes this government may prize, As gentle, plentiful, and wise; If they enjoy the sweets, 'tis plain We geese must feel a tyrant reign. What havoc now shall thin our race, When every petty clerk in place, 40 To prove his taste and seem polite, Will feed on geese both noon ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... withstand thy power? Praise from the riveled lips of toothless, bald Decrepitude, and in the looks of lean And craving poverty, and in the bow Respectful of the smutched artificer, Is oft too welcome, and may much disturb The bias of the purpose. How much more, Poured forth by beauty splendid and polite, In language soft as adoration breathes? Ah, spare your idol! think him human still; Charms he may have, but he has frailties too; Dote not too much, nor ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... the whole pressure on it of the interview between us thus far. "Ouf!" he cried, stretching his arms luxuriously, "the skirmish was hot while it lasted. Take a seat, Mr. Hartright. We meet as mortal enemies hereafter—let us, like gallant gentlemen, exchange polite attentions in the meantime. Permit me to take the liberty of calling ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... no engagement for that night—and Paul sent back a polite note of acceptance. He remembered many pleasant functions that he had attended in years past at the Dalmatian Embassy in London. After all, he had to do something. He could not go about searching for the vanished lady every ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... discernment, and could adapt themselves to the character of the particular persons they happened to be in company with, in a manner very remarkable; but this was evidently the result not of cunning, but of correct feelings, and of a polite ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... have given an answer ere this. Granted. But a variety of important occurrences, continually interposing to divert the mind and withdraw the attention, I hope will apologise for the delay, and plead my excuse for the seeming, but not real neglect. I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me, in the elegant lines you enclosed; and however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your poetic talents; in honor of which, and ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... got more work than can do, and find an almighty nugget sent by Satan. And now the very worst luck of all have come, wholly and out of all denial, by you and your faces and graces and French goings on. Not that I do not like you, mind; for you always was very polite to me, and done your best when you found me trying to put up with the trials put on me. But now this trial is the worst of all that ever come to my establishings; and to go away now as I used to think of doing when tyrannized ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... of the escadrille was looking interested. He understood that Tom and Jack must have met with some singular adventure; but since they did not see fit to take him into their confidence he was too polite to ask questions, feeling there must be a good reason ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... boys are going. It will be dreadfully dull without them. Now they have stopped teasing and are polite, I really enjoy them,' said Nan, who felt unusually gracious tonight as Tom's mishap kept him ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... took the cards, and, after returning the hen-wife thanks for her kind instruction, went back to the palace, where she was quite uneasy until she got speaking to the King in regard of his children; at last she broke it off to him in a very polite and engaging manner, so that he could see no muster or design in it. He readily consented to her desire, and his sons were sent for to the tower, who gladly came to Court, rejoicing that they were freed from such confinement. ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... of the undersigned," Spohr had not the faintest idea as to the identity of "the undersigned," nor the least inkling of that gentleman's design. He therefore replied that he had an engagement at that time. To this note he received another polite epistle asking him to be good enough to honour the "undersigned" with an interview, and to choose his own time. He therefore made an appointment, which he kept punctually, and on arriving at the house to which he was directed, he found an old ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... heard. The first time he had made a pest of himself with Gordon who was polite, evasive, always plausible. Gordon, Gordon—it was becoming an obsession with him he knew, but the man appeared at every turn. He ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... thought better of it and had concluded to yield to his wishes, even congratulated himself that the childish affair had been nipped in the bud by his timely and judicious authority, when on one bright summer day, like a thunder-clap from an unclouded sky, came a very polite note from Lieutenant Montgomery apprising him of the fact that Lizzie and he had just been married in the presence of a few friends by an Episcopal clergyman, and that they craved his forgiveness and blessing. From that moment her father's ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... out with much excitement: "Oh, Mother, you ought to have seen how friendly the lady was, and she is so beautiful and so gentle and so good, and quite an aristocratic lady; and Erick in his velvet suit is like a knight, and so fine and polite. Edi could ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... among your own continental army, unprecedented. The hospital at Camden was by Gen. Greene's order protected, although it had an armed guard for its internal police." Gen. Greene, who ere this, the reader must have perceived, was polite to his friends, and humane to his enemies, for even they are obliged to confess it, immediately instituted an inquiry into this complaint;* but how it was ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... man said something under his breath which, because it was not audible to his companion, need not be repeated here; but it was probably not an expression that he would have used in polite society. He drummed on the table with ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... the shop, rather blindly. He stared at the shelves of paper-covered novels and post-cards, and when the polite proprietor offered him a dozen of the latter, he accepted them without comment. Indeed, he put them into a pocket and turned ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... considerable experience in coming into contact with wealthy and noted men, I have observed that those who have accomplished the greatest results are those who "keep under the body"; are those who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient, and polite. I think that President William McKinley is the best example of a man of this class ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... he is very polite," said Helen, after her escort had bade them good night, and was out of hearing. "He offered me his arm, and then, after we had walked a little way, suggested that we could get along more comfortably by ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... the readiness of your submission," said this very polite gentleman. He was a comely lad, with blue eyes and a good-humoured mouth, to which a pair of bristling moustaches sought vainly to ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... there were stories of fights and freedom. The news went from plantation to plantation and while the slaves acted natural and some even more polite than usual, they prayed for freedom. Then one day I heard something that sounded like thunder and missus and marster began to walk around and act queer. The grown slaves were whispering to each other. Sometimes they gathered in little gangs in the grove. Next day I heard it again, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... than that rumour assigned it to have been an accusation that Alan was imprudently intimate with the handsome widow of Strone (a Bhanntrach Ruadh). The delicate insinuation was resented by Alan in language probably more plain than polite. Mr Cameron was Alan's senior by some twenty years or so, but notwithstanding this, his high spirit could not brook the rough retort of the accused; and, much to Alan's confusion, the result was that he received a peremptory demand to apologise ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... his father could say nothing. Wondering, but not believing, they exchanged stolen glances. It is probable that the abbe, in his present mood, was sincere; for in a fanatic one must allow for the wildest inconsistencies. The old sergeant, more skeptical than the Acadians, was, at the same time more polite. ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... as Bouchalka did not reappear on Tenth Street, Cressida and I went once more to the place where he had played, only to find another violinist leading the orchestra. We summoned the proprietor, a Swiss-Italian, polite and solicitous. He told us the gentleman was not playing there any more,—was playing somewhere else, but he had forgotten where. We insisted upon talking to the old pianist, who at last reluctantly admitted ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... describe the relations between their own and foreign countries as "friendly." When the relations are not friendly, yet not the opposite, they are usually registered on the political barometer as "correct." The attitude on both sides is formal, rigorously polite, reserved; such as would become a pair of people who had once been at feud and after their quarrel had been fought out agreed, if only for the sake of appearances, to show no outward animosity, but on the other hand ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... ate our Christmas dinner in one of the bedrooms. It was laid on the kitchen table, upon which a tablecloth, sent by the thoughtful hosts at the hotel, was spread. There were napkins, a big turkey and claret and champagne, and a real, live, polite little Frenchman to carve and wait. Barclay and I sat on the bed. Mrs. Forbes had the only chair. Johnnie and his sister occupied the hamper. Before eating Mrs. Forbes said grace, in which she again quoted the passage from ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... of the brain. Approaching a psychological inquiry is like entering a manufactory: curious to observe its ingenious processes, we find that, though we may penetrate its court-yard and ware-rooms, every precaution is taken by its polite proprietors to prevent our interrogating its workmen or understanding its methods. The intellect often displays proudly her works; she has the assurance to attempt to answer questions about all things else in heaven and earth; but when her life is the subject of inquiry, that life seems to elude ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... to families that were waiting supper for them, but Lorraine crept out from behind her sagebush, sneezing and thanking her imitation of the jack rabbits. Whoever they were, she was not sorry she had let them ride on. They might be her father's men, and they might have been very polite and chivalrous to her. But their voices and their manner of speaking had been rough; and it is one thing, Lorraine reflected, to mingle with made-up villains—even to be waylaid and kidnapped and tied to trees and threatened with death—but it is quite ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... length. The United States Minister was naturally a little annoyed to find that his present had not been accepted. 'I have no wish,' he said, 'to do the ghost any personal injury, and I must say that, considering the length of time he has been in the house, I don't think it is at all polite to throw pillows at him'—a very just remark, at which, I am sorry to say, the twins burst into shouts of laughter. 'Upon the other hand,' he continued, 'if he really declines to use the Rising Sun Lubricator, we shall have to take his chains from him. It ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... may be for good or ill; but one consequence has been that the newcomers, thrusting up into the circles above them, have taken with them the speech of their former associates, so that one hears now, in nominally polite circles, tones of voice, forms of speech, and the expression of points of view which would have been impossible in the youth of people who are now ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... holy man, now in a towering rage, and he flaunted the torch over the crew. "Howld y'r imp'dent tongues!" he shouted, shaking the canoe. "Be civil this minute, or I'll spill ye to the bottom, ye load of cursin' braggarts! Faith an' ut's a durty meal ye'd make for the fush! Foine answers ye give polite questions! How d'y' know we're not here to warn ye about the fort? For shame to ye. Whur's Eric ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... if he were not apprehensive his doing so would attract observation; and that he thought it would appear less conspicuous if he should see me in the Queen's great closet at a time which he specified, and when nobody would be there. I went. After having made some polite observations upon the services I had already performed, and those I might yet perform, for my master and mistress, he spoke to me of the King's imminent danger, of the plots which were hatching, and of the lamentable composition of the Legislative Assembly; and he particularly dwelt upon the necessity ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... us, and never did I feel more grateful to my guardian than when I watched his gracious bearing towards my friend. If he had been some noted literary gentleman, he could not have been more genial and polite. ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... the citizens of the republic, on the government, the Saxon race, and woman herself, in all her political, religious, and social relations. It is sufficiently humiliating to a proud woman to be reminded ever and anon in the polite world that she's a political nonentity; to have the fact gracefully mourned over, or wittily laughed at, in classic words and cultured voice by one's superiors in knowledge, wisdom and power; but to hear the rights of woman scorned in foreign tongue ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... over her task again with a quick exasperated movement, and Claire passed on. Her neighbor's abrupt rebuke gave Claire a renewed sense of exclusion. She had meant to be warmly appreciative, but she knew now that she had been only coldly polite. But, as a matter of fact, the prospect of delving through a box of Gertrude Sinclair's discarded finery moved her this morning to a dull fury. She felt suddenly tired of cast-offs, of compromise, of all the other shabby adjustments ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... The Gerad, after polite inquiries, seated me by his right hand upon the Dais, where I ate Kat and fingered my rosary, whilst he transacted the business of the day. Then one of the elders took from a little recess in the wall a large book, and uncovering it, began to recite a long ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... seem with reason—that her good master had gone out of his mind. But she presently changed her opinion, for after he had cried unrestrainedly until he was exhausted, Herr Ueberhell gave her a prompt proof of his sanity and returning health. In his kindly and polite manner of former times, he begged her to set out in the kitchen a bottle of the oldest and best Bacharacher. There he bade her bring a second glass and invited her to drink, and clink glasses with him because the greatest piece of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ladies walking on the bank, we Saluted the Village by three rounds from our blunderbuts and the Small arms of the party, and landed near the lower part of the town. we were met by great numbers of the inhabitants, we found them excessively polite. we received invitations from Several of those Gentlemen a Mr. Proulx, Taboe, Decett, Tice Dejonah & Quarie and several who were pressing on us to go to their houses, we could only visit Mr. Proulx and Mr. Deucett in the course ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... torture and destroy fell from their tongues, etiquette may have required that the countenance should be unmoved, the eye serene, the voice low and gentle. Such contrasts are not uncommonly seen in the polite Mandarin, whose apparent calmness drives his European antagonist to despair; and it may well be that the Babylonians of the sixth and seventh centuries before our era had attained to an equal power of restraining the expression of feeling. But real gentleness, meekness, and placability ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... Chiniquy had turned Protestant, so the Catholics hadn't much use for him. Well, we sat out in the gulf in the broiling sun till noon, and not a bite did we get. When we went ashore old Father Chiniquy had to go, so he said in that polite way of his, 'I'm very sorry I cannot go out with you dis afternoon, Mr. MacAllister, but I leave you my blessing. You will catch a t'ousand dis afternoon. 'Well, we did not catch a thousand, but we caught exactly ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... met one with volubility and the expectation of a fabulous tip have given place to khakied orderlies, the polite customs officials to old-soldier myrmidons of the worried embarkation officer. Store dumps with English markings are packed symmetrically on the cobbled stones. The transport lorries are all British, some of them still branded with the names of well-known London firms. Newly-built supply ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... over to them, and talked to them amiably. She wanted to be on good terms with them but, while she strove to be polite, her eyes followed Mr. Holohan in his limping and devious courses. As soon as she could she excused herself and ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... know, Dante sent no remittances home. He moved from one university to another, and accepted invitations from nobility to tarry at their castles. He dressed in melancholy black and read his poems to polite assemblies. Now and then he gave lectures. He was followed by spies, or thought he was, and now and then quarreled with his associates or host, and made due note of the fact, leaving the matter to be adjusted when he had time and wanted raw ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... and made two low bows. I felt for my scalp-knife, for I thought they was approaching to take me, but I couldn't use it —they was so darned polite. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... reflected, would wear a hat on a day like the one he was swimming through. But the people who passed him as he trudged onward to no particular destination didn't seem to notice; they gave him a fairly wide berth, and seemed very polite, but that wasn't because they thought he was nuts, Malone knew. It was because they knew he ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... belonged to that class of persons, on the surface very polite in society, who make a great point of punctiliousness, but who, directly they are crossed in anything, are completely disconcerted, and become more like sacks of flour than elegant and lively men of society. Again all was ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... assured her. "Of course Galbraith had to be polite and affect to listen, but I could see that he was bored by your chatter. He naturally wanted to talk to me ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... "Remember how kind she was to you when you were ill," or "Oh, Augustin, you didn't say that of the Baroness when she brought you grapes in your illness." I had plenty of grapes. There are few things which human nature resents more than a theft of its grievances. I was polite to Krak, but I lodged a protest with my mother and confided a passionate repudiation of any treaty to Victoria's sympathetic ear. Victoria was all for me; my mother was stern for a moment, and then, smiling faintly, told me to ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... your polite invitation to leave," said Dick, bowing ceremoniously. "I'm willin' to go, but ef you throw any more stones at me, Micky Maguire, I'll hurt you worse ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... words, and with a polite bow, the doctor went out, leaving Monsieur de Vargnes extremely surprised, and a prey to this doubt, as ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... there (the solitary one on the island), stood a short way above the landing quay; and once or twice, catching sight of her in her doorway and lifting his hat as he went by (for the Commandant was ever polite), he had found it in his mind to stop and inquire after ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... kind and polite; they keep them for three days at the public expense; after they have first washed their feet, they show them their city and its customs, and they honour them with a seat at the council and public table, and there are men whose duty it is to take care of and guard the guests. ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Diane de Cadignan wrapped herself, with coquettish motions, in a large shawl, and rose. Blondet and Rastignac were too much men of the world, and too polite to make the least remonstrance, or try to detain her; but Madame d'Espard compelled her friend to sit down ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... water at the source, which emerges as a thousand diamonds from the rock and then descends into the hollow trunk of a tree and becomes tame and inclined to domesticity. The cows had come for a drink at the same hour, and we had just exchanged a few polite remarks when I found myself observed by an English clergyman. Yes, unmistakably English. His face was prim and clean-shaven, his collar straight and stiff, upon his lips there played a sweet and devout ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... woman, more polite, had risen, and was waiting her turn. She was very tall and had a ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... physician listened with polite interest, but he shook his head. "Lieutenant, you simply are not aware of the close call you've had. Another two hours without treatment, and we might not have been able ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... clearly, they were looking into the council chamber at Ilen-dar. Clyone was there, pacing the floor. Dantor had just arrived with two of the green-bronze guards. The Zara, though nervous, was curiously calm and polite in her greeting of the ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... he said, "and there are a dozen women in town at least of your connections who'd do the polite things by you. As to inclination—well, one ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the more then. That ought to do the book some good. And then you understand, Mr. Moore," continued this remarkably naive person, "if your friend happened to know any of the reviewers, and could suggest how some little polite attention might be paid them, there would be nothing wrong in that, would there? I am told that they are quite gentlemen nowadays—they go everywhere—and—and indeed I should like to make their acquaintance, since I've come into ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... odd match: Floretta, pale, polite, impractical and intensely romantic; Thad, florid, rough and to the point. Yet the married pair seemed to be happy together. Winslow went to sea on several voyages and, four years after the marriage, remained at home ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... upon art as a means of livelihood only, a handmaid of commerce, or as a branch of knowledge, to be acquired only so far as to enable one to impart it to others; others may regard it as a polite amusement; others, again, as an absorbing pursuit and passion, demanding the closest devotion: but from whatever point of view we may regard it, do not let us forget that the pursuit of beauty in art offers the best of educations for the faculties, that its interest ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... is sometimes forced down youthful throats by the Mrs. Squeerses of polite learning, a vile compound of treacle and brimstone; but there is a vast difference between science as dead fact and science as living poetry,—the harvest of the child's own eyes, gathered on seashores and hillsides, in fields and lanes. We like the aim and tendency of this little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Washington, looking like himself on a monument, was making not a pretence to entertain poor Lady Sterling, who was almost sniffling. Lord Sterling, having gratified, an hour since, Mrs. Washington's polite interest in his health, was stifling yawn after yawn, and his chubby little visage was oblong and crimson. Tilghman, looking guilty and uncomfortable,—it was his duty to relieve Hamilton at the table,—was flirting with Miss Boudinot. Lady ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... ornamented several picnics before. It could not be eaten, but it looked well sitting in the middle of the table. At the close of the banquet all the party sang a song. Lady Green's voice was not very good, but Lota explained to the children afterward that it isn't polite to laugh at company even when they do make funny squeaks with their high notes. Pocahontas had to sit in the corner awhile for having done so. She was sorry, and promised never to offend again; as a reward for which, her Mamma gave her ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... invitation to Rufus. He would have excused himself gladly, but he felt that this would have been hardly polite; ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... proverb, that the London policemen are never at hand. The stout fellows with their clubs look as if they might do service; but what a contrast they are to the Paris sergents de ville! The latter, with his dress-coat, cocked hat, long rapier, white gloves, neat, polite, attentive, alert,—always with the manner of a jesuit turned soldier,—you learn to trust very much, if not respect; and you feel perfectly secure that he will protect you, and give you your rights in any corner of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... frequently enter the mind of the missionary, as he deals with Christian workers, than how to say this needful truth and do that needful deed so as not to hurt the feelings of those whom he would help. The individual who feels slighted or insulted will probably give no active sign of his wound. He is too polite or too politic for that. He will merely close like a clam and cease to have further cordial feelings and relations with the person who ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... to be polite, Elizabeth," she said. "Things do sometimes happen that are very trying, to be sure, but we should not give way to irritation. Why, where should I have been if I had? Think how it would have distressed your dear mother to have you show ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... addition to the latter motive, might also desire to secure a connection which might promote their own business prospects, was quite natural. The handsome American merchant, with his still handsomer fortune, was, therefore, much courted. Though always gay, gallant, and polite, Mr. McDonogh proved for some time invulnerable to even the charms of Creole beauty. At last there were indications that a young Orleanoise of fortune equal to his own, and of personal charms that were the theme of general praise ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "I have nothing to offer against all that. We who inherited our wealth had no moral title to it, and that we knew as well as everybody else did, although it was not considered polite to refer to the fact in our presence. But if I am going to stand up here in the pillory as a representative of the inheriting class, there are others who ought to stand beside me. We were not the only ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... and Russian instead of Austrian officers quartered at their house. How much more polite the Russians were—so much more gallant and kind-hearted! They didn't treat you as though you were a servant—"Do this. Do that." They brought some of their wounded to the farm, and Miss ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... no difference in the relative importance of sounds. They have sought, through every barbarous dialect, as well as every refined tongue, and gathered by the drag-net of observation, every barbarous and obscure as well as every polite sound which by any accident ever enters into the constitution of speech. The clucks of Hottentot Tribes and the whistle heard in some of the North American Languages have been reckoned in, upon easy terms, with the more serviceable and euphonious ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... for any reasons. I hold it to be an insult to a woman of sense to demand her reasons on such an occasion. Enough for me that she did not then wish to be my wife; so that the old intercourse went on—she cordial and polite as ever, I never for one moment doubting that the day would come when my roof tree would shelter her, and we should smile together over our fireside at my long and ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... to-day returned from New Centreville, whither I went after Miss Saville. Found she had just skipped the town with a young Englishman by the name of Bovoir, who had been paying her polite attentions for some time, having bowied or otherwise squelched a man for her within a week or two. It appears the young woman had refused to have anything to do with him for a long period; but he seems to have struck pay gravel about two days ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... eager to be out in the sunshine all day long. I found myself eating, too, almost ravenously, and my sleep at nights, instead of being broken and feverish, grew to be long and restful. But somehow I did not feel happy, for Mr Raydon, though always pleasant and polite, was less warm, and he looked at me still in a suspicious way that made me ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... discreet exhibition of a few carefully chosen bones in the plays of Bernstein and Bataille, direct descendants of Scribe, Sardou, et Cie, but I may be permitted to indulge in a slight snicker of polite amazement when I discover these gentlemen applying their fingers to their noses in no very pretty-meaning gesture, directed at a grandson of Moliere. For such is Georges Feydeau. His method is not that of the Seventeenth Century master, nor yet that of Mirbeau; nevertheless, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... concerning it, why should she not shun his society? He was half-desperate, and yet felt that any show of embarrassment or anger would only make him appear more ridiculous. The longer he thought the more sure he was that the girls were beginning to guess his position, and that his only course was a polite indifference to both. But this policy promised to lead through a thorny path, and to what? In impotent rage at himself he ground his teeth during the pauses between the stanzas that he was compelled to sing. Such was the discord in his heart that he felt like ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... consent to an arbitration regarding the injury inflicted on the Pergamenes and Rhodians. The object of the senate, which sought to provoke the king to a formal declaration of war, was not gained; the Roman ambassador, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, obtained from the king nothing but the polite reply that he would excuse what the envoy had said because he was ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the customary civilities, or arriving at a village, accepting a night's lodging, purchasing food for the party, asking for information, or answering polite African enquiries as to our objects in travelling, we begin to spread a knowledge of that people by whose agency their land will yet become enlightened and freed from ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... was an active Democrat. Mr. Parmenter was then about fifty years of age, of heavy frame, swarthy in complexion, and a man of good natural abilities. He took me to Mr. Van Buren. We found him alone, well dressed, polite and rather gracious than otherwise. Quite early in my visit, Mr. Parmenter took me to the Pension Office, then presided over by Mr. Edwards. Mr. Parmenter stated his business, and immediately attention was given to my applications. In the course of a few days ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... that Clement remembered very little about "Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk,"—a book of Sir Walter's less famous than many of his others; but he signified his polite assent to the Deacon's statement, rather wondering at his choice of a favorite, and smiling at his queer way of talking about the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... there was no difficulty about getting pratique, and the party might have landed forthwith had they so pleased; they deemed it wise, however, to exercise a certain measure of restraint, by abstaining from landing until the next morning. But although the port authorities were perfectly polite, Singleton thought—or was it only a case of a guilty conscience?—that the custom-house officer betrayed even more than ordinary Yankee curiosity as to the reasons which had prompted Jack to select West Indian waters as the spot in which to pursue his quest ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... found upon the authorised rolls. Though several emperors did their best to stop this practice, the endeavour was for the most part fruitless. Once in England the "esquires" were a class with certain recognised claims, but nothing could stop the polite tendency to add "Esq." to the name of a person on a private letter. The case was somewhat similar at Rome, although the practice did not ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... witnessed a very different sense of duty, and one to which I must confess a preference when we were at Lugano, an inland town of Teneriffe, situated a few miles from Santa Cruz, where our good "Coptic" halted for six hours to replenish her coal, thus permitting her passengers a shore excursion. A polite elderly gentleman, apparently the sole occupant of the Lugano hotel, whose decidedly clerical aspect, together with that simple white neckband which Catholics claim as solely their own, made us at once set him down as Roman, ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... she said simply, handing back the canteen, but without lifting her eyes again to his face. "I was so thirsty." Her low tone, endeavoring to be polite enough, contained no ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... great deal for a duke and a peer of the realm; you seem to me more learned than that literary man who wished me to think his verses good, and you are far more polite. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... betrayed on the stolid face of an elderly workman, to whom it was explained that he was required to distemper the walls of the drawing-room with a sole colour, instead of covering them with a paper, after the manner of all the other drawing-rooms he had ever had to do with. But he was too polite to express his difference of taste by more than looks;—and some days after the room was finished, with etchings duly hung on velvet in the panels of the door,—the sole-coloured walls well covered with pictures, whence they stood out undistracted ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... any ensued, was not sufficiently loud to shake a single leaf of the ivy on the towers of Nightmare Abbey; and some months afterwards he received a letter from his bookseller, informing him that only seven copies had been sold, and concluding with a polite request for the balance. ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... returned from India, Colonel Mayson," Korust said, in his usual quiet, tired tone. "You will, perhaps, find it interesting to talk together a little. As for me, I play because all are polite enough to wish it, but conversation disturbs me not ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her social credit. In the world of laborious idleness, Mrs. Toplady had a repute for erudition; she was often spoken of as a studious and learned woman; and this estimate of herself she inclined to accept. Having daily opportunity of observing the fathomless ignorance of polite persons, she made it her pride to keep abreast with the day's culture. Genuine curiosity, too, supplied her with a motive, for she had a certain thin, supple, restless intelligence, which took wide surveys of superficial life, and was ever ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... Sophy, and of all those who are wealthy enough to purchase and maintain such precious merchandise. These maidens are very honourably and virtuously instructed to fondle and caress men; are taught dances of a very polite and effeminate kind; and how to heighten by the most voluptuous artifices the pleasures of their disdainful masters for whom they are designed. These unhappy creatures repeat their lesson to their mothers, in the same manner as little girls among ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... shock-headed Scotchman, standing up in the Caledonian chapel, and dealing "damnation round the land" in a broad northern dialect, and with a harsh, screaking voice, what ear polite, what smile serene would have hailed the barbarous prodigy, or not consigned him to utter neglect and derision? But the Rev. Edward Irving, with all his native wildness, "hath a smooth aspect framed to make women" saints; his very unusual size and height are carried off and moulded into elegance ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the Court. Administrators, however exalted, are human, and even the lowliest of magistrates is prone to take offence, if given to understand that he is considered dull and dishonest. Luis de Leon never was betrayed into using disrespectful language; but his polite formulae could not conceal the fact that he had no very high opinion of those in whose hands his fate lay. Nor did the well-meant observance of established forms on the part of the Court do anything to modify his sentiments. It was in strict conformity with ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... eight windows on the front, in the best part of Boulevard Malesherbes, to cook onions in. I don't know what he didn't say to me in his effervescent state. For my part, I was naturally vexed to be spoken to in that insolent tone. The least one can do is to be polite to people whom one neglects to pay, deuce take it! So I retorted that it was too bad, really; but, if the Caisse Territoriale would pay what they owe me, to wit my arrears of salary for four years, plus seven ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... forth. I placed the two hundred louis before him, with many apologies, in the name of the Company, for the inconvenience its followers had occasioned him. I exchanged a friendly glance with Barjols and a polite nod with the Abbe de Rians who were present, and, with a profound bow to the assembled company, withdrew. It was only a little thing, but it took me fifteen hours; hence the delay. I thought it preferable to leaving ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... enthusiasm, which still endures, I selected the actual site for a modest castle then and there built in the accommodating air. It was something to have so palpable and rare a base for the fanciful fabric. All in a moment, disdaining formality, and to the, accompaniment of the polite jeers of two long-suffering friends, I proclaimed "Here shall I live! On this spot shall stand the probationary palace!" and so saying fired my rifle at a tree a few yard's off. But the stolid tree—a bloodwood, all bone, toughened by death, a few ruby crystals in sparse antra all ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... seat, with my hat high above me in the rack. I made a motion as if to get up for it, when he said, "Pray don't disturb yourself, sir; I'll reach up for it." Not all the conductors I met afterwards were as polite as this, but he has as good a right to pose as the type of American conductor as the overbearing ruffians who stalk through the books of sundry British tourists. In judging him it should be remembered that he ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... and quite unintentional; Dakie Thayne was very polite; but his eyebrows went up a little—just a line or two—as he said it, the light beginning to come ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... "Katrina, it isn't polite to look so bored," said her brother John, who was amusing himself with Sydney's help by drawing caricatures of ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... so many other branches of science, will be eventually solved. One thing is clear,—that, if the Bible be true and geology be true, that cannot be geologically true which is scripturally false, or vice versa; and we may therefore laugh at the polite compromise which is sometimes affected by learned professors of theology and geology respectively. All we demand of either—all that is needed—is, that they refrain from a too hasty conclusion of absolute contradictions between their ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... didn't care much for the woodchuck children, they were so wild and ill-mannered, and their mother was even more disagreeable than they were. As for Mister Woodchuck, she did not object to him so much; in fact, she rather liked to talk to him, for his words were polite and his ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... Commissioners kept records of all their examinations, and when Roosevelt wrote him a polite note inquiring the name of the "bright young man from Baltimore," Gorman did not reply. Roosevelt also asked him, in case he shrank from giving the name of his informant, to give the date when the alleged examination took place. He even ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... had had time to conclude his polite answers as to the state of his health, the bell rang a second time and the maid admitted Paul Stewart. Nor did the evening advance far before Jim and Ken dropped in, then came Dodo and Mr. Dalken, and last but not least the Ashbys stopped in to inquire how everyone was. Such "stoppings" ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... undermining each other, which the satirical wit of men hath charged upon courts; together with all the rage and violence, cruelty and injustice, which have been ever imputed to public assemblies; are with us (so polite are we grown) to be seen among our meanest traders and artificers in the greatest perfection. All which, as it may be matter of some humiliation to the wise and mighty of this world, so the effects thereof may, perhaps, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... to them, and was as polite as he could be, but he did not reply to their question. "You are exceedingly ugly," said the wild ducks, "but that will not matter if you do not want to marry one of ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... his father, with that furtive spirit of quizzing, which he had acquired amongst other polite accomplishments at Eton,—"sir, it is no use now considering whether the stocks should or should not have been repaired. The only question is, whom you will get to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... me, but what very odd things you say! And—excuse me—don't you know it is not thought at all good taste to quote the Bible in polite society?" ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... swords ready to cut your head off if you stole anything. So I took this cup and broke it. It was not stealing to carry off a broken cup, you know." And she would add, when winding up her narrative: "Those Frenchmen was so polite to me that they did n't ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... the counsel given is precisely that which they wish to follow. From the sentiments of Alexander at this time I had not the slightest doubt as to the course he would finally pursue, and I considered what he said about consulting the King of Prussia to be merely a polite excuse, by which he avoided the disagreeable task of giving the Marshals a ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... often heard him speak with rapture. I could scarcely compose myself, and must have betrayed indignation in my mien to the stranger, who was a counselor-at-law in the neighborhood, a man of engaging aspect and polite address. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... misshapen creature from whom Scott borrowed the character that gives a name to one of his minor Border stories. The real Black Dwarf (David Ritchie he was called among men) was fond of poetry, but hated Burns. He was polite to the fair, but classed mankind at large with his favourite aversions: ghosts, fairies, and robbers. There was this of human about the Black Dwarf, that "he hated folk that are aye gaun to dee, and never do't." The village beauties were wont to come to him for a Judgment of Paris on their charms, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... umbrella, even if he would not hear of a rain-coat. "Am I made of money?" he asked. He gave a like treatment to some intimations contributed by Medora Phillips during her call: he met them with the smiling, polite, half-weary patience which a man sometimes employs to inform a woman that she doesn't quite know what she is talking about. He presently in as active circulation, on the campus and elsewhere, as ever. The few who looked after him at all came to the view that ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... is no doubt a great man somewhere; a tremendous fellow of a student, who talks of cannon-boots, rapiers, and Berliner Weiss Bier; and an individual whose only distinguishing feature is his nose, and that is an insult to polite society. The rest have no characteristics ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... Montbard, however, was a Republican—in fact, a future Communard—and I know that he did not appreciate his virtually enforced introduction to the so-called "Badinguet." Still, he contrived to be fairly polite, and allowed the Emperor to inspect the sketch he was making. There was to be a theatrical performance at the chateau that evening, and it had already been arranged that Montbard should witness it. On hearing, however, that it had been impossible to provide my father and myself with seats, ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... went, I fell back, half fainting, in the comfortable armchair of the Pullman car, hardly able to speak with surprise and horror. It was all so strange, so puzzling, so bewildering! Then I owed my escape from the stenographic myrmidons of the Canadian Press to the polite care and ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... forgets all time, it must be by the influence of the kind go-between Sleep. We know, of course, that their contemporaries did not go to sleep over them: but it was because they felt that they were being done good to—that they were in the height of polite society—that their manners were being softened and not allowed to be gross. The time, in its blunt way, was fond of contrasting the attractions of a mistress on one side and "a friend and a bottle" on the other. That a novel ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... obscure, The name of earth that bears, The Authors of that Universe Have, at thy call, descended oft, And pleasant converse with thy children had; And how, these foolish dreams reviving, e'en This age its insults heaps upon the wise, Although it seems all others to excel In learning, and in arts polite; What can I think of thee Thou wretched race of men? What thoughts discordant then my heart assail, In doubt, if scorn ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... of the secret sorority felt satisfied or otherwise with the result of the shuffle, etiquette forbade them to show anything but polite enthusiasm. Each took her buddy solemnly by the hand and vowed allegiance. Peachy then produced what she called "the loving cup," a three-handled vase of brown pottery brought by Jess from Edinburgh and with the motto "Mak' yersel' at hame," on it in cream-colored letters. It was usually ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... much crestfallen to find that what she had regarded as spirited independence was labelled "bad form" at the College. On reflection it struck her that, apart from all rules, it had perhaps been scarcely polite to rush away, in direct opposition to the expressed wishes of one who had been taking so much trouble to make their walk interesting. In common with all the Chaddites, she keenly appreciated both Miss Maitland's personality and her knowledge of nature lore, and had enjoyed ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... when we reached the village of Senas tired with the day's march. A landlord standing in his door, on the lookout for customers, invited us to enter in a manner so polite and pressing we could not choose but do so. This is a universal custom with the country innkeepers. In a little village which we passed toward evening there was a tavern with the sign "The Mother of Soldiers." A portly woman whose face beamed with kindness and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... 'epoove 'im. 'Doctah Seveeah,' says I, 'don't you call me a jackass ag'in!' An' 'e din call it me ag'in. No, seh. But 'e din like to 'ush up. Thass the rizz'n 'e was a lil miscutteous to you. Me, I am always polite. As they say, 'A nod is juz as good as a kick f'om a bline hoss.' You are fon' of maxim, Mistoo Itchlin? Me, I'm ve'y fon' of them. But they's got one maxim what you may 'ave 'eard—I do not fine that maxim always come t'ue. 'Ave you evva yeah that maxim, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... appartement on better terms. He watched and waited and spun the web of his mischievous legal proceedings. He knew all the tricks of Parisian legislation in the matter of leases. Factious and fond of scribbling, he wrote polite and specious letters to his tenants; but at the bottom of all his civil sentences could be seen, as in his faded and cozening face, the soul of a Shylock. He always demanded six months' rent in advance, to be deducted from the ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... laughter is the 'sure sign of a weak mind, and the manner in which low-bred men express their silly joy, at silly things, and they call it being merry.' Better always, if necessary, the peculiar composure of polite sensibility to the suffering of properly introduced acquaintances. When he went out, he would be careful to 'walk well, wear his hat well, move his head properly, and his arms gracefully'; and I for one sympathize with the low-breds if they found him a merry ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... 'un, Soup," growled the sailor. "Who'd have thought it of a savage? Why, it was reg'lar polite and genteel. I couldn't ha' done that. Who'd ha' expected it of a chap who dresses in an orstridge feather and a wisp o' ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... and after reading to him President Grant's proclamation, endeavored to dissuade him from advancing over the line. But the Fenian General refused to comply with his advice, and expressed his contempt for the President in language more forcible and profane than polite. As Gen. Foster had no troops at his command to compel obedience by the Fenian leaders, he crossed over the line and informed the Canadian commander (Col. Chamberlain) of O'Neil's designs and his inability ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... sarcastic child, extremely self-contained, giving nothing and receiving nothing in return. It was impossible to become intimate with her. Avery had given up the attempt almost at the outset, realizing that it was not in Olive's nature to be intimate with anyone. They were always exceedingly polite to each other, but beyond that their acquaintance made no progress. Olive lived in a world of books, and the practical side of life scarcely touched her, and most certainly never appealed to her sympathy. "She will ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... not idle spectators, judging from the loud talking, yeh-yeh-ing, and unintelligible lingo, that resounded all about. We saw Raed paying the most polite attentions to a very chubby, fat girl with a black fur jacket ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... racing very much. While we were sitting there, a very fine gentleman—at least he had purple stripes on his tunic and ever so many rings—came and sat down beside us. Pratinas told me that this gentleman was Lucius Calatinus, who was a great lord, but a friend of his. I tried to say something polite to Calatinus, but I didn't like him. He seemed coarse, and looked as though he might be cruel at times. He talked to me something the way you have talked—said I was pretty and my voice sounded very sweet. But I didn't enjoy these things from him, I can ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... she left the Count, went to mention her intended departure to the Countess, who opposed it with polite expressions of regret; after which, she sent a note to acquaint the lady abbess, that she should return to the convent; and thither she withdrew on the evening of the following day. M. Du Pont, in extreme regret, saw her depart, while the Count endeavoured to cheer him with a hope, that Emily would ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Lone Wolf got up, stretched himself, yawned prodigiously, came a couple of steps nearer, and sat down again, with his head cocked to one side, and a polite air of asking, "Do ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... liver, Charlie?" inquired the genial editor. This amiable question was habitual with Mr. Pollock. He varied it a little when the object of his polite concern happened to be of the opposite sex; then he gallantly substituted the word "appetite." It was never necessary to reply to Mr. Pollock's question. In fact, he always seemed a little surprised when any one did reply, quite as if he had missed a portion ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... smilingly, that the portrait of Daphne was drawn for herself. I begged to be excused from believing it; and protested that I could not see one feature that had the least resemblance; but the Dean immediately burst into a fit of laughter. 'You fancy,' says he, 'that you are very polite, but you are much mistaken. That lady had rather be a Daphne drawn by me, than a Sacharissa by any other pencil.' She confirmed what he had said with great earnestness, so that I had no other method of retrieving ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... khaki, one of Francis's men, who was coming dangerously near, and had in his eye a determination to cut in. Francis and Marjorie moved downwards till they were almost opposite the door. And as they were dancing across the space before the door there was a polite knock on it. They stood still, still interlaced, as an unpartnered man lounging near it threw it open. And on the threshold, like a ghost from the past, stood Mr. Logan. In spite of his mysterious nervous ailment he had nerved himself to make the ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... by means of listening to their conversation, watching them from under my eyelids while they thought I was asleep, and smelling them carefully, I could form a sufficiently just estimate of their characters to regulate my own conduct towards them. Though a polite dog both by birth and breeding, I was too honest and independent to show the same respect and cordiality towards those whom I liked and those whom I despised; and though very grateful for the smallest favours from persons I esteemed, ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... connoisseur. The reader is no doubt aware, that among the natives of India the popular prejudice does not run in favour of this wholesome article of food; and perhaps to this fact I must attribute it that the surrounding Mussulmans and Hindoos became wondrously polite all on a sudden, and left a wide circle vacant around me, so that I had ample room to make down my bed; nor was I disturbed from a hearty sleep ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... Miss Vance smiled with polite contempt. No doubt Frances had a shrewd business faculty, but in other matters she was not ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... better: ipse venit. He was, however, so polite as to wave his privilege of nil mihi rescribas[18], and wrote from Edinburgh, as follows:—'Your very kind and agreeable favour of the 20th of April overtook me here yesterday, after having gone to Aberdeen, which place I left about a week ago. I am to set out this ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... considerations. One was dated the 24th of March, 1719, and accounted for his grace's bounty in a style princely and commendable, if not legal—"considering that the publick good is advanced by the encouragement of learning and the polite arts, and being pleased therein with the attempts of Dr. Young, in consideration thereof, and of the love I bear him," &c. The other was dated the 10th ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... for his absence. Many thought him a prisoner on account of his treatment of Padre Salvi on the afternoon of All Saints, but the comments reached a climax when, on the evening of the third day, they saw him alight before the home of his fiancee and extend a polite greeting to the priest, who was just ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... it was, and they were very polite and took my word for it. All but one old gentleman at the other end of the table, who wanted to know which was the joke—what he said to her or what she said to him; and we argued ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... do say English isn't very well taught at West Point, Captain," she replied, pulling off her gloves. "You oughtn't to blame the polite stranger ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... many questions and Bob felt sure she was not talking just to be polite, but was really interested in the work they were doing. It gave him much pleasure to know that the time he had spent in reading up on farm work was ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... been Chadwicked for your roll ?" I asked. "Are you the man from Ohio that was so polite he gave his bank to the lady? If you are, it serves ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... his own peculiar turns. There was nothing about him that one could dislike, or strike fire at, and be captious; and he always proceeded with such pity for those who were opposed to him that they always knew they must be wrong, though he was too polite to tell them so. And he had such a pleasant, paternal way of looking down into one's little thoughts when he put on his spectacles, that to say any more was to hazard ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... and Terry frowned. Had the douanier been insolent, my peppery Irishman would have been insolent too, perhaps, in the hope of cowering the man by truculence more swashbuckling than his own; but he had been as polite as his countrymen proverbially are, if not goaded out of their suavity. "Look here, Prince," said Terry, hanging onto his temper by a thread (for he also was hungry), "suppose you leave this matter to me. If you'll take the ladies to the best hotel in town, Moray and ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... alone, but that the place itself is observing you. Yet only five miles away long lines of motor-cars were waiting to take tourists, at ruinous prices, to the authentic and admitted beauty spots. There was not, as the polite convention would put it, a soul about. It was certainly a dreary expanse, but the sunlight there seemed strangely brilliant, I thought, and, what was more curious, appeared to be alive. It was quivering. The transient glittering of some seagulls ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... captain alluded to our clothes, but we merely shook our heads and declared that we had a full supply. He looked incredulous, but was too polite to contradict, and was about to depart, when he ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... trouble with the Newfoundland Labrador. All moneys granted for education are handed to the churches for sectarian schools. It is almost writing ourselves down as still living in the Middle Ages, when the Clergy had a monopoly of polite learning. In more densely populated countries this division of grants need not be so disastrous. Here it means that one often finds a Roman Catholic, a Church of England, a Methodist, and a Salvation Army school, all in one little village—and ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... though they escape in their youth, are found out at last and look foolish at the end of their course, and when they come to be old and miserable are flouted alike by stranger and citizen; they are beaten and then come those things unfit for ears polite, as you truly term them; they will be racked and have their eyes burned out, as you were saying. And you may suppose that I have repeated the remainder of your tale of horrors. But will you let me assume, without reciting them, that ...
— The Republic • Plato
... that is not to be thought of. And then, my dear Murray, a little private affair of my own, which has put me out sadly. I wrote, when I first came home, to Lady Rogers, asking leave to pay a visit at Halliburton Hall. I got an answer from Sir John, very kind and very polite. At the same time, he gave me to understand that he considered it better I should not make my appearance there; in other words, that I wasn't wanted. I fancied that Lucy had begun to care for me, and so Jack thought, I suspect, from what he said when I confessed ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... she was by his religious reference (she never heard the name of God mentioned in polite society), this quaint begging Mr. Vivian had her upon the balance. Her flying thoughts swept down the parting of the ways. But they flew swiftly back, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... confess, was a polite evasion of truth. I had much rather have been with Flora, whom I had seen for only a few ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... University. Very old. Naturally he was much wiser than Missy, for all her acquired wisdom. She stood in awe of him. He had a way of asking her absurd, foolish questions about things that everybody knew; and when, to be polite, she had to answer him seriously in his own foolish vein, he would laugh at her! So, though she admired him, she always had an impulse to run away from him. She would have liked, now, in this heavenly, religious mood, to run away lest he might ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... same tenor. Beyond these you will see little evidence in the London streets of an empire at war. Hotels are largely empty; managers very polite; restaurants must close at 10. P.M.; no after-theater supper at the hotels unless you are a guest. Men in khaki uniforms are more conspicuous; and bandaged heads, slung arms, and legs assisted by crutches are more noticeable ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... cabin, and I wrote a letter to the owner, and also a receipt for the coil of rope, which I delivered to Captain Levee. The boat soon returned from the lugger, the rope was taken on board, and then Captain Levee wished me farewell, and made his polite adieus to the gentlemen who followed him on deck, and waited there till he had hoisted in his boat, ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... curio-shop, the man who had come to Blankshire with me! I knew now. He had been there buying a costume like myself. He had seen me on the train, and had guessed the secret. I elbowed my way out of the smoking-room. It wouldn't do me a bit of harm to ask a few polite questions of Mr. Caesar of ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... with a spasm of anger constrict his throat; and knew that the restraint he imposed upon his temper was betrayed in a reddened face. Nevertheless his courteous smile persisted, his polite ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... as yet knew any poet (and I was very intimate with Aquinius), who did not appear to himself to be very admirable. The case is this: you are pleased with your own works; I like mine. But to return to Dionysius. He debarred himself from all civil and polite conversation, and spent his life among fugitives, bondmen, and barbarians; for he was persuaded that no one could be his friend who was worthy of liberty, or had the least desire of ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "Provincial Letters" in defence of the Jansenists against the Jesuits, and his no less famous "Pensees," which were published after his death; "his great weapon in polemics," says Prof. Saintsbury, "is polite irony, which he first brought to perfection, and in the use of which he has hardly been equalled, and has certainly ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... teacher was absent on business of importance to the school. We were not a little disappointed, supposing all recitations would await her coming. What was our surprise on entering to find every girl in her place, closely occupied with her studies. We seated ourselves by polite invitation; soon a class read; then one in mental arithmetic exercised itself, the more advanced pupils acting as monitors; all was done without confusion. When the teacher entered she expressed no surprise, but took up the business where she found it and went on." On one occasion, being ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... She giggled. "That was just my manners that I was practisin' on him. He was onery, and only got what was comin' to him; but if you're goin' to be polite, seems like you dassn't tell the truth. But Miss Marshall says that 'Thank you,' 'If you please,' and 'Good morning, how's your ribs?' are kind of pass-words out in the world that ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... merchant, who hailed him; yet he exhibited the required retenu, so expressive of confidence and ease within, and withal so fashionable. You might have said that he had the heart to wing a partridge,—to "wing it," a pretty phrase in the mouth of a polite sportsman, who, if a poacher were to break the bones of his leg, would, in his own case, think it a little different. Yes, Dewhurst might have been supposed to be able to "wing a partridge,"—not ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... all these attractions to a later visit, since we had come to Castleton to see the largest cavern of all, locally named the "Devil's Hole," but by polite visitors the "Peak Cavern." The approach to the cavern was very imposing and impressive, perpendicular rocks rising on both sides to a great height, while Peveril Castle stood on the top of the precipice before us like a sentinel guarding entrance to the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... "We've been in this war for more than three years. We've done everything that America is doing; because she's new to the game, we're doing it much better. We don't want any one to appreciate us, so why go praising her?" Precisely. Why be decent? Why seek out affections? Why be polite or kindly? Why not be automatons? I suppose the answer is, "Because we happen to be men, and are privileged temporarily to be playing in the role of heroes. The heroic spirit rather educates one to hold out the hand of friendship to new arrivals ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... and congenial to the analogy and principles of its respective language as to remain settled and unaltered; this stile is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of elegance. The polite are always catching modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... at his beast of a dog, "don't you know a bitch when you see one?" I was in the most ferocious rage! If he hadn't been a big burly bully, down he'd have gone. "Why didn't you say what it was?" I roared. "Why," says he, "the word isn't considered polite!" I gave him a cut there. I said, "I rejoice to be positively assured that you uphold the laws and forms of civilization, sir." My belief ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... school in the same state. One thing he had that was better than theirs, and he felt very sorry for them. A special servant went about with each of the other boys, to see that he attended his classes, was polite to his teachers, and did his work. But Horace had his own father to look after him, a thousand times better than any carping paedagogus. His father had explained to him that the other fathers were busy ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... his words was instantaneous. Stefanone fell back into his seat. The doctor's anxious and excited expression resolved itself instantly into a polite smile. ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... however, was one of an adaptable nature, and by the time he had pulled up beside Jethro he had recovered sufficiently to make a few remarks on farming subjects, and finally to express a polite surprise at Jethro's return. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dexterous (not always even that) evolutions on paper with a black-lead pencil; profitless alike to performer and beholder, unless as a matter of vanity, and that the smallest possible vanity. If any young person, after being taught what is, in polite circles, called "drawing," will try to copy the commonest piece of real work—suppose a lithograph on the title-page of a new opera air, or a woodcut in the cheapest illustrated newspaper of the day—they will find themselves entirely beaten. And yet that common lithograph ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Petrovitch wrote an ironically cold and polite letter to Piotr Andreitch, and set off to the village where lived his second cousin, Dmitri Pestov, with his sister, already known to the reader, Marfa Timofyevna. He told them all, announced his intention to go to Petersburg to try to ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... very polite and interesting young men, but Rebecca and I had to go about the plantation very warily, for we never knew when we might be spied upon. Imp had to be cared for daily, so we found plenty of amusement ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... "Very polite and attentive, I am sure!" exclaimed Sir Joseph. "My lady, the Alderman is so obliging as to remind me that he has had 'the distinguished honor'—he is very good—of meeting me at the house of our mutual friend Deedles, the banker, and he does ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... will appear past doubt, that, were the use of iron lost among us, we should in a few ages be unavoidably reduced to the wants and ignorance of the ancient savage Americans, whose natural endowments and provisions come no way short of those of the most flourishing and polite nations. So that he who first made known the use of that contemptible mineral, may be truly styled the father of arts, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... used to polite observations from her second cousin once removed, so she very quietly answered that she thought Glumdalkin had been going to take a nap, and that she did ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... peculiar interest. One of its noticeable celebrities is the house in which Lord Chesterfield resided. It is now occupied by a Wesleyan minister, who elaborates his sermons in the very room, I believe, in which that fashionable nobleman penned his polite literature for youthful candidates for the uppermost circles of society. In the centre of the market place there is a magnificent monument erected to the memory of the late Lord George Bentinck, who was held in high esteem by the people of the town and vicinity. The manufactures ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... most of whom belonged to the university. They held weekly meetings and read, in turn, essays on various subjects. They professed to unite the advancement of science with the history of mankind and polite literature. The first volume of transactions ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... distinguished reputation—'qu'il n'avait pas ete recu—qu'il n'etait pas habitue a cette sorte de procede—et qu'il pria Monsieur Dickens d'oublier son nom, sa memoire, sa carte, et sa visite, et de considerer qu'elle n'avait pas ete rendu!' Of course I wrote him a very polite reply immediately, telling him good-humouredly that he was quite mistaken, and that there were always two weeks in the beginning of every month when M. Dickens ne pouvait rendre visite a personne. He wrote back to say that he was more than ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Roannes, the Boy dismissed him at once as unworthy of further consideration. He was brilliantly, even artificially polished—glaringly ultra-fashionable, ostentatiously polite and suave. In the lines of his bestial face he bore the records of a lifetime's profligacy and the black tales of habitual self-indulgence. Paul hated him instinctively and wondered how a man of Ledoux's unmistakable refinement could tolerate ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... Conseil-General at Laon, and I went down to my brother-in-law's place at St. Leger near Rouen. We were a very happy cosmopolitan family-party. My mother-in-law was born a Scotch-woman (Chisholm). She was a fine type of the old-fashioned cultivated lady, with a charming polite manner, keenly interested in all that was going on in the world. She was an old lady when I married, and had outlived almost all her contemporaries, but she had a beautiful old age, surrounded by children and grandchildren. She had lived through ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... the officers would say, "you have begotten a daughter much handsomer than yourself." My mother considered this as a polite way to avoid saying that I was much handsomer than she was. If she thought so, she did herself a great injustice, for I could not be compared to what she was, when she was of my age. She was even then a most splendid matron. But I ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... made leading remarks, and even asked if he had seen the splendid dwelling of Captain Allen. The handsome stranger held him firmly at a distance. And not only on that day and evening, but on the next day and the next. He was polite even to blandness, but suffered no approach beyond the simplest formal intercourse. Every morning he was seen going to Captain Allen's house, where he always stayed several hours. The afternoons he spent, for the most part, in his ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... spoken between them until the light from the floor upon which the Senate Chamber was situated came in view. Then Freckles turned with a polite inquiry as to where the gentleman wished ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... That was the polite way of explaining her presence if explanations were ever necessary. McTaggart looked again at the notes he had made on the sheet of paper. Pierrot's trapping country, his own property according to the common law of the wilderness, was ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... would interfere with his system of extorting money from the inhabitants of that country (the treasury being empty in Tripoli), set his face against my journey, and endeavoured to delay it until he could get a counter order from Constantinople. His Highness was however very polite, and promised to furnish me with tents, if I had need, and a large escort. The Turks are getting sensitive of the press. The Bashaw said he had heard I was a great newspaper writer, and asked me if I had any objection to writing ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Meadows, "Oh barbarous! Wrestling and boxing are polite arts to it! trusting to the discretion of an animal less intellectual than ourselves! a sudden spring may break all our limbs, a stumble may fracture our sculls! And what is the inducement? to get melted with heat, killed with fatigue, and covered with dust! miserable infatuation!—Do ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... guessed—and it would seem with reason—that her good master had gone out of his mind. But she presently changed her opinion, for after he had cried unrestrainedly until he was exhausted, Herr Ueberhell gave her a prompt proof of his sanity and returning health. In his kindly and polite manner of former times, he begged her to set out in the kitchen a bottle of the oldest and best Bacharacher. There he bade her bring a second glass and invited her to drink, and clink glasses with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his man goes by the pungent title of Pepper. Unless poor John should have occasion for two names during the passage, you are reasonably safe. And still, I think," continued Eve, biting her lips, like one who deliberated, "if it were any longer polite to bet, Mr. John Effingham would hazard all the French gloves in his trunks, against all the English finery in yours, that the inquisitor just hinted at gets at your secret before we arrive. Perhaps I ought rather to say, ascertains that you are not ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... took dat hand he made for me and set out to try it on dat gal. She never had give me a friendly look even, and when I would speak to her polite she just hang her head and ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... and Captain Clinton appeared, followed by his fidus Achates, Detective Sergeant Maloney. Both men were in plain clothes. The captain's manner was condescendingly polite, the attitude of a man so sure of his own position that he had little respect for the opinion of any one else. With an effort at ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... turn out the light and say good night to my mountain, and then I will go to sleep thinking of you. Don't worry about the minister. I'm very polite to him, but I shall never—no, never—fall ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... but that is not all, you must be charmingly polite to him; he is frightfully jealous of the Duc d'Anjou, who, while you were ill in bed, promenaded before the house with his Aurilly. Make advances, then, to this charming husband, and do not even ask him what has become of his wife, ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... was that first one and then another began to hunt the captain to question him, but only to obtain short polite answers, that officer being too busy to gossip after the fashion wished. They fared worse with the chief and second officers, who were quite short; and then one of the most enterprising news-seekers on board captured old Bostock, literally ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... in Herod. But a king must control his feelings, and Herod was old and wise. When he had called his three visitors to him, he was as smooth and polite as ever. He told them that they would find the ...
— The King Nobody Wanted • Norman F. Langford
... work. And, after all, he only pursued the way of life in which he had been brought up. But Basil was poor and had his career to make, therefore he certainly should have labored. However, for Juliet's sake, Cuthbert was as polite as possible. ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... fleet, yelling wildly, but Abner Sawyer wished he had made his debut a trifle less conspicuously. For it brought all eyes to Abner Sawyer himself standing stiffly upon the hill-top not quite sure of his ground. A neighbor or so eyed him in polite surprise and nodded; a child fastened round eyes upon his silk hat and he wished he had left it at home. But Christmas was no more Christmas than Sunday was Sunday without this formal head-piece, and besides, it had been his sole concession to the horrified stir of dignity ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... Frank, laughing as he disappeared within the stable, followed by Miss Jemima, who now coaxingly makes it up with him, and does not leave off her admonitions to be extremely polite to the poor foreign gentleman till Frank gets his foot into the stirrup, and the pony, who knows whom he has got to deal with, gives a preparatory plunge or two, and then darts ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and spiritual things. Vainly do men and women try to dodge the law which makes the 'sweat of the brow' the indispensable requisite for 'eating bread.' When commerce becomes speculation, which is the polite name for gambling, which, again, is a synonym for stealing, it may yield much more dainty fare than bread to some for a time, but is sure to bring want sooner or later to individuals and communities. The foundation of this good woman's fortune was that she worked with a will. There ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
