"Unseemly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... traverse it are continually in danger of falling over the cross-bars that bind it together,) examples of sculpture filched indiscriminately from the past work, bad and good, of Turks, Greeks, Romans, Moors, and Christians, miscolored, misplaced, and misinterpreted;[15] here thrust into unseemly corners, and there mortised together into mere confusion of heterogeneous obstacle; pronouncing itself hourly more intolerable in weariness, until any kind of relief is sought from it in steam wheelbarrows or cheap toyshops; and most of all in beer and meat, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... the young man was shocked that they should reflect so unseemly a picture of the august tribunal before which, at that very moment, her case was being tried. Nothing could be in worse taste than misplaced flippancy; and he answered somewhat stiffly: "Yes, you have been ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... this commission for his friend, and doing it zealously, call for his sitting down and holding the girl in his lap while she kisses him? Is there no way of his carrying out this commission save by his embracing her time and again in unseemly fashion and never taking his lips ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... stone barely tells The name and date to the chance passenger. For lowly born was she, and long had eat, Well-earned, the bread of service:—her's was else A mounting spirit, one that entertained Scorn of base action, deed dishonorable, Or aught unseemly. I remember well Her reverend image: I remember, too, With what a zeal she served her master's house; And how the prattling tongue of garrulous age Delighted to recount the oft-told tale Or anecdote domestic. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... old men and women! Dash the children's brains out against the stone wall! Violate young girls! Mutilate their fair bodies so that they will be unseemly when they are found by the husband or father. Burn, steal, kill—but remember that your Kaiser and the War Staff have promised to stand between you and God Almighty and the Day of Judgment! Even if Jesus did say, "Woe unto them that offend against my little ones," you must remember that ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... much agility and force. There must have ensued quite a free fight all around in the meeting-house, for "Mrs. Goodyear's boy had his head broke that day in meeting, on account of which a woman said she doubted not the wrath of God was upon us." And well might she think so, for divers other unseemly incidents which occurred in the meeting-house at the same time were narrated in Court, examined ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... to wise me in this matter. And, the sooth to say, but I would not desire to dwell amongst kin that had set my mother aside, and reckoned her not fit to company with them, not for no wickedness nor unseemly dealing, but only that she came of a trading stock. It seemeth me, had such wist our blessed Lord Himself, they should have bidden Him stand aside, for He was but a carpenter's son. That's the evil of being ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... lead the common people into endless mistakes, and the Woman would gain whatever the Circles lost, in the deference of the passers by. As for the scandal that would befall the Circular Class if the frivolous and unseemly conduct of the Women were imputed to them, and as to the consequent subversion of the Constitution, the Female Sex could not be expected to give a thought to these considerations. Even in the households of the Circles, the Women were all in ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... Halgerdr Longbreeks, so this very day a fellow of Horncastle called, in my hearing, our noble-looking Hungarian friend here, Long-stockings. Oh, I could give you a hundred instances, both ancient and modern, of this unseemly propensity of our illustrious race, though I will only trouble you with a few more ancient ones; they not only nicknamed Regner, but his sons also, who were all kings, and distinguished men; one, whose name was Biorn, they nicknamed ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... the depot to keep an eye on the outfit and see that they didn't locate any land or scare the cow ponies hitched in front of Murchison's store or act otherwise unseemly. Luke was away after a gang of cattle thieves down on the Frio, and I always looked after the law and ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... floor of the chips and rubbish with a broom of cedar boughs, bound together with a leathern thong. She had swept it all clean, carefully removing all unsightly objects, and strewing it over with fresh cedar sprigs, which gave out a pleasant odour, and formed a smooth and not unseemly carpet for their little dwelling. How cheerful was the first fire blazing up on their own hearth! It was so pleasant to sit by its gladdening light, and chat away of all they had done and all that they meant to do. Here was to be a set ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... hadn't." He pushed his arm out and glanced at his watch. "Oh, there's plenty of time, anyway. I'm lunching with this blighter down town, padre, at some special restaurant of his," he explained, "and I take it the sum and substance of his unseemly remarks are that he thinks we ought to get ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... that lived thousands of years ago. Not one is respectable or unhappy, over the whole earth." And that is not irony on nature, he means just that, life meant no more to him. He accepted the world just as it is and glorified it, the seemly and unseemly, the good and the bad. He had no conception of a difference in people or in things. All men had bodies and were alike to him, one about as good as another. To live was to fulfil all natural laws and impulses. To be comfortable was to be happy. To be happy was the ultimatum. He did not ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... organisation or stage management could influence, impressed the English journalists and Members of Parliament even more than the gigantic scale of the demonstration. There was not a trace of the picnic spirit. There was no drunkenness, no noisy buffoonery, no unseemly behaviour. The Ulster habit of combining politics and prayer—which was not departed from at Balmoral, where the proceedings were opened by the Primate of All Ireland and the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church—was jeered at by people ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... "Unseemly? Before ladies?" said the doctor in a puzzled way. "Why, can't you see for yourselves? Ha, ha, ha!" he said, laughing softly. "Don't you see the remedies have beaten the poison. There's a delightful sleep he ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... day the colonel summoned the major and the captain into his presence. He censured them sternly, accusing them of disgracing their uniform by frequenting unseemly haunts. What resolution had they come to, he asked, as he could not authorize them to fight? This same question had occupied the whole regiment for the last twenty-four hours. Apologies were unacceptable on account of the blow, but as Laguitte was almost unable to stand, it was hoped that, should ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... preposterous love of life in them they, too, had to do it. Maybe you couldn't blame them. He and Dick—they had been like two children, scared out of their wits, crying out, hitting at each other in the dark. Youth and age, that was what they had fought about. It had been an unseemly scrap, a "you're another." Dick had been brought up against life as it looks when you see it naked, the world—and what a world! No wonder he swore it was a world such as neither he nor his fellows, like him aghast, would have made. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... the plate came round he put threepence in, but he took a shilling out. It was a useful trick, taught him by an expert in the art of rigging the thimble and the pea. Nickie, when he had fairly good clothes, often attended church merely to practise it. To-night the exploit was more an act of unseemly and impious ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... negligent culture, and. consequently becomes impoverished and diminished in value. All this was evident as we went along. Here was warmth, and wealth, and independence staring us in the face; there was negligence, desponding struggle, and decline, conscious, as it were, of their unseemly appearance, and anxious, one would think, to shrink away from the searching eye ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... door but left it unlocked. It seemed as though they would get away without arousing man or dog; but just as they were leading the horses through the barn gate Velox, perhaps incensed at being taken from his stall at that unseemly hour and leaving his mates, gave ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... mental stupor prevented the immediate comprehension of the new and deeply conciliatory spirit which here presented itself, at once to heal and to save. It was a national deed clearly to disclose this unseemly shopkeeper's spirit which attempts to drag to the mercantile level even the highest concerns of humanity. At the same time there came to some a conception of how deep and great, how overwhelming this German spirit must be, that it not only forces such aliens into its yoke, but, as in the case ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... I had but to demand an investigation into the man's affairs. It was easily done, and without any cost or sacrifice of principle. But why could not the minister demand the same himself? "It would be unseemly," he asserted. Well, it might be—why had he not selected an elder member of the Church? Because, as he had often told me, there was none so dear to him. This was plain and reasonable, and all this passed through my brain with the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... beheld from a short distance the passing of the bridal procession. Though there were crowds all along the route followed by the wedding party, there was no scrouging, no shoving, no fighting, no disorderly scramble, no unseemly congestion about the chapel where the ceremony took place. It reminded me vividly of that which inevitably happens when a millionaire's daughter is being married to a duke in a fashionable Fifth Avenue church—it reminded me of that ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the commodious shoe, which leaves the feet uncrumpled and free from the results of the tighter and closer ones of the West, were laid aside for the dress of Europe. The only part of the garb which we use, that he did not assume and compel his people to accept, was the unseemly and uncomfortable hat, and this he would also have taken, had religion not interposed to prevent it. Of all parts of the Christian's costume, the hat is the most calculated to inspire disgust in the sight ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the champions of thy faith esteem The sprinkled fountain or baptismal stream; Shall jealous passions in unseemly strife Cross their dark weapons o'er ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... job for Aud to keep her countenance, for she was like to have wept. And yet she felt it would be unseemly to eat her invitation; and like a shallow woman and one that had always led her husband by the nose, she told herself she would find some means to cajole Thorgunna and come by her purpose after all. So she put a good face on the thing, had Thorgunna into the boat, ...
— The Waif Woman • Robert Louis Stevenson
... youth had had his wicked will of her, he rose and fled forth fearing the consequences of his ill-doing. When the Wazir's wife heard the slave-girls' cries, she sprang up and came out of the baths with the perspiration pouring from her face, saying, "What is this unseemly clamour in the house[FN18]?" Then she came up to the two little slave- girls and asked them saying, "Fie upon you! what is the matter?"; and both answered, "Verily our lord Nur al-Din came in and beat us, so we fled; then he went up to Anis al-Jalis and threw his arms round ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... units, duchies, principalities, bishoprics, free cities, and what not, among electorates and kingdoms of a larger sort, but still minute. It seemed like a pathological chart presenting a face broken out with an unseemly tetter. The land indeed, in those days, was afflicted by a sad political disease. The Germans call it "Particularismus" or "Vielstaaterei," the breaking up of a nationality into a mass of fragments. Some on the map were scarcely ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... his audience that he was composing an operetta, of which he would give them a few passages. He was a skilful pianist. He explained, as his fingers ran up and down the keys, that the scene was in Ratcliffe Highway. A tavern: a hornpipe. Jack ashore. Unseemly squabbles: here there were harsh discords and shrill screams. Drunkenness: the music getting very helpless. Then the daylight comes—the chirping of sparrows—Jack wanders out—the breath of the morning stirs his memories—he thinks of other days. Then comes in Jack's song, which neither ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... the unseemly scuffle, and asked the King who and what the young man was who could keep at bay so many of his fellows. 'I bought him once at sea,' said Louis, 'and paid a hundred marks for him. They pretend that ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... through Thrace and Asia Minor, Egypt had the misfortune to be honoured by a visit from its emperor. The satirical Alexandrians, who in the midst of their own follies and vices were always clever in lashing those of their rulers, had latterly been turning their unseemly jokes against Caracalla. They had laughed at his dressing like Achilles and Alexander the Great, while in his person he was below the usual height; and they had not forgotten his murder of his brother, and his talking ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... very much like an errand-boy, and also felt that he was called on to perform his duties as such at rather an unseemly time, but he said nothing, and took the slip of paper ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... made the Confutators butts of scorn and derision. At any rate, the Lutherans were charged with having failed, at the public reading, to control their risibilities sufficiently. Cochlaeus complains: "During the reading many of the Lutherans indulged in unseemly laughter. Quando recitata fuit, multi e Lutheranis inepte cachinnabantur." (Koellner, 411.) If this did not actually occur, it was not because the Confutators had given them no ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... method, not as an ultimate result and a consummation. Again, he was preserved from the danger of going down too deep and too low into the unclean mysteries of modern humanity, not so much perhaps by moral delicacy as by an artistic distaste for all that is repulsive and unseemly. For those reasons, it would not be surprising if—when Death has made him young again—Alphonse Daudet was destined to outlive and outshine many who have enjoyed an equal or even greater celebrity during this century. He will command an ever increasing circle of admirers and friends, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... the Countess's door. I realised that it was a most unseemly hour for calling on a young, beautiful and unprotected lady, but the exigencies of the moment lent moral ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... purpose quite as well—and indeed better. Once or twice she intercepted a glance passing between this superfluously handsome lady and the principal guest, until at last it occurred to her as a strange and unseemly thing that Lord Tulliwuddle should be paying so long a visit to his shooting tenants. Eva, on her part, felt a curiously similar sensation. These American gentlemen were as pleasant as report had painted ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... made my way to my quarters in the Mittelstrasse. It was about eight o'clock when I put my key in the door. I found Kim very much awake and somewhat excited. At this unseemly hour there was a visitor! This was all the more unusual for I was not in the habit of receiving my most intimate friends or acquaintances at ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... in its disguis'd coarse rust, And scurf'd all ore with its unseemly crust, The diamond, from 'midst the humbler stones, Sparkling shoots forth the price of nations. Ye safe unriddlers of the stars, pray tell, By what name shall I stamp my miracle? Thou strange inverted Aeson, that leap'st ore From thy first infancy ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... too insolent, Sir Richard!' said Charles Edward. 'Have you inveigled me into your power to bait me in this unseemly manner? And you, Redgauntlet, why did you suffer matters to come to such a point as this, without making me more distinctly aware what insults were ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... reason already, James. It would be not only unseemly, but impossible, for me to leave my guest. But even without that, even if I were entirely alone, still I could not go. My duties; the house; my dear sister's ideas,—she always said a house could not be left for a month by the entire family without deteriorating in ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... own clime And your own gods, a man of peace, Pompey, the earliest friend I knew, With whom I oft cut short the hours With wine, my hair bright bathed in dew Of Syrian oils, and wreathed with flowers? With you I shared Philippi's rout, Unseemly parted from my shield, When Valour fell, and warriors stout Were tumbled on the inglorious field: But I was saved by Mercury, Wrapp'd in thick mist, yet trembling sore, While you to that tempestuous sea Were swept by battle's tide once more. ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... she suddenly broke into a little ripple of laughter, and, upon being questioned severely as to the reason of such unseemly mirth, she said, gaily, "I was just wondering what poor Phil will do with three girls, and one ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... Turnour had insisted on changing her motoring hat for a Gainsborough confection which would, I was deadly certain, cause her to loathe Nimes while memory should last; but the better part was mine. Toqued and veiled, the mistral could crack its cheeks if it liked; it couldn't hurt mine, or do unseemly ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... clew; for, when she went over for the soda, though she knocked several times, and heard voices up-stairs, and altogether unseemly laughter for a house where there had just been a funeral, not a soul came to the door! Could it be that Julia Cloud heard her and stayed up-stairs on purpose? She felt that as the nearest neighbor and a great friend, of ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... spiritual authorities, Bruno was removed from Venice to Rome, and confined in the prison of the Inquisition, accused not only of being a heretic, but also a heresiarch, who had written things unseemly concerning religion; the special charge against him being that he had taught the plurality of worlds, a doctrine repugnant to the whole tenor of Scripture and inimical to revealed religion, especially as regards the plan of salvation. After an ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Brown's ability for military leadership was too insignificant even for comment, his moral and personal courage compelled the admiration of his enemies. Arraigned before a Virginia court, the authorities hurried through his trial for treason, conspiracy, and murder, with an unseemly precipitancy, almost calculated to make him seem the accuser, and the commonwealth the trembling culprit. He acknowledged his acts with frankness, defended his purpose with a sincerity that betokened honest conviction, bore his wounds and met his fate with a manly fortitude. Eight ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... tricks with the Club cutlery, and diverted its silver to improper uses; he laid traps for upsetting aged and infirm legislators; he tried the coolness of the youngest and best-natured Members of Parliament by popping up in strange places and exhibiting unseemly attitudes. At length, by unanimous consent, he was decreed to be a nuisance, and a few days would have revoked his license ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... powers and great virtues, he found himself, in age and poverty, a mark for the hatred of a perfidious court and a deluded people. In Parliament his eloquence was out of date. A young generation, which knew him not, had filled the House. Whenever he rose to speak, his voice was drowned by the unseemly interruption of lads who were in their cradles when his orations on the Stamp Act called forth the applause of the great Earl of Chatham. These things had produced on his proud and sensitive spirit an effect at which we cannot ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was separated from the dining "saloon" by a sliding door—which frequently refused to slide at all, or else perversely slid so suddenly as to endanger finger-tips and cause unseemly words to flow. This noble apartment of elegant dimensions (to borrow the undefiled English of the house-agent) could contain four feasters at a pinch. Sabz Ali having cooked the dinner, the cook-boat ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... bring in that unfortunate inebriate whom I sentenced to confinement in the gaol yesterday. The Court, while sensible of the imperative necessity of protecting itself from all unseemly disorder and preserving its dignity undiminished, nevertheless always leans to the side of mercy. The Court trusts that a night's incarceration may have sufficiently sobered and chastened the poor creature. The Court ...
— The Sheriffs Bluff - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... which demanded that the responsibility for certain shortages in the bank's assets be fixed immediately as between the accused bookkeeper and cashier and his superiors. Whitredge brought me word of this hurry-up proposal, and either was, or pretended to be, properly indignant over the unseemly haste. ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... deterioration crowd upon us. Fathers and mothers regard their children with painful solicitude. Not even parental partiality can close the eye to decaying teeth, distorted forms, pallid faces, and the unseemly gait. The husband would gladly give his fortune to purchase roses for the cheeks of the loved one, while thousands dare not venture upon marriage, for they see in it only protracted invalidism. Brothers look into the languishing eyes of sisters with sad forebodings, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... in the fairest time of year, in a golden age: I have youth to show you and an ancient sword, birds, flowers and sunlight, in a plain unharmed by any dream of commerce: why should I show you the sleep of that inelegant man whose bulk lay cumbering the earth like a low, unseemly mountain? ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... men that wear skirts like women. I remember many years ago when I was in Sister Agnes' room, of seeing some of those dreadful pictures of skirts and bandy-legs. They are unseemly things for men to wear; it is as though one were uncivilised. I hate him ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... executioners hoped that in the midst of the tortures inflicted upon him—the most atrocious which man could devise—they would hear him say something unseemly or unlawful; but so firmly did he resist them, that, without even saying his name, or that of his nation or city, or whether he was bond or free, he only replied in the Roman tongue, to all questions, 'I ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... in the most unseemly manner, said: "Alas, poor Cummings. He'll lose 35 pounds." At that moment there was a ring at the bell. Lupin said: "I don't want to meet Cummings." If he had gone out of the door he would have met him in the passage, so as quickly ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... ordered by God through a prophet. The purpose of natural law is to remove wrong and promote right, keeping men from robbery and theft so that society may be able to exist. Conventional law goes further and tends to remove the unseemly and to promote the becoming. Divine law has for its purpose to guide men to true happiness, which is the happiness of the soul and its eternal life. It points out the way to follow to reach this end, showing what is the true good for man to pursue, and ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... a town square and was banqueted by the Mayor, although he had nearly run him down a few hours earlier, and had ruined forever his reputation as a man of dignified bearing. But the Mayor was not alone in his forced display of unseemly haste. Many other townspeople, long past the nimbleness of youth, rushed for shelter; and pride goeth before a collision with a wayward aeroplane. Jackson said the sky rained hats, market baskets, and wooden shoes for five minutes after his Bleriot had ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... change, for swift moments oddly youthful; with a wide mouth, which would suddenly twist up at its right corner as though from some unholy quip of humor, and whose as sudden straightening into a solemn line would show that the unseemly humor had been exorcised. In manner he was bland, ornate, gestureish, ample; giving the sense that in nothing less commodious than a church could he loose his person and his powers to their full expression. He was genially familiar; ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... carried home "in a Water-cart driven by one of the Underkeepers in his green Coat, with a Hazle-bough for a Whip." It is a little oasis of delicate and pensive refinement in that hot close of the seventeenth century, when so many unseemly monsters were bellowing ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... when men ran wild with their own impulses, unable to control the fierceness of instinct. It is a sadder barbarism when men yield to every impulse from without, with no imperial dignity in the soul, which closes the apartments against the violence of the world and frowns away unseemly intruders. We have no spontaneous enthusiasm, no spiritual independence, no inner being, obedient only to its own law. We do not plough the billows of time with true beak and steady weight, but float, a tossed cork, now one side up and now the other. We live ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... when given there. Good church music gives us great pleasure, without exciting us to dancing or drinking; the Taj does the same, at least to the sober-minded. [W. H. S.] The regulations now in force prevent any unseemly proceedings. The gardens at the Taj, of Itimad-ud-daula's tomb, of Akbar's mausoleum at Sikandara, and the Ram Bagh, are kept up by means of income derived from crown lands, aided ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... and was looking carefully round her, when they were both disturbed by the unseemly behaviour of the master ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... messire—a ponderous axe with haft the length of this my leg. A vilely tall, base, and most unseemly dog that hath spoiled me of my lord's sweet money-bags, wherefore I yearn to see him wriggle in a noose. To the which end I journey in these my rags, unto my lord Duke on Barham Broom, with tale of wrong and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... of Chief Justice Draper the Anderson case was closed and the fugitive disappears. As a result, however, of the unseemly action of the Brantford magistrate the Canadian law was revised so as to take from the control of ordinary magistrates jurisdiction as regards foreign fugitives from justice, leaving such cases with county judges ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... frequently,—and how she had been pleased, for his benefit, even to don her cap with rose-purple ribbons, and her yellow gown of tru-tru levantine; but how, later on, having flown into a rage with her neighbour, on account of the unseemly question: "What might your capital amount to, madam?" she had given orders that he should not be admitted, and how she had then commanded, that everything, down to the very smallest scrap, should be given to Feodor Ivanitch ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... Earl Hakon the increase was good in the land, & peace was there within it among the peasantry. Well-beloved, too, was the Earl among them for the greater part of his life, but as his years waxed old it happened that his intercourse with women became unseemly, and to such a pass came this that the Earl would cause the daughters of powerful men to be brought unto him, when he would lie with them for a week or twain, and then send them back to their homes. This manner of acting brought him to great enmity with the kinsmen of these ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... was the great theory of the Middle Ages, the theological method in sculpture, the literary dogma of the monks of that time; and this is the meaning and purpose of certain groups which even now shock the propriety of our methodistical purists. These unseemly subjects and images of indecency are very numerous at Saint Benoit on the Loire, in the cathedral of Reims, at le Mans, in the crypt at Bourges, everywhere in our churches; for in those where they do not occur, it is because the prudery which was most rife ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... I used to suspect my conversion, and began to think it unseemly that a man should cease to believe that we must renounce this life in order to gain another, without much preliminary study of the Scriptures; I began to look upon myself as a somewhat superficial person whose religious beliefs yielded before the charm of a ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... herself in it between two trees in a rose-sweet nook at Greenvale, and gave herself up to a reckoning of assets and liabilities. Decidedly the balance was on the wrong side. Miss Esme could not dodge the unseemly conclusion that she was far from pleased with herself. This was perhaps a salutary frame of mind, but not a pleasant one. If possible, she was even less pleased with the world in which she lived. And this was neither salutary ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... for my struggling church, a weak blade of grass in the desert," Santa Fe was saying when Hill got the range of 'em, "I cannot but regret having taken from you your splendid contribution to our parish fund in so unusual, I might almost say in so unseemly, a way. That I have returned to you a sufficient sum to enable you to prosecute your journey to its conclusion places you under no obligation to me. Indeed, I could not have done less—considering the very liberal loan that you have made to my poor niece to enable her to return quickly ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... but contemplate with much humiliation and distress, the existence, among professing Christians in America, of this partial, unseemly, and unchristian system of caste, so distinctly prohibited in the word of God, and so ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... all. Our pious masters, at St. Michael's, must not know that a few of their dusky brothers were learning to read the word of God, lest they should come down upon us with the lash and chain. We might have met to drink whisky, to wrestle, fight, and to do other unseemly things, with no fear of interruption from the saints or ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... hour she believed that she was walking on level ground, but when she looked back there was no sign of any town behind her. Echo had disappeared as completely as if it had been swallowed. Even the unseemly bay-windowed houses on the hill had gone under. She walked for another half hour and saw only the gray sage stretching all around her. The hills looked farther away than when she started. Still, that beaten road must lead somewhere. Two hours later she began to wonder why this particular ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... him and said to him, 'By Allah, an thou speak a single syllable, I will do thee a mischief!' Then he went in to his wife, with Khelbes in his grasp, and behold, she was sitting, as of her wont, nor was there about her aught of suspicious or unseemly. ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... unseemly and desolate appearances do not prevent the attendance of congregations more numerous, and, I think, more fervent, than were usual when the altars shone with the offerings of wealth, and the walls were covered with the more interesting decorations ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... heinous offense, given up a servant of his to the rest of his fellows, with charge to whip him first through the market, and then to kill him; and while they were executing this command, and scourging the wretch, who screwed and turned himself into all manner of shapes and unseemly motions, through the pain he was in, the solemn procession in honor of Jupiter chanced to follow at their heels. Several of the attendants on which were, indeed, scandalized at the sight, yet no one of them interfered, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... earnestly for that which thou hast not, taking heed especially that no man comes the "artful" over thee; whereby I caution thee against one Tom Kitefly of Manchester, whose bills have returned back unto me, clothed with that unseemly garment which the notary calleth "a protest." Assuredly he is a viper in the paths of the unwary, and will bewray thee with his fair speeches; therefore, I say, take ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... at sunset. Proceeding through an ancient and unseemly town, full of long, narrow, and ill-paved streets, and black unevenly built houses, they ascended the hill, on the top of which was situated the new and Residence town of Reisenburg. The proud palace, the white squares, the architectural streets, the new churches, the elegant ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... inventions thereof. There had been other times, too, when Tublat had swung helplessly in midair, the noose tightening about his neck, death staring him in the face, and little Tarzan dancing upon a near-by limb, taunting him and making unseemly grimaces. ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... like her pictures, even like those which are thought to flatter most—but I only saw the profile—I could not see the front face as I knelt to her, at least without an upturning of the eyes which I thought would be unseemly—and there were but some two or three seconds allowed for the ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... at chess, or that William the Conqueror in early days had to beat a precipitate retreat from France through assaulting the King's son over the chess board, and a somewhat similar misadventure in early days to Henry I, and John's unseemly fracas. It is related that an English knight seized the bridle of Philip Le Gros in battle, crying out, the king is taken, but was struck down by that monarch who observed, "Ne fais tu pas que aux echecs on ne prend pas ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... replied the cow, attending strictly to her business as a ruminant, "does not impress me as justifying your execution of all manner of unseemly contortions, as a preliminary to accosting ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... Unseemly altercations have summoned me to the kitchen, and I return to close this over-long chronicle. I was met there by Tryphena, a large sheet in her hands, and an accusing expression on her face which stamped her as a family ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... profits of trade with the Baltic and North Seas. Vraiment, such friendship lies heavily upon us, and its weight feels almost like that of enmity. At Aix-la-Chapelle I had to remind the English ambassador that his unknightly and arrogant bearing toward Austria was unseemly both to the sex and majesty of Austria's empress. And our august sovereign herself, not long since, saw fit to reprove the insolence of this same British envoy, who in her very presence spoke of the Netherlands as though they had been a boon to Austria ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... into the bottomless pit of death; the new, marvelous susceptibility to nature as comradeship with boys of his own age was lacking; the sudden desires from pure bravado and perversity to do something unseemly, e. g., making a fly omelet and carrying it in a procession with song; the melting of pewter plates and pouring them into water and salting a wild tract of land with them; organizing a band of miners, whom he led as if with keen scent to the right spot and rediscovered his nuggets, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... face grew tender for the young girls and the eight-year-olds, at the sight of Miss Quincey it stiffened into tolerance, cynically braced to bear. Miss Cursiter had an eye for magnificence of effect, and the unseemly impact of Miss Quincey was apt to throw the lines into disorder, demoralising the younger units and ruining the spectacle as a whole. To-day it made the new Classical Mistress smile, and somehow ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... appreciate these truths, not only in our cities, but in the country, and the ugly, unsightly, and unseemly structures which have so long deformed the land are giving place to edifices in which the true ideas of harmony, grace, proportion, symmetry and expression, which make what we call Beauty, are brought out ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... ruffled, as well as Manuela's, by being carried about in his cage, at unseemly hours, when he should have been hanging quietly in the verandah, where he belonged. He looked sulky, and only said, "Caramba! ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... as the press of danger ceased, and party strifes abated, with the accession of the House of Brunswick, Christianity began forthwith to slumber. The trumpet of Wesley and Whitefield was needed before that unseemly slumber could again ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... wish to think of all this, and not judge hastily. Take off those unseemly weapons, which are far from suited for my student son. Let this be done at once, Serge. You, Marcus, will follow me to my room, and be there an hour hence. I have much to say to you, my boy, ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... marriage, his professional career would not be weighted by family cares, the whole world was once more open before him, and the slate clean. These were considerations which could not prudently be overlooked, though it would be unseemly to emphasise them too strongly when the poignancy of regret ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... the electors of Loughton!" and Lady Laura drew herself up and spoke of this unseemly intrusion on her father's borough, as though the vulgar man who had been named had forced his way into the very drawing-room in Portman Square. At that moment Mr. Kennedy came in. "Do you hear what Mr. Finn tells me?" she said. "He has heard that Mr. Quintus Slide has gone down to Loughton to stand ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... assume no other aspect. But what availed it that the judge stood firm by the statute, when juries as pertinaciously backed the sentiment of the world and refused the law permission to take its course? It availed much. The unseemly conflict has been carried on until at length civilization has become shocked by the spectacle. The effect of the ever-recurring encounter is something worse than ridiculous. It has taken years to bring us to our senses, but we are rational at last. Public opinion exercises its good sense, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... at the head of his flocks, while at his knee ran small naked Cupids. But she laughed—William, in a slate-coloured blouse, laughed consumedly till Scott, putting the best face he could upon the matter, halted his armies and bade her admire the kindergarten. It was an unseemly sight, but the proprieties had been left ages ago, with the tea-party at Amritsar Station, fifteen hundred miles to ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... by a violation of etiquette, matters of mere life and death are not at all of a nature to disturb its tranquillity. There, everything is a matter of routine and propriety; and, to judge from experience, nothing is so unseemly as to appear to possess human sympathies. The fact is not very different at Leaphigh, for the monikin sympathies, apparently, are quite as obtuse as those of men; although justice compels me to allow, that in the ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... historians, with that amazement which they always show when they find a man behaving like a gentleman towards a woman confided to his honour, all pause with deep-drawn breath to note that the awe of Jeanne's absolute purity preserved her from any unseemly overture, or even evil thought, on the part of her companions. We need not take up even the shadow of so grave a censure upon Frenchmen in general, although in the far distance of the fifteenth century. ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... envoy from the President, with instructions to treat with Mexico on the basis of Slidell's proposals of 1845, arrived. Trist was a clerk in the Department of State, and Scott refused to recognize or have any relations with him. After much unseemly bickering and the conciliatory services of the British Minister to Mexico, the general and the envoy made peace, and negotiations were opened, only to be broken off by Santa Anna upon his arrival from the north. On August 19 and ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... of your own selection or voice thoughts of your own thinking is to invite unseemly mirth, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... of death was voted; and Cicero, with unseemly haste, caused the conspirators to be strangled that same night (December 5, 63). The suppression of the conspiracy in the city was followed by the defeat of the army in Etruria. Thither Catiline had fled, and there he fell fighting with desperate courage at the head ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... controversy, irritating in manners, indiscreet, and lacking flexibility in the management of men. The messages which he wrote as President were dignified and judicious, and his addresses were not lacking in power, but he was prone to indulge in unseemly repartee with his hearers when speaking on the stump. He exchanged epithets with bystanders who were all too ready to spur him on with their "Give it to 'em, Andy!" and "Bully for you, Andy!" giving the presidency the "ill-savor of a corner grocery" and ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... water once more; but he was no mean conversational swimmer, and reached dry land without any unseemly floundering. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... and brought Arion out of his snug box, and wisped him and combed him, and blacked his shoes, and made him altogether lovely—a process to which the intelligent animal was inclined to take objection, the hour being unseemly and unusual. Poor Bates sighed over his task, and brushed away more than one silent tear with the back of the dandy-brush. It was kind of Miss Violet to think about getting him a place; but he had no heart for going into a new service. He would rather have taken a room in one of the Beechdale ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... surrounded the Abercorn hotel, and the constable, going to the door, called loudly to Mr. Jenne, the proprietor, who was doubtless in the land of dreams. Mr. Jenne, who appeared to be somewhat suspicious, was loath to open his house at that unseemly hour, and demanded his visitor's name; but the constable, giving a fictitious name, enquired for John Howarth, and when that individual made his appearance, he was at once arrested in the name of the Queen. Seeing the people outside, neither he nor Mr. Jenne dared resist, and, ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... to. At dawn it was restored to its natural shape, and the monks, one and all, were startled out of their senses to find themselves in the presence of a stern and awesome dignitary of the Church, who immediately began to lecture the Abbot for his unseemly conduct the previous day, ordering him to undergo such penance as eventually, robbing him of half his size and all his self-importance, led to ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... the last election, but because I come from Colorado I am considered an authority on woman suffrage, and when I say it's no good, and swell out my chest and look gloomy, it has great weight, great weight!" He leaned back in his chair and gave way to unseemly mirth as he recalled some occasion on which he had evidently hoaxed ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... himself, and not his correspondent, Hall Stevenson, was "quadraginta et plus annos natus," has referred it to an earlier date. The point, however, is of no great importance, as the untranslatable passage in the letter would be little less unseemly in 1754 or 1755 than in 1768, at the beginning of which year, since the letter is addressed from London to Hall Stevenson, then in Yorkshire, it must, in ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... and met me at the hall door, where he burst into unseemly laughter. I suppose at the expression of dismay which must have been written upon my countenance. He seized me by both hands ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... he cried angrily, "for ye are drunk with your own sacrifice, and ye defile God's temple with unseemly cries. Behold this man—can ye tell me whether he be indeed a prophet?" Darius, whose anger was fast taking the place of the awe he had felt when he first saw Zoroaster beside him, strode a step forward, with his hand upon his sword-hilt, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Mahon and Helen had firmly expressed their intention of retiring; the hour, they agreed, was unseemly, when now weeks of almost unbroken association stretched ahead of them. Yet for the fifth time they had failed to ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... book is divided into chapters which are arranged alphabetically by subject, with the exception of the seventh book, consisting of amatory epigrams, which is not subdivided. In a prefatory note to this book he says he has omitted all indecent or unseemly epigrams, {polla en to antigrapso onta}. This {antograpso} was the Anthology of Cephalas. The contents of the different ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... had all your long journeys for nothing, my learned friends, and a very good joke too;" at which the Regius Professor of Physiology burst into a roar of laughter and slapped his thigh in a highly indecorous fashion. The audience were so enraged at this unseemly behaviour on the part of their host, that there might have been a considerable disturbance, had it not been for the judicious interference of young Fritz von Hartmann, who had now recovered from his lethargy. Stepping to the front of the platform, the young man apologised ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... promises upon the sycophants and flatterers by whom she was surrounded. The infatuation of the King, whose passion for his arrogant mistress appeared to increase with time, tended, as a natural consequence, to encourage these unseemly demonstrations; nor did the friends of the exiled Queen fail to render her cognizant of every extravagance committed by the woman who aspired to become her successor; upon which Marguerite, who, morally fallen as she was in her own person, had never ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... This unseemly mockery did not do the assailant any good, but lessened the effect of the spell which lay on Timar, who began to recover from his stupefaction, and to recollect that he had to deal with a condemned man who was really in mortal ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... the squaw, and she held up the tabby-striped arums. Very mingled feelings seemed to have been working in Alister's mind, but his respect for the fruits of education was stronger even than his sense of propriety. He forgot to scold Dennis for his unseemly familiarity with a stranger, he was so anxious to know in what ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... is most unseemly," said Lois Henry, looking at her in surprise. "If thou art indulged in such tempers at Madam Wetherill's, it is high time thou went where there is some decent discipline. I am ashamed of thee. And yet it is more the fault of those who have been ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... and a half had passed when Mr. Middleton finished. Mr. Augustus Brockelsby still sat in the revolving chair, but he was no longer disturbing the air with his unseemly grunts. He was, in fact, absolutely silent, absolutely still. The keenest touch could feel no pulsation in his wrist, the keenest eye could detect no agitation of his chest, the keenest ear could hear no beating from ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis |
