"Intrusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of teaching them better manners yet. They are like our flies; our flies are the noisiest, most intrusive, most impertinent creatures. You don't appreciate ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... afternoon. The gloomy January day had already yielded to a dark, cold night, enshrouding the city and vicinity of Potsdam. The king was, as usual, to go to Sans-Souci toward nightfall. There, far from the turmoil of the world, he liked to spend his mornings and evenings, retiring from intrusive eyes into the quiet of his simple domestic life. Like his august grand- uncle, Frederick II., the king laid down his crown and the splendor of his position at the gates of the small palace of Sans-Souci, and, at this country-seat, consecrated by so many ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... dishevelled appearance, which all places show when seen at an unaccustomed hour, their time of activity and bustle past. The rooms were littered with torn papers; waste-baskets overflowing; looking silent, scrappy, and abandoned in the grey morning light which seemed intrusive, usurping the place of the usual artificial illumination, and betraying a bareness which the other concealed. Jennie recognized a relationship between her own up-all-night feeling and the spirit of ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... inhabitants of Amiens. I have seen no town in France so remarkable for a rude and unfeeling behaviour, and it is not fanciful to conjecture that the multitude of poor may tend in part to occasion it. The constant view of a sort of misery that excites little compassion, of an intrusive necessity which one is more desirous to repulse than to relieve, cannot but render the heart callous, and the manners harsh. The avarice of commerce, which is here unaccompanied by its liberality, is glad to confound real distress with voluntary and idle indigence, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... all about the subconscious mind, the hidden loves and hates and longings which we believe are dead and long forgotten. When one of those emotions suddenly comes alive and stands, terribly real and intrusive, between our souls and our everyday lives, the strongest and the best of us may stumble and grope blindly after content, or reparation, or forgetfulness, or whatever seems most likely to ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... "And, but for this intrusive fellow, you would never have become aware of it," muttered the attorney. "Give ear to me, squire," he said, urging Flint close up to the other's side, and speaking in a low tone, "I do not like the fellow's looks ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Curiosity, a liking to witness, or to experience, emotion, the pleasure of being able to tell what has been seen and heard, to find out new facts and repeat them again to others, joined to a sort of vague, commonplace, almost intrusive pity, are sentiments, which sometimes in hours of great disaster, produce what appears to wear the look of sympathy. A fortnight after M. de Nailles's death, between the acts of Scylla and Charybdis, the ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... golden under the lamp, and had you seen John's vague glance turn from a moongrey row of Korean bowls to her deeper eyes, you would have been convinced not merely that he regarded her as the finest object in his collection, but also that he was right. It would be intrusive to dwell upon the joys and sorrows of light housekeeping in New York on a small income. Enough to say that the joys preponderated in this case. They read much together, he gradually cultivated an awkward acquaintance with her friends—he ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... chemically neutralises the toxin; (2) the production in the blood of the attacked animal of a "germicidal" poison which repels and kills the attacking microbes themselves (not merely neutralising their poisonous products); (3) the extermination of the intrusive, disease-producing microbes by a kind of police, which scour the blood channels and tissues and "eat up"—actually engulf and digest—the hostile intruders. These latter agents, actual particles of the living animal in which they exist, are the "eater-cells," or "phagocytes"—minute, viscid, actively ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... of people he would "tell a little story," which was often enough, in Lord Lyons' phrase, an "extreme" story. This was the way in which he had grown accustomed to be friendly in company; it served a purpose when intrusive questions had to be evaded, or reproofs or refusals to be given without offence. As his laborious and sorrowful task came to weigh heavier upon him, his capacity for play of this sort became a great resource to him. As his fame became established people recognised ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... and its unskillful performer. Perhaps, too, there was a timid desire to be at her best on the return of Brother Seabright, and to show him, with a new performance, that the "heavenly gift" had not been neglected. She opened the chapel with the key she always carried, "swished" away an intrusive squirrel, left the door and window open for a moment, until the beating of frightened wings against the rafters had ceased, and, after carefully examining the floor for spiders, mice, and other creeping things, brushed away a few fallen leaves and twigs from the top of the harmonium. Then, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... by means of its mouth, either when on the wing, or when suspended within reach of it, the flying-fox is always more or less liable to have the spoil wrested from it by its intrusive companions, before it can make good its way to some secure retreat in which to devour it unmolested. In such conflicts they bite viciously, tear each other with their hooks, and scream incessantly, till, taking to flight, the persecuted ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... company, however much she might have disapproved of her seeking it as she did. But it is well that God, and not even reasonable mothers, has the ordering of those things in which they consider themselves most interested, and are not unfrequently intrusive. Next to his father and Mr. Simon, Agnes Gracie was the most valued of Cosmo's friends. Mr. Burns came next. For Lady Joan, he never thought of her by the side of anybody else. If he had not learned to love her, I think he might now very well have loved Agnes. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... certainly not returned, should the answer be a refusal; unless, indeed, when, from a previous repulse, or some other particular and special circumstances, such an offer may be regarded by the lady or her relatives as presumptuous and intrusive. Under such circumstances, the letter may be placed by the lady in the hands of her parents or guardian, to be dealt with by them as they may deem ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... part, I presume, to hide her tremor.—She was always a little haughty with me, I must acknowledge. Could there have been anything in my address, however unconscious of it I was, that made her fear I was ready to become intrusive? Or might it not be that, hearing of my footing with my parishioners generally, she was prepared to resent any assumption of clerical familiarity with her; and so, in my behaviour, any poor innocent "bush was supposed a bear." For I need not ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... operation of some such law as blanches the fur-bearing animals of the North. They seemed proper to its desolation, while some houses of more modern taste, painted to a warmer tone, looked, with their mansard roofs and jig-sawed piazzas and balconies, intrusive and alien. ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Alexander, succeeded him. He was of a quick and impetuous temper, and proudly tenacious of his hereditary rights and dignity. The intrusive policy and dictatorial conduct of the strangers excited his indignation, and he beheld with uneasiness their exterminating wars with the neighboring tribes. He was doomed soon to incur their hostility, being accused of plotting with the Narragansetts to rise against the English and drive ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... question, the start of surprise. 'Twas all inevitable, so familiar—so distastefully intrusive, too. 'Twas a boredom hard to suffer, and never would have been borne had not the occasion of it been my uncle's delight. 'Twas always the same: Diamonds? ay, diamonds! and then the gasped "My God!" They would pry into this, by the Lord! and never be stopped by my scowl and the shrinking ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... of the wind, as they sighed through the pines, seemed like the breath of a sleeping child, and then, as they lisped from the soft, tender leaves of beeches and maples, like the half-articulate whisper of the mother hushing all the intrusive sounds that might awaken it. Then came the pulsating monotone of the frogs from a far-off pool, the harsh cry of an owl from an old tree that overhung it, the splash of a mink or musquash, and nearer by, the light step of a woodchuck, as he cantered off ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and young, attended in the pavilion, mingled at times in the conversation, received from their masters the relics of the entertainment, and devoured them as they stood behind the backs of the company. Jesters, dwarfs, and minstrels were there in unusual numbers, and more noisy and intrusive than they were permitted to be in better regulated society. As they were allowed to share freely in the wine, which flowed round in large quantities, their licensed tumult was the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... terrific, its presence ubiquitous, its deceitfulness incredible. It can find a home under every heart beneath the poles. It is wider than the catholic church, and it is masterful, lawless, and intrusive within it. We are all living in it, breathing it, acting under its influence, being cheated by its appearances, and unwarily admitting its principles." Let young ministers who wish to preach to their people on the World—after studying what the Preacher, and the Saviour, ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... of Christ's reception of the intrusive crowd. Without a sigh or sign of impatience, He 'welcomed them'—a difficult thing to do, and one which few of us could have achieved. The motives of most of them can have been nothing higher than what leads vulgar people ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a great deal about your mother, and nothing except the very best. I think I should like to know her. Do you think she would consider me presuming and intrusive if ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... visited with severe compunction; an intrusive uncomfortable feeling that she had never before been thus compelled to entertain. For looking back upon the past two years she perceived that her conduct as mistress of that drawing-room and house had not always been as fastidious ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... In such a social whole, manners and customs are fixed. The newcomer is often fresh, ingenuous, and sometimes intrusive. Little by little he becomes socialized. Ways of action are fixed for him, and a range of performance comes to be his. In harmony with this range, suggestion is very fertile; but one learns after a time that ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... was, in a great measure, effected by the pardon promulgated in the name of His Majesty—consigning to oblivion those occurrences which would otherwise have agitated the public mind. The only exception made was the intrusive President Araripe, and this, because, instead of availing himself of the first proclamation of amnesty, in which he was included, he retired into the interior with a band of robbers, in order to excite further disturbance. The consequence of this obstinate perseverance ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... name for this malady may be coined in Esperanto: malsano lingvotrudema officious or intrusive disease, consisting in an itch ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... have a glimpse of the parasite—Mr. Smurge, I presume, 'whose gratitude was as boundless as his appetite, and his presence as unsought as it appeared to be inevitable.' But now, how gracious and admirable is the central figure—radiating gratitude, but not too much of it; never intrusive, ever within call; full of dignity, yet all amenable; quiet, yet lively; never echoing, ever amplifying; never contradicting, but often lighting the way to truth; ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... well." Madame Carre further commented. But even as she spoke Miss Rooth's fine gaze was suffused again and the next moment she had definitely begun to weep. Nick Dormer sprung up; he felt embarrassed and intrusive—there was such an indelicacy in sitting there to watch a poor working-girl's struggle with timidity. There was a momentary confusion; Mrs. Rooth's tears were seen also to flow; Mr. Nash took it gaily, addressing, however, at ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... deserted and turned against him also, forgetting that he had given her no clew to his present place of abode, and had sent a message indicating that he would regard any effort to discover him as officious and intrusive. He quite honestly believed that by this time she had come to share in the general contempt and hostility which is ever cherished toward those whom society regards as not only depraved and vile, but also dangerous to its peace. It seemed as if both ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... asking questions for the purpose of starting conversation or drawing out a person, not to be rude or intrusive. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... night. Her instant need was to be alone. It was this feeling also that caused her to go on tiptoe around the room and draw down the blinds, as though the glimmering windows were large eyes peering at her with intrusive wounding stare. Then taking her position close to a front window, she listened. He was walking slowly backward and forward on the pavement reluctantly, doubtfully; finally he passed through the gate. As it clanged heavily behind him, Isabel pressed her hands convulsively ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... know to keep the peace among themselves, when the keeping of the peace among others was the very end and aim of the appointment. But worse times were coming. For in the middle ages, notwithstanding the rank evils of barren scholasticism, secular-minded popes, and intrusive emperors, there was still a church, a common Christian religion, a common faith of all Christians; but now, since that anarchical and rebellious movement, commonly called the Reformation, but more fitly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... wearing yellow breeches, and dispensing with the luxury of a neckcloth. He shakes his shoulders, according to his rather iniquitous custom, at being told that he is suspected of adultery and incest! A pleasant subject of merriment, no doubt, it is—though somewhat embittered by the intrusive remembrance of that unsparing castigator of vice, Mr. Gifford, and clouded over by the melancholy breathed from the shin-bone of his own poor old deceased grandmother. What a mixture of the horrible and absurd! And the man who thus writes is—not a Christian, for that he denies—but, forsooth, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Helvetia, was Keltic, and beyond Switzerland, along the banks of the Danube, and in the fertile plains of Northern Italy, intrusive and conquering Kelts were extended as far east as Styria, and as far south as Etruria; but these were offsets from the main body of the stock, whose true area was Gaul and the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... did not see my little fellow-traveller, who, in her modest reluctance to be intrusive, held back during the rough greetings between John and me. But in proper time she felt it due to herself to come forward and assert her presence; so, setting her tail bolt upright like a standard, she began ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... men of natures so inactive that they cannot even enjoy the sight of activity around them: men with schemes and desires are in their presence intrusive. Their existence is a sleepy lake, which would not be troubled even with the wind of far-off labour. Such lord Morven was not by nature; up to manhood he had led even a stormy life. But when his passions began to yield, his self-indulgence ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... and the whole circumference was glowing with the dusky light of the fires, displaying the forms of the women and children who were crowded around them. This patriarchal scene was curious and striking enough; but we made our escape from the place with all possible dispatch, being tormented by the intrusive curiosity of the men who crowded around us. Yankee curiosity was nothing to theirs. They demanded our names, where we came from, where we were going, and what was our business. The last query was particularly embarrassing; since traveling in that ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... short-cropped. Add to these two small, dull, gray eyes, and you have features not easily described. Nevertheless, there are moments when his countenance wears an expression of mildness-one in which the quick eye may read a character more inoffensive than intrusive. A swallow-tail blue coat, of ample skirts, and brass buttons; a bright-colored waistcoat, opening an avalanche of shirt-bosom, blossoming with cheap jewelry; a broad, rolling shirt-collar, tied carelessly with a blue ribbon; ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day: on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut out! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing Thought; but of quite stifling and suspending Thought, so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not the greatest. As the Swiss Inscription ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the first floor, and looking upon the street. Dirty, too, it should surely be, and comfortless, and tenanted by misery, or poverty, or sin, or, very likely, all together. Possibly some miserly old wretch lived there, needing only a little light to count up his hoard, and caring little for any intrusive wind, if it did not blow away his treasure. I fancied I could see him running over the tale of his coin by a feeble rushlight—squat, perhaps, on the dirty tile-floor—then locking his box, and placing it carefully under the pillow of his straw pallet, then tip-toeing to the door to examine ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... favours—and I can't complain of that. But—I'd rather like the advantage of being on the ground all summer, don't you see? Alone, there, even though I'm off in the fields half the time, I'll have to be everlastingly careful that I don't make myself intrusive. With you and mother there, the whole situation would be different. You do see, don't ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... beginning the anodynous "Wormwood," she launched into another high-voltage eulogy of Angelica's brother. Even more than they had at first thought was he willing and competent and agreeable in the matter of their common household labor; he was not intrusive; he was rich with clever and well-informed talk when they all laid aside work to be sociable. In fact, as she had said before, he ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... long stand unmodified. The o—e alternation was welcome in so far as it roughly distinguished the singular from the plural. The dative singular fet, however, though justified historically, was soon felt to be an intrusive feature. The analogy of simpler and more numerously represented paradigms created the form fote (compare, e.g., fisc "fish," dative singular fisce). Fet as a dative becomes obsolete. The singular now had o ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... increase Edith's painful agitation. I led her down stairs to my wife, who, I omitted to mention, had accompanied us from town, and remained in the library with the children during our conference. In a very short time afterwards Mr. Ferret had cleared the house of its intrusive guests, and we had leisure to offer our condolences and congratulations to our grateful and interesting client. It was long before Edith recovered her former gaiety and health; and I doubt if she would ever have thoroughly ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... disgraceful way it had caused the birth of children unrecognised by law; and their respect for the accomplished fact, for something that already lay in the past, would then prevent their trying to unmarry it, or restoring the children to an unborn state, and very gradually they would tolerate this intrusive brood. Such was the process of Mr. Pendyce's mind. Indeed, like the spaniel John, a dog of conservative instincts, at the approach of any strange thing he placed himself in the way, barking and showing his teeth; and sometimes ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to join your seaside walk, Saddened, and mostly silent, with emotion; Not interrupting with intrusive talk The grand, majestic ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... I may trust you will not regard this letter as intrusive. I should never have entertained an idea of writing it, had you not opened the correspondence. If you think any thing in it harsh, review your own—which I regret that I lost soon after it was received—and you will probably ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... it behind them, the wide and spotless plain spread on all sides, its whiteness broken by myriads of flashing sparks and spangles of reflected light. Suddenly a rut caused the foremost sleigh to jolt violently, and then the others in succession; they fell away a little, their intrusive clatter breaking the supreme and solemn silence of ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... defeated visibly at the time, and, doubtless, in very few cases accomplished the ends proposed. In one instance, where a party of Franks had been transported into the Asiatic province of Pontus, as a column of defence against the intrusive Alans, being determined to revisit their own country, they swam the Hellespont, landed on the coasts of Asia Minor and of Greece, plundered Syracuse, steered for the Straits of Gibraltar, sailed along the shores of Spain and Gaul, passing finally ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... saw little of the writing. Directly he rattled his keys, it was hidden under the sheet—just as children hide their treasures from intrusive eyes. When five or six weeks had gone by, hundreds of written sheets ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... preside O'er realms of wide extent; but here submiss Their homage pay, alternate kings and slaves. Next these, with prying eunuchs girt around, The fair sultanas of his court; a troop Of chosen beauties, but with care concealed From each intrusive eye; one look is death. A cruel Eastern law! (had kings a power But equal to their wild tyrannic will) To rob us of the sun's all-cheering ray, 340 Were less severe. The vulgar close the march, Slaves and artificers; and Delhi ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... not seen him for many days. But because I have not, and because of what I hear of him, I think you have met. I think, too, that perhaps you both made some mistakes about each other. I will not even beg you not to consider me impertinent or intrusive. It would insult your intelligence and your heart. I ask you, my child, to tell me whether or no ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... now." And he held out both his hands. She looked round, fearing intrusive eyes, but seeing none, she allowed him to embrace her. "My own,—at last my own. How well you understood me in those old days. And yet it was all without a word,—almost without a sign." She bowed her head before she had escaped ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... for only once in a lifetime. With the violets, the beautiful blush-bells of the anemone come garlanded with their graceful leaves, plentifully enough. But did the rambler ever find the sensitive fern, which resented the intrusive hand with all Mimosa's coyness? I never did but once. I have wooed many a delicate frond of all varieties of fern since, but never one so conscious. Now, too, ere the trees come into leaf, is the time to seek the boxwood, called, I hope improperly, by the ominous name of the Southern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... it would be more than painful to me if this personage were to be made free of your house. How superfluous, how intrusive, he would be, if he were to force his ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... Neither is to be lightly offered. It is a lapse of taste; nay, more, it is a breach of morals. Only the other day, as I was seated in Watier's, my box of prime macouba open upon the table beside me, an Irish bishop thrust in his intrusive fingers. 'Waiter,' I cried, 'my box has been soiled! Remove it!' The man meant no insult, you understand, but that class of people must be ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her cheek and gazed Wistfully, with his keen, sagacious eyes. One arm with lax embrace the neck enwreathed, With polished roundness near the sleek, gray skin. Admetus, fixed with wonder, dare not pass, Intrusive on her holy innocence And sacred girlhood, but his fretful steed Snuffed the air, and champed and pawed the ground; And hearing this, the maiden raised her head. No let or hindrance then might stop the king, Once having looked upon those supreme eyes. The drooping boughs disparting, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... account of the other evangelists, it seems that after the passover feast had been eaten and before Jesus established his memorial supper, he dismissed Judas from the circle. Surely it must be our endeavor to shut out from our hearts all traitorous and intrusive thoughts, that during the sacred service we may be consciously ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... hopefulness and vitality. The sight of disease affects him as dust does a careful housewife. It makes him angry and impatient. "Tut, tut, this will never do!" he cries, as he takes over a new case. He would shoo Death out of the room as though he were an intrusive hen. But when the intruder refuses to be dislodged, when the blood moves more slowly and the eyes grow dimmer, then it is that Dr. Winter is of more avail than all the drugs in his surgery. Dying folk cling to his hand as if the ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this action was to make Sneeshing resent the caressing of the intrusive paw, which twice over scraped him, and he snapped at, ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... appetite. Furniture was moved, rugs were transferred, the first floor was spoiled to turn the spare bedroom into Mr. Plowman's conception of a Judge's lavatory. It had been mutually agreed that Mrs. Plowman's presence would be intrusive, but, in the circumstances, to go soberly to church was more than the good lady could stomach. An O. P. was therefore established in the bathroom beside the geyser, to which point of vantage Mrs. Plowman undertook to repair the moment the car ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... bias. As the Delphic priestess in the act of prophecy lost her individuality and became the mouthpiece of the god, so the Greek allowed facts to speak for themselves, became their mouthpiece and banished the intrusive ego. If therefore we call the Greeks objective, all this must be included in our definition ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... and the sword! True to the pole, by thee the pilot guides His steady helm amid the struggling tides, 205 Braves with broad sail the immeasurable sea, Cleaves the dark air, and asks no star but Thee.— By thee the plowshare rends the matted plain, Inhumes in level rows the living grain; Intrusive forests quit the cultured ground, 210 And Ceres laughs with golden fillets crown'd.— O'er restless realms when scowling Discord flings Her snakes, and loud the din of battle rings; Expiring Strength, and vanquish'd Courage feel Thy ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... intrusive, Captain Ringgold, but I thought it was possible that you had forgotten this paragraph," said the young officer, with abundant deference in ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... his own experience when he speaks of the condemnation of an intrusive alien force that holds unregenerate human nature in bondage. He is writing a page of his own autobiography, and he is sure that all the rest of us have like pages in ours. Heart answereth unto heart as in a mirror. If each man is a unity, the poison must run through all his veins ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... votaries are the sons of luxury; who appropriate to festivity the hours designed for rest; who consider the reign of pleasure as commencing when day begins to withdraw her busy multitudes, and ceases to dissipate attention by intrusive and unwelcome variety; who begin to awake to joy when the rest of the world sinks into insensibility; and revel in the soft affluence of flattering and artificial lights, which "more shadowy set ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... young men was unnecessarily intrusive. He would enter the trader's house on any available pretext, and the old man noticed that he would let his savage eyes rest upon his wife's figure in a way there was no mistaking. Not daring to tackle the brawny savage, whose chest, arms, and back were ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... bright with unshed tears. She bent nearer him and spoke still lower. There was something so intimate and private in their bearing, in their soft tones, that Redwood—Redwood who had thought for two whole days of nothing but his son—felt himself intrusive there. Abruptly he was checked. For the first time in his life perhaps he realised how much more a son may be to his father than a father can ever be to a son; he realised the full predominance of the future over the past. Here between these two he had no ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... passive, but an active and intrusive egoism, proportional to the energy and extension of his faculties developed by his education and circumstances, exaggerated by his success and his omnipotence to such a degree that a monstrous colossal I has been erected in society. It expands unceasingly the circle of a tenacious and rapacious ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... which, according to his partial biographer, recommended the Cardinal of Geneva, were rather those of a successor to John Hawkwood or to a duke of Milan, than of the apostles. Extraordinary activity of body and endurance of fatigue, courage which would hazard his life to put down the intrusive pope, sagacity and experience in the temporal affairs of the Church; high birth, through which he was allied with most of the royal and princely houses of Europe; of austerity, devotion, learning, holiness, charity, not a word. He took the name of Clement VII; the Italians bitterly taunted the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... like to ask to see you yet for fear you should think me intrusive, but a message was entrusted to me on Tuesday night which I dare not of myself keep back from you. Will you see me? If you are able to, and will name the time which will suit you best, I shall be very grateful. Forgive me for ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... in Miss Gascoigne, who had listened to it all, her large eyes growing every minute larger and larger, "that it must be somehow a lady's own fault when a gentleman is intrusive, I never believed—I never could have believed—after all Dr. Grey has said about Sir Edwin, that the three figures—a lady, and gentleman, and a child, whom I saw this afternoon sitting so comfortably together on the bench—as comfortably, I vow and declare, as if they ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... faces. There seemed to be a distinct difference of origin between the upper and lower portions of the berg, as though a land glacier had been covered by layer after layer of seasonal snow. Then again, what I have described as 'intrusive layers of blue ice' was a remarkable feature; one could imagine that these layers represent surfaces which have been transformed by regelation under hot sun ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... and poorest may enter the society of these great spirits without being thought intrusive. All who can read have got the ENTREE. Would you laugh?—Cervantes or Rabelais will laugh with you. Do you grieve?—there is Thomas a Kempis or Jeremy Taylor to grieve with and console you. Always it is to books, and the spirits of great men embalmed in them, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... advises us to choose the lesser. I would, therefore, prefer to appear intrusive rather than ungrateful; so excuse me if I trespass on your time or your patience. After the generous devotion you displayed last night, and after what Adele moreover has told me, I feel I am bound to inform you whom you have thus befriended; for, as you have already learned, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... promoted by the constant efforts of my entertainers to shield me from intrusive curiosity. Whenever I sallied forth, two townsfolk in authority were sent forward to warn the public that the Furtoo desired to promenade without a mob at his heels. These lusty criers stationed themselves at the corners with an iron ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... think of making another war. Though the Moghuls rapidly became powerless after the death of Aurungzebe, the blows struck by anticipation in their behalf protected them for forty years against the ambition of the intrusive Occidentals, and even for some time after Nadir Shah's Persian invasion had demonstrated that their dynasty was as weak as that of Lodi had been found when Baber came into the land. Whether the English have been right or wrong in making themselves masters of India, it is certain that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... do not trench upon the vital and imperative duties of his high calling. "This one thing I do," said single-hearted Paul; and if Paul were a pastor now in New York or Boston or Chicago, he would make short work of many an intrusive rap of a time-killer at ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... leather fringes, and sometimes marked by lines of delicate embroidery in white quills. There were those who said that Dandy Steve had an Indian wife somewhere on the Upper Saranac, but nobody knew; and it would have been a bold man who asked an intrusive question of Dandy Steve, or ventured on any impertinent jesting about his private affairs. Certain it was that none but Indian hands embroidered the fine buckskins he wore; but, then, there were such buckskins for sale,—perhaps ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... they are not extremely decomposed. Many of them are to be preferred to the fresher dolerites as being less brittle. The quality of the Cornish greenstones appears to have been distinctly improved by a smaller amount of recrystallization where they have been heated by contact with intrusive masses of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... aspirations!—Such swelling passions so mastered, so controlled, till then I never beheld! Like the slow pause of the solemn death-bell, the big tear at stated periods dropped; but dropped unheeded. Though she could not exclude them, her stoic soul disdained to notice such intrusive guests!—Her whole frame shook with the warfare between the feelings and the will—And ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... right into the water at an angle with the land; and, here, there was every probability of their finally finding an opening in the breastwork of adamantine rocks that ranged along the coast-line as if to prevent any intrusive strangers like themselves from getting ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... and the Latter-Day Pamphlets of Carlyle, only the difference between the two minds is apparent, the difference is, after all, but a difference in temperament. It is the contrast between the impassive aloofness of the artist, and the personal and intrusive vehemence ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... exclusive In Kentucky, So do not be intrusive In Kentucky. If you want the right of way, And have the coin to pay, You'll be in the swim to ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... last there, and now found them all dead. I no sooner lose sight of dear Allen, than I am told that I shall see him no more. That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had sooner remembered it. Do not think me intrusive or importunate, if I now call, dear Sir, on you ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... checked and startled him for a moment. Violated privilege, invaded secrecy, base, perfidious espionage upbraided and stigmatized him, as the intricacies of the outraged sanctuary opened upon his intrusive gaze. He felt for a moment shocked and humbled. He was impelled to lock and replace the desk where he had originally found it, without having effected his meditated treason; but this hesitation was transient; the ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... them without being too intrusive," assented Collins, who, since the success of his stratagem of the afternoon before, had been ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... upon a fete-day, when the household are scattered abroad in the gardens and shrubberies at their rejoicings, Captain Double-dick passes through the open porch into the lofty stone hall. There, being a total stranger, he is almost scared by the intrusive clanking of his boots. Suddenly he starts back, feeling his face turn white! For, in the gallery looking down at him, is the French officer whose picture he has carried in his mind so long and so far. The latter, disappearing in another instant for the staircase, enters directly afterwards ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... ought to keep wholly to himself any possession that may be useful to the publick, I hope you will not think me unreasonably intrusive, if I have recourse to you for such information as you are more able to give me than any ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... instrumental, to my father-in-law's house, before which they began to sing and dance with great clamour every now and then crying out, "Long live our noble kinsman! Long live the son-in-law of the chief magistrate!" The magistrate inquired into the cause of our intrusive rejoicing, when I told him my kinsfolk were congratulating me upon my alliance with his illustrious house, and come to thank him for the honour he had done the whole body of leather-dressers in my person. The chief magistrate on hearing ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... piano for a low chair beside the open fire. She was tired. Although spring had come, the evenings were chill and the room was large. Her hands were cold and she spread them out to the blaze. The heavy curtains billowed and sank and billowed again, as intrusive puffs of wind crept officiously through the crevices of the old casements. Blanche and Berkeley were with her mother, and they were reading "Lorna Doone." She had read the book a week ago, and did not care to ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... called—is to him indeed, to all intents and purposes, a book, out of which he is doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting schoolboys.—Vacations themselves are none to him, he is only rather worse off than before; for commonly he has some intrusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such times; some cadet of a great family; some neglected lump of nobility, or gentry; that he must drag after him to the play, to the Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrery, to the Panopticon, or into the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the letter was read, and Lucas stood and fidgeted, with a sense that he was intrusive and petty and undesired. "Yes," said the owner of the spectacles, at length. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... dismissed the intrusive thought. The glamour of her so dazzled him that he could see nothing ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... dervish patrols whilst scouting. The opposing troopers looked at each other from relatively open ground, and standing separated by only a few hundred yards. One Baggara horseman came within 150 yards of our men. The Lancers, keen to engage with steel, did not attempt to fire upon their intrusive foemen, but innocently tried instead to bag them. Several times our troopers advanced to the charge, but the enemy, when the Lancers sought to put hands upon them, were gone. That day the Baggara horsemen were met with in far greater numbers than ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... plaintively away. But another reached hopefully forward, and another. The dinies were not bright. The three committeemen and two members of the cabinet were thigh-deep in water when the boat came back. They still whacked valorously if wearily at intrusive diny heads. They still had made no progress in implanting the idea that the dinies ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... said, dryly, "for so much common-sense. Mr. Ascough will put you in possession of a banking account at any moment. Should you consider it—well—intrusive on my part if I were to inquire as to ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it. Courant's back was toward her. He had purposely set his face away, but he could hear the furtive whisperings of the stirred calico. He was full of the consciousness of her, and this sound, which carried a picture of her drooped head and moving hands, came with a stealing unquiet, urgently intrusive and persistent. He tried to hold his mind on his work, but his movements slackened, grew intermittent, his ear attentive for the low rustling that crept toward him at intervals like the effervescent approach of waves. Each time he heard ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... the black rows, Cally picked her way after Hugo and Mr. MacQueen. Considering that all this was her father's, she felt abashingly out of place, most intrusive; when she caught a dusky face turned upon her she hastily looked another way. Still, she felt within her an increasing sense of cheerfulness. Washington Street sensibilities were offended, naturally. The busy colored stemmers were scarcely inviting to the eye; the odor of the tobacco soon ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... objection to this kind of mutual attentiveness travels under two guises: one is the possibility of being offensively nosy and intrusive; the other is the fear of really violating the privacy of other people. Certainly, privacy should be respected, and we should not force ourselves upon others, but attentiveness is not intrusiveness. Every human ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... pleasant cottage in the suburbs. A broad and placid lake spread out before our dwelling; and its tiny billows, under the pressure of the sweet southwestern breezes, beat almost against our very doors. Green and shady groves environed us on three sides, and sheltered us from the intrusive gaze of the highway; and never was a brighter collection of flowers and blossoms clustered around any habitation of hope and happiness before. I rented the cottage on moderate terms, and furnished it neatly, but simply, as became my resources. All things considered, the prospect was fair ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... first joyous and headlong interest in the narrative of 'Huckleberry Finn', its rapid succession of continuously arresting incidents, its omnipresent yet never intrusive humour, the deeper significance of many a passage in that contemporary classic is likely to escape notice. Sir Walter Besant, who revelled in it as one of the most completely satisfying and delightful of books, speaks of it deliberately as ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... sounded like a threat of surveillance, and Coronado's dark cheek turned darker with angry blood. This stolid and intrusive brute was absolutely demanding his own death. After saying, with a forced smile, "You will be invaluable to us, Lieutenant," the Mexican lounged away to where Texas Smith was examining his firearms, and whispered, "Well, will you ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... furnished with luxurious and elegant plenty, as many people send for suppers to their box, and entertain a knot of friends there with infinite convenience and splendour. A silk curtain, the colour of your hangings, defends the closet from intrusive eyes, if you think proper to drop it; and when drawn up, gives gaiety and show to the general appearance of the whole: while across the corridor leading to these boxes, another small chamber, numbered like that it belongs ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... condescends to subordinate himself to the requirements of pantomime, has always what he is proud to call his temperament; in other words, so much personal caprice, which for the most part means wilful misunderstanding; and in seeing his acting you have to consider this intrusive little personality of his as well as the author's. The marionette may be relied upon. He will respond to an indication without reserve or revolt; an error on his part (we are all human) will certainly be the fault of the author; ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... stop like all things else; and soon Juan, who for an instant had been moved To such a sorrow by the intrusive tone Of one who dared to ask if "he had loved," Called back the Stoic to his eyes, which shone Bright with the very weakness he reproved; And although sensitive to beauty, he Felt most indignant still at not ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... [daunted and conciliatory] I'm afraid I appear intrusive. My name is Praed. [Vivie at once throws her books upon the chair, and gets out of the hammock]. Oh, pray ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... if one went far enough, lay "slums," and Mr. Carter hated the sight of slums; they always made him miserable and discontented. With all his money and his philanthropy, was there still necessity for such misery in the world? Worse still came the intrusive question at times: Had all his money anything to do with the creation of this misery? He owned no tenements; he paid good wages in every factory; he had given sums such as few men have given in the history of philanthropy. Still—there were the slums. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... bank near her, his roving eyes full of bold curiosity bent on her from time to time, his idle fingers plaiting a little wreath out of long-stemmed clover and boutons d'or, he appeared merely an intrusive, irresponsible young fellow willing to amuse himself with a few moments' rustic courtship here before ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... cabbages continued to be more and more planted by them in the waste sand: intrusive chaos, and Triglaph held at bay by them," till at last in 1240, seventy years after the great Bear's death, they fortify a new Burg, a "little rampart," Wehrlin, diminutive of Wehr (or vallum), gradually smoothing ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the old chief, flinging the walrus rib at an intrusive dog with signal success, "I am glad to hear you say that, because I may ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... truth, the sight of her, still weak and fragile but happy in the possession of her baby, would give him a fresh courage. Things couldn't happen to hurt her, he assured himself. For her, for them; he would weather the storm—somehow. "Why," thus he would snub intrusive Worry, "we've got Fisher, anyhow. When he pays, we'll simply make it last until business picks up." . ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... fine tall trees. The Bay made in from Long Island Sound and seemed to be closed by the opposite shore, so that in calm weather you might mistake it for a lake. This home was thoroughly adapted for Roosevelt's needs. Being only thirty miles from New York, with a railroad near by, convenient but not intrusive, it gave easy access to the city, but was remote enough to discourage casual or undesired callers. It had sufficient land to carry on farming and to sustain the necessary horses and domestic cattle. Mrs. Roosevelt supervised ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... fired at the accusation, divested as it was of the shadow of truth, yet unsuspicious of design, would have instantly relinquished his canine acquaintance, but for the interposition of Dashall, who suspected this intrusive personage to be neither more nor less than a dog-stealer, of whom there are many in London continually on the alert for booty. These fellows pick up all stray dogs, carry them home, and detain them until such time ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... has so kindly sent to amuse them. The rest-house attendant does not approve of these manners, so he slips out of a side-door with a basin of water in his hand and pitches it straight over the little crew as if they were a flock of intrusive chickens; they fly, shrieking with delight, and return in thicker swarms than ever inside of ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... wide angle, suddenly turns towards the S.E., and descends the slope of the glacis in a more attenuated form. Another but shorter valley is traceable at sunrise on the W. On the N.W., the rampart is visibly dislocated, and the gap occupied by an intrusive mountain mass. This dislocation is not confined to the wall, but, under favourable conditions, may be traced across the floor to the broken S.E. border. It is probably a true "fault." On the N.E., the inner slope of the wall is very broad, and affords a fine example ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... he contradicted earnestly. "You've been very hard hit over this business, and I happen to know he wants to meet you, only that he is afraid of appearing intrusive. At ten o'clock at the arrival platform. May I say good-bye now? God bless you. I haven't much influence with Him, but I—I hope He'll be good ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... discriminating harshness of the College authorities themselves. Out of the hundred students then residing at Balliol, eight at least were Scotch, four on the Snell foundation and four on the Warner, and the Scotch eight seem to have been always treated as an alien and intrusive faction. The Snell exhibitioners were continually complaining to the Glasgow Senatus on the subject, and the Glasgow Senatus thought them perfectly justified in complaining. In a letter of 22nd May 1776, in which they go over the whole long story of grievances, the ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... notion of the strange theories which have developed themselves respecting this most interesting subject, I must still express my conviction as to the unity of the authorship of the Homeric poems. To deny that many corruptions and interpolations disfigure them, and that the intrusive hand of the poetasters may here and there have inflicted a wound more serious than the negligence of the copyist, would be an absurd and captious assumption, but it is to a higher criticism that we must appeal, if we would either understand ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... up in the best style of binder. No—we love to pass long solitary hours in one of those old depositories of choice literature made venerable by the rich mellowing of time, and the sombre tapestry of cobwebs which are undisturbed by the intrusive visitation of prim housemaids. There, amid antique volumes, caskets of thought more precious than gems, how delightful to commune with the bright spirit of dead authors, whose inspired pens have left behind them the glorious scintillations of immortal genius, which sparkle on every page! When ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... next time that George was engaged at tennis, he had not struck the ball above twice till the same intrusive being was again in his way. The party played for considerable stakes that day, namely, a dinner and wine at the Black Bull tavern; and George, as the hero and head of his party, was much interested in its honour; consequently the sight of this moody and hellish-looking ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... angelic goodness be pleased to answer, are you indeed the wife of one I name not? If it be true, I will utterly withdraw my intrusive presence. In ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... fence around the sacred spot. If one must die, must surrender life, oh, where can it be done better than under such circumstances? From first to last no stranger's hand had aught to do with this sister either in life or in death. No idle or curiously intrusive person came near, and all the surroundings, though simple, were in keeping with the solemnity of the occasion. There was no pomp or rivalry of show, no gaudy deckings, that we in our hearts despise, but which an unhallowed custom forces upon us; but all was done decently, ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... Greek for seven, hepta, has only four characters, the aspirate being marked over the initial vowel. This same crowding of "pente" was discernible each time it occurred in the text. It was a coincidence that was too intrusive. The obvious explanation was that "hepta" had been deleted and "pente" substituted in every instance, and the fraud had not been detected because the rest of the Greek writing was absolutely genuine. The hieroglyphs In cartouches, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... and Greek. The silence I had known was gone, though the desert lay all around—the great sands, the great masses of granite that look as if patiently waiting to be fashioned into obelisks, and sarcophagi, and statues. But away there across the bend of the river, dominating the ugly rummage of this intrusive beehive of human bees, sheer grace overcoming strength both of nature and human nature, rose the fabled "Pharaoh's Bed"; gracious, tender, from Shellal most delicately perfect, and glowing with pale gold against the grim background of the hills on the western shore. It ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... Vronsky, the latter's attempt at suicide, the steadily increasing scenes of jealousy with the shadow of death coming nearer, the clairvoyant power of the author in describing the death of Anna, and the departure of Vronsky, where the railway station reminds him with intrusive agony of the contrast between his first and last view of the woman he loved. No one but Tolstoi would ever have given his tragic character a toothache at that particular time; but the toothache, added to the heartache, gives the ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... the insertion of a sound which facilitates pronunciation, such as that of b in Fr. chambre, from Lat. camera. The intrusive sound may be a vowel or a consonant, as in the names Henery, Hendry, perversions of Henry. [Footnote: On the usual fate of this name ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley |
