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More "Unsociable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... farmer was a poor pirate but a born soldier. He was described by one who knew him as being morose, sour, unsociable, and ill-tempered, and that he "knew as little of the sea or of ships as he did of the Arts of Natural Philosophy." But it is recorded to his credit that he was not cruel. He started life in a merchant ship bound for India, and was accidentally left behind in Madagascar. Taken care ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... going toward the door—"if it makes me one to be sorry, awfully sorry and even rather angry, that I haven't before me a period of the same sort of unsociable pegging away that you have. For want of it I shall never really be good. However, if you don't tell people I've said so they'll never know. Your conditions are far better than mine and far more respectable: you can do as many things as you like in patient obscurity while I'm pitchforked into ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Debussy won more and more distinction as a unique composer, but also gained the reputation of being a very unsociable man. Physically it has been said that in his youth he seemed like an Assyrian Prince; through life he retained his somewhat Asiatic appearance. His eyes were slightly narrowed, his black hair curled lightly over an extremely broad forehead. He spoke little and ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... his mistress' singing caused him; then he taught his eyes to look at her, and was finally able to contemplate her at his leisure without fearing an explosion of concealed frenzy, like that which had seized him the first day. His passion became more profound as it became more tranquil. But the unsociable sculptor would not allow his solitude, peopled as it was with images, adorned with the fanciful creations of hope, and full of happiness, to be disturbed by his comrades. His love was so intense and so ingenuous, that he had to undergo the innocent scruples with which we ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... in her heart. She could never forgive Mrs. Whittredge. Few guessed the intensity hidden beneath Celia's gentle manner. Only now and then a spark from her dark blue eyes revealed it. The general construction put upon her proud reserve was that she was unsociable. ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... away from the window, putting the letter into her pocket. The tea-tray, with its solitary cup and saucer, was waiting on the table, and Elsie poured out tea, congratulating herself that she was alone. She was not an unsociable woman; but the boarding-school, with all its noisy, merry occupants, had set her longing for solitude. She had felt far too weary and dispirited to enter into the fun ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... Came, who was a friend of her Aunt Miranda's and one of the few persons who exchanged calls with that somewhat unsociable lady. The Came farm was not a long walk from the brick house, for Rebecca could go across the fields when haying-time was over, and her delight at being sent on an errand in that direction could not be measured, now that the new minister and his wife had grown to be such a ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... start met popular disapproval. The early Christians, who tried to keep themselves free from idolatry, were regarded as very unsociable persons. They never appeared at public feasts and entertainments. They would not join in the amusements of the circus or the amphitheater. They refused to send their children to the schools. The ordinary citizen ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... forms did the rock assume to-day! Now its pinnacles bristled up like a forest of pines; now there seemed to rise the forms of castles and houses, and even groups of human beings. All this is black sandstone—hideously black, unlovely, unsociable, savage-looking. 'Tis a mere wilderness of rock, thrown in heaps about, with valleys, or trenches, or crevices, through which the caravan slowly winds. This is our first cloudy day. May we have many such! We feel little of the sun's power, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... boon to those not sociable"—on her birthday-page in Ellen Sharpe's birthday-book. Ellen handed it to her going upstairs and had chanted the words out to the others and smiled her smile... she had not asked her to write her name... was it unsociable to dislike so many of the girls.... Ellen's people were in the Indian... her thoughts hesitated.... Sivvle... something grand—All the grand girls were horrid... somehow mean and sly... Sivvle... Sivvle ... Civil! Of ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... indeed, seem merely invidious, ungracious, and unreasonable in the eyes of both parties; he retreated without listening to the persuasions of his opponents, or asking the consent of his friends. The origin of all lay in his unsociable, supercilious, and self-willed disposition, which, in all cases, is offensive to most people; and when combined with a passion for distinction passes into absolute savageness and mercilessness. Men decline to ask favors of the people, professing ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... themselves, and who came to seek for human consolation. I had nothing for them but what was purely necessary, and could proceed no farther. I could at least only speak of indifferent things, in such liberty as God allows, in order to suit everyone, and not to be unsociable or disagreeable to any; but for His own word, He Himself is the dispenser of it. Oh, if preachers were duly careful to speak only in that spirit what fruits would they bring forth in the lives of the hearers! With my true children I could communicate best in silence, in the spiritual ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... portions of mankind which are not, perhaps never have been, included in this Human Society; still they are outlying portions and nothing else, fragmentary, unsociable, solitary, and unmeaning, protesting and revolting against the grand central formation of which I am speaking, but not uniting with each other into a second whole. I am not denying of course the civilization of the Chinese, for ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... need of some appreciation on the score of merit, for he was not much to look upon, being at that trying age when a young fellow's moustache is only a light down, an age at which youths always look their worst, and are awkward and unsociable ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... next circumstance is ready in my mind. One of the doctor's fellow-students (described as being personally an irresistible man) was possessed of abilities which even attracted our unsociable Benjulia. They became friends. At the time of which I am now speaking, my brother's disgusting wife—oh, but I repeat it, Mr. Mool! I say again, his disgusting wife—was the mother of a ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... informed Agnes that her husband had left her with all reasonable expression of conjugal kindness; his temper being improved by the prospect of going abroad. But one other servant accompanied the travellers—Lady Montbarry's maid, rather a silent, unsociable woman, so far as Emily had heard. Her ladyship's brother, Baron Rivar, was already on the Continent. It had been arranged that he was to meet his sister and her ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... of the waves, drift to their death on the shore in little gelatinous pools. During those times devoid of inspiration, when the artist's hand was heavy on his instrument, Felicia, deprived of the one moral support of her intellectual being, became unsociable, unapproachable, a tormenting mocker—the revenge taken of human weakness on the tired brains of genius. After having brought tears to the eyes of every one who cared for her, raking up painful recollections or enervating anxieties, she reached the lowest depths of her ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... I was in an unsociable mood one afternoon; so, taking a cigar and book, I sauntered up the mountain. There is an arbor halfway to its top, and I have a lounging-place near by, where the roots of an old tree make a comfortable nest just above a steep precipice, and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... A most unsociable dog he proved to be, resenting all their advances, refusing to let them lay hands on him, menacing them with bared fangs and bristling hair. Nevertheless he remained, sleeping and resting by the spring, and eating the food they gave him after they set ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... a private school, and after a year or two to Eton, but at neither was he happy. And although he had been so merry at home, at school he was looked upon as a strange unsociable creature. He refused to fag for the bigger boys. He never joined in the ordinary school games, and would wander about by himself reading, or watching the clouds and the birds. He read all kinds of books, liking best those which ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... a matter-of-fact way). Helen, ask yourself this question: what choice is left to a man in such a case? You are generally known as the most beautiful woman in this city. Now shall I, an artist, allow myself to acquire the reputation of an unsociable lout who shuts himself up in his four walls and denies himself to all visitors? The second possibility would be to receive you while at the same time pretending not to understand you. That would give me the wholly undeserved ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... period of twelve years, he marched through tribes of less ferocious dispositions. For before that time, being never visited by foreigners, nor accustomed, themselves, to see a stranger in their country, they were unsociable to the whole human race. And at first, not knowing whither the Carthaginian was going, they had imagined that their own rocks and forts, and the plunder of their cattle and people, were his objects; but afterwards, the report of the Punic war with which ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... with the men on the Kalahua Estate in the wild revelries with which they too often sought to break the monotony of their existence and celebrate a good season, he was by no means a morose or unsociable man; and Chard, the merry-hearted Belgian sugar-boiler, often declared that it was Prout alone who kept the estate going and the native labourers from turning on the white men and cutting their throats, out of sheer revenge for the brutal treatment they received from Sherard, the savage, drunken ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... "George" is neither exactly a swell house like the "Royal Hotel" or the "Plough," nor yet a commercial one, but something betwixt and between. The coffee-room is very small, consequently all the frequenters are drawn together, and if a conversation is started a man must be deuced unsociable that does not ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... so much over Lilac Lane and the words Mr. Richmond had given her, that Maria charged her with being unsociable. Much Matilda wished that she could have talked with her sister about those same words; but ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... new desire—the desire of seeing the world—soon had its effect in making Rasselas no longer gloomy and unsociable. Considering himself as master of a secret stock of happiness, he affected to be busy in all the assemblies and schemes of diversion, because he supposed the frequency of his presence necessary to the success of his purposes. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the Atlantic, was a solid, silent, almost venerable Teuton by the name of Scheidle. Mr. Scheidle occupied an anomalous position, but one of absolute authority, since he had been for many years the United States Manager of no less than three of the largest foreign reinsurance companies. He was unsociable, apparently uninterested in anybody save possibly himself, and disinclined to be lured by any call or beckoning whatsoever from his William Street office. An outsider would have said that most of his time was ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... air of dejection increased. I must be unsociable no longer. Let me rejoin my dear schoolfellows, making a little detour in order to appear to reach them from the direction not of the pond but of ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... ship as far as the afterguard was concerned. Pound being a rough and capable man of the old school with no false dignity and an open manner of speech. He had been talking of his little house at Twickenham, of Mrs. Pound and the children, of servants and neighbours that were unsociable and now he was talking of dreams. He had been dreaming the night before of Pembroke docks, the port he had started from as a boy. Pembroke docks was a bad dream for Pound, and he said so. It always heralded some disaster when it appeared before ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... pardon, madam; I know I am unsociable. You speak of returning: You know the occasion ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... and cocoa with me to-night, Miss Peel," said Miss Day. "You're so dreadfully unsociable, not a bit like an ordinary St. Benet's girl. If you go on in this fashion, you'll be moped to death before your ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... nothing on record, Haines assured himself as to that some years ago. The fact is, Knox, that while I hope this provision has been made, there remains a doubt in my mind. Beaucaire has traveled on my boat several times, but he's an unsociable fellow; I don't like him; he's not my kind. If he still harbors hatred toward that run-away son—and to my notion he is exactly that sort—he will never feel any too kindly toward Delia, or her child. If he has not freed them, that will ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... when an unexpected guest breaks in upon him, and does not care for sacrificing an afternoon to every chance-comer; that will be the master of his own time, and the pursuer of his own inclinations, makes but a very unsociable figure in this kind of life. I shall therefore retire into the town, if I may make use of that phrase, and get into the crowd again as fast as I can, in order to be alone. I can there raise what speculations I please upon others, without being observed myself, and at ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... you, Pauline? Come and kiss me! Why, you look as unsociable as your uncle, sitting there ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... again, and had only praise for her on each occasion. But the riding lessons did not begin at once. In fact he was, for a number of reasons, in a sullen and unsociable humour which did not incline him towards the task he had undertaken. He made various excuses for not beginning the lessons, and took Faustine out almost ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... produced by the restraints which the necessary but unequal laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... shook hands with her, remarking she was a pale-faced thing, and needed work and exercise to make her spry. Then the company sat down, and Tom, if Lucy did not, did ample justice to Miss Hepsy's cookery. It was an unsociable, uncomfortable meal. Aunt and uncle ate, as they did everything else, as if for a wager, and were finished before Lucy had touched ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... that stipulated time I don't know, as he never was very communicative, and is more unsociable than ever now. He is a man who never shows his feelings, but he must feel the loss of his old position deeply. He seemed surprised not to find you here, and says it was a pity to set you teaching, as it will take all the life and fun out of you, and that is the ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... especially pleased to encounter him again," he said with a slight frown; "for, if I remember aright, he acted very rudely to Myrtle and proved unsociable when I made overtures and spoke ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... any one else," Mr. Coulson replied. "I don't think he was seasick, but he was miserably unsociable, and he seldom left his cabin. I doubt whether there were half a dozen people on board who would have recognized him ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... through, and Gaston shrank from proposing that she too should spend five weeks in the Place Beauvau or the Rue de Lille. There was moreover a slight element of the mystifying for him in the perverse unsociable way in which Francie took up a position of marked disfavour as yet to any "visiting." AFTER, if he liked, but not till then. And she wouldn't at the moment give the reasons of her refusal; it was only very ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... himself. He would stop at a favorite spring of his, kneel down and take a refreshing drink, right before my very eyes, and then, although my throat was parched, he would bar me even from wetting my tongue. He was decidedly unsociable, but from a training standpoint, he was ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... been spared much of my anxiety during the winter if I had learned sooner that such aloofness as mine was no novelty to the procurator, that he had, among his most valued subordinates, a man even more unsociable than I, and even more highly esteemed and more sedulously pampered. This was the celebrated and regretted Spaniard, Mercablis, who, for more than thirty years, was accorded by the Choragium a home of his. own, a retinue of servants and the fulfillment of every whim, of which the ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... touched; in other words, that I should betray myself, and abandon the care of my own preservation, in order to give way to the malice of a criminal, that he may act with impunity and with full liberty. On the contrary, since he shows himself unsociable towards me, and since he has placed himself in a position which does not permit me safely to practice towards him the duties of peace, I have only to think of preventing the danger which menaces me; so that if I cannot do this without hurting him, he has to accuse himself only, since he has reduced ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... It might, on the other hand, be looked upon as an active element because it acts so energetically in getting out of its compounds. We can dodge the question by saying that nitrogen is a most unreliable and unsociable element. Like Kipling's cat it walks by ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... theory and practice, I have simply followed a customary habit of thought that is on the whole misleading. For, in truth, it is as impossible for the man of affairs to avoid disinterested reflection, as it is for the commercial traveller to be unsociable. The activity of the one has to do with the organization of a wide range of {136} interests, as the activity of the other has to do ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... surveyed the strand, turned back, and looked at the shore and the cliff like a man trying to recall recollections and to fix them. Did he, then, know this country? He would probably have refused to reply to that question if it had been asked. The best thing was still to have nothing to do with that very unsociable personage. Dick Sand soon saw him walk from the side of the little river, and when Negoro had disappeared on the other side of the cliff, he ceased ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... the natural longing after kindred had also its influence; and if the society of Lord Sherbrooke was any impediment, that was instantly removed by the young nobleman saying, "Come, Wilton, as you are an unsociable devil, and seem out of temper, I shall leave you to ride home by yourself—The truth is," he added, after a moment's pause, "I am going upon an expedition, that the character I have given myself to my fair Lady Laura may be fully and completely established on ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... of the evening is over now. We have all signalized ourselves by feats of valor. I have scampered through an unsociable country-dance with the head coachman, and have had my smart gown of faint pink and pearl color nearly torn off my back by the ponderous-footed pair that trip directly after me. We have, in fact, done our duty, and may retire as soon as we like. But the music ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... world proportion ye revealed, That every being joyfully obeys,— A boundless structure, in night's veil concealed, Illumed by naught but faint and languid rays, A band of phantoms, struggling ceaselessly, Holding his mind in slavish fetters bound, Unsociable and rude as be, Assailing him on every side around,— Thus seemed to man creation in that day! United to surrounding forms alone By the blind chains the passions had put on, Whilst Nature's beauteous spirit fled ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... 'Don't think me unsociable,' she said to Lady Palliser, before going back to her room after a hasty breakfast; 'but I am too completely miserable to put on the faintest show of cheerfulness, and I should only make you wretched if I were with you. Go out for a ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... even to the grocery boy, hunted up the station master, an elderly fellow who was well known for his unsociable disposition. ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... of its members, and it was a difficult step to get over, even for parties. Danton did not exonerate Marat. "I do not like him," said he; "I have had experience of his temperament; it is volcanic, crabbed and unsociable. But why seek for the language of a faction in what he writes? Has the general agitation any other cause than that of the revolutionary movement itself?" Robespierre, on his part, protested that he knew very little of Marat; that, previous ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... him; then he taught his eyes to look at her, and was finally able to contemplate her at his leisure without fearing an explosion of concealed frenzy, like that which had seized him the first day. His passion became more profound as it became more tranquil. But the unsociable sculptor would not allow his solitude, peopled as it was with images, adorned with the fanciful creations of hope, and full of happiness, to be disturbed by his comrades. His love was so intense and so ingenuous, that he had to undergo the innocent scruples with which ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... alive in the cool movements of the waves, drift to their death on the shore in little gelatinous pools. During those times devoid of inspiration, when the artist's hand was heavy on his instrument, Felicia, deprived of the one moral support of her intellectual being, became unsociable, unapproachable, a tormenting mocker—the revenge taken of human weakness on the tired brains of genius. After having brought tears to the eyes of every one who cared for her, raking up painful recollections or enervating ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... kind occurred to Mary during her rather long and tedious journey. Various passengers got into her third-class compartment and got out again, but they were somewhat dull and commonplace folk, many of them being of that curiously unsociable type of human creature which apparently mistrusts its fellows. Contrary to her ingenuous expectation, no one seemed to think a journey to London was anything of a unique or thrilling experience. Once only, when she was nearing her destination, did ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... not bet beyond the modest 'fiver' which a man would be thought unsociable if he did not risk on the horse that carries the country's colours. But he is very 'thick' with the racing-people on the Downs, and supplies the stable with oats, which is, I believe, not an unprofitable commission. The historical anecdote of the Roman emperor who fed his ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... composing my mind to perfect solitude, I found myself comparatively in a little world of human beings around me. The change was, at first, irksome to me, such complete seclusion having rendered me almost unsociable, add to which, the disagreeable termination of my correspondence with Julian. Still, the little conversation I was enabled to carry on, partly by signs, with my new fellow-prisoners, was of advantage by diverting my attention. I breathed not a word respecting my correspondence ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... was extreme, and Claire was unsociable to excess, they therefore seldom spoke to each other. During the entire winter, the magistrate did not directly address the young girl ten times; and, on these rare occasions, he had learned mechanically by heart the phrase he proposed to repeat to her, well knowing that, without this ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... libraries might well have envied. His formula had been found—he was a "revelation." His momentary terror had been real, just as mine had been—the overclouding of his passionate desire to be left to finish his work. He was far from unsociable, but he had the finest conception of being let alone that I've ever met. For the time, none the less, he took his profit where it seemed most to crowd on him, having in his pocket the portable sophistries ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... as the office-boy, was so much pleased by the applause of her relatives, then so much agitated by the remarks of Cy Bogart, in the back row, in reference to her wearing trousers, that she could hardly be got off the stage. Only Raymie was so unsociable as to devote himself ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... trouble that harmonise well with such surroundings, and that some persons, by the dispensing power of the imagination, can go back several centuries in spirit, and put themselves into sympathy with the hunted, houseless, unsociable way of life that was in its place upon these savage hills. Now, when I am sad, I like nature to charm me out of my sadness, like David before Saul; and the thought of these past ages strikes nothing in ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a word to the wise. Besides, she had no longing for the society of men, but rather a wish to forget that she had ever known any. Life had made a hole in her heart which she meant to fill if she could, but only with inanimate things and the love of children. So that Mr. van Cannan's unsociable restriction, far from being ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... The next circumstance is ready in my mind. One of the doctor's fellow-students (described as being personally an irresistible man) was possessed of abilities which even attracted our unsociable Benjulia. They became friends. At the time of which I am now speaking, my brother's disgusting wife—oh, but I repeat it, Mr. Mool! I say again, his disgusting wife—was the ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... the fact, because the engineer ignored the question until it had been thrice repeated, and then he said, somewhat tartly: "That is my affair, Mr. Gleason." Everybody thought that Loring was decidedly unsociable, and some went so far as to call him ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... to say French, and as unsociable as Ned Land was, I must admit he took a definite liking to me. No doubt it was my nationality that attracted him. It was an opportunity for him to speak, and for me to hear, that old Rabelaisian dialect still used in some ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... Troyes, has long suffered from enteritis, for which different treatments have been tried in vain. He is also in a very bad state mentally, being depressed, gloomy, unsociable, and obsessed by thoughts of suicide. Preliminary experiments easy, followed by suggestion which produces an appreciable result from the very day. For three months, daily suggestions to begin with, then at increasingly longer intervals. At the end of this time, the cure is complete, the enteritis ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... no more!" De Morbihan protested. "Rest assured the Chief of the Surete has laid his plans: his web is spun, and so artfully that I think our unsociable outlaw will soon be making friends in the Prison of the Sante.... But now we must adjourn. One is sorry. It has been ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... inert element" because it was hard to get it into combination with other elements. It might, on the other hand, be looked upon as an active element because it acts so energetically in getting out of its compounds. We can dodge the question by saying that nitrogen is a most unreliable and unsociable element. Like Kipling's cat it walks by ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... purpose, said Montesquieu, music, which influences the mind by means of the corporeal organs, was extremely proper. It is a kind of medium between manly exercises, which harden the body, and speculative sciences, which are apt to render us unsociable and sour. . . . Let us suppose, for example, a society of men so passionately devoted to hunting as to make it their sole employment; they would doubtless contract thereby a kind of rusticity and fierceness. But if they happened to imbibe ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... proscribe, cut off from, send to Coventry, keep at arm's length, draw a cordon round. depopulate; dispeople^, unpeople^. Adj. secluded, sequestered, retired, delitescent^, private, bye; out of the world, out of the way; the world forgetting by the world forgot [Pope]. snug, domestic, stay-at-home. unsociable; unsocial, dissocial^; inhospitable, cynical, inconversable^, unclubbable, sauvage [Fr.], troglodytic. solitary; lonely, lonesome; isolated, single. estranged; unfrequented; uninhabitable, uninhabited; tenantless; abandoned; deserted, deserted in one's utmost need; unfriended^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... would probably be glad to dispense with the sight of her countenance), inspire in this fairy such a lofty idea of herself and such a profound contempt for her neighbor, that they make her positively unsociable. She remains forever absorbed in the latrian worship which she believes due to herself. She deigns to speak but to God, and He must indeed be a kind and merciful God if He listens ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... watch these animals, they kill some; and thus by defending their property, they soon become professed hunters; this is the progress; once hunters, farewell to the plough. The chase renders them ferocious, gloomy, and unsociable; a hunter wants no neighbour, he rather hates them, because he dreads the competition. In a little time their success in the woods makes them neglect their tillage. They trust to the natural fecundity of the earth, and therefore do little; carelessness in fencing often exposes ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... 23 we proceeded to Vintain, two miles up a creek on the southern side of the river, much resorted to by Europeans on account of the great quantities of beeswax brought hither for sale. The wax is collected in the woods by the Feloops, a wild and unsociable race of people, who in their trade with Europeans generally employ a factor or agent of the Mandingo nation. This broker, who speaks a little English, and is acquainted with the trade of the river, receives certain part only of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... first to a private school, and after a year or two to Eton, but at neither was he happy. And although he had been so merry at home, at school he was looked upon as a strange unsociable creature. He refused to fag for the bigger boys. He never joined in the ordinary school games, and would wander about by himself reading, or watching the clouds and the birds. He read all kinds of books, liking ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Lilac Lane and the words Mr. Richmond had given her, that Maria charged her with being unsociable. Much Matilda wished that she could have talked with her sister about those same words; but Maria was ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... Jillifrey, and proceeded to Vintain, a town situated about two miles up a creek on the southern side of the river. This place is much resorted to by Europeans on account of the great quantities of beeswax which are brought hither for sale; the wax is collected in the woods by the Feloops, a wild and unsociable race of people. Their country, which is of considerable extent, abounds in rice; and the natives supply the traders, both on the Gambia and Cassamansa rivers, with that article, and also with goats ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... the station of lieutenant. His captain being killed in the retreat at the Isle of Rhe, Felton had applied for the company; and when disappointed, he threw up his commission, and retired in discontent from the army. While private resentment was boiling in his sullen, unsociable mind, he heard the nation resound with complaints against the duke; and he met with the remonstrance of the commons, in which his enemy was represented as the cause of every national grievance, and as the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... itself. There is a case on record of a pike fastening on the lips of a mule, which had been taken to drink in the pond. They have been known to bite at swans and geese, and altogether Jack Pike is a most voracious creature. It may be assumed also that it is unsociable, for it generally swims about by itself, and not in shoals or ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of all persons, better able to explain the mystery than any one else. He had overheard in Ranger's study a general lamentation about the prospects for Saturday, and a wish expressed by his brother that Rollitt were not so unsociable and undependable. Everybody agreed it was utterly useless to ask him to play, and that they would have to get a second-rate man to fill the empty place, and so most probably ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... his craft. It was a new Columbia River salmon boat, evidently on its first trip, and it handled splendidly. Even when Charley praised it, our prisoner refused to speak or to notice us, and we soon gave him up as a most unsociable fellow. ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... and a tear fell like a dew-drop from her long eyelashes. These things still more amazed the soul of Mr. Fordyce. That anybody should shed a tear for a being so sordid and unsociable as Abel Graham struck him as one of the extraordinary things he had met with in his career; and to see this fair young creature, fitted by nature for a sphere and for companionship so different, sincerely grieving for the old man's distress, seemed the most extraordinary ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... hands," Mr. Ottinger interrupted, "chop the trimmings. We're here for the stuff, ain't we?" He was immediately reprehended for his brusque, unsociable manner. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... An unsociable traveler misses many of the profitable results of his journey, besides finding time ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... who was a friend of her Aunt Miranda's and one of the few persons who exchanged calls with that somewhat unsociable lady. The Came farm was not a long walk from the brick house, for Rebecca could go across the fields when haying-time was over, and her delight at being sent on an errand in that direction could not be measured, now that the new minister ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... representation or resemblance that he purposes. Verse can imitate only sound and motion. A boundless verse, a headlong verse, and a verse of brass, or of strong brass, seem to comprise very incongruous and unsociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the sound of the line expressing loose care, I cannot discover; nor why the pine is taller in an alexandrine ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... intends returning at that stipulated time I don't know, as he never was very communicative, and is more unsociable than ever now. He is a man who never shows his feelings, but he must feel the loss of his old position deeply. He seemed surprised not to find you here, and says it was a pity to set you teaching, as it will take all the life and fun out of you, and that is the first time I ever heard ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... accounted unsociable; besides, he was ragged, uncouth, independent, and did not conform to the ways of society; so the select circle cast him out—more properly speaking, did not let ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... to engross him. He grew moodier, more exacting. If Myra arrived home late, he wanted to know where she had been, whom she had seen. Were they dining out, he muttered unsociable objections; were people coming to the house, he complained of the lack of privacy. What a whirl they lived in! So they did, but what was the remedy? Myra herself felt helpless in a tangle of engagements. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... much to help matters. He was so hopelessly English. At least, that was the way Ann put it. He was shy and sensitive. It is a trying combination. It made him appear stupid and conceited. A lonely childhood had rendered him unsociable, unadaptable. A dreamy, imaginative temperament imposed upon him long moods of silence: a liking for long solitary walks. For the first time Ann and Mrs. ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... at once. I warn you that when I am fairly off I shall always talk to you in Spanish, for it would look very unsociable if we were always talking together in English. If you ride or walk by the side of the boy you will soon get on; and there will be Donna Maria for you to chat away with, and from what we saw of her I should say she is sociably ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... were sometimes spoken to in neighborly greeting. We grunted indifferently in reply, as an unsociable man might. When, as sometimes happened, people rose up in front of us from gateways or hidden roads, it was very disconcerting. On such occasions only the darkness saved us, for we took no chances, wherever there ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... before he had eaten it all. He preferred being beaten to going hungry, so they never caught him till he had fed full. But what troubled him most was the tramping, the long dusty stages afoot in country where the unsociable villages lay remote from each other, and the roads were hot and long. A man can outwalk any other animal. After thirty miles, a horse is nowhere and the man is still going, but even fifteen miles leaves the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... operator, who is the only one I've spoken with in the town, represents the attitude of everybody there, probably, and he thinks, evidently, that an eccentric recluse lives here, and that his housekeeper is pretty close-mouthed and 'unsociable,' as he put it. It's rather strange that they aren't more curious, but she must have known how to deal with them, for whatever interest anybody may have felt died out long ago. They know the man had a daughter and that she's grown now, but this ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... and I shall not let you escape till you have answered a few questions. I have been doing my best to become acquainted with you, but you listen and reply in monosyllables, which is most unsociable. You leave me to do all the talking, and I want to hear your side of the question. Is she always ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... constable and go bankrupt, or cheat at cards in order to keep up their position, or do some other foolish thing that makes it impossible for the King to favour them more. Old friends are generally the refuge of unsociable persons. Remembering this also, gauge the temptation that besets the very leader of Society to form fresh friendships, when all the cleverest and most charming persons in the land are standing ready, like supers at the wings, to come on and please him! At Carlton House there was a constant ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Fearing to be thought unsociable, he rose hastily, and was soon talking to the guests with unusual eagerness. His sudden lapses into thought, however, created the impression in the minds of some of his listeners that he was laboring ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... Enemy of the Beard," where, amidst irony and invective, the literary monarch bestows on himself many exquisite and characteristic touches. All that the persons of fashion alleged against the literary character, Julian unreservedly confesses—his undressed beard and awkwardness, his obstinacy, his unsociable habits, his deficient tastes, while at the same time he represents his good qualities as so many extravagances. But, in this Cervantic pleasantry of self-reprehension, the imperial philosopher has not failed to show this light and corrupt people that the reason he could not possibly resemble ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... of a sociable place there," Miss Mela broke in again. "I never saw such an unsociable place as New York. We've been in this house three months, and I don't believe that if we stayed three years any ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... temptation. He has made a resolve to reform, but he is now solicited again by the bottle. His moral triumph or failure literally consists in his finding the right name for the case. If he says that it is a case of not wasting good liquor already poured out, or a case of not being churlish and unsociable when in the midst of friends, or a case of learning something at last about a brand of whiskey which he never met before, or a case of celebrating a public holiday, or a case of stimulating himself to a more energetic resolve in favor of abstinence than any he has ever yet made, ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... . . while Emily Bronte was as unsociable as a storm at midnight and while Charlotte Bronte was at best like that warmer and more domestic thing a house on fire—they do connect themselves with the calm of George Eliot, as the forerunners of many later developments of the feminine advance. Many forerunners (if it comes to ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... mind to ask him point blank whether he, at least, didn't know why Falk, a notoriously unsociable man, had taken to visiting his ship with such assiduity. After all, I reflected suddenly, it was a most remarkable thing. I wonder now what Hermann would have said. As it turned out he didn't let me ask. Forgetting all about Falk apparently, he started a monologue on his plans for the ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... was the valet, Smerdyakov. He was a young man of about four and twenty, remarkably unsociable and taciturn. Not that he was shy or bashful. On the contrary, he was conceited and seemed to ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and indeed he was so strong, and young, and honest-hearted, that he had been successful enough hitherto within his narrow limits. He had pleasant manners, too, and a pleasant face, which gained him as many friends as he ever cared to have; for he had a queer, reserved, unsociable twist in his character, which kept him aloof from much company, and rather spoilt his reputation for geniality and heartiness. He hated the hard work he had to go through in society; so at least he was wont to grumble, and then would add, laughing, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... came and listened to the letters in silence while the others buzzed and commented. Rob, so the Harbour folk said, was much changed. He had grown unsociable and preferred to stay home and read books rather than go a-visiting as did others. The Harbour folk shook their heads over this. There was something wrong with a man who read books when there was a plenty of other amusements. Jacob Radnor had ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Esmo, "in the wild lands, and they are certainly unsociable and solitary. But men, at least civilised men, are governed not only by instinct but by interest, and the interest of each individual in the preservation of social co-operation and social order is very evident ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... he never mixed with the men on the Kalahua Estate in the wild revelries with which they too often sought to break the monotony of their existence and celebrate a good season, he was by no means a morose or unsociable man; and Chard, the merry-hearted Belgian sugar-boiler, often declared that it was Prout alone who kept the estate going and the native labourers from turning on the white men and cutting their throats, out of sheer revenge for the brutal treatment they received from ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... unusual in a girl of fifteen. She never lost a moment of time, and seemed almost to grudge the necessary leisure for relaxation and play-hours, which might be partly accounted for by the awkwardness in all games occasioned by her shortness of sight. Yet, in spite of these unsociable habits, she was a great favourite with her school-fellows. She was always ready to try and do what they wished, though not sorry when they called her awkward, and left her out of their sports. Then, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Rosalind sat on by herself before the fire in the front room. She did not want to be unsociable with the nurse; but she wanted to think, alone. A weight was on her mind; the thought that the dear old friend, who had been her father and refuge, should never know that she again possessed her recovered ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... was to find out, he had only one fear—that it might not be bad enough. Then, when the image of the marquise and her son rose before him again, standing side by side, the old woman's hand in Urbain's arm, and the same cold, unsociable fixedness in the eyes of each, he cried out to himself that the fear was groundless. There was blood in the secret at the very last! He arrived at Fleurieres almost in a state of elation; he had satisfied himself, logically, that ...
— The American • Henry James
... I was repenting of my folly, and wishing, when I thought of the two cocktails, that the prohibition wave could be hurried up so as to leave us all high and dry—bone-dry, silent and unsociable. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... taking place. When an Old Lady has a guilty conscience, it is apt to make her nervous and distract her thoughts from immediate pleasure. She wondered a little uneasily if Sylvia really did suspect her. Then she concluded that it was out of the question. Who would suspect a mean, unsociable Old Lady, who had no friends, and who gave only five cents to the Sewing Circle when everyone else gave ten or fifteen, to be a fairy godmother, the donor of beautiful party dresses, and the recipient of gifts from romantic, aspiring ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... seldom spoke to them at all, and save when he was cooking or giving the kitchen a slovenly cleaning they saw little of him. Monypenny had predicted that their presence must make a new man of him, but he was still unsociable and morose and sat as long as ever at the warping-mill, of which he seemed to have become the silent wheel. Tommy and Elspeth always dropped their voices when they spoke of him, and sometimes when his mill stopped he heard one of them say to the other, "Whisht, he's coming!" ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... mischievous as a small boy, destructive as a monkey, deft at hiding as a squirrel. He is unsociable and unamiable, disliking the society of other birds. His harsh screams, shrieks, and most aggressive and unmusical calls seem often intended maliciously to drown the songs of ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... come hither from any ends of the world whatsoever, and shall return from their sins and implore thy pardon, do thou then pardon them, and hear their prayer. For hereby all shall learn that thou thyself wast pleased with the building of this house for thee; and that we are not ourselves of an unsociable nature, nor behave ourselves like enemies to such as are not of our own people; but are willing that thy assistance should be communicated by thee to all men in common, and that they may have the enjoyment of thy ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... neighbourhood. A man that is out of humour when an unexpected guest breaks in upon him, and does not care for sacrificing an afternoon to every chance-comer; that will be the master of his own time, and the pursuer of his own inclinations, makes but a very unsociable figure in this kind of life. I shall therefore retire into the town, if I may make use of that phrase, and get into the crowd again as fast as I can, in order to be alone. I can there raise what speculations I please ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... at the shed. He was a brooding, unsociable sort of man, and it didn't make any difference to the chaps whether he had a union ticket or not. It was pretty well known in the shed—there were three or four chaps from the district he was reared in—that he'd done five years hard for burglary. What surprised me was that ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... during hall Lovelace was rather unsociable. It was not that he studied Greek or Latin; he had a healthy contempt for scholastic triumphs; horse-racing was the real interest of his life. "This is my work," he used to scoff, brandishing The Sportsman in Gordon's face. "I am not going to be a classic scholar, and I sha'n't discover ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... was. Presently he got thinking how Jack would worry about the quarrel and have no heart for his work. Perhaps he was fretting over it now, all alone by himself, down at the end of the damp, dark drive. Tom had a lot of the old woman about him, in spite of his unsociable ways and ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... hate a man who won't talk to me and tell me things, and the doctor was so silent and unsociable, that, by way of revenge, I left him to the care and curses of ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... country of the Quadi at Granua, these. Betimes in the morning say to thyself, This day I shalt have to do with an idle curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man; an unsociable uncharitable man. All these ill qualities have happened unto them, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad. But I that understand the nature of that which is good, that it only is to be desired, and of that which is bad, ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... and practice, I have simply followed a customary habit of thought that is on the whole misleading. For, in truth, it is as impossible for the man of affairs to avoid disinterested reflection, as it is for the commercial traveller to be unsociable. The activity of the one has to do with the organization of a wide range of {136} interests, as the activity of the other has to do ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... acquaintance, and especially begging me to take pains to introduce the new-comers into the "best society." To appreciate the joke thoroughly you must understand that there is no society here at all—absolutely none. We are not proud, we Maritzburgians, nor are we inhospitable, nor exclusive, nor unsociable. Not a bit. We are as anxious as any community can be to have society or sociable gatherings, or whatever you like to call the way people manage to meet together; but circumstances are altogether too strong for us, and we all in turn are forced to abandon the attempt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Cherub. "You should see a tertulia, if you want to know how families can enjoy themselves together. But there's another side of the picture, too. English and American people—there are a few—accuse us of being unsociable. They say we never give invitations to luncheons and dinners as people of other countries do; that a few calls are exchanged, and that is all, in an intercourse, it ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... I am informed, occasionally be seen in petticoats at home, still I fear that the firm stride of the Laughlan lady could hardly be reproduced in English boots. To see ten or twelve of these ladies walking in the unsociable formation of single file, which they adopt, with their many-coloured kilts flying out on either side, is a very pretty sight.' Evidently, a judicious traveller and observer might do worse than take a tour to ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... quite a change in Mr. Drysdale during the last year," said Mrs. Richter. "My husband was speaking of it the other day. He said that Drysdale was becoming really unsociable. I hope he is not growing dissipated, for the sake of his wife, who ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... two, his uncle missed the accustomed grace, and began to say it himself. He is now the person to say "Silence, boys;" and then to ask the blessing on the meal. It makes them gather round the table, instead of sitting down here and there in the comfortless, unsociable way they used to do. Tom and Dick go to school together now, and Dick is getting on famously, and will soon be able to help his next brother over his lessons, as ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... sanctity of the social contract and the laws. These articles of belief are imposed, not as dogmas of religion exactly, but as sentiments of sociability. If any one declines to accept them, he ought to be exiled, not for being impious, but for being unsociable, incapable of sincere attachment to the laws, or of sacrificing his life to his duty. If any one, after publicly recognising these dogmas, carries himself as if he did not believe them, let him be punished by death, for he has committed the worst of crimes, he has lied ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... say the only friends you are likely to have? Are you so unsociable that you cannot ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... condescend indeed; but he won't be condescended to, that's clear, not even by a Duchess. With what mock humility he meets her airs! how I adore him for it! Then you are such a pillar of ice!—so shy and unsociable when he is present!—and, by-the-bye, if I did not despise recrimination as the pis aller of all conscious Misses, I would say you are much more the object of his attention, at least, than I am. Several times ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... God, or less than a man; the latter part of this assertion would have held good had he carried it farther, and said lower than a brute, for there is no creature in the universe that is not linked into some society, except we allow the existence of that exploded and unsociable bird the Phoenix.' ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... moment. Don't be offended at a trifle. Do not be offish and unsociable. The Steamship Subsidy bill was a fraud on the government. You voted for it, Mr. Trollop, though you always opposed the measure until after you had an interview one evening with a certain Mrs. McCarter at her house. She was my agent. She was acting for ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... rather unsociable, his philosophic views disagreeing with the beliefs and prejudices of the people of his own rank, did not know any of the families living near, and ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... in the Third Olynthiac (Sec. 15). The early orations against Philip also show some misunderstanding of his character. And if, in fact, Demosthenes lived his early years largely in solitary studiousness and was unsociable by disposition, this lack of a quick grasp of human nature and motives is quite intelligible. But this defect grew less conspicuous as his experience increased; and though even to the end there remained something ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... Mr. Lindsay holding out his hand "here's your aunt says you don't like anybody how is it? are you of an unsociable disposition?" ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... betray myself, and abandon the care of my own preservation, in order to give way to the malice of a criminal, that he may act with impunity and with full liberty. On the contrary, since he shows himself unsociable towards me, and since he has placed himself in a position which does not permit me safely to practice towards him the duties of peace, I have only to think of preventing the danger which menaces me; so that if I cannot do this without hurting ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... fully explained his eccentricities, John reflected sagely, as he mixed himself a grog. Poor Alan! He was drunk; and what a dreadful thing was drink, and what a slave to it poor Alan was, to drink in this unsociable, uncomfortable fashion! The man who would drink alone, except for health's sake - as John was now doing - was a man utterly lost. He took the grog out, and felt hazier, but warmer. It was hard work opening the portmanteau and finding his night things; and before he was undressed, the cold had struck ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was considered indispensable to the proper discharge of my duties in Wallencamp that I should make frequent calls on the parents of my flock, throughout the entire community. If I failed in any measure in this respect, they reproached me with being "unsociable," and said; "Seems to me you ain't very ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... boat which we built on purpose. It is now seven-and-twenty years since we were swallowed up. Everything here, indeed, is very tolerable, except our neighbours, who are disagreeable, troublesome, savage, and unsociable." "And are there more," replied I, "besides ourselves in the whale?" "A great many," said he, "and those very unhospitable, and of a most horrible appearance: towards the tail, on the western parts ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... my air of dejection increased. I must be unsociable no longer. Let me rejoin my dear schoolfellows, making a little detour in order to appear to reach them from the direction not of the ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... you mean us, Mitcham. You are quite mistaken; neither my brother nor myself think ourselves better than any one, nor have we any idea of giving ourselves airs. The fact is—and I am not surprised that you should think us unsociable—we are taking lessons in Spanish. If we go with the regiment it will be very useful, and I have heard it said that any one who lands in a foreign country, and who knows a little of the grammar and pronunciation, will learn it in half the time that he would were he altogether ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... to see you!" Flint raised his glass and tilted it ever so slightly in her direction. Claire lifted the cocktail to her lips and set it down untasted. "What's the matter? Getting unsociable again?" ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... there are poets and poets, poets sociable and poets very unsociable. Wordsworth made the country, but Lamb made the town; and there is quite a band of poets nowadays who share his distaste for mountains, and take London for their muse. If you'll promise not to cry again, I'll recall some lines by a friend of mine which were written for town-tastes ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... place in behind the stove, feeling at once, though I am far from being unsociable usually, that the man was an intruder and would spoil the evening. But despite his cold, dampening presence we were soon at it, hammer and tongs, discussing the things that are discussed behind hospitable stoves in country ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... attempt was a failure. If Edgar made any poetry while in the water he did not mention it; but he was absent-minded and unsociable all the way to the river and back—sky-gazing for curious cloud-forms, listening for bird-notes and hunting wild-flowers, and talking almost ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Mitcham. You are quite mistaken; neither my brother nor myself think ourselves better than any one, nor have we any idea of giving ourselves airs. The fact is—and I am not surprised that you should think us unsociable—we are taking lessons in Spanish. If we go with the regiment it will be very useful, and I have heard it said that any one who lands in a foreign country, and who knows a little of the grammar and pronunciation, will learn it ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... but failure for the ill-natured, unsociable, disgusting tramp who is known to be ignorant, lazy, shiftless, a spendthrift, a liar, and an all-around crook. Such a worthless man will make a complete failure of life because he ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... nothing would induce her to budge from Paris till she had seen her sister through, and Gaston shrank from proposing that she too should spend five weeks in the Place Beauvau or the Rue de Lille. There was moreover a slight element of the mystifying for him in the perverse unsociable way in which Francie took up a position of marked disfavour as yet to any "visiting." AFTER, if he liked, but not till then. And she wouldn't at the moment give the reasons of her refusal; it was only very ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... to a private school, and after a year or two to Eton, but at neither was he happy. And although he had been so merry at home, at school he was looked upon as a strange unsociable creature. He refused to fag for the bigger boys. He never joined in the ordinary school games, and would wander about by himself reading, or watching the clouds and the birds. He read all kinds of books, liking best those which told of haunted castles, robbers, giants, murderers, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Andalusian at this small table to serve at once as a link of sympathy between the quiet men, who would fain silence him, and a means of making unsociable persons acquainted with each other. The five men were thus permitted to dine in a silence befitting their surroundings and their station in life. For they were obviously gentlemen, and obviously of a thoughtful ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... we say another word," said Mr Stoddart, "I must just say one word about this report of my unsociable disposition.—I encourage it; but am very glad to ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... like a settled frost, he seemed wrapped in the mantle of egotism and sublunary conceit; and it was from the uninviting expression of this great man's countenance, that I first drew my conceptions as to how a proud and unsociable man looked. With very different emotions I was wont to survey the mild but expressive features of his great opponent, Fox: there was a placidity mixed up with the graver lines of thought and reflection, that would have invited a child to take him by the hand; indeed, the witchcraft ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... Sevillanos," said the Cherub. "You should see a tertulia, if you want to know how families can enjoy themselves together. But there's another side of the picture, too. English and American people—there are a few—accuse us of being unsociable. They say we never give invitations to luncheons and dinners as people of other countries do; that a few calls are exchanged, and that is all, in an intercourse, it may ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... insensible to those motives which operate upon all his fellows, he is not fit to live in society; he would contradict the very end of his association: he would he its enemy; he would place obstacles to its natural tendency; his rebellious disposition, his unsociable will, not being susceptible of that modification which is convenient to his own true interests and to the interests of his fellow-citizens; these would unite themselves against such an enemy; and the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... hasten on to come up with him before he had eaten it all. He preferred being beaten to going hungry, so they never caught him till he had fed full. But what troubled him most was the tramping, the long dusty stages afoot in country where the unsociable villages lay remote from each other, and the roads were hot and long. A man can outwalk any other animal. After thirty miles, a horse is nowhere and the man is still going, but even fifteen miles ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... at that stipulated time I don't know, as he never was very communicative, and is more unsociable than ever now. He is a man who never shows his feelings, but he must feel the loss of his old position deeply. He seemed surprised not to find you here, and says it was a pity to set you teaching, as it will take all the life and fun out of you, and that is the first time I ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... fellow-countryman Hummel, who for many years had been occupying the position of musical director in Weimar. He had left Vienna before my poetry had attracted attention, so that we had not become acquainted with each other. It was almost touching to witness the joy with which this ordinarily unsociable man greeted me and took possession of me. In the first place I probably revived in him memories of his native city, which he had left with reluctance; then, too, it probably gave him satisfaction to find his literary countryman honored and respected in Weimar, where he heard ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was at an intolerant age, and if his schoolfellows struck him as more backward or more stupid than they need be, he is not likely to have taken pains to conceal the impression. It is difficult, at all events, to think of him as unsociable, and his talents certainly had their amusing side. Miss Browning tells me that he made his schoolfellows act plays, some of which he had written for them; and he delighted his friends, not long ago, by mimicking his own solemn appearance on some breaking-up or commemorative ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... to live together in an union and friendship, and which we cannot separate like man and wife, when they happen to disagree. The profound silence that is enjoined upon the monks of La Trappe, is a singular circumstance of their unsociable and unnatural discipline; and were this injunction never to be dispensed with, it would be needless to visit them in any other character than as a collection of statues; but the superior of the convent suspended, in our favour, that ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... reform, but he is now solicited again by the bottle. His moral triumph or failure literally consists in his finding the right name for the case. If he says that it is a case of not wasting good liquor already poured out, or a case of not being churlish and unsociable when in the midst of friends, or a case of learning something at last about a brand of whiskey which he never met before, or a case of celebrating a public holiday, or a case of stimulating himself to a more energetic ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... passion took new phases. He wrote no sonnets, painted no pictures. He neglected his work, and spent his idle hours in rambling here and there in a gloomy, unsociable fashion. ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a pass with his wooden leg to guard himself as Mr Venus springs up in the emphasis of this unsociable declaration, Mr Wegg tilts over on his back, chair and all, and is rescued by that harmless misanthrope, in a disjointed state ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Avarice. Tis strange to see how suddenly this abject Passion kills all the noble Sentiments and generous Ambitions that adorn Humane Nature; it renders the Man who is over-run with it a peevish and cruel Master, a severe Parent, an unsociable Husband, a distant and mistrustful Friend. But it is more to the present Purpose to consider it as an absurd Passion of the Heart, rather than as a vicious Affection of the Mind. As there are frequent Instances to be met with of a proud Humility, so this Passion, contrary to most others, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... knew that he had grown somewhat churlish; that men who did not understand his unsociable ways and extreme reticence looked at him askance. But what of it? How little such things mattered! The tragedy was his and the silence was his, and he had never asked ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... remained in silence, noiselessly working his limbs like a spider, and wearing a dull and sulky look. It was not till he rose to take leave that he became at all animated. Even when sitting in the carriage, the old man at first seemed still unsociable and absorbed in his own thoughts. But the calm, warm air, the gentle breeze, the dim shadows, the scent of the grass and the birch buds, the peaceful light of the moonless, starry sky, the rhythmical ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... suggestion, for, as all travellers know, if you don't sit by a camp fire in the evening, you have to sit by nothing in the dark, which is a most unsociable way of spending your time. They found a comfortable nook under the hedge, where there were plenty of dry leaves to rest on, and there they built a fire, and put the billy on, and made tea. The tea and sugar and three tin cups and half a pound of mixed biscuits were brought out of the bag ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... deriving all its supposed value from impenetrable secrecy, and Ludloe's admonitions tending powerfully to impress me with the necessity of wariness and circumspection in my general intercourse with mankind, I had gradually fallen into sedate, reserved, mysterious, and unsociable habits. My ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... House, in what had been once the centre, but was now the edge of the town. The little troop had to pass through the negro quarter—small frame-houses, peppered over grassless, bare lots, the broken-down fences protesting against unsociable isolation. The Rooms, from the outside, reminded one of a hive of angry bees. In and out of the door men were hurrying, and a crowd swarmed on the side-walk talking in a loud, excited hum. As soon as the Professor was recognized, a silence of astonishment fell upon the throng. With stares ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... they were disappointed, for Madam Conway was a proud, unsociable woman, desiring no acquaintance whatever with her neighbors, who, after many ineffectual attempts at something like friendly intercourse, concluded to leave her entirely alone, and contented themselves with watching the progress ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... She talked. Mme. de Listomere no longer despaired of fathoming the new-made wife, whom yesterday she had set down as a dull, unsociable creature, and discoursed on the delights of the country, of dances, of houses where they could visit. All that day the Marquise's questions were so many snares; it was the old habit of the old Court, she could not help setting traps to discover her niece's character. ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... watched grimly over the exchequer confided to him, which was daily growing fuller in despite of the cormorants who trembled at his frown; hard worker, good hater, conscientious politician, who filled his own coffers without dishonesty, and those of the state without tyranny; unsociable, arrogant; pious, very avaricious, and inordinately vain, Maximilian de Bethune, Duke of Sully, loved and respected Henry as no man or woman loved and respected him. In truth, there was but one living being for whom the Duke had greater reverence and affection than for the King, and that was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the window, putting the letter into her pocket. The tea-tray, with its solitary cup and saucer, was waiting on the table, and Elsie poured out tea, congratulating herself that she was alone. She was not an unsociable woman; but the boarding-school, with all its noisy, merry occupants, had set her longing for solitude. She had felt far too weary and dispirited to enter into the fun ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... was in much too unsociable a mind for paying friendly calls. Still, something in the aspect of the place harmonised with my humour, and I worked my way round to the back, where the ground, after affording level enough for a kitchen-garden, ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... account o' your conscience. It's conscience cotton, Thomas Jefferson. I've explained before, but I don't know's you understood. It seems a little unpolite to wear it in my ears, with you here keeping me comp'ny. I s'pose you think it's un—unsociable. But Aunt Olivia doesn't allow me to 'sociate with the Tony Trumbullses. Oh, Thomas Jefferson, I wish she'd ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... no good at home," he said. "You can see what a sulky, unsociable fellow he is. No interest in nothing—thinks everybody hates him, and won't make up to anybody. He says he'll run away if I put him in school. If he does, I certainly will put him in the reformatory until he's ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... the modest 'fiver' which a man would be thought unsociable if he did not risk on the horse that carries the country's colours. But he is very 'thick' with the racing-people on the Downs, and supplies the stable with oats, which is, I believe, not an unprofitable commission. The historical anecdote of the Roman emperor who fed his horse on gilded oats ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... me, then," I said to her. "You know how unsociable I am; I feel sure that I shall ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... of Agnas Blancas, and grimly counted the days, and the money (although his nature, I believe, was fundamentally generous, in his set concentration of purpose, he had grown morbidly avaricious) which should restore him to his beautiful mistress. Morose, reticent, unsociable as he had become, he had still, I discovered by degrees, a leaning towards the humanities, a nice taste, such as could only be the result of much knowledge, in the fine things of literature. His infinitesimal library, a few French ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... was born, and had procured, by means more or less moral, a fragment of the wall-paper belonging to it, she, within two days of her landing in Corsica, began to feel that profound melancholy which must overcome every foreigner in a country whose unsociable inhabitants appear to condemn him or her to a condition of utter isolation. She was already regretting her headstrong caprice; but to go back at once would have been to risk her reputation as an intrepid traveller, so she ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... though he deftly hid the fact, because the engineer ignored the question until it had been thrice repeated, and then he said, somewhat tartly: "That is my affair, Mr. Gleason." Everybody thought that Loring was decidedly unsociable, and some went so far as to call ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... engross him. He grew moodier, more exacting. If Myra arrived home late, he wanted to know where she had been, whom she had seen. Were they dining out, he muttered unsociable objections; were people coming to the house, he complained of the lack of privacy. What a whirl they lived in! So they did, but what was the remedy? Myra herself felt helpless in a tangle of engagements. They overpowered her. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... the start met popular disapproval. The early Christians, who tried to keep themselves free from idolatry, were regarded as very unsociable persons. They never appeared at public feasts and entertainments. They would not join in the amusements of the circus or the amphitheater. They refused to send their children to the schools. The ordinary citizen could not understand such people. It is not surprising, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... character, and Annette really seemed like an anomalous contradiction. There was a duality about her nature as if the blood of two races were mingling in her veins. To some persons Annette was loving and love-able, bright, intelligent, obliging and companionable; to others, unsociable, unamiable and repelling. Her heart was like a harp which sent out its harmonious discords in accordance with the moods of the player who touched its chords. To some who swept them it gave out tender and touching melody, to others its harshest and saddest discords. ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... unsociable, he shrank from his neighbours because they had been cruel to him when they were children, and the dislike was more than returned; yet I think that, but for the loneliness of his whole life, he would have been friendly enough. No ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... the valet, Smerdyakov. He was a young man of about four and twenty, remarkably unsociable and taciturn. Not that he was shy or bashful. On the contrary, he was conceited and ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... left her with all reasonable expression of conjugal kindness; his temper being improved by the prospect of going abroad. But one other servant accompanied the travellers—Lady Montbarry's maid, rather a silent, unsociable woman, so far as Emily had heard. Her ladyship's brother, Baron Rivar, was already on the Continent. It had been arranged that he was to meet his sister and her husband ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... duties, rightly done, are one of the developments of soul. Let it be seen that you girls who can enjoy your literature, and your history, and your music, and your drawing with keen appreciation are not made thereby selfish or unsociable; but that you are more delightful creatures than those who have no such independent resources and joys. A girl who gets her certificate or prize and is cross or dull at home, and does not think it worth ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... Breeding associations. Autumn societies. Mammals: small number of unsociable species. Hunting associations of wolves, lions, etc. Societies of rodents; of ruminants; of monkeys. Mutual Aid in the struggle for life. Darwin's arguments to prove the struggle for life within the species. Natural checks to over-multiplication. Supposed extermination ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... to the proper discharge of my duties in Wallencamp that I should make frequent calls on the parents of my flock, throughout the entire community. If I failed in any measure in this respect, they reproached me with being "unsociable," and said; "Seems to me you ain't very ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... afraid," he confessed, "that when I found that I had a fellow traveller in my coupe I felt most ungracious and unsociable. I was in a thoroughly bad temper and indisposed for conversation. The simplest way to escape from it seemed to be to plead ignorance of any language save ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... His captain being killed in the retreat at the Isle of Rhe, Felton had applied for the company; and when disappointed, he threw up his commission, and retired in discontent from the army. While private resentment was boiling in his sullen, unsociable mind, he heard the nation resound with complaints against the duke; and he met with the remonstrance of the commons, in which his enemy was represented as the cause of every national grievance, and as the great enemy of the public. Religious fanaticism further inflamed these vindictive reflections; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... only one who did not join in these choruses. Long since, as one feature of his developing moroseness, he had ceased from barking. He had become too unsociable for any such demonstrations; nor did he pattern after the example of some of the sourer-tempered dogs in the room, who were for ever bickering and snarling through the slats of their cages. In ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... he has, in many of these instances, attained the representation or resemblance that he purposes. Verse can imitate only sound and motion. A boundless verse, a headlong verse, and a verse of brass, or of strong brass, seem to comprise very incongruous and unsociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the sound of the line expressing loose care, I cannot discover; nor why the pine is taller in an alexandrine than ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... upon which he could draw with perfect ease and assurance. When I was first introduced to him, he appeared to be rather distant in manner than inviting friendly approach. But I was told that ill health had made him unsociable and somewhat morose and testy, and, indeed, there was often the trace of suffering and weariness in his face. It was also remarked in the Senate that at times he was ill-tempered and inclined to indulge in biting sarcasms ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... are my prisoner, and I shall not let you escape till you have answered a few questions. I have been doing my best to become acquainted with you, but you listen and reply in monosyllables, which is most unsociable. You leave me to do all the talking, and I want to hear your side of the question. Is ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... unenviable frame of mind, and is thoroughly unsociable to Owen Kelly and the old ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
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