"Inopportune" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... part to play, too," said Desiree, thinking of Charles, who had been called away at such an inopportune moment, and had gone without complaint. "It is the penalty we pay for living in one of the less dull periods of history. ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... DEAR PUPIL:—Despite the fact that your manuscript score arrived at a time most inopportune, I having recently renounced all but my most pressing lessons to plunge myself entirely into an atmosphere of profound creation, I have conscientiously performed the task you imposed upon me. That this task proved ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... carrying the prisoner with him, he rode through the pickets at the head of his men, receiving and returning their salutes. John Haps, of Company F, Second Kentucky, tightly gripping the prisoner's throat, meanwhile, to prevent inopportune disclosures. Just as the party got clear of the base, they were discovered, and one man's horse falling, he was made prisoner. On the 15th, Breckinridge and Bennett were sent to Baird's mill, eight miles ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... be an intrusion at such a time, Elvira. The effusions of even the best-intentioned friends are injudicious at the inopportune moment of domestic reunion." ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... may not be inopportune to make a break in the record of Cardan's life and work, and to treat in retrospect of that portion of his time which he spent in the composition of his treatises on Arithmetic and Algebra. Ever since 1535 he had been working intermittently at one or other of these, but it would have been impossible ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... kindly. "It's very tiresome of Peggy to disappear at such an inopportune moment, but no harm can have happened to her, you know. It's impossible! As I said before, she has probably some wild prank in her head of which this is a part. I'll give her a lecture when I catch ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... Legislature, when Mr. Brace concluded to enter. Mr. Wynn and the wounded man, who occupied an arm-chair by the window, were the only occupants of the room. But in spite of the former's ostentatious greeting, Brace could see that his visit was inopportune and unwelcome. The sheriff nodded a quick, impatient recognition, which, had it not been accompanied by an anathema on the heat, might have been taken as a personal insult. Neither spoke of Miss Nellie, although it was patent ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... the tender, passing touch to show me my secret grief was understood, and my inconsistency was pardoned. I needed the generous smile to prove to me that my greed for kindness, even when perhaps inopportune, was met in an ungrudging spirit. I needed now and then—I needed this sometimes terribly, more, perhaps, than any other thing—a sacrifice of some very small, very personal desire of yours, because it was not mine or because it was opposite to mine. Never, never, did my heart and my nature demand ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... with the dexterity of art; it understands how to make the collective force of all its laws converge at the same time to a given point. Such is not the case with democracies, whose laws are almost always ineffective, or inopportune. The means of democracy are therefore more imperfect than those of aristocracy, and the measures which it unwittingly adopts are frequently opposed to its own cause; but the object it has in view is ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... reasonable allowance for the circumstances of his position. We saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and tedious delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated facts, torn from their connection; not by partial and imperfect glimpses caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view of that divinity which "shapes our ends, rough hew them as we will," we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. It mattered ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... This inopportune memory did not trouble her: she was almost grateful to Raymond for giving her the touch of superiority her compatriots clearly felt in her. It was not merely her title and her "situation," but the experiences she had ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... an ill-bred, ill-born, profligate, partly insane, an evil-tempered monster, a self-righteous person, full of self- approbation—in fact you were the Beast of this pious Apocalypse. Your friend Dr. Lind was an embittered and scurrilous apothecary, "a bad old man." But enough of this inopportune brawler. ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... Philip said quite low. Just at this moment Jimmy Anstice, with that exasperatingly inopportune way of ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Holiness not to submit the dogma of infallibility for consideration, "because the Church has to sustain at present a struggle unknown in former times, against men who oppose religion itself as an institution baneful to human nature, and that it is inopportune to impose upon Catholic nations, led into temptation by so many machinations, more dogmas than the Council of Trent proclaimed." It added that "the definition demanded would furnish fresh arms to the enemies of religion, to excite ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... true, as I have said, that American girls do "go off" very soon. I must confess that one evening at dinner, surrounded by charming young Americans, I was bold enough to say so. It was a very inopportune moment to have made the remark, for seated next to me was a remarkably fine and handsome young lady, who informed me that she had five sisters—I think it was five—and I was assured by our host that they were all of them as "elegant" as my fair neighbour, and that ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... whole has been peaceful. From 5 a.m. we have been very busy among the Australian wounded, these being the principal sufferers in yesterday's fight, owing, it is said, to their charging with the bayonet at an inopportune moment. Many of their senior officers passed through our hands, and their men, fine, ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... evil genius. His sallow face was perpetually turning up at inopportune moments. When Kenmuir Queen, the prize short-horn heifer, calved unexpectedly and unattended in the dip by the lane, Tammas and the Master, summoned hurriedly by Owd Bob, came running up to find the little man leaning against the stile, and shaking with silent merriment. Again, poor old Staggy, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Lord North had, indeed, offered resolutions of conciliation. The measure amazed his own followers and was greeted by the Whigs with Homeric laughter. Offers of conciliation could scarcely have arrived in America at a more inopportune time,—the very moment almost when the battle of Lexington came like an alarm-bell in the night to waken men from the dream of peace. And the resolutions themselves had all the appearance of being a clever ruse designed ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... go, however, to the bottom of things. Doubtless foreign competition, and competition of any kind, is always inopportune; and, if any trade could be permanently rid of it, business, for a time, would ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... strange but not inappropriate inscription, "Begone about your business." The story runs that, many years before, a crusty old bencher had promised the dial-maker to provide a motto for the then new dial. The messenger, however, arrived at an inopportune time, received the above curt dismissal in answer to his request, and conveyed it to his master as the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... the congestion and nervous excitement which occur at the most inopportune moment possible. Man may suffer physical injury, though there are no grounds for the assertions of Pliny that the menstrual blood is so potent for evil that it will, by a mere touch, rust iron, render a tree sterile, make dogs mad, etc., or that of Paracelsus that "of it the ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... got as far as the library door on his way to the station, when he suddenly remembered the news with which he was fraught when he entered the poor bishop's bedroom. He had found the moment so inopportune for any mundane tidings, that he had repressed the words which were on his tongue, and immediately afterwards all recollection of the circumstance was for the time banished by ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... protested Ramblethorne. "Corpses have a nasty way of turning up at inopportune moments. These youngsters are worth more to ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... said Kenrick, laughing; "at least I know he called it Stygian and Tartarean. But, as I was saying, he set Penkridge (who happened to be going round with the lists) to examine the cupboards, and see if by chance some inopportune rat had died there; and Penkridge, opening one of them where the floor was very rotten, and poking about with his foot, knocked a great piece of plaster off the great schoolroom ceiling, and was as nearly as possible putting ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... then, that I am doubly inopportune," I said, "for I have been following you to ask a small favour—not for myself, but for a certain Major Dignum, at the Grand Pump Hotel; nothing more than the attesting of a signature—a ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... influences were to be concentrated against the President, it became necessary just at this inopportune time to make good the terrible waste in the armies caused by expiration of terms of service and by the bloody campaigns of Grant and Sherman. Volunteering was substantially at an end, and a call for troops would have to be enforced by a draft. Inevitably ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... the membranes surrounding the fetus. Brown speaks of protrusion of the membranes from the vulva several weeks before confinement. Davies relates an instance in which there was a copious watery discharge during pregnancy not followed by labor. There is a case mentioned in which an accident and an inopportune dose of ergot at the fifth month of pregnancy were followed by rupture of the amniotic sac, and subsequently a constant flow of watery fluid continued for the remaining three months of pregnancy. The fetus died at the time, and was born in an advanced state of putrefaction, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... organisation of the municipality, and delivered a splendid series of orations on various abuses, such as plural voting, iniquitous monopolies, etc. Yet he proved his studious moderation by strenuously declaiming against the famous "Declaration of the Rights of Man," pronouncing it inopportune and perilous. His heroic harangues provoked disorder in his audience dangerous to himself. But his courage was dauntless, for even when the king and his chief minister abandoned the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... that I had only a dollar or two in my pocket. Therefore the check for fifty dollars that the old gentleman had carefully drawn for me with his quill pen and then had as carefully sanded over was by no means inopportune. I took the shore-car back over the Warren Avenue Bridge, depressed at the thought of leaving the scene of my first acquaintance with the world and at the same time somewhat relieved, in spite of myself, ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... for so short a time it wanted to prove by a shining example how it abhorred the lawlessness of its youth. At this inopportune moment Clanton gave himself up to be tried for the murder of ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... the arrival of the landlady, silenced the master of the puppet-show, and put a speedy and final end to that grave and solemn harangue, of which we have given the reader a sufficient taste already. Nothing indeed could have happened so very inopportune as this accident; the most wanton malice of fortune could not have contrived such another stratagem to confound the poor fellow, while he was so triumphantly descanting on the good morals inculcated by his ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... he said, "for disturbing you at such an inopportune hour. Our business, however, made it necessary for us to reach you with ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ladies had not long left the dining-room. They were agitated when his name was announced; even Apollonia's heart beat; but then that might be accounted for by the inopportune recollection of an occasional correspondence ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... Doctor was even worse, until poor Mrs. Sutherland's life was scarcely worth living. Wallace unwittingly brought down a torrent of wrath upon his head one day when the Spring Drive was on and prospects were looking black. It was an inopportune moment for Wallace to broach the subject upon which he had been ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... official atrocities in the Punjab and the manifestly dishonest breach of official declarations on the Khilafat. With the knowledge that India was bleeding at heart, the Government of India should have told His Majesty's ministers that the moment was inopportune for sending the Prince. I venture to submit that it is adding insult to injury to bring the Prince and through his visit to steal honours and further prestige for a Government that deserves to be dismissed with disgrace. I claim ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... anything of this involved? Cocks had crowed before, even at noon-tide in summer, and the world had outlived the omen! Nevertheless the sound, especially so loud and grating a one, in which the bray of the donkey was so evenly mixed with the hideous scream of the peacock before rain, was an inopportune and impudent one; and the Colonel would have been very likely to wring chanticleer's neck if it had happened to come within the clutch of his fingers. As it was, he determined to cause an immediate ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... as well be going," said Iris, hoping that her aunt would pass on and leave them to enjoy the tete-a-tete which she had interrupted at such an inopportune time. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... ride my horses," said Lady Chiltern, whose present condition in life rendered hunting inopportune ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... ours. The main drawbacks in his opinion, however, were the slave-trade, and the power allowed the effete Portuguese of shutting up the country from all except a few convicts of their own nation. The time of his coming was inopportune; the disasters which, from inexperience, had befallen the Mission of the Universities, had a depressing effect on the minds of many at home, and rendered a new attempt unadvisable; though, had the Scotch ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... as in the last degree tactless, indiscreet, and entirely inopportune. It is a thing unheard-of that occurrences relating to a sovereign reigning at the time should be ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... unburdened of directions for a dress to a forewoman, who was too ill to understand; scoldings to be scattered with no illiberal hand amongst a group of frightened girls, hardly sparing the poor invalid herself for her inopportune illness. In the middle of all this turmoil, Ruth crept quietly to her place, with a heavy saddened heart at the indisposition of the gentle forewoman. She would gladly have nursed Jenny herself, and often longed to do it, but she could not be ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... at such an hour, were bound to drift through his mind; but he was conscious that their uncomfortable persistence and precision were due to the inopportune arrival of the Countess Olenska. Here he was, at the very moment of his betrothal—a moment for pure thoughts and cloudless hopes—pitchforked into a coil of scandal which raised all the special problems he would have preferred to let lie. "Hang Ellen Olenska!" he grumbled, as he covered ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... might have done was never known; perhaps, with his strong arm round her, Nesta would have yielded then and there; but a most inopportune childish voice broke ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... remonstrated with she said that she was "'bleeged ter have co'tin' times ez well ez de res' er folks," and intimated that in affairs of the heart these things were apt to happen at any time or place, and that if a gentleman chose an inopportune moment "'twan't her fault," and no one could, with any show of reason, expect her not to pay attention to him. She ruled everybody, her white folks included, though just how she did it no one could say, unless she was one of those ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... the King (Louis XIV.), with furious complaints against the Abbe for writing it without her knowledge, and for inflicting upon her such an atrocious injury as to mention this pretended marriage. Her letter and its enclosure reached the King at a very inopportune moment. Just before, he had received a letter, which, taken in connection with this of the Princesse des Ursins, struck a blow at her power ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... determined to have the twenty onzas to himself; and this it was that induced him to leave Baraja and Oroche behind him. His design was well conceived, and might have been executed to his satisfaction. No doubt his aim had been true enough; but it chanced to be taken at an inopportune moment—just as Tiburcio sprang forward under the impulse of the revelation which Bois-Rose ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... was going to some National Celebration, and he stood beside Christine in all the splendid picturesque pomp of the McFarlane tartans. He was holding Christine's hand, and she stood as a white lily in the glow and color of his dark beauty. Perhaps both of them felt James' entrance inopportune. At any rate they received him coldly, Donald drew Christine a little apart, said a few whispered words to her, and lifting his bonnet slightly to James, ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... reached the shutter, after the delay caused by Li-loe's inopportune presence, he found that Hwa-mei was already ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... of police, had by this time introduced himself into the chamber, and watched the course of procedure from behind the chair of the president. He now leaned forward, and whispered into Hullin's ear, "this would be inopportune."—These significant words were obeyed. The court pronounced the duke guilty of the capital crimes of having fought against the Republic; of having intrigued with England; of having maintained intelligence with Strasburg, with the view ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... Inopportune, shrill-accented, The acrid Asiatic mirth That leaves him careless 'mid his dead, The scandal of the ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... SATISFACTORY EXCUSE FOR AN INOPPORTUNE LAUGH? Certainly, no child transgressing in this particular ever failed to receive less than ten-fold its due of punishment therefor, as many grown persons will join me in testifying. Especially is this true ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... anxious eye of William; until he thought (as it almost reached him, angrily muttering, with the subdued murmur of the flood, its disappointed expectations of a victim) that he was safe. But his self-gratulation, at this moment, was very inopportune; for, just as he uttered an exclamation of thankfulness at his supposed escape, the tree approached the broad and shallower part of the creek; when, suddenly throwing its upper end into the air with a ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... fool as you think yourself. She is a girl in ten thousand, and may, not improbably, make the exceptional woman I once before spoke to you about. I knew this connection was under consideration by Elmur, but the engagement did not exist a few hours ago, and the present moment is precisely the most inopportune which could be chosen for its announcement, hence it follows that someone has forced Elmur's hand, or that he is forcing the hand of someone, it may be ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... property to the care of another who, even only occasionally, permits himself to take too much liquor, because he can never know just when that overdose may be taken. He is always ready to believe that it may be imbibed at the most inopportune moment, and that the master of his ship may be under its influence at the precise instant when the safety of the ship, crew, and cargo demand his utmost vigilance and most intelligent resource. And although ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... other craft lying off the town, into which the inhabitants were crowding, with all their effects of any value, no doubt intending to go a little way up into the country also, to avoid the inconvenience of inopportune calls. The signal was made for our little squadron to get out their boats, chase, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... with compassion, but there was another matter that must be mentioned, though she felt that the time was inopportune. ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... she noticed a fly at the door, and paused a moment to consider whether her visit might not be inopportune. It was a beautiful day, and Diana and Mrs. Colwood were probably to be found in some corner of the garden. Mrs. Roughsedge walked round the side of ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... held him she will never know, for at that inopportune time came blundering one of his men into the room with a call for his presence to take charge ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... this of which we have freely partaken?" cried they around, and, in the really impressive silence which followed, an inopportune person discovered a small silver tablet among the fragments upon his plate, and, taking it up, read aloud ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... Russell met him. Eric felt the meeting inopportune; he was ashamed to meet his friend, ashamed to speak to him, envious of him, and jealous of his better reputation. He wanted to pass him by without notice, but Russell would not suffer this. He came up to him and took his arm affectionately. The slightest allusion to his late ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... tactics again in IV. 303-309, offers his "inopportune tactical lucubrations, doubtless under Athenian (Pisistratean) influence." The poet is here denied a sense of humour. That a veteran military Polonius should talk as inopportunely about tactics as Dugald Dalgetty does about the sconce of Drumsnab is an essential part of the ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... exposed occasionally to the chronic weakness of all Indian soldiers, absence without leave. The Indian, on his own business bent, was disposed to depart whenever he pleased, often, too, at times most inopportune, sometimes, when he had been given a special and particular task. He knew not the usages of army life and really meant no offence; but, all the same, his utter disregard of army discipline ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... came out gradually that he was not 'nicely disposed.' His relatives failed to understand him, and they gave him up like a puzzle. He was self-contradictory. For instance, though a shocking liar, he was lavish of truth whenever truth happened to be disconcerting and inopportune. He it was who told the forewoman of his uncle's millinery department, in front of a customer, that she had a moustache. His uncle threshed him. 'She has a moustache, anyhow!' said this Galileo when his uncle had finished. Mr. Knight wished Tom to go into the drapery, but ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... the disregard of Bibulus and the signs of the sky, then the Cyprus mission had been invalid also, and Cato's fine performance void. Caesar's grand victories, the news of which was now coming in, made it inopportune to press the matter farther; and just then another subject rose, on which the optimates ran off like hounds upon a ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... the cabinet as to the course of conduct to be adopted. In the impossibility of instantly making up his mind upon this unexpected emergency, Philip fell, as it were, into a long reverie, than which nothing could be more inopportune. With a country in a state of revolution and exasperation, the trance, which now seemed to come over the government, was like to be followed by deadly effects. The stationary policy, which the death of Requesens ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... are notoriously inopportune, may even die inopportunely, and this was the revenge that Mr. Aubyn, some two years after her return to Hillbridge, took upon his injured wife. He died precisely at the moment when Glennard was beginning to criticise her. It was not that she bored him; she did what ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... near adding "for life," but decided that such a declaration would be inopportune. "Why should you engage in business, Quincy? You are not obliged ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... find that far from attempting to assuage, he seemed determined, on the contrary, to irritate the wound. Well convinced by experience of the solidity of her virtue, he seized the present apparently inopportune occasion of testing it anew. Assuming great sternness of voice and manner, he told her it was easy to see that her virtue was only superficial, since she manifested so great a want of submission to God's will, and of faith in His providence, ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... time of need. While he stood deliberating where he should find a messenger, he saw Bradamante approach. That fair warrior had been parted from Rogero on their way to the abbey of Vallombrosa, by an inopportune adventure which had called the knight away. She was now returning to Montalban, having arranged with Rogero to join her there. To Bradamante, therefore, his fair cousin, Astolpho committed Rabican, and also the lance of gold, which would only be an incumbrance in his aerial excursion. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of mind by force of habit Cho[u]bei turned round and bowed with ceremony toward the place of his unceremonious exit—"The time is inopportune. Cho[u]bei intrudes. He will call again." The opening of the wicket gate, the peering, scowling face of the banto[u] recalled the past scene to mind. With all the haste his tottering gait allowed Cho[u]bei ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... of some piled-up books, used to make him thrill with a sensation of fear and nocturnal mystery, despite the rays of sunlight that came filtering in through the skylights; but he began to enjoy this solitude when he found that he could people it to his fancy. Real beings soon annoyed him like the inopportune sounds that sometimes awoke him from beautiful dreams. The garret was a world several centuries old that now belonged entirely to him and adjusted itself to ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... game, and had a right to, and it was for their opponents, whom Nelson so well represented, to outwit and trap them into fighting; but as for having any grounds for complaint, it was not only silly, but inopportune, to give expression to having a grievance against the French admirals because they cutely slipped out of his deadly grasp from time to time and made him weary of life! His grievances were easier to establish against the Board of Admiralty, who were alternately paying him ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... with a vague inopportune desire to explain what so evidently did not need explaining. He walked about the room trying ways of putting it, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... agitations that George Washington Lafayette, a son of the marquis, arrived in the United States, to claim an asylum at the hands of Washington. He could not have appeared at a more inopportune moment; for political reasons rendered it inexpedient for the president, as such, to receive him; and to place him in his family might cause perplexities, connected with political affairs, prejudicial to ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... pounds Scots a year, until such time as a benefice of at least fifty pounds should fall to him; so that he was kept in hope. After this Dunbar tunes forth a song of welcome to "his ain Lord Thesaurair," in which terror at this functionary's inopportune absence—since quarterday we may suppose—is lost in gratulations over ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... cheers of the crowd. I feel sure he intended to make a short speech, as the multitude seemed to demand it. The President was bowing his acknowledgments to the large gathering, when someone, with that bad taste that always crops out at the most inopportune moment, yelled 'Hurrah for Cleveland.' A great many others, with bad taste, laughed. Harrison flushed to his temples, bowed and ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... week. My offers to take Ida's letters to the post, or to go and fetch home the mail, have been met with a hasty negative, and Minna despatched forthwith to attend to them; and whenever I might enter Ida's room, it would appear to be at a most inopportune moment, for the earnest conversation that had been going on between herself and Gabrielle would instantly stop, and their countenances assume a most transparent expression of indifference. Long whispered conversations with mamma ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... to attend as witnesses against you, and that it was not worth their while to lose valuable time merely for the pleasure of seeing you hung. However, all this is beside the question. What I was saying was, it is a pity you did not say to me frankly: 'Your presence here is inopportune; but if you will stand apart if any unexpected affair takes place, you will get say two thousand crowns out of the twenty-five thousand my friends are going to capture.' Had you done that, you see, things might have turned ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... the house of Mrs. Loring, his mind was in a state of painful excitement. The inopportune appearance of Dexter had so annoyed him, that he had found it impossible to assume the easy, cheerful air of a visitor. He was conscious, therefore, of having shown himself in the eyes of Miss Loring ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... done. Waldron called, greatly unnerved and not at all himself; and Kate received him with amicable interest. She had not yet informed her father of the rupture between Waldron and herself, nor did he suspect it. As for "Tiger," he realized the time was inopportune for any statement of conditions, and held his peace. But once she should be well, again, he had savagely resolved this decision of ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... must therefore triumph over art, not by its blind and brutal force as a dynamical power, but in virtue of its form as a moral magnitude; in a word, not as a want, but as an internal necessity. It must not be insufficiency, but the inopportune character of the latter that gives nature her victory; for insufficiency is only a want and a defect, and nothing that results from a want or defect could produce esteem. No doubt in the simplicity resulting from surprise, it ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... for her, and Lois was too glad of this little hoard of affection to examine how or why it was given. To him she could give pleasure, but apparently to no one else in that household. Her aunt looked askance at her for many reasons: the first coming of Lois to Salem was inopportune, the expression of disapprobation on her face on that evening still lingered and rankled in Grace's memory, early prejudices, and feelings, and prepossessions of the English girl were all on the side of what would now be called Church and State, what was then esteemed in that country a superstitious ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... she come to visit me at the Abbey Inn and what had she gained by this interview? Perhaps—I reflected, as I plodded along the deserted country road—she had been interrupted on that occasion by the inopportune appearance of Dr. Damar Greefe. Again, why had he appeared there at that moment if not because he had suspected her presence at the Inn; and what was the relationship existing between these two ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... comfortable; while Mother, Mary, and Betty were turning the House upside down; and in this her Care, she so well succeeded, that, to her Dismay, he bade her take Pen and Ink, and commenced dictating to her as composedly as if they were in Bunhill Fields. This was somewhat inopportune, for every Thing was to seek and to set in Order; and, indeed, Mother soon came in, all of a Heat, and sayd, "I wonder, my Dear, you can keep Nan here, at such idling, when she has her Bed to make, and her Box to unpack." Father let her go without a Word, and sate ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... is suffering severely for the want of labor, it may by some be deemed inopportune in offering remarks upon this article of commerce. To such dissentients I will remark, that a great portion of the work can be performed by women and children. A moiety of our anticipated increase of population ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... had been taught to keep cool in moments of danger, and he realized that their lives depended entirely upon his handling of the great machine. They had descended below the level of the storm-cloud at a most inopportune moment. They were caught in the midst of ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... to an explanation, sir. As you have entered at what I can but call such a very inopportune moment, you heard what I was saying—words uttered, need I say, in no malicious spirit, but in a sincere and public-spirited desire to discover the truth. I was accusing and do accuse, no one; I was merely laying ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... in order to visit the city of Kara Hissar, and the neighboring Lidjissy mines, which had been pioneered by the Genoese explorers, and were now being worked by a party of Englishmen. This divergence on to unbeaten paths was made at a very inopportune season; for the rainy spell set in, which lasted, with scarcely any intermission, for over a fortnight. At the base of Kosse Dagh, which stands upon the watershed between the two largest rivers of Asia Minor, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... was just the sort that would run away; and the little lilac lady hung her head and blushed, and Bella wondered why Elsie Cameron should laugh so. Then there was the blacksmith himself. Like most yielding husbands, he was subject to unaccountable fits of stubbornness, and seized this inopportune occasion to indulge in one. He positively refused, he announced dourly, even in the face of Susan's demands, to make an Uncle Tom's Cabin parade of himself and Arabella by going trolloping up the church aisle with her. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... on a certain public occasion, became the guest of the manufacturer, who had local dignities; and so well did Mrs. Toplady play her part of hostess that Royalty deigned to count her henceforth among its friends. Her husband would have received a title, but an inopportune malady cut short his life. A daughter of the first marriage still lived; she had wedded into the army, and was little heard of. Mrs. Toplady, a widow unattached, took her ease in ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... herself, was far too painfully absorbed in her boy's danger to lend an ear to the tender nothings of her sympathetic kinsman. And the whole party were so possessed with the notion that Mr Armstrong was something of a hero, that any suggestion to the contrary was just then clearly inopportune. ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... the Golden Butterfly was on the sward beside the crippled Cobweb. Mortlake's face was black as night. He fulminated maledictions on the young aviators who had appeared at—for him—such an inopportune moment. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... letter very useless, and even inopportune; but I was desirous of having a pretty, long conversation with you upon the present circumstances, to explain you what I think of this matter. As a proper opportunity for it did not occur, I took the liberty of laying down ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... Edinburgh for a score of years, and when at last the Queen of Hearts did come, the citizens were found napping—a sore mortification with which her Majesty deals very gently in her Journal, scarcely alluding to the inopportune accident. In truth only a moiety of early risers—those mostly country folks who had trooped into the town—restless youthful spirits, ardent holiday-makers, who could not find any holiday too long—or gallant devoted innocent ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... through all his wanderings, and which, he suddenly recollected, should "anything happen to him," held all the indications of a secret in his life without any explanation of it, and went over its contents. He was interrupted in the midst of this by a chance and inopportune visitor, no less than a younger brother, who pulled the papers about, and cried, "Hallo, what's this?" with the unjustifiable freedom of a near relation, bringing Dick's heart into his mouth, and furnishing him with a dreadful example of what might be, were a touch of more authority laid upon ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... ordinary events of life, but he wishes now that he had taken the honorable step. If he only understood the turns and tricks of fashionable life. He has been in wilds and deserts so long, that he has a curious nervous dread of blunders or those inopportune explanations ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... necessary to relate how the deputy happened to appear at such an inopportune moment for Simon. The planter, after awaiting the return of Simon for over two hours, was informed by the saloon keeper to whom he appealed, that he had entrusted his money to Simon Suggs, and that his chances of ever seeing it again were poor indeed. On discovering this he swore out ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... with their spears (a custom which rouses the fury of the combatants, and strikes terror into their enemies), they filled the front ranks of the Isaurians with consternation. But as the troops were pressing forward eagerly to the combat their generals recalled them, thinking it inopportune to enter upon a contest of doubtful issue, when their walls were not far distant, under protection of which the safety of the whole army could be placed on ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... parting from Rosalind at Umballa. His brain and nervous system were in a state that involved a climax and reaction; and, unhappily, this climax, during which his identification of his present self with his memory of its past was intensified to the point of absolute hallucination, came at an inopportune moment. If he could only have kept the phantoms of his imagination at bay until he met Sally! But, really, speculation on so strange a frame of mind is useless; we can only accept the ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... diplomatic situation when the Czar's telegram of June 11th was received by King Ferdinand. Nothing could have been more inopportune for the Bulgarian cause. Though the government had no intention of changing its plan, sufficient deference had to be paid to the Czar's request to suspend the forward movement of troops. The delay was fatal. The Servians, who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... more than ordinarily prudent. Do not take any risks, even the most trivial, unless you feel you must. Perhaps I'm weak and foolish, but I'm possessed with a strange, nervous dread. This sudden call of duty—for so I suppose I must look upon it—seems so inopportune;" and she hid ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... spirits about him, good angels must depart. I would come myself, but that my presence would embitter Mervyn, and I could not meet him properly. I am writing to Miss Charlecote. If she should propose to receive you all at the Holt immediately, until Crabbe's most inopportune gout is over, you had better go thither at once. It would be the most complete vindication of your conduct that could be offered to the county, and would give time for considering of establishing you elsewhere, and still under Miss Fennimore's care. For Bertha's ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in history had a more inopportune moment been chosen for such crying illegalities. For close upon the heels of the demonstrations and unrest which they evoked, came the dramatic events of the Balkan War, the crushing victories of the allies, the resurrection of ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... Mansfield, and soon after my return having been invited to attend it, I did so, and made a brief political address. During this month I was visited by many interviewers, and while sometimes their calls were inopportune, yet I uniformly received them, answered their questions, and furnished them any information in my power. I knew that they were seeking information not for their own convenience, but to gratify a public interest, and, therefore, I was entirely willing to answer such ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... an expressively apologetic gesture,— "Have I come at an inopportune moment? I saw your uncle arrive, and I was extremely anxious to see him on a little confidential matter— I ventured to persuade your servant to let ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the Duke of York from the command of the army was singularly inopportune, for Sir David Dundas had scarcely been appointed as his successor when a juncture arose specially demanding a combination of energy and experience. The British government, already engaged in the Peninsular war, had at last resolved to take a vigorous part in the new and desperate struggle between ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... that would brand them as apostates if they meant what they said. This or that one, in the midst of an orgy of sin, or after long practical irreligion, in order to strangle remorse that arises at an inopportune moment, may seem to form a judgment of apostasy. This is treading on exceedingly thin glass. But it is not always properly defection from faith. Apostasy kills faith as surely as a knife plunged into the ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... door!" screamed Missy from the balcony, receiving a hurried maternal reproof for ill-behaviour. Mrs. Thornycroft wondered who the inopportune visitor ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... abandoned kite," insisted Carrados firmly. "Then, of course, its object became plain to me—as indeed to anyone. For ten minutes, perhaps, a wire must be carried from the overhead line to the chestnut-tree. Creake has everything in his favour, but it is just within possibility that the driver of an inopportune train might notice the appendage. What of that? Why, for more than a week he has seen a derelict kite with its yards of trailing string hanging in the tree. A very calculating mind, Mr. Hollyer. It would be interesting to know what line of action Mr. Creake has mapped ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... Felix had so many customers that he could neither talk nor play with her, it served her as a temporary refuge—as would a shelter until the rain was over—and Felix delighted in it because it kept Kling out of the way, the good-natured Dutchman having often spoiled a sale by what Felix called "inopportune remarks ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... ways, particularly in the way of cleansing the shores of the land, and carrying off the filth that was constantly poured into the sea there-from; which, Peterkin suggested, was remarkably tidy of it to do. Poor Peterkin could never let slip an opportunity to joke, however inopportune it might be: which at first we found rather a disagreeable propensity, as it often interrupted the flow of very agreeable conversation; and, indeed, I cannot too strongly record my disapprobation of this tendency in ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... not help thinking that his visit was inopportune; that he had chose an unfortunate time for it. "If the count finds him still here," thought she, "I am not afraid that he will make a scene, but all his pleasure will be spoiled." There was a tinge of ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... however, as Lyveden's health of mind was concerned, itself grievously inopportune, the catastrophe could not have happened at a more opportune moment. Trading upon the heels of his encounter with Valerie, it made a terrific counter-irritant to the violent inflammation which that meeting had set up. Yet if the back of ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Godfrey de Bouillon was its leader at the end of the eleventh. It was the misdemeanor of St. Louis, and a great error in his judgment, that he prolonged, by his blindly prejudiced obstinacy, a movement which was more and more inopportune and illegitimate, for it was becoming day by day more factitious and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... himself hating them with an intensity he could scarcely conceal. The transition from that to an appreciation of his own superiority was natural enough. Perhaps not so natural, a return of the twinges of conscience that had been afflicting him of late at inopportune moments. When he realised the existence of these thoughts, he read in them only weakening nerve, and to steady himself he moved about among his followers, cheering them on. But the glowering, vacillating looks he received here and there succeeded in impressing ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... newly-cleaned staircase. He waggled his hands at us, and when we entered we saw that the man was stricken speechless. His eyes grew red—red like a ferret's—and what little breath he had whistled shrilly. At first we thought it was a fit, and then we saw that it was mirth—the inopportune ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling |
