"Graceless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these graceless people thought to humbug the hard-headed man from the North, he succeeded on one occasion in completely silencing his chief enemy, O'Halloran. That lover of paradox and idle speculation was tracing the decline of superstition to ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... neither too much interference nor too little attention. Nothing for exhibition; care to teach well, without any vain attempt to teach in a wonderfully short time. All that experience proves to be useful, in both Dr. Bell's and Mr. Lancaster's modes of teaching, Mrs. Burke had adopted; leaving it to "graceless zealots" to fight about the rest. That no attempts at proselytism had been made, and that no illiberal distinctions had been made in his school, Lord Colambre was convinced, in the best manner possible, by seeing the children of protestants and catholics sitting on ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... How the graceless-graceful stride of the elephant was eyed, And the capers of the little horse that cantered at his side! How the shambling camels, tame to the plaudits of their fame, With listless eyes came ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... distribute itself over the mass. The principle is therefore consonant with justice. What is not less important, the principle, systematically developed, would go far toward freeing the legislature from the graceless function of arbitrating between selfish interests, and the administration from the necessity of putting down powerful interests outlawed by legislative act. It would give us a State working smoothly, and therefore an efficient instrument for social ends. ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... the furniture is too valuable to be entrusted to a less attentive person. This Mrs. Clarke had a sister whose name was Webb, and who left a son and a daughter, who are both married. The son, as you will soon hear, has been a wild and graceless fellow; but the daughter is one of the most agreeable and engaging young creatures I think ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... of the arched windows thereof. Mr. Simcoe's tracts fluttered into the doors of all the Doctor's cottages, and were taken as greedily as honest Mrs. Portman's soup, with the quality of which the graceless people found fault. With the folks at the Ribbon Factory situated by the weir on the Brawl side, and round which the Low Town had grown, Orthodoxy could make no way at all. Quiet Miss Myra was put out of court ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... enter on this graceless errand? I must not call her child; for where's the father That will in such a suit seduce his child? Then, Wife of Salisbury;—shall I so begin? No, he's my friend; and where is found the friend That will do friendship such endamagement?—{255} ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... replies; but I could not well help it then. Tom Thornton was a villain, by his own confession. My uncle had declared that he had stained his soul with crime for his son's sake. Whichever was the greater villain, it was clear that the son was the more obdurate, graceless, and unrepentant of the two. I had no patience with him. I had no respect for him, and I certainly had no fear of him. Even policy would not permit me to treat him with a ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... viewlessly) they rejoice with, they sorrow for, (if angels can sorrow) and they minister unto "the heirs of salvation," as they did in the days of old, and as they will do, to the end of time. Were we not assured of this blessed fact in the book of books, reason would assert, that for a thankless, graceless generation alone, earth should not have been formed so divinely fair; but it is heavenly, that the immortal servitors of man may even here find records of the divinity, and themes for undying thanksgiving. Are we indeed visited, watched, and ministered unto, by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... purloined by one Isaac Beardsley, an unscrupulous man, of some influence, who used, for amusement, to potter about in various antiquarian enterprises of no moment, but who had now been dead for some fifteen years. I then also recollected that he had an only child, a graceless gallows-bird of a son, who broke his father's heart, then wasted his substance in riotous living, and, after being long a disgrace and nuisance at home, had sunk out of sight amid the lowest strata of vice and crime in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... from opening resources to their hearts or stimulating their minds, only darkened their ideas and depressed them; it was made up of rigid old women, withered and graceless, whose conversation turned on the differences which distinguished various preachers and confessors, on their own petty indispositions, on religious events insignificant even to the "Quotidienne" or "l'Ami de la Religion." As for the men who appeared in the Comtesse de Granville's ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... just rights. Miss Woodhull was essentially a militant suffragette and her stanch admirers, Miss Baylis and Miss Stetson were her enthusiastic partisans. Miss Atwell, the teacher of esthetic dancing and posing, who came thrice weekly to instill grace into the graceless and emphasize it in those who were already graceful, sat, so to speak, upon the fence, undecided which way to jump. She inclined strongly to the strictly feminine attitude of dependence upon the stronger sex, but was wise to the advantage of keeping in touch with those occupying the seats ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... in elemental veracity, that putting is the devil. Systems more numerous than dactyls and spondees in Classic verse, patent putters outnumbered only by howlers in Oxford responsions, bear witness to this graceless statement. Quite lately in these columns have I confessed—pulvere cineribusque— that our side had twice failed at the inconsiderable distance of two yards, even after discarding the small thirty-two. But that further confession will be forthcoming is now wildly and preposterously ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... MIDDLETON,—Your letter has been like the drawing up of a curtain. Of course I remember you very well, and the Skye terrier to which you refer—a heavy, dull, fatted, graceless creature he grew up to be—was my own particular pet. It may amuse you, perhaps, as much as "The Inn" amused me, if I tell you what made this dog particularly mine. My father was the natural god of all the dogs in our house, and poor Jura took to him of course. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... varon, y muy experimentado y prudente en negocios," says Oviedo of the cardinal, "pero a vueltas de las negociaciones desta vida, tuvo tres hijos varones," etc. Then follows a full notice of this graceless progeny. Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... Put clothes clean—white like anything. Sit down. One day eat nothing. Then feast plenty. Good goat of my country—more fatter." (It was a graceless cut, for the previous day I had given him a well-grown kid). "No messin' abeaut. Plenty talk with friend. Walk about bazaar. Full up people—clean, nice. No row—nothing. Subpose I make lucky. I find one pearl, I go along my ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... Pinchin, his career was not nearly so prosperous, nor his end so happy. You will learn, a little further on, what scurvy tricks Fortune played him, and how at last his poor little brains succumbed to the rough toasting of that graceless jade. I had always thought him Mad, and Mad, indeed, as a March hare he proved to be ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... years De Stancy had been an easy, melancholy, unaspiring officer, enervated and depressed by a parental affection quite beyond his control for the graceless lad Dare—the obtrusive memento of a shadowy period in De Stancy's youth, who threatened to be the curse of his old age. Throughout a long space he had persevered in his system of rigidly incarcerating within ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... tried living in the barracks, but after a time every one in the officers' quarters rose in revolt at the pranks of those graceless children, so Captain Woolcot took a house some distance up the Parramatta River, and in considerable bitterness of spirit removed ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... Catherine began to make it clear to her obstinate cousin that she wished to be friends. The intimacy ripened rapidly, and, Mr. Lockwood, on their wedding day there won't be a happier woman in England than myself. Joseph was the only objector, and he appealed to Heathcliff against 'yon flaysome graceless quean, that's witched our lad wi' her bold een and her forrad ways.' But after a burst of passion at the news, Mr. Heathcliff suddenly calmed down and said to me, 'Nelly, there is a strange change approaching; I'm in ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... same graceless youth was in the habit of calling 'The Sentimental.' She was the darkest of the family, and the most beautiful also, where every one was more or less good-looking. She had soft brown hair, dark blue-gray eyes of the tenderest ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... Netherland had always been in dispute. The English population on Long Island grew, an encroached upon the Dutch towns at the west end; and the towns in that region which were partly English, partly Dutch in population were of doubtful allegiance. The graceless Major John Scott, coming to the island with some royal authority, formed a combination of Hempstead, Gravesend, Flushing, Newtown, Jamaica and Oyster Bay, with himself as president, and then proceeded (January, 1664), at the head of 170 men, to reduce the neighboring Dutch ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... car at the moment that it came out on to the highroad! Oh, they bungled the thing villainously. My Marathon feat saved your life, Mr. Addison, but it looks like losing me the case! We have the Hawkins couple. But, although a graceless pair, they were more dupes than knaves. I am convinced, personally, that neither of them suspected that Lady Burnham Coverly was dead. Damar Greefe had represented to them that she had lost ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... hastily, and then, after a glance from the window, ventured up stairs. And he was in the thick of his self-imposed task when his graceless nephew by marriage, who had met Mrs. Driver and referred pathetically to a raging thirst which he had hoped to have quenched with some of her home-brewed, brought ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... as they followed him: and I was left with the two queens, one of whom was making ruffles for the man she loved, and the other slopping tea for the good of her country. They renewed their generous endeavours to set me right, and I (graceless beast that I am) take up the smoked card which lay before me, and with the corner ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... All beautiful within, the churches of Florence are singularly poor in those rich facades which give such scope to the sculptor and architect, conferring, as at Pisa, distinction on a whole town. The churches of the Carmine, Santo Spirito and San Lorenzo are without facades at all, presenting graceless and unfinished masonry in place of what was intended by their founders. Elsewhere there are late and florid facades alien to the spirit of the main building, while it has been left to our own generation to complete Santa Croce and the Cathedral. The latter, it is true, once had a facade, which, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... remarkable withal how thoroughly instructed Friedrich Wilhelm shows himself in such matters; and how paternally delighted to receive such proposals of improvement introducible at the said Carzig and Himmelstadt, and to find young Graceless so diligent, and his ideas even good. [Forster, ii. 390, 387, 391.] Perhaps a momentary glance into those affairs may ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... one of these, angry and threatening, I recognized for that of Rinolfo—Messer Giojoso's graceless son; the other, a fresh young feminine voice, was entirely unknown to me; indeed it was the first girl's voice I could recall having heard in all my eighteen years, and the sound was as pleasantly strange as ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... a nice little stroll," continued the graceless Mr. Green, "and then I s'pose she found it was later than she thought, and she began to ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... cauld ice, Surely it is a great follie: I have ask'd grace at a graceless face, But there is nane ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... in. But when it tore off their masks, lo! some were disappointingly commonplace, and others were gipsy quotations trying to conceal the punctuation marks that belonged to them. Memory was much chagrined to have had such a hard chase only to catch this sorry lot of graceless rogues. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... her, and was evidently pained by the discovery of his selfish and politic traits,—to call them by no harsher name,—it was inexpressibly touching to hear the excuses she made for him, to see the all-shielding love with which she veiled his faults, and kept him as a mother would keep her graceless, yet dearest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... graceless, gallant fellow, who at the war's end had fallen, dying, into his arms, had sent by him a last word of penitent love to his mother, an aged widow. She lived in Suez, and when Ravenel brought this message ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... out; the land is roused; Where is the coward who sits well housed? Fie on thee, boy, disguised in curls, Behind the stove, 'mong gluttons and girls! A graceless, worthless wight thou must be; No German maid desires thee, No German song inspires thee, No German Rhine-wine fires thee. Forth in the van, Man by man, Swing the battle-sword ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... the matter! the disturbance! Why, Sister, this Rogue here—this unintelligible graceless Rascal here, will needs set up for a Rakehell, when there's scarce such a thing in the Nation, above an Ale-draper's Son; and chuses to be aukardly out of fashion, merely for the sake of Tricking and Poverty; ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... my cobbler's son," Maria Dolores answered. "I, a Princess of the Empire, humbly offered him, a cobbler's son, my hand, heart, and fortune,—and the graceless man rejected them ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... with all the ardor of his poetic Indian nature. Many a time did the forests of the island re-echo with his recitations of the holy rosary, and he had the happiness to see his son also follow his example, by receiving the saving waters of Baptism. The graceless son, however, soon forgot his baptismal vows, and returned to his former licentious mode of life. Falling in with a depraved party of his tribe, who had taken the war-path against the peaceful Christian Indians, he assisted in a murderous attack on his native village. The fiends were unhappily ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... those centuries to a close, and that other one, the Revolution, which ushered in the new epoch of liberty and well-dressed poverty. Of these buildings, the cathedral has the right to be named first. As a whole it cannot be called a beautiful structure, for its form is graceless; but what a charm there is in its details! Even its incongruity has a singular fascination. This most evident incongruity arises from the combination that it expresses of the Gothic and Byzantine styles. The facade ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Graceless faces, Loveless graces, Are but motes in light that quicken, Sands that run down Ere the sundown, ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... among us; How much our ancestors outsung us: Can personate an awkward scorn For those who are not poets born; And all their brother dunces lash, Who crowd the press with hourly trash. O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, Whose graceless children scorn to own thee! Their filial piety forgot, Deny their country, like a Scot; Though by their idiom and grimace, They soon betray their native place: Yet thou hast greater cause to be Ashamed of them, than they of thee, Degenerate from their ancient brood Since ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... hour; three ships in sight; read before breakfast one of Cobbett's sermons "On hypocrisy." In the forenoon two sermons from Chalmers's "Discourses on Commercial Integrity." One of the steerage passengers read from the Scriptures and commented sensibly, but he was laughed at by some graceless Irishmen. In the afternoon Mr. Hopkins proposed to address the passengers. After reading about the talents he proceeded to speak of the Bible as the oldest and best Book. Paine, he said, had denounced it as a forgery, but various authors had mentioned the N.T. Burnett ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... sleepless; in what horrors of death; during what long nights she lay moaning, and in almost delirious agonies respecting that future world which she quite ignored when she was in good health.—Picture to yourself, oh fair young reader, a worldly, selfish, graceless, thankless, religionless old woman, writhing in pain and fear, and without her wig. Picture her to yourself, and ere you be old, learn ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at last, full of years and honour; and I was summoned from school to attend her funeral. My uncle was much affected, for she had been an excellent mother. She might have been so; but I, graceless boy, could not perceive her merits as a grandmother, and showed a great deal of fortitude upon the occasion. I recollect a circumstance attendant upon her funeral which, connected as it was with a subsequent one, has since been the occasion of serious reflection ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... he say it. I, who had been so witless as to let this come upon us! Moa's weapon prodded me. Her voice hissed at me with all the venom of a reptile enraged. "So that was your game, Gregg Haljan! And I was so graceless as ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... lad,' he said kindly. 'I ask ye not to tarry in what ye must deem a graceless household;' and he looked sadly across at his two sons, boys in age, but seniors in excess. 'I would we had mair lads like you. I fear me a heavy reckoning ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in their custody he was impatient to browbeat the youth and taunt him with his helplessness. But Arnold Baxter would not listen to it, so the graceless son had ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... himself his voice sounded harsh and unnatural, his words instinct with the graceless cruelty of ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the advice, but in the end he must have recognised its wisdom. At the very last moment it might have been possible to get Victor Emmanuel's authority proclaimed at Naples before Garibaldi entered the city, or, at any rate, Cavour thought so; but the attempt would have worn a graceless look at that late hour, and it was not made. Cavour never forgot the services which Garibaldi had rendered to Italy; "the greatest," he said, "that a man could render her." When the dissension between them began, he might ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... besides I want to close this deal and close it quickly. Naturally Hayes isn't fool enough to toss away two thousand dollars, and something seems to tell me he'll urge his principals to take the boats at our figure, Matthew!" And the graceless old villain chuckled and dug his youngest skipper in the short ribs. "Let this be a lesson to you, my boy," he warned him. "Remember the old Persian proverb: 'A shut mouth catches ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... of chapels he had to attend, about the gown he wore, about the master's treatment of him, about the want of plums in the pudding, as old men and schoolboys grumble. It was wonderful what a liking John James took to this odious, querulous, graceless, stupid, and snuffy old man, and how he would find pretexts for visiting him at his lodging in the old hospital. He actually took that journey that he might have a chance of seeing Clive. He sent Clive notes and packets of drawings; thanked him for books ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... grin Jim felt his faith in himself wavering. He remembered unworthy thoughts he had entertained, graceless things he had done; he felt that his presence here as a knight of unassailable purity was hypocritical. He winced at all points from the uncertainty as to the point to be attacked. His life was like a long ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... man, "for all that I can see, you may as well bide a while with us; for, indeed, with leave of my graceless maid, I think we may even end our wild-goose chase here and get us back ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... the weather, we had the Missa to deal with, the humour of the proceedings did not strike any one—except the onlookers. For she rolled and pitched and plunged and dived as she lay there at her moorings. She was never still a moment, and, in a word, behaved like the graceless, mercurial baggage she was. But she ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... extraordinary. A human life is greater than all its possible appraisers, assessors, and critics. In comparison with the fact of Spencer's actual living, such critical characterization of it as I have been at all these pains to produce seems a rather unimportant as well as a decidedly graceless thing. ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... terrors of guiltiness. When he casts his eye back upon himself, he wonders where he was and how he came there; and grants that if there were not some witchcraft in sin, he could not have been so sottishly graceless. And now, in the issue, Satan finds (not without indignation and repentance) that he hath done him a good turn in tempting him: for he had never been so good if he had not sinned; he had never fought with such ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... grave and formal cat, and, in his way, a personage. He was decorous to a degree, unbended in no confidences with strangers, and hated Mr. Fopling, whom he regarded as either a graceless profligate or a domestic animal of unsettled species who, through no merit and by rank favoritism, had been granted a place in the household superior to his own. At sight of Mr. Fopling, Ajax would bottle-brush ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... insignificant but none the less oppressive stranger. It was odd how, on the instant, the little lady engaged with her did affect him as comparatively black—very much as if that had absolutely, in such a medium, to be the graceless appearance of any item not positively of some fresh shade of a light colour or of some pretty pretension to a charming twist. Any witness of their meeting, his hostess should surely have felt, would have been a false note in ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... let a proper text be read, An' touch it aff wi' vigour, How graceless Ham leugh at his dad, Which made ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... grade was displayed on many an impromptu stage. And that especial pet horror of supersensitive godliness—the godless German cotillion—even forced itself into the gayeties of the winter. Great was the wrath of the elect against all amusements of the kind—but chiefest among outrages was this graceless German. But despite the denunciations, the ridicule, and even the active intervention of one or two ministers, the young soldiers and their chosen partners whirled away as though they had never heard a slander or ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... interest, as would have sealed his fate indubitably, had not she interposed; but upon the entreaties of that exemplary wife, the three holy Maries remitted the remainder of their flagellation, and retired, leaving Perez senseless on the floor. Poor Juana was agonized at beholding the state to which her graceless partner was reduced, and hauling him, as well as her own exhausted strength would permit, upon his miserable pallet, washed the blood and dust from his wounds, and watched his return to consciousness with unexampled tenderness and dutiful fidelity. Perez at length opened ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... jarred heavily past, spurting ineffectually at the yellow dust which rose perversely under its baptism and surged beneath the awnings of the shops. It was Saturday, universal shopping-day in the farmland, and a ramshackle line of rustic vehicles—buggies, democrats, sulkies, lumber wagons—with graceless plough horses slumbering in the thills, stretched in ragged alignment down the curb. Shelby's smart turnout seemed fairly urban by contrast, and Ruth saw that it met with the critical approval ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... you here, lecher? O intemperate king! Wilt thou not see me? Come, come, show your face, Your grace's graceless, king's unkingly face. What, mute? hands folded, eyes fix'd on the earth? Whose turn is next now to be murdered? The famish'd Bruces are on yonder side, On this, another I will name anon; One for whose head this garland I do bear, And this ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... would become Athor well. Kenkenes understood the look but he did not flinch. Instead he let his head drop slowly until he looked at her from under his brows. Then he summoned into his eyes all the wounded feeling, pathos, soft reproach and appeal, of which his graceless young heart was capable, and gazed ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... qualifications, even under a Venetian constitution, in an individual who aspired to a post so eminent and responsible. Satisfied with the stars and mitres and official seals, which were periodically apportioned to them, the Marney family did not aspire to the somewhat graceless office of being their distributor. What they aimed at was promotion in their order; and promotion to the highest class. They observed that more than one of the other great "civil and religious liberty" families,—the ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... enjoying in its main thoroughfares the luxury of grass-grown "front gardens," untrodden by the foot of man save as to the path from the gate to the hall door; but blighted by an intolerable monotony of miles and miles of graceless, characterless brick houses, black iron railings, stony pavements, slaty roofs, and respectably ill dressed or disreputably poorly dressed people, quite accustomed to the place, and mostly plodding about ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... life he led poor Juno, we often wondered why she did not turn grayer than ever, having to deal with this graceless young reprobate. If he found her trying to sleep a little, he would bite her ears and pull at her tail, bracing himself back on all four of his absurd little feet, and sometimes tumbling over in his excitement; ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... is one, but people murder for two reasons only—for revenge and for gold. People don't do such acts as are to torture their minds here, and perhaps be punished hereafter—that is, if there be one, child. I say, people don't do such deeds as these, merely because a graceless son comes to them, and says, 'if you please, mother.' Do you understand that, child? I've blood enough on my hands already—good blood too—they are not defiled with the scum of a parish boy, nor ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was a too gracious preparation for a very graceless husband. Charles, in exile, had already made more than one discreditable connection and he was already the father of more ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... and spirited, After the graceless insults to the Court The Paris journals flaunt—not voluntarily, But by his ordering. Magician-like He holds them in his fist, and at his squeeze They bubble what he wills!... Yes, she's a girl Of patriotic build, and hates the French. Quite ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... mid clouds of scattered rice, through all the wedding whirl A laughing fellow hurries out a certain graceless girl, Unless my hand have lost its strength, unless my eye be dim, I'll lift the shoe, the contract too, and fling ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... through Poland and through Warsaw, Famous for mines of salt and yokes of iron: Through Courland also, which that famous farce saw Which gave her dukes the graceless name of 'Biron.' 'T is the same landscape which the modern Mars saw, Who march'd to Moscow, led by Fame, the siren! To lose by one month's frost some twenty years Of conquest, and his guard ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... thine; but now am I overcome, and since I know that I must die, I have now no fear, and this is why I am bold to tell thee this that I have spoken, though I wot now I shall be presently slain. And now I tell thee I repent it, that I have asked grace of a graceless face." ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... self, Sir, that wears his Linen, fingers his Money, and lies with his Mistress;—You Dog, you shall serve the Queen.—Has a Tradesman a Fop Prentice, that airs out his Horses, and heats his Wife, or an old Puritan a graceless Son, that runs to the Play-House instead of the Meeting, they are threathen'd with the Queen's Service; so that Her Majesty's good Subjects, drink her Health, wish success to her Arms, and send her ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... to a meeting at a tavern in the neighborhood of the prison, disguising our names as too certain to betray our objects, and baiting our invitation with some hints which we had ascertained were likely to prove temptations under his immediate circumstances. He had a graceless young son whom he was most anxious to wean from his dissolute connections, and to steady, by placing him in some office of no great responsibility. Upon this knowledge we framed the terms ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... a week's honest labor. I have taken them into my service, have fed and clothed them, year after year, on their arrival from the States, and in return I have generally found them rogues and thieves, and a graceless, worthless, thriftless, lying set of vagabonds. That is my very plain and very simple description of the darkies as a body, and it would be indorsed by all the western white ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... a thick chain about his feet, (it is said that it was a silver chain, because he was of royal blood;) the king, as the story relates, sent his son Rhun to enquire into the demeanour of Elphin's wife. Now Rhun was the most graceless man in the world, and there was neither wife nor maiden with whom he had held converse, but was evil spoken of. While Rhun went in haste towards Elphin's dwelling, being fully minded to bring disgrace upon his ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... The low, graceless humor of names! On my shelf of poetry, arranged by the alphabet, Coleridge and J. Gordon Cooglar are next-door neighbors! Mrs. Hemans is beside Laurence Hope! Walt Whitman rubs elbows with Ella Wheeler Wilcox; Robert Browning with Richard ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... there was something about them that stirred her spinster heart—they were so gay, so appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The longer Rebecca lived in the brick house the more her Aunt Jane marveled at the child. What made her so different from everybody else. Could it be that her graceless popinjay of a father, Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some strange combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows, the color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways and words, proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... quoth the Friar, fanning himself with a frond of bracken, "'tis a hot day, a day reminiscent of the ultimate fate of graceless sinners, and I am like the day and languish for breath, yet, to thy so pertinent question I will, straightly and in few words, pronounce and answer thee, as followeth: Our Lady Benedicta hath run away firstly, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... water beneath cauld ice, Surely it is a great follie; I have asked grace at a graceless face, But there is nane ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... of Sam Brattle, took place in the month of September, and during that same month the energy of other men of law was very keenly at work on a widely different subject. Could Messrs. Block and Curling assure Captain Marrable that a portion of his inheritance would be saved for him, or had that graceless father of his in very truth seized upon it all? There was no shadow of doubt but that if aught was spared, it had not been spared through any delicacy on the part of the Colonel. The Colonel had gone to work, paying creditors who were clamorous against him, the ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... loungers outside a soup kitchen; and on the other, Westbourne Grove, two streets further, a blazing array of crowded shops, a stirring traffic of cabs and carriages, and such a spate of spending that a tired student in leaky boots and graceless clothes hurrying home was continually impeded in the whirl of skirts and parcels and sweetly pretty womanliness. No doubt the tired student's own inglorious sensations pointed the moral. But that was only one of a perpetually recurring series of ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... a look at Dalhousie College with the parade in front, and the square town-clock, built by his graceless Highness the Duke of Kent, let us climb Citadel Hill, and see the formidable protector of town and harbor. Lively enough it is, this great stone fortress, with its soldiers, swarming in and out like bees, and the glimpses of country and harbor are surpassingly beautiful; but just at the margin ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... their dance, and are proper to a Sepulchral rite such as they have been sent to perform by their Queen, terrified as she has been by a dream the night before, a dream signifying how the Dead were wroth with those that slew them. But the Chorus like not this graceless deed of grace: what ransom can be found for the overthrow of the lord of a house? with him Awe has been overthrown, and Fear takes its place, or yet more Success is ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... things we have to take cautiously: the doctor has a patient who wears black and does not raise her veil. Why, it is the typical mysterious lady! Then the good doctor comes across Arnold Armstrong, who was a graceless scamp—de mortuis—what's the rest of it?—and he is quarreling with a lady in black. Behold, says the doctor, they are ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... reason it gave was forcible. The Puritan thought his thought higher and his moral standards better than those of his successors. So they were. He could not be convinced that moral standards had nothing to do with it, and that utilitarian morality was good enough for him, as it was for the graceless. Nature had given to the boy Henry a character that, in any previous century, would have led him into the Church; he inherited dogma and a priori thought from the beginning of time; and he scarcely ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... at Night my Doxie likewise came, Whom I in mod'rate Terms began to blame; Telling her that old Witch with whom she went, Abroad a Days by Rogues was only sent About to Wheedle young and tender Maids To Ruine, till they turned common Jades. You Lie, reply'd my hopeful graceless Dear, I'll have you know, I'll never sin in fear, Besides for she of whom you think, Amiss, That sweet obliging Gentlewoman is A tender-hearted Bawd that ne'er made Whore, But ever us'd such as were broke before. Now finding her so bad at ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... to unlatch for every graceless unthrift that chooses to pummel at Giles Dauber's wicket, I shall have but sorry bedding wi' an ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... thrown me money—a silly life, good to no man or beast. Oh yes, that I know full well now; and I have killed Phoebus because you looked at me; and my mother, who has loved me all her life, is old before her time through my fault. I am a graceless fool, a mountebank. When I put off my spangles and stand thus, you see the rude peasant that I am. And yet in all the great, wide, crowded world I know there does not live another who could love you as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... about Jacob. He was "a pawkie lad" in Peter's estimation—"nae just fair forth the gait in his dealings with his brother, and even waur (worse) with his old blind father, to whom he should have thought shame to tell lees in that graceless way." ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... on her way, her head high, an invincible lightness in the spring of every footstep, a splash of scarlet berries making a star among her dark hair, and humming the graceless lilt ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... arch is much to be commended, especially when, coming from the direction of the railway- station, you see it frame with its sharp compass-line the perfect picture, the reach of the Canal on the other side. But the backs of the little shops make from the water a graceless collective hump, and the inside view is the diverting one. The big arch of the bridge—like the arches of all the bridges—is the waterman's friend in wet weather. The gondolas, when it rains, huddle beside the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Instead, however, of bemoaning his fate, as the reader may be prepared to expect, the condemned betook himself to mourning the loss of his kingdom, and devising means to regain it. He was also not a little puzzled to know what road his graceless army had taken, for he knew in his heart, they would lose no time in getting safely out of the country. In truth he began to curse the day he took command of Glenmoregain's army; for though he might have been a good enough gentleman ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... all these qualities, should Rickie feel that there was something wrong with him—nay, that he was wrong as a whole, and that if the Spirit of Humanity should ever hold a judgment he would assuredly be classed among the goats? The answer at first sight appeared a graceless one—it was that Herbert was stupid. Not stupid in the ordinary sense—he had a business-like brain, and acquired knowledge easily—but stupid in the important sense: his whole life was coloured by a contempt of the ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... were making. Coming back by Cananor, he lodged in the house of a Christian, who himself was religious, but his son debauched, and subject to all sorts of vices. The good man, sensibly afflicted at the ill conduct of his graceless son, wept day and night; and Xavier began at first to comfort him, saying, those vices were ordinary in youth, and riper age would reclaim him from them. Having done speaking, he stood mute awhile, and recollected ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... old folk know their children? Would they own the graceless town, With never a ranter to worry And ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... afternoons when cool shadows lay across the lawn between their houses, he often discussed these matters of life. Nancy herself had not been spared the common fate. Being now a mere graceless rudiment of humanity, all spindling arms and legs, save for a puckered, freckled face, she was past the witless time of expecting to pick up a bird with a broken wing and find it a fairy godmother who would give her three wishes. It was more plausible now that a ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... it in broad letters, These words were written plain to see: "Ah! graceless wretch, hast spent thine all, And brought thyself ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... by making dying a change for the better, and burial but the planting of a seed from which there will spring a new life. In the next place, behold me as I am—weak, weary, old, shrunken in body, and graceless; look at my wrinkled face, think of my failing senses, listen to my shrilled voice. Ah! what happiness to me in the promise that when the tomb opens, as soon it will, to receive the worn-out husk I call myself, the now viewless doors ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Scriptures were read and a psalm was sung, and then the mother or Hamish offered a few words of prayer. They would as soon have thought of going without their morning and evening meals as without worship. It would have been a godless and graceless house, indeed, without that, in the opinion of those who had been accustomed to family ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... graceless pack: Get you gone, lost children mine: Your release is earned in fine: The Chimaera ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... is a graceless hour. Graveyards may yawn at twelve but even they are content to slumber at four. I don't believe there is anything so desolate in this world as the mental perspective one obtains at four o'clock. Tombstones are bright beacons of cheer as compared to the monumental regret ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... smiling humor, and yet, in spite of himself, he could almost have smiled at the very consistency of the fellow. It was egotism still: aesthetic disgust at the graceless contour of his conduct, but never a hint of simple sorrow for the pain he had given. Rowland let him go, and for some moments stood watching him. Suddenly Mallet became conscious of a singular and most illogical impulse—a ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... friends—and why not? Friends! I think you laugh, my lad. Clive it was gave England India, while your father gives—egad, England nothing but the graceless boy who lures him on to speak— "Well, Sir, you and Clive were comrades—" with a tongue thrust in your cheek! Very true: in my eyes, your eyes, all the world's eyes, Clive was man, I was, am and ever shall be—mouse, nay, mouse of all its clan Sorriest sample, if you ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... drowsily. Bees in the piebald petunias that grew straggling and sweet above the sill of the open window, dozed long in each sticky chalice. Alec was taking off his boots in the lobby, and in reply to the condescending invitation he muttered some graceless words concerning his grandmother, but he came into the room and sat with his elbows on the table. He had an idea of what might be said, and felt the awkwardness ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... face was in his handkerchief; so was my friend's in his; and so was mine in mine, as even now my pen drops and I reach for it again. I half regret joining the mad party that had gathered an hour later in the old law office where these two graceless characters held almost nightly revel, the instigators and conniving hosts of a reputed banquet whose MENU'S range confined itself to herrings, or "blind robins," dried beef, and cheese, with crackers, gingerbread, and sometimes pie; the whole ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... the bog-heath has usually only one cluster of flowers to arrange on each branch. Take a spray of ling (Frontispiece), and you will find that the richest piece of Gothic spire-sculpture would be dull and graceless beside the grouping of the floral masses in their various life. But it is difficult to give the accuracy of attention {69} necessary to see their beauty without drawing them; and still more difficult to draw them in any approximation ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... itself was a huge, three-story box of gray-white stone with a slate roof, a little turret en poivriere at each corner, and a graceless classic doorway in the principal facade. A wide double gate, with a coronet in a tarnished gold medallion set in the iron arch-piece, gave entrance to this place through a kind of courtyard formed by the rear of the chateau ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... the gunwale and said, 'Steady her, please, while I climb in,' but had no answer. The boat, apparently, had torn loose from her davits and gone voyaging alone. But as I made to climb in I was fiercely attacked in the face by the wings, beak, and claws of Jaffray's graceless parrot. In the first surprise and discomfiture I let go and sank. Coming up, choking with brine and fury, I overcame resistance with a backhanded blow, and tumbled over the gunwale into the boat. And presently I was aware that violence had succeeded where patience had failed. Polly sat in ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... think that I am vain, And that my trumpeter is dead, I'll drop this graceless, boasting strain, And sing of you, dear ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... actions—to the power which raised Christ from the dead, and is capable of raising us up also. Then you will gradually be taught that all life is of the nature of a sacrament—that all food is to be taken because thereby we have health and strength to manifest forth the grace of God in a too often graceless world—you will be taught lessons which I cannot even suggest; for God knows so much more than any of us what unsearchable riches He has as an inheritance for us. Let us enter upon that inheritance. God has ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... only leave All things to our Father! Would we only cease to grieve, Wait His mercy rather! Meek resigning childish choice, Graceless, thankless pressing— Listen for His gentle voice, 'Child, receive this blessing!' Faithless, foolish hearts! see you Seeds' earth-hidden growing? What our God for us will do, ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... twice as often as before, to increase the chance of her being on hand some morning when Jane should drop in. "Try it yourself—just to see what it's like," she would suggest; and her own plump and shapely hands would yield their place on the small red velvet cushion to the long and graceless fingers of her protegee. And presently the other processes—the soakings, ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... courtly show. Strange kindness, to love men against their will! Suppose, when thou wert eager in some suit, No grace were granted thee, but all denied, And when thy soul was sated, then the boon Were offered, when such grace were graceless now; —Poor satisfaction then were thine, I ween! Even such a gift thou profferest me to-day, Kind in pretence, but really full of evil. These men shall hear me tell thy wickedness. Thou comest to take me, not unto my home, But to dwell outlawed at your gate, that so Your Thebe may ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... 'till Mr. Constable produc'd the Emblem of his Authority, upon which it was deliver'd, without so much as re-minding Gracelove of his Bargain; who then pretended he would search the House for Sir William Wilding; but her graceless Reverence swore most devoutly that he had never been there, and that she had neither seen nor heard from him since the Day he left Philadelphia with her. With these Things, and this Account he return'd to Counsellor Fairlaw's, who desir'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... duty and as a step to the ministry of the Church, the desire of his heart from the first. At school, his companions respected him heartily, and loved him for his unselfish kindness and sweetness, while a few of the more graceless were inclined to brand him as soft or slow, because he never consented to join in anything blameable, and was not devoted to boyish sports, though at times he would join in them with great vigour, and was always ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to undergo the strangest of transformations long before becoming a baccalaureus. You may meet with him a few years later, in the uniform of some Higher School, and find it difficult to recognize your former pupil,—now graceless, taciturn, secretive, and inclined to demand as a right what could scarcely, with propriety, be requested as a favour. You may find [432] him patronizing,—possibly something worse. Later on, at the University, he becomes ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... "Patrick O'Shaughnessy, ye graceless boy, how dare you take such a liberty with your sister! A strange man,—an Englishman,—and Esmeralda knowing nothing about him, and believing there is no one near! Let me pass now! Stand aside this moment! Patrick O'Shaughnessy, will ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... good many good things. In the December number we find a story which runs thus:—"Judge B., of New Haven, is a talented lawyer and a great wag. He has a son, Sam, a graceless wight, witty, and, like his father fond of mint juleps and other palatable "fluids." The father and son were on a visit to Niagara Falls. Each was anxious to "take a nip," but (one for example, and the other in dread of hurting the old man's feelings) ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... him for what he was— a man passionate and revengeful, the leader of that side of the valley's life which she deplored. She did not trust him. Nevertheless, she felt his fascination. He made that appeal to her which a graceless young villain often does to a good woman who lets herself become interested in trying to understand the sinner and his sins. There was another reason why just now she showed him special favor. She wanted to blunt the edge of his anger against the Texan ranger, though her reason ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine |
