"Unvarnished" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the plain, unvarnished manner in which the question was put; perhaps it was the intent gaze with which Mr. Huntley regarded him; but, certain it is, that the flush on Hamish's face deepened to crimson, and he turned it from Mr. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in which Mr. Kipling is at this moment the chief professor. There is moreover a manifest affinity between these short prose narratives and the strain of racy strenuous versification upon the quaint unvarnished notions and hardy exploits of the bush, the prairie, or the frontier, by which Bret Harte, Lindsay Gordon, and again Kipling have attained celebrity. As these poems echo the far-off ring of the ancient ballad, so we may venture to surmise that the short prose story ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... opportunity I ever had of distinguishing myself in the active service of my country in this way as a soldier, and as a volunteer yeomanry cavalry man too, I must entreat the indulgence and particular attention of the gentle reader, while I give a faithful narrative, an unvarnished tale, of the whole affair. This being the solitary instance in which I was called into the field of battle while I was in the service, I must entreat those who do me the honour to read my Memoirs, to extend their forgiveness to me if I should prove ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... been tempted to romance in any form; never but once had sentiment interfered with a passionless transfer of scientific notes to the sanctuary of the unvarnished note-book or the cloister of the juiceless monograph. Nor have I the slightest approach to that superficial and doubtful quality known as literary skill. Once, however, as I sat alone in the middle of the floor, classifying my ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... as a plain, unvarnished truth that this accomplished and semi-historical personage raced a horse of his own, which turns out now to have been the famous Rainbow, an animal of such marvellous speed, courage, and endurance that as many legends are current about him as of Dick Turpin's well-known ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... to themselves, As the public have never had more than one-third of the Nights, and that translated indifferently, we will see what we can do. "We agreed," says Burton, "to collaborate and produce a full, complete, unvarnished, uncastrated, copy of the great original, my friend taking the prose and I the metrical part; and we corresponded upon the subject for years." [149] They told each other that, having completed their task, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... true man, is both unreasonable and uncharitable. Nor, I think, will that reader grasp the way to see the truth who cannot teach himself what has in Cicero's case, been the effect of daring to tell to his friend an unvarnished tale. When with us some poor thought does make its way across our minds, we do not sit down and write it to another, nor, if we did, would an immortality be awarded to the letter. If one of us were to lose his all—as Cicero lost his all when he was sent into exile—I think ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... fail to trace in the foregoing unvarnished account of our subject's ancestry and environment many of the factors which have contributed to the unique success he has attained as a writer. Nor can he fail to trace a certain likeness, of which our author seems ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... I assure you I neither magnify nor embellish. I am merely stating unvarnished facts, that you may thoroughly understand into what fertile soil your scattered grains of learning fall. I promise you, with moderate cultivation ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... which do not end with making this world a comfortable place—though we have not even managed that for the majority of men—feel quite at ease, say, after an unflinching survey of our present system of State punishment? Or after reading the unvarnished record of our dealings with the problem of Indian immigration into Africa? Or after considering the inner nature of international diplomacy and finance? Or even, to come nearer home, after a stroll through ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... Besides, he was sure that such an effort would be futile, for she would detect his hollowness at once, and he feared a glance of scorn from her blue eyes more than the lightning of heaven. He resolved to leave the Lake House on Monday, and from New York write to Miss Burton the unvarnished truth, assuring her that he knew himself to be unworthy even to speak to her again. Then, as soon as he could complete his preparations, he would go abroad and give ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... and Thor, must surely have presented rare attractions to the enterprising traveler before it became a beaten track for modern tourists. A simple narrative of facts was then sufficient to enlist attention. Even the unlearned adventurer could obtain a reputation by an unvarnished recital of what he saw and heard. He could describe the Logberg upon which the republican Parliament held its sittings, and attest from personal observation that this was the exact spot where judgments ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... found it difficult to get any further; he knew himself that all he was about to describe was plain, unvarnished fact—but how would it strike a stranger's ear? He found himself seeking ways in which to tone down the glaring improbability of the thing as much as possible, but in vain; "I don't know how I shall ever get it all out," he told himself at last; "if I think about it much longer I shall begin ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... realism. The poet revels in enumerating the good things the men had to eat at the feast of Saint Nicholas; he describes with a wealth of vocabulary and a flood of technical terms quite bewildering every sort of boat, and all its parts with their uses; he reproduces the talk of the boatmen, leaving unvarnished their ignorance and superstition, their roughness and brutality; he describes their appearance, their long hair and large earrings; he explains the manner of guiding the boats down the swirling, treacherous waters, amid the dangers of shoals and hidden rocks; he describes all ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... material and language, necessary, or they would not go to the limit in expense for printing and mailing, as they do. But from the point of view of the gardener, and especially of the beginner, it is to be regretted that we cannot have the plain unvarnished truth about varieties, for surely the good ones are good enough to use up all the legitimate adjectives upon which seedsmen would care to pay postage. But such is not the case. Every season sees the introduction of literally hundreds of new varieties—or, as is ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... The plain unvarnished tale of the travel in Midian, undertaken by the second Expedition, which, like the first, owes all to the liberality and the foresight of his Highness Ismail I., Khediv of Egypt, forms the subject of these volumes. During the four ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Walter's first instance is from Causes Celebres, (vol. xii., La Haye, 1749, Amsterdam, 1775, p. 247). Unluckily the narrator, in this collection, is an esprit fort, and is assiduous in attempts to display his wit. We have not a plain unvarnished tale, but something more like a facetious leading article based on ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... The plain and unvarnished truth is that at the beginning of this, the twentieth century, when Germany is the supreme political and commercial Power on the Continent of Europe, the study of German is steadily going back in the United Kingdom. In some parts ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... to remember, Garth, that every word I write, is the simple unvarnished truth. If you look back over your remembrance of me, you will admit that I am not naturally an untruthful person, nor did I ever take easily to prevarication. But, Garth, I told you one lie; and that fatal exception proves the rule of ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... Cossacks who drag the steamer off the sand-banks, and are often entertaining companions. Many of them can relate from their own experience, in plain, unvarnished style, stirring episodes of irregular warfare, and if they happen to be in a communicative mood they may divulge a few secrets regarding their simple, primitive commissariat system. Whether they are confidential or not, the traveller ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... impulses and large hearts; with boys who delight in playing pranks, and who are ever ready for any sort of mischief; and with boys in whom human nature is strongly engrafted. They are boys, as many of us have been; boys in the true, unvarnished sense of the word; boys with hopes, ideas, and inspirations, but lacking in judgment, self-control, and discipline. And the book contains an appropriate moral, teaches many a lesson, and presents many ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... disentangle the twain would be idle indeed. The passages where she is most insistent upon the due sequence of events, most detailed in observation are not impossibly purely fictional, the incidents related without stress or emphatic assertions are probably enough the plain unvarnished happenings as she witnessed them. That the history is mainly true admits of little question; that Mrs. Behn has heightened and coloured ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... nonsense, but unvarnished truth. I might have been saved easily enough, and Mr. Ferrars need have suffered no inconvenience save a wetting, but for my own fault; for he was there long before the water reached the place where I ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... may be those who will object that the plain, unvarnished tale of my friend "Hy" Smith, which follows, is lacking in the robust qualities that truth alone can bring; to them I recommend the attitude of the Injun. But I must add this: Heaven forbid that I should have to stand good for any of Hy's stories! Still, some of what ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... not a grand funeral by any means and I think it would have broken Helen's heart to see the plain unvarnished coffin which her poor father's remains were ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... too pleased at their copying my beard. If there were any use in their noise, if the talking did any good to the public, I should not have a word to say against them: but, to tell you the plain unvarnished truth, I have more than once looked out from my peep-hole ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... my aim has been to present an unvarnished tale of the circumstances—extending over nearly half a century—which have brought about the present crisis in South Africa. Consequently, it has been necessary to collate the opinions of the best authorities on the subject. My acknowledgments are due to the distinguished ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... the praise she received, since she really earned it. She sowed the seeds, and it was only right that she should reap the fruit. And of all the praises that were heaped upon her none equalled the simple unvarnished story of her own deed. To describe her exploit, with no word of comment, was to load her with commendation of the highest kind. And it is well indeed when that can be said of any woman—which is always the case when her life is right. On the whole, even now people get pretty much what they deserve. ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... his cheek, his speech will alter and be broken, and he will feel himself unable to turn it off lightly, as a thing of no impression and validity. In this way the erroneous man, the man nursed in the house of luxury, a stranger to the genuine, unvarnished state of things, stands a fair ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... almost night when we joined our family; and endless were the questions the sight of the buffalo produced, and great was the boasting of Jack the dauntless. I was compelled to lower his pride a little by an unvarnished statement, though I gave him much credit for his coolness and resolution; and, supper-time arriving, my wife had time to tell me what had passed while we had been ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night—of the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told, in her own quiet way a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rabidly devoured the ideal;—I pronounced ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Buddhist accounts with the wildest legends, on which the very thoughts passing through the mind of Buddha appear in gorgeous descriptions as angels of darkness or of light. To us, now taught by the experiences of centuries how weak such exaggerations are compared with the effect of a plain unvarnished tale, these legends may appear childish or absurd, but they have a depth of meaning to those who strive to read between the lines of such rude and inarticulate attempts to describe the indescribable. That which (the previous and subsequent career of the teacher being borne ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... heavy flop." It seems odd that Mr. John Burns could say of this sensitive and capricious man of genius, as we find him saying in Mr. Compton-Rickett's book, that "William Morris was a chunk of humanity in the rough; he was a piece of good, strong, unvarnished oak—nothing of the elm about him." But we can forgive Mr. Burns's imperfect judgment in gratitude for the ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... we see? There are a number of prosperous foreign colonies living in London now, most of whose leading members maintain business or social relations, more or less active, with one or another section of the English population of the great British metropolis. Perhaps, if we could get a plain, unvarnished account from some member of one of these colonies, of England and English life as they appear to him and to his compatriots, Englishmen might be as much confounded as I have known very intelligent and well-informed Frenchmen to be, by the notions of French life and of the condition of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... but conquests nevertheless. These were the plain facts. Now the practical question was this: Was the treaty to be drafted on the basis of the existing state of possession or on the basis of the status before the war? The British note stated their case in plain unvarnished fashion; it insisted on the status uti possidetis—the possession of territory won ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... shadow of the Censor, German or English, still looms over the pages here and there, blotting out the sensational episodes which we felt we had reason, if not right, to expect; and if their absence is really due to Mr. O'RORKE'S steady refusal to indulge us by embellishing his almost too unvarnished recital the effect is just the same. Or perhaps the suggestion of flatness is to be ascribed to the enemy's failure on the whole to treat certain of his victims in any very extraordinary manner, and if so we can accept it and be thankful. There are lots of interesting passages ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... have said, and he was hanging him. Nor was it possible to see his lordship, and acquit him of gusto in the task. It was plain he gloried in the exercise of his trained faculties, in the clear sight which pierced at once into the joint of fact, in the rude, unvarnished gibes with which he demolished every figment of defence. He took his ease and jested, unbending in that solemn place with some of the freedom of the tavern; and the rag of man with the flannel round his neck was hunted ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unvarnished truths had cropped up in the course of the last round of my Aunt's Flower Garden; and the ladies were out of humor. Madame de Montparnasse, frigid, Cyclopian, black as Erebus, found that it was time to go home; ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... failed to produce an attractive and interesting work, with such a subject. There never was a life which stood less in need of the embellishments of rhetoric, which could rest more confidently and securely upon its plain, unvarnished truth, than that of Count Cavour. He was a man of the highest order of greatness; and when we have said that, we have also said that he was a man of simplicity, directness, and transparency. A man of the first class is always easily interpreted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... hopelessly lost, as the handsome, smiling, accomplished, popular, viceless Greek, Tito Melema. Yet is he the very reverse of what is called a monster of iniquity. That which gives its deep and awful power to the picture is its simple, unstrained, unvarnished truthfulness. He knows little of himself who does not recognise as existent within himself, and as always battling for supremacy there, that principle of evil which, accepted by Tito as his life-law, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... statement so unimpassioned. It was because I wanted to satisfy myself that I was acting alone for Penelope's good and disclosing the truth, uncolored, for her to judge. Slowly I told it all, in a dry, unvarnished sequence of facts. I told him of my visit to O'Corrigan's; of the fight and my interference; of my hours with his brother and his account of his wanderings and trials; of my vain plea to bring him back to Penelope and his refusal to surrender his search ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... love you as my cousin, love you somewhat as I love Uncle Eric, love you as the sole young relative left to me, as the only companion of my lonely childhood; but other love than this I never had, never can have for you. Hugh, my cousin, look fearlessly at the unvarnished truth; neither you nor I have one spark of that affection which ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... glad these delightful pages have not been marred by discussion of the causes or conduct of the great struggle between the States. There is no theorizing or special pleading to distract our attention from the unvarnished story of ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... face turned rosier. He was not used among his docile Canadians to any such speech as this. The unvarnished fashions of New England ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... electro-plater, and should be applied to by his companions in the shop in all emergencies under the name of the "Encyclopaedia." Suppose a long procession of such cases, and then consider that these are not suppositions at all, but are plain, unvarnished facts, culminating in the one special and significant fact that, with a single solitary exception, every one of the institution's industrial students who have taken its prizes within ten years, have since climbed to higher situations in their ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... there were six tiny little bedrooms divided from one another by plain unvarnished partitions of pine. A wooden bedstead, a mattress, and a chair, stood in each room, but I only found two mirrors, and one of ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... reached, I think, when I left off my plain unvarnished tale and took to maundering, that precise point in it which exhibits Roger in the act of replacing his hat upon his even then slightly greyish head and striding on. It seems to me that he would not have checked in his stride if the woman had replied ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... its simplicity and its frank statement of facts. Dana apparently did not invent anything, but depicted real men, men he had intimately known for two years, calling them even by their own names, and giving an unvarnished account of what they did and said. He never hung back from work or shirked his duty, but "roughed it" to the very end. As a result of these experiences, this book is the only one that gives any true idea of the sailor's life. Sea stories generally ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... quite done with his unvarnished tale, and when Mr. Smoothbore had given him a parting nod in sign that he had done with him, Sergeant Balais rose, for the first time, with an uplifted finger, as though, but for that signal of delay, the honest landlord would have fled incontinently, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... proceeding, by which they are briefly informed of the charge which is brought against the accused. The leading counsel for the crown then lays the facts of the case before the jury, in a plain unvarnished statement; no appeal is made to the passions or prejudices of the twelve men, who are to pronounce upon the guilt or innocence of the accused; but every topic, every observation, which might warp their judgment, or direct their attention ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... so unnatural-like in the proceeding," observed the old gentleman, after Rolf had given him a true, unvarnished account of the affair. "He's a handsome gallant, and she's a very fine lassie, there's no denying that; but at the same time, God's blessing does not alight on marriages contracted without the parent's consent; and it's my opinion that Miss Wardhill should have ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... purgatory to be shortened by prescribed devotions. It merely gives the real world an ideal status and teaches men to accept a natural life on supernatural grounds. The consequence is that the most pious can give an unvarnished description of things. Even immortality and the idea of God are submitted, in liberal circles, to scientific treatment. On the other hand, it would be hard to conceive a more inveterate obsession than that which keeps the attitude of these same minds inappropriate ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... from the false in the various accounts which have been published of this love-drama. George Sand's version may be read in her Lettres d'un Voyageur and in Elle et Lui; Alfred de Musset's version in his brother Paul's book Lui et Elle. Neither of these versions, however, is a plain, unvarnished tale. Paul de Musset seems to keep on the whole nearer the truth, but he too cannot be altogether acquitted of the charge of exaggeration. Rather than believe that by the bedside of her lover, whom she thought unconscious ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... aforetime counsellor," added Hendrickson, "you have the unvarnished story. A stern necessity drew around each of us bands of iron. Yet we have been true to ourselves—and that means true to honor. But now the darker features of the case are changed. She is no longer the wife of Leon Dexter. The law has shattered every link of the ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... the most part they are full of local colour, and, correctly speaking, represent rather rapid sketches illustrative of life in the bush than tales in the ordinary sense of the word. . . . They bear the impress of truth, sincere if unvarnished." ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... two; but it must be remembered that he was writing long after the time he mentions, and that his recollections were no doubt somewhat mellowed by Jane Austen's subsequent fame; whereas Philadelphia Walter's is an unvarnished contemporary criticism—the impression made by Jane on a girl a ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... Chauxville," he said, without lookup, "your epigrams are lost on me. I know most of them. I have heard them before. If you have anything to tell me about Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, for Heaven's sake tell it to me quite plainly. I like plain dishes and unvarnished stories. I am a German, you know; that is to say, a person with a dull palate ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... rationally calculate upon speedy wealth or preferment." A sad lesson, to be sure, for one so young to learn so thoroughly. Perhaps some reader will say that this was cynical, the result of disappointment. But it was not cynical, neither was it the result of disappointment. It was unvarnished truth, and more's the pity, but truth it was none the less. It was one of those hard facts, which he of all men, needed to know at the threshold of his experience with the world. Such a revelation proves disastrous to the many ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... honestly believe that the extraordinary features of my own life-romance are as strange as, if not stranger than, any hitherto recorded. Even my worst enemy could not dub me egotistical, I think; and surely the facts I have set down here are plain and unvarnished, without any attempt at misleading the reader into believing that which is untrue. Mine is a plain chronicle of a chain of extraordinary circumstances which ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... that "sledge-hammer Saxon," that marvelously graphic picture of misery and bereavement, hard-headed, and hitherto hard hearted men were crying like children. Then came the rugged unvarnished statement shouted forth in ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... plain, unvarnished Yank who made his Pile in a Scrub Town situated midday between the Oats Belt and the Tall Timber. He was a large and sandy Mortal with a steel-trap Jaw and a cold glittering Eye. He made his first Stack a Dollar at a Time on straight Deals, but ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... to her, he would lose not an instant in broaching the important subject. He was happy to think he had a friend in the old lady. Perhaps she might bring about the desired interview. But although this thought was encouraging, he could not but tremble when he remembered the very plain and unvarnished way she had ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... earnestness after his boy. To me his manner was one of almost reverential courtesy; scarcely durst I ask him how he had left Laurie, but while the question was faltering on my tongue, Spira came out with it in round, unvarnished terms, saying, "Is our good Englishman ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... comment on these terrible stories, my dear friend, and tell them to you as nearly as possible in the perfectly plain unvarnished manner in which they are told to me. I do not wish to add to, or perhaps I ought to say take away from, the effect of such narrations by amplifying the simple horror and misery ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... serenade which had been planned to wile the gentle sleeper sweetly from her slumbers and to hail her natal day not a month before. That had been a graceful, sentimental recognition of a glad event; this was an unvarnished, well-nigh stern arousal to the world of grave business and anxious care, following the mournful announcement of a death—not a birth. From this day the Queen's heavy responsibilities and stringent obligations were to begin. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... was considered by his friends to be a cynic; and a French cynic is not without cruelty. He once told Wanda that he had seen men and women do much worse than throw their lives away, which was probably the unvarnished truth. But there must have been a weak spot in his cynicism. There always is a weak spot in the vice of the most vicious. For he sat alone in his room at the Hotel de l'Europe, at Warsaw, long into the night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and thinking thoughts which he would at ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... a plain, unvarnished tale," said Tom, "but it's one that ought to be told, and in this very spot. Perhaps you don't any of you know, that in Dr. Marks' school it's ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... the pure and classical poets of his mother tongue. It is quite ridiculous to see how the vanity of these Cockneys makes them overrate their own importance, even in the eyes of us, that have always expressed such plain unvarnished contempt for them, and who do feel for them all, a contempt too calm and profound, to admit of any admixture of any thing like anger or personal spleen. We should just as soon think of being wroth with vermin, independently ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... back to this mermaid," he began in a confidential voice, "what I say as I didn't claim to have saw. It happened this way and what I'm telling you, sonny, is the plain, unvarnished facts of the case, take 'em or leave 'em as you will. They happened and I'm here to tell the ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... hiding in newly-dug graves made to assist the flight of the living, not to entomb the dead—of lying in jungles and cypress-swamps while fierce men and baffled hounds were panting for his blood—of vicissitudes and perils more like the wild creations of some fevered dream than the plain and unvarnished reality: nothing of all this came before him to trouble his young hopes or cloud his ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... story. For the most part it is told exactly in his own words. You'll admit its truth when you have read it, for there isn't a line in it which will stretch your imagination a hair's breadth. It's the plain unvarnished tale of an average young man who joined the army because he considered it his duty—who fought for many months. That's why I am trying to record it; for if I tell it truly I shall have written the story of many thousands—I shall have written a ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... not satisfy the wretched Turk. Blood, lawless blood—a horrid Moloch, surmounting a grim company of torturers and executioners, and on the other side revelling in a thousand unconsenting women—this hideous image of brutal power and unvarnished lust is clearly indispensable to the Turk as incarnating the representative grandeur of his nation. With this ideal ever present to the Asiatic and Mohammedan mind, no wonder that even their religion needs the aid of the sword and bloodshed to ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... preclude all argument on this point. But we'll listen to the young woman, notwithstanding; she has a right to speak, and she shall speak. Did not your mother die in the woods? No hocus-pocus, miss, but the plain unvarnished truth." ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... the junior who has a facility for thinking an idea through and then expressing it comprehensively in clear, unvarnished phrases. Moreover, even when they are stilted in their own manner of expression, they will warm to the man whose style achieves strength through its ease and naturalness. They will quickly make note of any young officer who is making progress ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... part of the eighteenth century smoking had "gone out." In Mrs. Climenson's "Passages from the Diaries of Mrs. Lybbe Powys," we hear of a bundle of papers at Hardwick House, near Whitchurch, Oxon, which bears the unvarnished title "Dick's Debts." This Dick was a Captain Richard Powys who had a commission in the Guards, and died at the early age of twenty-six in the year 1768. This list of debts, it appears, gives "the most complete catalogue of the expenses ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... Empire. Here complete editions of Gargantuan compass; vast cyclopaedia copied by hand and running into thousands of volumes; essays dating from the time of dynasties now almost forgotten; woodblocks black with age crowded the endless unvarnished shelves. In an empire where scholarship has attained an untrammelled pedantry never dreamed of in the remote West, in a country where a perfect knowledge of the classics is respected by beggar and prince to such an extent that to attempt to convey ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the plain, unvarnished story of each day's work as much as they cared to send in at night, for the builders were now putting down four and five miles of road every working day. Such road building the world had never seen, and news of it now ran round the earth. At night these tireless story-tellers listened to the ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... which, like ours, is becoming sated with cleverness, it is a delight to read the unvarnished story of Champlain. In saying that the adjective is ever the enemy of the noun, Voltaire could not have levelled the shaft at him, for few writers have been more sparing in their use of adjectives or other glowing words. His love of the sea and of the forest was profound, but he is never ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... yet not much, to talk the colonel over. He did not go to see the house, and Esther did not press that he should; he took her report of it, which was an unvarnished one, and submitted himself to what seemed the inevitable. But his daughter knew that her task would have been harder if the colonel's imagination had had the assistance of his eyesight. She was sure that the move must be made, ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... unvarnished but unexaggerated picture of the actual state of Oude, with many remedial suggestions; but direct annexation formed no part of the policy which Sir William Sleeman recommended. To this measure he was strenuously opposed, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... address shook the hearts of the listeners, and before the first sentence was ended they were under the spell of a mighty magician. They stood hushed, awed, and melted, as the speaker enforced the solemn lesson of the hour, and brought home to them, in plain unvarnished terms, the duty which remained for them to do—to finish the work which the dead around them had given their lives to carry on. It was one of the briefest of the many speeches with which Lincoln had swayed the impulses and opinions ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... sympathetic feeling for that savage. For several reasons: in the first place he liked audacious, pushing fellows, lucky adventurers. Was he not one himself? And then the Nabob amused him; his accent, his unvarnished manners, his flattery, a trifle unblushing and impudent, gave him a respite from the everlasting conventionality of his surroundings, from that scourge of administrative and court ceremonial which he held in horror,—the conventional phrase,—in so great ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... customary attention to details, he saw that the nail was one of several which had fastened a narrow strip of molding around the cabinet. About two feet of this molding had been torn away, leaving the nails protruding from the cabinet and Tom noticed not only that the unvarnished strip which the molding had covered was clean and white, but that the exposed parts of ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... The two unvarnished braggarts followed the valorous Dona Gorja with their eyes; and then with a despicable gesture drew their knives across their sleeve as though wiping off the blood there might have been, sheathed them at one and the same time, ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... girl," he said, his hand held out. "I fear there's a good deal of the unvarnished brute ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... thus places facts before us in the natural order of their ascertainment, and narrates instead of enumerating. The story to be told leaves the marvels of imagination far behind, and requires no embellishment from literary art or high-flown phrases. Its best ornament is unvarnished truthfulness, and this, at least, may confidently be claimed to be bestowed upon it ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... February 21, 1900, a thrilling story was told, it being the official and unvarnished account of a disastrous hunting trip taken by five of the post soldiers, the dispassionate routine language but giving it verisimilitude; while the subsequent happenings serve to show what kind of government seems most to appeal to ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... creeping up into the higher circles. Every woman despises flat and unvarnished imprecations; but in the most elevated circles there are women who swear without knowing it. They have read Bulwer, and George Sand, and the exaggerated style of some of our imported as well as home-made periodical literature, until they do not actually ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... the king, in an imperious voice, "silence while I am speaking! I really feel sorry that you have compelled me to speak to you so plainly and unreservedly; but as you are always boasting of being a truthful man, I hare told you my opinion in unvarnished language, and will add that, if you should be unwilling to change your disrespectful conduct, the state cannot count very confidently of ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... (the name under which it then appeared) be issued in pamphlet form. Some donations were made, but not enough for that purpose. The noble effort of the ladies of New York and Brooklyn Oct. 5 have enabled me to comply with this request and give the world a true, unvarnished account of the causes of ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... (dress) negligxa. Untie malligi. Until gxis. Untimely antauxtempa, trofrua. Untiring senlacigxa. Untoward kontrauxa. Unto (prep.) al. Untrammeled libera. Untrue malvera. Unused neuzita. Unusual neordinara, malofta. Unvarnished (plain) simpla, neafektema. Unveil malkovri. Unwary malsingardema. Unwavering nesxanceligxa. Unwell malsana. Unwholesome malsana, malsaniga. Unwieldy multepeza, nemanregebla. Unwillingly kontrauxvole, malbonvole. Unwise malsagxa. Unwittingly ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... conscious preparation of young ladies bred up from childhood to sit behind tea-tables and say the right things to tea-drinkers. Association with the crude, outspoken youth at the State University had been an education in human nature, especially masculine nature, for her acute mind. Her unvarnished association with the other sex in classroom and campus had taught her, by means of certain rough knocks which more sheltered boarding-school girls never get, an accuracy of estimate as to the actual feeling of men towards the women they profess to admire unreservedly which (had he been ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... qualities, frankly, and untinged by bitterness. But it must be remembered, that Gen. Hooker has left himself on record as the author of many harsh reflections upon his subordinates; and that to mete out even justice to all requires unvarnished truth. ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... thing that took place and happened, I will proceed and relate the plain and unvarnished history of it. And what I set down in this epistol, you can depend upon. It is the plain truth, entirely unvarnished: not a mite of varnish ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... I thought this was not so accurate.'' This famine of conscience, this indifference to truth, does far-reaching damage in our profession. I assert that it does immensely greater harm than obvious falsehood, because, indeed, the unvarnished lie is much more easily discoverable than the probable truth which is still untruth. Moreover, lies come generally from people with regard to whom one is, for one reason or another, already cautious, while these insinuating approximations ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... trivial, since the human soul, with its awful shadow, makes all things sacred." So in writing a biography it is impossible for us to tell what did and what did not powerfully influence the character. It is safer simply to tell the unvarnished truth. The lily builds up its texture of delicate beauty from mould and decay. So how do we know from what humble material a soul ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... the chauffeur had not the slightest notion that he had conveyed a murderer to London when he began to tell his tale to his employer and the detectives. They wanted a plain, unvarnished story, and got it. On leaving the offices in Bishopsgate Street, Fenley asked to be driven to Gloucester Mansions, Shaftesbury Avenue. Tom had seen the last of him standing on the pavement, with a suitcase on the ground at his feet. He was ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... and other cases in which we are led to discern very primitive witness behind Acts, do not indeed give to such witness the value of shorthand notes or even of abstracts based thereon. But they do support the theory that our author meant to give an unvarnished account of such words and deeds as had come to his knowledge. The perspective of the whole is no doubt his own; and as his witnesses probably furnished but few hints for a continuous narrative, this perspective, especially in things chronological, may ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the Witches."] We could have dispensed with many of the flowers of rhetoric with which the pages of this discovery are strewed, if Master Potts would have favoured us with a plain, unvarnished account of what occurred at this execution. It is here, in the most interesting point of all, that his narrative, in other respects so full and abundant, stops short, and seems curtailed of its just proportions. The "learned and worthy preacher," ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... I, looking down upon my bleeding knuckles, "I am not Sir Maurice Vibart. It seems my fate to be mistaken for him wherever I go. My name is Peter, plain and unvarnished, and I am very humbly your servant." Now as I spoke, it seemed that the Daemon, no longer the jovial companion, was himself again, horns, hoof, and tail—nay, indeed, he seemed a thousand times more foul and hideous ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... not ape ornaments and indulge in bombast or rhodomontade which stamp a writer as not only superficial but silly. There is no room for such in the everyday newspaper. It wants facts stated in plain, unvarnished, unadorned language. True, you should read the best authors and, as far as possible, imitate their style, but don't try to literally copy them. Be yourself on every occasion—no ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... attainments of an exceptional order, there was a revulsion in her sentiments from all that she had formerly clung to in this kind: honesty, goodness, manliness, tenderness, devotion, for her only existed in their purity now in the breasts of unvarnished men; and here was one who had manifested them towards ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... arabs,' as he calls them. We fear Mr. Smith in prosecuting this good work of his is doomed to perform a serious act of disenchantment. The ideal Gipsy is destined to be scattered to the winds by the unvarnished picture which Mr. Smith will cause to be presented to our vision. He does not pretend to show us the romantic, fantastically-dressed creature whose prototypes have long been in the imaginations of many of us as types of the Gipsy species. Those of our readers who have formed their ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... God has sent His servants to rebuke sin, both in the world and in the church. But the people desire smooth things spoken to them, and the pure, unvarnished truth is not acceptable. Many reformers, in entering upon their work, determined to exercise great prudence in attacking the sins of the church and the nation. They hoped, by the example of a pure Christian life, to lead the people back to the doctrines of the Bible. But the Spirit of ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... journey to the landlord's, commenced, in her own way, a lecture upon agricultural economy, which, though plain and unvarnished, contained excellent and practical sense. She also pointed out to him when to speak and when to be silent; told him what rent to offer, and in what manner he should offer it; but she did all this so dexterously and sweetly, that honest Peter thought the new and corrected views which she furnished ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... himself with admirable clearness and truth to nature. His pride is so deep-rooted, his self-respect so great, that he respects all other dignitaries: the Senators are his "very noble and approved good masters." Every word weighed and effectual. Admirable, too, is the expression "round unvarnished tale." ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... unvarnished account of an Oriental battle might feel inclined to criticise Santa Coloma's tactics; for his men were, like the Arabs, horsemen and little else; they were, moreover, armed with lance and broadsword, weapons requiring a great deal of space to be used effectively. Yet, considering all the circumstances, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... and looked at me in a way that I could not misunderstand; it was plain, unvarnished scorn, and a ladylike anger, and a few other ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... The unvarnished and unbowspritted and unjib-boomed tale was pretty much as follows: Mr. Langenau had found himself in the middle of the river, when the storm came on. I am afraid he could not have been thinking very much about the clouds, not to have noticed that a storm was rising; though every one agreed that ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... some fleeting semblance of vitality by the extravaganza presented to it, for the language of hyperbole is the natural expression of Eastern thought, and penetrates into mental recesses unknown and unexplored by the relater of unvarnished facts. The quick response of the native mind to Nature's teaching, and the wealth of tradition woven round flower and tree, mountain and stream, foster the love of marvel and miracle in those whose ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... It must, however, be conceded that the kings themselves are fully aware of the tediousness of their dinner parties, and would lighten the boredom if they could; but etiquette forbids. The particular monarch whose humours are the subject of this 'plain unvarnished' history would have liked nothing better than to be allowed to dine in simplicity and peace without his conversation being noted, and without having a flunkey at hand to watch every morsel of food go into ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... plain, unvarnished human being when one sees him in a true light! Schulz's honest, kindly face seemed to me to typify all that I knew of the finer qualities of the Germans; the frugal simplicity, the tenderness, the proud, stiff rectitude. He ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... the wanness of his features, and the slightly wearied look he bore, were all imparting intelligence to me—the knowledge I craved for so much ever since I heard the words, 'Take what you want, but find Livingstone,' What I saw was deeply interesting intelligence to me and unvarnished truth. I was listening and reading at the same time. What did these dumb witnesses ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie |
