"Ill-timed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was particularly ill-timed, for it restored the forgotten bitterness to the position from which it had been temporarily driven by ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... make out what there was to laugh at in a spectacle that for two mortal hours—ever since daybreak—had been causing him the extreme of fear; but, without saying a word, he waited for the explanation of this ill-timed hilarity. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... female figure clad in light draperies was pacing slowly in the moonlight betwixt himself and the distant rocks. Who on earth could she be, and how had she got there? were the questions he asked himself, his first sensation being one of annoyance at so unexpected and so ill-timed an intrusion. But as the moments passed and the figure came more clearly into view, impatience gave way to curiosity, and curiosity to ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... given him by the kind-hearted old Master. But you need not think I am going to tell you every time his popgun goes off, making a Selah of him whenever I want to change the subject. Occasionally he was ill-timed in his artillery practice and ignominiously rebuked, sometimes he was harmlessly playful and nobody minded him, but every now and then he came in so apropos that I am morally certain he gets a hint from somebody who ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... words "tipsy parson," the minister burst into a loud laugh, and so did two or three others who had been at Mr. Reeside's. The grave deacon in the chair looked around with frowning wonder at such indecorum, and felt that especially ill-timed was the levity ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... I laughed; but my ill-timed mirth had nearly cost me an "affair of honour" with the little regenerator. His hand was instantly on the hilt of his sword, and every wrinkle on his brown visage was swelling with wrath; when my better genius prevailed, He probably ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... water, loam, and fertilizing materials from great distances. The slopes of Granada back of Malaga and Almeria were covered with vineyards. Every foot of land susceptible of cultivation was turned to account, every drop of water from the ill-timed winter rains was conserved for the growing season. The application of intelligence and labor to tillage enabled the Hispano-Arab provinces to support a dense population.[1270] These Saracen cultivators had come from the severest training school in all Eurasia. Where ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... one interest with them in establishing their independence. That she should be delicate about advising us to solicit the notice of other Courts, is not to be wondered at, since she must partake, in some degree, of the humiliations that our ill-timed solicitations subject us to. The whole of your communications with the Count de Vergennes, marks a delicacy on the other side, about advising upon a measure, which the instructions of your sovereign should direct. It is easy ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... morning air by coming down to you, and seeing this Grecian Venus of yours, about which you discoursed so eloquently between the cups. But, indeed, by your appearance and that of your servants, I should judge that my visit was an ill-timed one." ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... because a woman was in a desperate situation or because that woman was Claire Robson. All through the dinner hour at the Tom Forsythes he had thought about her, had speculated vaguely what mischance or effrontery had been responsible for her ill-timed visit to Flint's. He remembered trying to decide whether the young woman was extraordinarily deep or extraordinarily simple and frank. He did not like to concede that he could be influenced by anything so transparently malicious as Mrs. Richards's statements regarding ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... could not help admiring the dashing and decided way in which she had acted. They thought how useful she would have been in organising escape from some of the tight places in which they had found themselves of late in consequence of their ill-timed wishes. ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... eyes to their fullest extent: while Hugh Tarpaulin, stooping down so as to bring his nose upon a level with the table, and spreading out a palm upon either knee, burst into a long, loud, and obstreperous roar of very ill-timed and immoderate laughter. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... through iron suppression. To others it will appear that the old governor's rashly timorous edict was, after all, the true source of deliverance. Certainly the question remains, whether even the most sudden and ill-timed concession of rights, if only backed by energetic police action, is not a prompter, surer cure for public disorder than whole batteries of artillery without the concession of rights. I believe the most blundering ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... fool," said Fleda. She thought Barby's punctiliousness however a little ill-timed, as she rose from her sofa and went ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... cases was undeniably funereal, not in shape only but also in color; for the dealer, with an ill-timed sense of fitness, had had them painted black. And the effect was heightened by the conduct of the two grinning carriers, who bore each case on their shoulders, coffin-wise, and proceeded to the museum at a slow, funereal walk; ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... something in connection with her rescue—but what that something was he could not conjecture. That was the mystery which baffled him. However, he had sense enough to see that his own best course was to leave her to her own devices, and not annoy her by ill-timed questions. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... one from Bavaria, and one from Frankfort. Thus it will be seen that South Germany still kept the lead in the movement for German unity; and the president of the committee was that Izstein, of Baden, who had been known to Germany chiefly by his ill-timed expulsion from Berlin. But, though this distribution of power augured ill for the relations between the leaders of the German movement and the King of Prussia, the meeting at Heidelberg was not prepared to adopt the complete programme of the Baden leaders, nor to commit ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... of financial peril we shall see the people combining to sustain the banks of their own locality, rather than, as is the case to-day, hastening to accelerate the ruin of perfectly solvent institutions which, but for their ill-timed fright, might weather the storm. Again I say, there could be no greater element of union and strength than this, which has grown out of our necessities and tribulations. In spite of all the confusion and ruin ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... mythological stories, went on most eagerly talking about the legend of the youth who was borne away to be the cup-bearer of the gods. It was a thing to make her forget about the aunts and everybody else; and Mr. Wardour helped her out, as he generally did when her talk was neither foolish nor ill-timed but he checked her when he thought she was running on too long, and went himself to talk to Mrs. Lacy, while Kate was obliged to come to her aunts, and stood nearest to Lady Jane, of whom ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... haunt of Satan and his angels. It is enough that I have been long warned to beware of this place by wise and holy men, to whom the qualities of the unholy region are well known. Wherefore, Saracen, forbear thy foolish and ill-timed levity, and turn thy thoughts to things more suited to the spot —although, alas for thee! thy best prayers are but as blasphemy ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... indignantly; "such bad jokes are ill-timed. What strange mixtures of good and bad, of noble and base, every stratum of Paris life contains! There is that poor girl, in one way contemptible, no doubt, and yet in another way she has an element of grandeur. On ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... late the errors of that policy which reduced the Elector of Saxony to extremities and forcibly drove this powerful monarch into an alliance with Sweden. By moderation, equally ill-timed, he now wished to repair if possible the consequences of his haughtiness; and thus committed a second error in endeavoring to repair the first. To deprive his enemy of so powerful an ally, he had opened, through the intervention of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... birth of a writer who reached three score and ten is usually ill-timed for a proper perspective of his work. A generation has elapsed since his death. Fashions have changed; writers, like bits of old furniture, have had time to "go out" and not time enough to come in again. George ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... had served a part of his term in the penitentiary for bribery in San Francisco, Lane signed the petition. This brought a letter of remonstrance from his friend Charles McClatchy, editor and owner of the Sacramento Bee, who felt that such a movement was ill-timed and not in the ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... small charges, and, in certain cases, the poorest received education free.[36] In higher education the period of union in Canada exhibited great activity. The generous provision made for a King's College in Toronto had been for a long time stultified by the ill-timed sectarian spirit of the Bishop of Toronto; but a more reasonable temper prevailed after the Rebellion, and the second governor-general of the united provinces, Sir Charles Bagot, spent much of his short time of service in securing ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... particular pleasure in physical existence, but well simply because he is not a subject for prescriptions. Yet there is no store of vitality, no buoyancy, no superabundant vigor, to resist the strain and pressure to which life puts him. A checked perspiration, a draught of air ill-timed, a crisis of perplexing business or care, and he is down with a bilious attack or an influenza, and subject to doctors' orders for an indefinite period. And if the case be so with men, how is it with women? How ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... if ever, was the golden opportunity for remaining silent and looking intelligent; but Wunpost forgot his early resolve and gave way to an ill-timed jest. ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... Intelligence; and in intelligence the Middle Class had shown itself signally deficient. In foreign affairs—in its dealings with Russia and Turkey, Germany and America—it had shown "rash engagement, intemperate threatenings, undignified retreat, ill-timed cordiality," in short, every quality best calculated to lower England in the esteem of ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... itself,—an honor which has never been conferred upon it since the thrice happy administration of Sir Edmund Andres, of precious memory, who was also a Baronet"; and in a candid British judgment to-day, (that of Lord Mahon,) the honor was "a most ill-timed favor surely, when he had so grievously failed in gaining the affections or confidence of any order or rank of men within his Province." The subject occupies a large space in the private correspondence, and the title was the more flattering and acceptable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... autumn. Since the spring of 562 Flamininus, by direction of the senate, had journeyed through Greece to thwart the intrigues of the opposite party, and to counteract as far as possible the evil effects of the ill-timed evacuation of the country. The Aetolians had already gone so far as formally to declare war in their diet against Rome. But Flamininus succeeded In saving Chalcis for the Romans by throwing into it a garrison of 500 Achaeans and 500 Pergamenes. He made an attempt also ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... this occurred in a region in which there were no Europeans at all—about three hundred and seventy-five miles from the nearest coast—the doctor and the captain would have assumed that it was an ill-timed joke, which had been perpetrated by some European children who had read the newspapers describing the abduction, or by wards of missions. But it was difficult not to believe their eyes; they had the kite in hand and the little rubbed ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... know not if this will ever come into your hands, but it and my sword shall be left in trust with the faithful Darius. We have made our ill-timed cast for liberty and it has failed, and to-morrow I and five others are to die at the rope's end. I bequeath you my sword—'tis all the tyrant hath left me to devise—and my blessing to go with it when you, or another Ireton, shall once more ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... question, for if he is able to settle a question of such great magnitude he ought to be able to explain the manner in which he does it. He knows and you know that the question is not settled, and that his ill-timed experiment to settle it has made it worse ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... that death, so ill-timed, so disastrous for Ranny in its consequences, Ranny mourned as if it had been in itself an affliction, an irreparable loss. He felt with the most entire sincerity that now that the Humming-bird was dead he would ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... Mrs. Ellison; and Kitty, who had been blushing to the verge of tears, laughed instead, and then was consumed with vexation when Mr. Arbuton came up, feeling that he must suspect himself the motive of her ill-timed mirth. "The champagne ought to be cooled, I suppose," observed Mrs. Ellison, when the coffee had been finally stirred and set to boil ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... expect from its inhabitants sufficient mental vigour to receive and understand the truths of our religion. I have met with many Christian missionaries, of various and conflicting creeds, who have fruitlessly sown the seed of Christianity upon the barren soil of Africa; but their labours were ill-timed, they were too early in the field, the soil is unprepared; the missionary, however earnest, must wait until there be some foundation for a superstructure. Raise the level of the waters, and change the character of the surrounding ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... great urgency, are of such domination that they take little thought for anything but themselves, except in persons of particularly adroit mind. It was Stelton's misfortune, therefore, to embark on an ill-timed conversation ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... harangue to take in my ill-timed parenthesis, and the color mounted slowly to his ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... said he, "but it is simply impossible. The Judge-Advocate-General is a very high official; I cannot allow him to go to the English headquarters and give information as to what is going on here. The authorities would justly put a very bad construction upon such ill-timed amiability, and I should not like to obliterate the good impression which the success of the expedition to Simla has made upon my superiors by an unpardonable act of folly on my ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... provoked a well-disposed neighbor by killing his fowls and throwing them over the fence, instead of trying some neighborly way of preventing their depredations on his grain. When I have seen a teacher exciting the emulation of a jealous-minded child; or by threats, or even by ill-timed reasoning(?), converting a momentary pettishness into a fit of obstinacy—I have felt as if I wanted to whisper in her ear, "Do not seem to notice them; let well enough alone." When I see an envious mother depreciating and finding fault with a judicious and conscientious teacher till she has discouraged ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... Russian subjects nor refugees," Denviers replied. "You may save your inquiries for others, since we have no intention of satisfying your ill-timed curiosity." My companion turned his back to Rachieff, and raising a blazing piece of pine-wood which had fallen, tossed it again among the glowing embers, taking no more notice of the discomfited officer. Rachieff was nonplussed; he frowned ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... bewitching way, as did a pretty but slightly passe French actress under similar embarrassing circumstances. She pleads: "What has a woman to do with dates—cold, false, erroneous, chronological dates—new style, old style, precession of the equinox, ill-timed calculation of comets long since due at their station and never come? Her poetical idiosyncrasy, calculated by epochs, would make the most natural points of reference in woman's autobiography. Plutarch sets ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... interrupt me, Lieutenant Munroe, with these ill-timed remarks, which are merely intended to throw discredit on my character for truth and veracity. I remarked, that I stepped into the uniform of the defunct major-general. To abbreviate the narrative somewhat, I walked through the Austrian lines for three hours, till I had discovered the position ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... nothing to say. Gloom darkened the North as a consequence of these unfortunate speeches, for they expressed an optimism which we cannot believe he really felt, and which hurt him in the estimation of the country. "There is no crisis but an artificial one," was one of his ill-timed assurances, and another, "There is nothing going wrong.... There is nothing that really hurts any one." Of his supporters some were discouraged; others were exasperated; and an able but angry partisan even went so far as to write in a private letter, ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... seem that Sebastian had only waited for the explanation of Charles's most ill-timed absence to carry out his usual programme. The clock in the tower of the Rathhaus had barely struck seven when he took his hat and cloak from the peg near the dining-room door. He was so absorbed that he did not perceive Papa Barlasch seated ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... staring at the little bowing flames of the juniper branches and Olivia was taking her tea. Then in came Mrs. Hastings, a very literal interfering goddess, and her bonnet was frightfully awry so that the parrot upon it looked shockingly coquettish and irreverent and lent to her dignity a flavour of ill-timed waggishness. But it must be admitted that Mrs. Hastings and everything that she wore were "les antipodes des graces." She was followed by a footman, his arms filled with parcels, and she sank among them on the divan and held out her limp, ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... any decisive result; nay, the balance of success seemed on the whole to incline in favor of Perseus, and many states, which before were wavering, now showed a disposition to join his cause. But his ill-timed parsimony restrained him from taking advantage of their offers, and in B.C. 168 the arrival of the Consul L. AEmilius Paullus completely changed the aspect of affairs. Perseus was driven from a strong position which he had taken up on the banks of ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... great degree of danger or fatigue. All but the apex may often be reached in the saddle. The bergschrund with its fragile lip of ice, the crevasse with its treacherous bridges, and the avalanche which an ill-timed footstep starts with overwhelming havoc, do not threaten the explorer of the Western mountains; and ordinarily he passes from height to height—from the base with its wreaths of evergreens to the zone where vegetation is limited ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... that was ill-timed and embarrassing, the Percivals themselves, returned from their visit, choosing a wet afternoon to drive over and pay their respects to Lady Hayes's young guest! Sheer horror of the situation took ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... door of the property-room and glanced inside. The burglar ducked his head and held his breath, while Patty struggled with an ill-timed desire to giggle. Martin was in a facetious mood. He whistled in the manner of calling ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... a grated window; but the light from it and from the street door was too dim for Mr. Liakos to see what was going on inside the warehouse. As he stood there on the threshold, he saw that his arrival was ill-timed; for there was a dispute in progress. Although he did not understand, or even try to understand what it was all about, he heard hot words bandied back and forth, and above them he could distinguish the merchant's ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... and I were deep in the contemplation of our treasure, and I was solemnly promising myself to enrich the Paris Museum with it, when an ill-timed stone, hurled by one of the islanders, whizzed over and shattered the valuable object ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... laughed. He thought Uncle Remus was making him the victim of one of his jokes; but the youngster was never more mistaken. The old man was serious. Nevertheless, he failed to rebuke the ill-timed mirth of the child, appearing to be altogether engrossed in his work. After a while, ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... needless to say, that Major Elliott extended his visit beyond the day or two he had engaged for; and when Mr and Mrs Gaskoin saw how matters were going, they recommended an immediate avowal of the little deception that had been practised, lest some ill-timed visitor should inopportunely let out the secret, which had already been endangered more than once by the forgetfulness of the servants: but Frances wished to prolong their diversion till she should find some happy moment for the denouement; added to which, she had an extreme curiosity ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... end, we should all have been reconciled; we should have kissed and made friends: for you're just the one girl in the world for Harold; indeed, I never met anybody so capable and so intelligent. And now you spoil all my sport by going and refusing him! It's really most ill-timed of you. And Harold has sent me here—he's trembling with anxiety—to see whether I can't induce you to think ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... "Your merriment is ill-timed, then," growled young Overton. "Wait until you have all your war stuff on Mexican soil before ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... her heel, and walked rapidly away. She had said her say, and did not want to listen to any of Granger's ill-timed comments. ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... Ill-starred and ill-timed as this marriage seemed to be, it was the one bright and beautiful thing about the life of Poe. He remained passionately devoted to the youthful wife as long as she lived; and it is thought by those who knew ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... whole assembly, though instigated by different motives, joined to set themselves in a state of hostile opposition to the head of the government; without perceiving, that this inconsiderate, unjust, and ill-timed opposition, would occasion anxiety, mistrust, and irresolution, in the minds of all; and destroy that national harmony, that union of interests, wills, and sentiments, the only source of strength to Napoleon, of ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... she said. "The Convent cloister is not a hen-yard. Such ill-timed devotion well-nigh merits penance. Rise from thy knees, and go at ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... who performed the ceremony; and that no other witnesses were present except Sir George Etherege and Pillichody. But you are mistaken. I and Chowles were present; and he who officiated was a priest. The marriage was a lawful one; and yon sleeping girl, who, but for your ill-timed interference, would, ere this, have breathed her last, is to all intents and purposes Countess ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the whole of Sunday forenoon committing the society columns of the Gossip to memory, and wishing her name was there," he chuckled, with a jocoseness which seemed to that lady extremely ill-timed. ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... Actores of Spes sets forth that the operation is put in jeopardy by the ill-timed parsimony of Domitius, which throws back the labourers to the point from which they set out at first[258]. Therefore let Domitius be stirred up to finish his part of the work, or if he thinks that too expensive, let him throw up his share of the concession ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... and of faith; it knows that the work of a man of letters ought not to be examined like that of a theologian; that a bad interpretation does not condemn a proposition, and that it may injure the weak to see an ill-timed suspicion of heresy thrown upon geniuses of the first rank. In spite of this unjust accusation, M. de Montesquieu was always esteemed, visited, and well received by the greatest and most respectable dignitaries of the Church. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... let it fall On the ground; the Prince, who entered With the other lady's portrait, Raised up mine, but so rebellious Was he to what you had asked him That, instead of his presenting One, he wished to keep the other. Since he mine will not surrender To my prayers and my entreaties: Angry at this ill-timed jesting I endeavoured to regain it, That which in his hand is held there Is my portrait, if you see it; You can judge ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... proffer now. Her equal yoke would sit with ease; It might, with wearing, even please, (Not with a better word to move The loyal wrath of present love); She would not mope when you were gay, For want of knowing aught to say; Nor vex you with unhandsome waste Of thoughts ill-timed and words ill-placed; Nor reckon small things duties small, And your fine sense fantastical; Nor would she bring you up a brood Of strangers bound to you by blood, Boys of a meaner moral race, Girls with their mother's evil grace. ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... discerned by the sight, so the inward feelings of the mind could be distinguished, it would clearly appear to you that that laughter which you censure came from a heart not elated with joy, but frantic with misfortunes. And yet it is not so ill-timed as those absurd and inconsistent tears of yours. Then you ought to have wept when our arms were taken from us, our ships burned, and we were forbidden to engage in foreign wars, for that was the wound by which we fell. Nor is it just that you should suppose that the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... not repress an angry exclamation, nor yet a wish to silence the fiddles, annihilate the stir and bustle, stop the clamor, and disperse the ill-timed festival; like a dying man, he felt unable to endure the slightest sound, and he entered his carriage much annoyed. When he looked out upon the square from the window, he saw that all the happiness was scared away; the peasant women were in flight, and the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... SIDO. Thy servant and thy friend. Ah! gentle lady, I deemed this unused scene and ill-timed hour might render solace welcome. He'll not come; Ho crossed the mountains, ere the set of sun, ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... down at his tray. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "Not to speak ill of the dead, Mrs. Harrington, the late Mrs. Harrington was always saying 'My poor stricken boy,' and things like that—'Do not jar him with ill-timed light or merriment,' and reminding him how bad he was. And she certainly didn't jar him with any ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... inward sentiments of all ranks of people. Even the few over whom religious prejudices were not prevalent, thought national honor sacrificed by a servile imitation of the modes worship practised in England. And every prudent man agreed in condemning the measures of the king, who, by an ill-timed zeal for insignificant ceremonies, had betrayed, though in an opposite manner, equal narrowness of mind with the persons whom he treated with such contempt. It was judged that, had not these dangerous humors been irritated by opposition; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... French wars his master Henry VIII. with whom he had the misfortune to be a favorite. His father squandered a diminished patrimony still more absurdly in his search after the philosopher's stone; and the ruin of the family was so consummated by the ill-timed prodigalities of his elder brother, that when his death without children in 1594 transmitted the title of lord Montjoy to sir Charles, a thousand marks was the whole amount of the inheritance by which this honor was to be maintained. It is needless to add that the younger ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... worse humour by remarking that a European surgeon would not have been so generous as to have blooded him without making a charge. He looked up in my face, but did not say a word: I saw he was of opinion that I had better have spared this piece of ill-timed levity. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... like a decorated seat. Mr Silva would not admit the phrase to be improper, and consequently his associates would not permit the reading to proceed. During most of the time the captain was convulsed with laughter, and whenever he saw the commotion at all lulling, he immediately, by some ill-timed remark, renewed it to its accustomed fury. At length, as the seamen say, they all had got a cloth in the wind—the captain two or three,—and it was approaching the time for beating to quarters. The finale, therefore, as previously arranged, was acted. Captain ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Osborne and Roger had left the neighbourhood. In spite of all that Mrs. Gibson had said about Roger's visits being ill-timed and intrusive, she began to feel as if they had been a very pleasant variety, now they had ceased altogether. He brought in a whiff of a new atmosphere from that of Hollingford. He and his brother had been always ready to do numberless little ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... had any explanation to offer of "why she would be that cross wid poor Denis O'Meara." Her mother accounted for it by pique at the Carberys' ill-timed gossip about his imaginary courtship of Mary Anne Neligan; and Mrs. Kilfoyle was for a while inclined to the same opinion, until one day by chance she espied in the little old tin box which contained Theresa's treasures, a roll of bright yellow ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... no slight consolation to us, while suffering under alternate reproaches for ill-timed severity, and injudicious praise, to reflect that no very mischievous effects have as yet resulted to the literature of the country, from this imputed misbehaviour on our part. Powerful genius, we are persuaded, will not be repressed even by unjust castigation; nor ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Something is lacking in all writing. You can never be sure how the written page will affect the reader, because his mood, his circumstances, his affections are so changeable. It is different with the spoken word. If it is harsh and ill-timed it can always be remodeled. No wonder the Apostle expresses the wish that he could speak to the Galatians in person. He could change his voice according to their attitude. If he saw that they were repentant he could soften the ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... Jones, we shall be late for the fireworks." And she swept on, taking no further notice of the discomfited Sir Guy, whilst Frank and I followed in her wake, feeling rather awkward even at witnessing this ill-timed rencontre. ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... whether it be Court patronage, theoretical exposition, or any other form of authority, this important principle is forgotten. The would-be teachers of the people scatter the seed irrespectively of the soil, and the attempt, however laudable, is ill-timed. ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... silent; the angry word was on his tongue; the contemptuous rejection of what he regarded for the moment as a proposition equally ill-timed and insolent, seemed bursting to his lips; but once more he restrained himself. He rose from his seat, and walked slowly backwards and forwards, deep in thought. Mr. Streatfield was too much overcome by his own agitation ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... are not singled out as curious. They are the men who are in the lodginghouse sitting-rooms during bleak and bitter weather and who swarm about the cheaper shelters which only open at six in a number of the lower East Side streets. Miserable food, ill-timed and greedily eaten, had played havoc with bone and muscle. They were all pale, flabby, sunken-eyed, hollow-chested, with eyes that glinted and shone and lips that were a sickly red by contrast. Their hair was but half ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... what was her Fury when she heard me say, I was afraid and shockd at so loathsome a Spectacle. She stepped back, swollen with Rage, to see if I had the Insolence to repeat it. I did, with this Addition, that her ill-timed Passion had increased her Ugliness. Enraged, inflamed, distracted, she snatched a Bodkin, and with all her Force stabbed me to the Heart. Dying, I preserv'd my Sincerity, and expressed the Truth, tho' in broken Words; and by reproachful Grimaces to the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... me," he began, "if I observe that his discourse—so warm with the true Christian spirit—is ill-timed. I gather that he is with us in desiring a Catholic reform. To-night only a proposal is before us; the proposal to form a sort of league among all those who cherish the same desire. Let us then ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... manner or a too evident contempt for his adversary, or by the over-statement of a good cause, habitually throws the minds of his hearers into an attitude of opposition. There are the many men who, by ill-timed or too frequent levity, lose all credit for their serious qualities, or who by pretentiousness or self-assertion or restless efforts to distinguish themselves, make themselves universally disliked, or who by their egotism or their repetitions or their persistence, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... in our heart. He who only sees what really exists and only values what he knows, rarely becomes angry. The errors of our judgment produce the warmth of our desires.] These lessons, I know, are unsuited to him, perhaps at need they may prove scanty and ill-timed; but remember they are not the lessons I wished to draw from this study. To begin with, I had quite another end in view; and indeed, if this purpose is unfulfilled, the ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... "Ill-timed charity and business principles scarcely go together, my good Burke," said Kingsnorth, with ill-concealed impatience. He did not like this man's tone. It suggested a glorification of the former BANKRUPT landlord and a lack of appreciation of ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... me, ye sons of Greece! with silence hear! And grant your monarch an impartial ear: Awhile your loud, untimely joy suspend, And let your rash, injurious clamours end: Unruly murmurs, or ill-timed applause, Wrong the best speaker, and the justest cause. Nor charge on me, ye Greeks, the dire debate: Know, angry Jove, and all-compelling Fate, With fell Erinnys, urged my wrath that day When from Achilles' arms I forced the prey. What then could I against the will ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... no fancy for sustaining what is called the honor of French gallantry—a gallantry which consists in wearying with ill-timed attention, with remarks upon the rain and the fine weather, interlarded with a thousand and one stupid rhymes, the women forced by ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... and if, as his son asserts, the enmity of Catharine, which the discovery of her secret gained for him, delayed his acquisition of the marshal's baton for ten years, he certainly had some reason to remember and regret his ill-timed curiosity. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... paralyzed. There was something terribly uncanny about the laughter. It seemed so ill-timed, ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... none at all if divested of those accidental circumstances. Here people very commonly err; and fond of something that has entertained them in one company, and in certain circumstances, repeat it with emphasis in another, where it is either insipid, or, it may be, offensive, by being ill-timed or misplaced. Nay, they often do it with this silly preamble; "I will tell you an excellent thing"; or, "I will tell you the best thing in the world." This raises expectations, which, when absolutely disappointed, make the relater ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... during the present session on any of these topics. Every thing would depend upon the choice of a Protector, and the elections of the ensuing year. Yet this very silence was awful, shewing the deep weight attributed to the question; the fear of either party to hazard an ill-timed attack, and the expectation of a furious contention ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... exaggerated by writers on the campaign. In reality four new German Corps were already at Brussels or Courtrai mainly from Wrttemberg and Bavaria, and although the presence in them of men with grey beards and boys with none gave rise to some ill-timed satisfaction in the British press, these Landsturm troops were not to be despised. Rawlinson moved on Menin on the 19th, but was stopped three miles away by the German masses coming from Courtrai, and had to entrench on a line running east of Gheluvelt. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... was Collier Pratt's baby she had in her arms; her charge, the child she loved, and the child of the man she loved, a part of the miracle that was slowly revealing itself to her; but a sudden sharp instinct warned her that her impulse was ill-timed. ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... seldom that we "turn critics;" but our very bile rises at the ill-timed dedication of this work to the King, as the "first fruits of the combined exertions of a few of your majesty's subjects, educated within the GROSSLY misrepresented UNIVERSITY of LONDON." It is quite unnecessary for us to explain why this Dedication deserves the epithet we have chosen: it stands ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... Aghast at such ill-timed pleasantry, we erupted pellmell into the drive, all frantic by word or deed to distract the terrier from his purpose. Shrieks, curses, and a copy of La Fontaine's Fables were hurled simultaneously and in vain at our favourite, and it was Berry, to ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... Her Majesty hopes to be able in the course of the present summer to fulfil the intention, which you are aware she has long entertained, of a visit to Ireland. The general distress unfortunately still prevalent in Ireland precludes the Queen from visiting Dublin in state, and thereby causing ill-timed expenditure and inconvenience to her subjects; yet Her Majesty does not wish to let another year pass without visiting a part of her dominions which she has for so long a time been anxious personally to become acquainted ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... epistles are, then, each of them contains weighty instruction—the first, in reference to ill-timed kindness and liberality towards the teachers of error; the second, concerning the character and conduct of those who love to have the preeminence, and the abhorrence in which they ought to be held by all who love the purity and peace of ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... bulk of our worldly possessions. Tiring at length of this, he switched to the opposite point of view. He goaded us nearly to madness with his criticisms of our inefficiency, and he mocked repeatedly the groom's ill-timed cry of Liberty. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... The remark was ill-timed. I saw a spasm of anger distort Bezers' face. "Get up, boy!" he snarled, "I wrote to Mademoiselle what I would do, and that I shall do! A Bezers keeps his word. By the God above us—if there be ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... rather rash, they got very vexed, we were delighted, they were disappointed. At last at the end of ten days, they began to unload the vessel. Now! thought we, "what is going to happen, surely they are not going to stay here." Our ill-timed hilarity received a sudden check, for our fears were confirmed, they unloaded the vessel completely, and after ballasting her with sand and shingle, they set sail, and departed. But alas! for us they left ten of their people behind them, who commenced ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... was quickly extinguished by the devoted affection and gratitude of his right excellent heart. His figure appeared much less disproportioned than when first we saw him taunted into fury in his mother's hostelry by poor Jack Roupall's ill-timed jests on his deformity: he was much stouter; and the full cavalier dress was better calculated to hide any defects of person, than the tight fitting vests of the bygone Roundheads, who looked to every inch of cloth with a carefulness altogether scouted by their more heedless successors. ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... course up to the present time, without serious trouble; and it is now apparent that the mass of the people are settled in their devotion to the Union, and will sustain no man or party in factious opposition to the Government, or even in ill-timed exertions to obtain redress of acknowledged wrongs, when those exertions are calculated to embarrass the nation in its mortal struggle for safety and triumph. The existence of the nation, its unity and tranquillity, are paramount to all personal or party rights and interests; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... has no longer an enemy; their late enemies are willing and proud to be their countrymen, fellow-citizens, and friends; and they should look to it that small politicians do not rob them in the eyes of the world, by unnecessary and ill-timed severity to the submissive, of the glory of being, as they are, a great, noble, chivalric, generous, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... forgotten a great deal of it, Professor Fontaine." Marjorie spoke with the pretty deference that she always accorded this long-suffering professor, whose strongly accented English and foreign eccentricities made him the subject of many ill-timed jests on the part of his thoughtless pupils. "I'm going to study hard, though, and it will soon come ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... on before us to reconnoitre the ground, made his appearance above. When he saw me stumbling and twisting about, falling now on my side, and now on my knees, toiling to advance a single step, my companion burst into a fit of laughter. I had then neither time nor will to do as he did, and his ill-timed mirth vexed me. At last I caught hold of the stake, bruised and exhausted, and ready to wish there was no such thing as travelling. Sumichrast told us that we had scarcely three hundred feet more to ascend, and shouldered the basket ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... Thou shouldst not address such words to a person possessed of learning and competent to understand his own interests. Thou art powerful. The reason of this affection that thou showest for me now is ill-timed. Guided, however, by my own interests, I myself am firm in peace and war that are themselves very unstable. The circumstances under which peace is to be made or war declared are changed as quickly as the clouds change their form. This very day thou ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... intimately, somewhat repellent in manners. Romaine would have been quite unfitted for the work which Grimshaw and Berridge, in spite—or, shall we say, in consequence?—of their boisterous bonhomie and occasionally ill-timed jocularity were able to do. The farmers and working men of Haworth or Everton would assuredly have gone to sleep under his preaching, or stayed away from church altogether. One can scarcely fancy Romaine itinerating at all; but if he had done so, the bleak ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... David Stuart in June 1790: "The introduction of the Quaker memorial respecting slavery was, to be sure, not only ill-timed, but occasioned a great ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... ship-preaching. Sailors are such odd fellows that they are nowise moved by noise and smoke; but they well know how to value a good aim, and always love and honour a commanding-officer who truly respects their feelings, nor by means of long-winded and ill-timed discourses, or what they irreverently call psalm-singing, interferes too much with ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... is drowned by this dissonant roar. What a noise the big ocean makes! Schoolboys bursting from their prison are not louder than these waves set free to play. They disturb me. I will no more of their ill-timed brawling.—Silence, hoary One!—Winds, avaunt!—to your homes!—Clouds, fly to the antipodes, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... war-stricken time a welcome exception has been made by the patriotic pageantry which, during the week now closed, has been enacted at Queen's Hall.[*] There were critics, neither malicious nor ill-informed, who contended that such pageantry was ill-timed. They advanced against it all sorts of objections which would have been quite appropriate if the public had been bidden to witness some colossal farce or burlesque; some raree-show of tasteless oddities, or some untimely pantomime ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... natural thought gains nothing and loses much by this heavy pomp of abstract eloquence. So when Johnson wants to say in the eleventh Idler that it is wrong and absurd to let our spirits depend on the weather, he makes his reader laugh or yawn, rather than listen, by the ill-timed elaboration of his phrases: "to call upon the sun for peace and gaiety, or deprecate the clouds lest sorrow should overwhelm us, is the cowardice of idleness, and the idolatry of folly." So much must be admitted. Johnson is often turgid and pompous, often ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... love dies, there is a consolation in knowing that the sea casts up its dead," was his sage, though ill-timed remark. ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... Of course, I don't wonder at his anger. I should be just the same myself. It does look like a shocking breach of professional honour, and a sad disregard of his interests. If he knew the truth he would see that it was nothing worse than a silly ill-timed boyish joke. However, he never shall ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... Eye Shinus, Religious Enthusiasm Sensitive Plant, Sensitiveness Senvy, Indifference Shamrock, Light-heartedness Snakesfoot, Horror Snapdragon, "No." Snowball, Bound Snowdrop, Hope Sorrel, Wild, Wit Ill-timed Sorrel, Wood, Joy Sothernwood, Jest, Bantering Spearmint, Warm, Sentiment Speedwell, Female Fidelity Speedwell, Spiked, Semblance Spider, Ophrys, Adroitness Spiderwort, Esteem, not Love Star of Bethehem, Guidance Starwort, Afterthought Stock, Lasting ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... reach, but casts a pensive, riveted look downwards to the modest flowers which the multitude trample under their feet. If he had a piece likely to succeed, coming out under all advantages, he would damn it by some ill-timed, wilful jest, and lose the favour of the public, to preserve the sense of his personal identity. 'Misfortune,' Shakespear says, 'brings a man acquainted with strange bedfellows'; and it makes our thoughts traitors to ourselves.—It is a maxim with many—'Take care of the pence, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... could not restrain them when that chord was touched. It was a propensity she much disliked, the more because she thought it looked like affectation beside Sophy, whose feelings never took that course, but the more ill-timed the tears, the more they would come, at the most common-place condolence or remote allusion. It was the effect of the long strain on her powers, and the severe shock coming suddenly after so much pressure and fatigue; moreover, her habits ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... secret?" "Like a safe when the padlock is on," he answered. "No, no. Do be serious. Can you be silent?" "I beg your pardon," he said gravely, and clapped his hand on his mouth in token of shame at his ill-timed jesting, though had any one else done it, he would have given him a black eye for his pains. "Why well then, listen," said Mrs. Behrens, who now proceeded to relate all that she knew of the affair. "Wheugh!" whistled Braesig, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... cousin in the cabin, tried to persuade Jane to have the sick child carried on deck, for the sake of the fresh air, but she did not succeed; and not wishing to leave Mrs. Taylor, she took off her hat, and remained some time in the cabin—a piece of good-nature which Mr. Ellsworth seemed to think ill-timed. As they drew near the Highlands, however, she returned to her seat on deck; for the morning was lovely, and she did not wish to lose the scenery. She found Mrs. Hilson sitting ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... age, which soon became so general, that the tares which sprung from it are to be found even among the choicest of the wheat. Shakespeare himself affords us too many instances of this fashionable heresy in wit; and he, who could create new worlds out of his own imagination descended to low, and often ill-timed puns and quibbles. This was not an evil to be cured by the accession of our Scottish James, whose qualifications as a punster were at least equal to his boasted king-craft.[5] The false taste, which ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... German crank, who strolled from one to the other with a smile on his lips and mischief in his eyes. More than once he even went so far as to burst into a shout of laughter, until the chaplain sternly rebuked him for his ill-timed levity. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... opportunity to escape, allow the opportunity to lapse, suffer the opportunity to lapse, allow the occasion to pass, allow the occasion to slip by; waste time &c (be inactive) 683; let slip through the fingers, lock the barn door after the horse is stolen. Adj. ill-timed, mistimed; ill-fated, ill-omened, ill-starred; untimely, unseasonable; out of date, out of season; inopportune, timeless, intrusive, untoward, mal a propos [Fr.], unlucky, inauspicious, infelicitous, unbefitting, unpropitious, unfortunate, unfavorable; unsuited ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... said. "I speak only for the lad's good, and I am sure that you cannot but feel the truth of what I have said. What does Alured want to make enemies for? It may be that it was only my son who openly resented his ill-timed remarks, but you may be sure that others were equally displeased, and maybe their resentment will last much longer than that which was quenched in a fair stand-up fight. Certainly, there need be no malice between the boys. Alured's defeat may even ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... deceit! Can Truth's own light thy loveliness outshine? To her bold speech misdoubting Aladine With unaccustomed temper calm replied: "If so it were, who planned the rash design, Advised thee to it, or became thy guide? Say, with thyself who else his ill-timed zeal allied?" ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... o'er With curious touch, and tampering with his bow.[24] Helen of Argos with her female train 395 Sat occupied, the while, to each in turn Some splendid task assigning. Hector fix'd His eyes on Paris, and him stern rebuked. Thy sullen humors, Paris, are ill-timed. The people perish at our lofty walls; 400 The flames of war have compass'd Troy around And thou hast kindled them; who yet thyself That slackness show'st which in another seen Thou would'st resent to ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... gladly, if I can. But, before you begin, let me apologize for what I said in ill-timed jest about doctors being atheists. I suppose that, in one sense, there isn't a more truly religious class of ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... except through the public papers, relative to the concern in which we are now engaged. My patience, however, is now worn out, and I have come here to learn whether I am to expect the steam-vessels or not,—whether the scandalous blunders of Mr. Galloway are to be remedied by those concerned, or if an ill-timed parsimony is to doom Greece to inevitable destruction; for such will be the consequence, if Ibrahim's resources are not cut up before the period at which it is usual for him to commence operations. You know my opinions so well, that it is unnecessary ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... till I see what he wants," he had said, and, shutting the old man in, he had gone forth to admit Stark, resenting his ill-timed intrusion and inquiring brusquely the cause ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... been kept waiting longer than usual, and he had somehow the feeling that his visit was ill-timed, when at last she came to him. He looked up eagerly as she entered the little reception room which he had grown to know so well during the last few weeks, and it struck him for the first time that her welcome was a little forced, her ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... determined that its will must be overpowered by force or thwarted by constitutional forms. Threatened alternately by the Jacobin mob of Paris and by the Royalist middle class, the Government played off one enemy against the other, until an ill-timed effort of the emigrant noblesse gave to the Convention the prestige of a decisive victory over Royalists and foreigners combined. On the 27th of June, 1795, an English fleet landed the flower of the old nobility of France at the Bay of Quiberon in southern Brittany. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... noodle again went through the village, and met some people carrying a dead man. "May God aid you, good men!" he exclaimed. "Do you wish me to help you to thresh?" But he got himself well thrashed once more for this ill-timed speech. When he reached home, he howled, "They've felled me to the ground, beaten me, and plucked my beard and hair!" and told of his new mishap. "Ah, noodle!" said his mother, "thou shouldst have said, 'God ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... believe that such disguises are seldom seen now except upon the stage. If this is a scene out of a play, which you wish to rehearse in order to judge its effect, I warn you that it is entirely lost upon me, and that I consider the play itself very ill-timed, improper, and ridiculous. Besides, for a man of talent and a romantic poet you have not exhibited any very great imagination. It is a classical imitation, nothing better. There is something like it in mythology, I believe. ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... wade it," he says, "if this awkward and ill-timed dust-storm hasn't changed it, as everything else. When poor dear master and I went across—that would be about six months ago—the water wasn't quite up to our stirrups; but, like as not, last night's downpour has raised it too, and we'll have a swim for it. Well, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... resulting from the disquieting rumours that Caesar Borgia was arming at Rome for a decent upon the Duchy, and the continued absence of Gian Maria in such a season, upon a wooing that they deemed ill-timed. A strong party had been formed, and the leaders had nailed upon the Palace gates a proclamation that, unless Gian Maria returned within three days to organise the defence of Babbiano, they would depose him and repair to Aquila to invite his cousin, Francesco del Falco—whose ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... the Brann-Baylor episode, the old adage, "two wrongs will not make a right," is certainly applicable to it. Brann's article on Baylor University was wholly indefensible— essentially ill-timed and could not possibly have wrought any good, either to Baylor or the cause of morality in general. It merited the protest and indignation it evoked, and we question if Brann, when he wrote it, really appreciated ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... in this unimpassioned speech he detected the premonitions of a capitulation on the part of Drusus, and with a voice of ill-timed persuasion, replied, "Be reasonable, Drusus; you have everything to gain and nothing to lose by ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... among my lapses. An older man than I ever hope to be might find excuses for the Croydon summer. I meant in other ways. For one thing, I have craved success as I think few men have ever craved it; and yet my plowings in that field have been ill-timed and boyish to ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... officer considered Tromp, who commanded the Dutch rear, as his personal antagonist, and in order to facilitate the latter's getting into action, he hove-to (stopped) the whole English rear to wait for him. This ill-timed point of honor on Spragge's part seems to have sprung from a promise he had made to the king that he would bring back Tromp alive or dead, or else lose his own life. The stoppage, which recalls the irresponsible ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... offered to strangers by the ingenuity of the liveliest people in the world—but nothing roused her: she remained persistently dull and weary through it all. In this frame of mind and body, she was in no humour to receive Henry's ill-timed addresses with favour, or even with patience: she plainly and positively refused to listen to him. 'Why do you remind me of what I have suffered?' she asked petulantly. 'Don't you see that it has left its ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... was differently reported, and perhaps there was no literal record of it. Dion Cassius, however, can hardly have himself composed the version which he gives in his history, for he calls the speech as ill-timed ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Dharma Dhwaj could not help laughing at the thought of how this must sound in his father's ear. And the Raja hearing the ill-timed merriment, sternly ordered the Baital to cease his immoralities and ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... they woke us up by scampering over our faces, and then bursting into a loud laugh of He! he! he! at having performed the feat. Their sense of the ludicrous appears to be exquisite; they screamed with laughter at the attempts which disturbed and angry human nature made in the dark to bring their ill-timed merriment to a close. Unlike their prudent European cousins, which are said to leave a sinking ship, a party of these took up their quarters in our leaky and sinking vessel. Quiet and invisible by day, they emerged at night, and cut their ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... my ear like a clap of thunder. The next day I confided my troubles to M. Gosselin, who kindly reassured me, and who could not or would not see anything wrong. He made no effort, even, to conceal from me how surprised and annoyed he was at this ill-timed attempt upon a conscience for which he, more than any one else, was responsible. I am sure that he looked upon the hasty action of M. Gottofrey as a piece of impudence, the only result of which would be to disturb a dawning vocation. M. Gosselin, like many ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... himself in his place in the barge, and close to the Sovereign. Raleigh rose to retire, and Tressilian would have been so ill-timed in his courtesy as to offer to relinquish his own place to his friend, had not the acute glance of Raleigh himself, who seemed no in his native element, made him sensible that so ready a disclamation of the royal favour might be misinterpreted. He sat silent, therefore, whilst Raleigh, with ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... are less fastidious: some will air Their last production in the public square: Some choose the bathroom, for the walls all round Make the voice sweeter and improve the sound: Weak brains, to whom the question ne'er occurred If what they do be vain, ill-timed, absurd. "But you give pain: your habit is to bite," Rejoins the foe, "of sot deliberate spite." Who broached that slander? of the men I know, With whom I live, have any told you so? He who maligns an absent friend's fair fame, Who says no word for him when others blame, Who courts a reckless ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... undergone an important change. Even upon the night when he made such an ill-timed arrival at Mr Pecksniff's house, he was comparatively subdued and easy to deal with. This Mr Pecksniff attributed, at the time, to the effect his brother's death had had upon him. But from that hour his character seemed to have modified by regular degrees, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... unhappy over what she insisted was a totally unjust supposition, it was but natural that she should turn to another girl for consolation. Not to Polly, however; Nan said not a word to her, for Polly had given no evidence of having heard of her ill-timed visit to Betty's trunk, having been on her way to the village at the time the offence was committed, and above everything Nan desired to remain fixed in Polly's good graces. No, she confided the account of her interview first to Beatrice Field, making so tragic ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... as he listened to these remarks, poured into his ear by a man of thirty-five, between puffs of his cigar, because there was nobody else to whom he could make them. But they seemed to Fred very ill-mannered and ill-timed. If he had not dreaded making himself absurd, he would gladly have stood forth as the champion of the Sparks, the Wermants, and all the other members of the Blue Band, so that he might give vent to the anger raging in his heart on hearing that odious compliment ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... soldiery and fiery car sweeping over our land; our temples of justice laid in ashes; all the horrors and desolation of war upon us; who but this convention will be held responsible for it? And who but him who shall have given his vote for this unwise and ill-timed measure, as I honestly think and believe, shall be held to strict account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all coming time, for the wide and desolating ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... Memoirs, i. 233. The note that Johnson received 'was,' says Mr. Hoole, 'from Mr. Davies, the bookseller, and mentioned a present of some pork; upon which the Doctor said, in a manner that seemed as if he thought it ill-timed, "too much of this," or some such expression.' Croker's Boswell, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... their peculiar new Queensberry instincts, at once piled on to the one that was getting the worst of it, Rory had to put down the chicken leg he was enjoying to arbitrate with his whip in the usual way. He gave the jealous Muskymote an extra smack or two for its ill-timed behaviour as he thought of that ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... ready laugh began again at the mere remembrance of her former mirth. I kept discreetly silent, fearing to break the flow of reminiscence by some ill-timed question. ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... a hovering triumph in Loerke, since Gudrun had denied her marriage with Gerald. The artist seemed to hover like a creature on the wing, waiting to settle. He did not approach Gudrun violently, he was never ill-timed. But carried on by a sure instinct in the complete darkness of his soul, he corresponded mystically with her, imperceptibly, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... think it ill-timed—now that we are surrounded by strangers, and our very lives perhaps in peril—but I cannot wait. I have spent precious moments enough in waiting. It has been very long, Margie, since I heard you say you loved me, and I want to hear ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... consumption of nuts to come and make experiments on our human visitors; the elder members of the Chimpanzee Family have also been most useful, and have often restrained the young of their household from interrupting my inquiries by ill-timed pleasantries. Only once in the whole course of these scientific labours have I had seriously to complain of my tail being made use of ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... and went on with her unpacking. He asked her if she did not think these home things made it rather ghastly, and she said if he kept on in that way she should certainly go back on the pilot-boat. He perceived that her nerves were spent. He had resisted the impulse to an ill-timed joke about the life-preservers under their berths when the sound of the breakfast-horn, wavering first in the distance, found its way nearer and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... contempt—a glance which, passing him, rested finally upon the prone body of Chief Inspector Kerry lying stretched upon the floor before the stove. Her pupils contracted to mere pin-points and then dilated blackly. She recoiled a step, fighting with the stupor which her ill-timed indulgence had left behind. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... controller of Holland, absolute ruler of a great military Empire; Pitt, the Prime Minister of an obstinate and at times half-crazy King, dependent on a weak Cabinet, a disordered Exchequer, a Navy weakened by ill-timed economies, and land forces whose martial ardour ill made up for lack of organization, equipment, and training. Before the outbreak of war in May 1803, Napoleon had summed up the situation in the words—"Forty-five millions of people must prevail over sixteen millions." And now after a year of hostilities ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... who had bowed before the supremacy of Urartu, and their chief, Uassarmi, had been the ally or vassal of Sharduris. Contemptuously spared at the taking of Arpad, he had not been able to resign himself to the Assyrian yoke, and had, in an ill-timed moment, thrown it off in 731; he had, however, been overcome and forced to surrender, and Tiglath-pileser had put in his place a man of obscure birth, named Khulli, whose fidelity had remained unshaken throughout the reign ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... infliction of the terrible death, and to listen to the mockeries of people and priests; but reverent awe forbids description of Him who hung there in His long, silent agony. Would that like reticence had checked the ill-timed eloquence of preachers and teachers of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Lanyard ascended the stairs without heeding what noise he made. Nevertheless his actions were never awkward or ill-timed; his approach was not heard, his arrival on the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... an ill-timed thought, bad for the dark mood of his mind. It was an angry thought, goading him to some avenging act, that should change the cheerful house into a haunted place which lonely travellers would dread to pass by night; and where the timid would see shadows struggling in the ruined ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... with you, Monsieur 'Le Hutin'; that it is the merest matter of moonshine—new moon versus full moon, and must have been written by a lunatic. But, my Chevalier Bayard, one thing I do intend to say most decidedly, and that is, that your lunge at female intellect was as unnecessary and ill-timed and ill-bred as it was ill-natured. The mental equality of the sexes is now as unquestioned, as universally admitted, as any other well-established fact in science or history; and the sooner you men gracefully concede us our rights, the sooner ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... not do to carry this analogy too far in writing of Mr. Burroughs lest it be inferred that I regard the author's work as having in it something of the uncouth, or the ill-timed, or the uncultured. His writing is of the earth, but not of the earth earthy. He sees divine things underfoot as well as overhead. His page has the fertility of a well-cultivated pastoral region, the limpidness of a mountain brook, the music of our unstudied songsters, the elusive charm ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... except by the express permission of her Royal Highness the Princess Micomicona; she having granted it, there could be no doubt as to the outcome of any battle in which he chose to draw his sword. Seeing this, in her opinion, ill-timed hesitancy, the one-eyed Asturian muttered that by the time the Princess was found, her master would have passed the heavenly border. The Princess, however, was quickly summoned, and Don Quixote knelt on his stiff knees before ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... this ill-timed jesting. Oh, she had herself been cheated of her due; for all that she had managed to squeeze out something like real tears over old Sivert's grave. Eleseus should know best what he himself had written—so-and-so much to Oline, to be a comfort and support in her declining years. And ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun |
