"Distasteful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... woman of that quality should be forced to accept a vocation at once so low, so distasteful, and so unremunerative. With her evident antecedents, had she no friends but this common Western night watchman of a bank? Had Roberts deceived him? Was his whole story a fabrication, and was there some complicity between the two? What was it? He ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... precisely what happened after that, but in some way this man found his daughter, and to-day she is living with him. As for my hopes of getting assistance from him, I lost them from the moment when I made my initial mistake of telling him something distasteful. The daughter hates me and I hate her. I have learned that she never ceases advising the old man against all schemes for investment except those bearing moderate interest and readily realized on. Dr. Burnham—I see you know him—has ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... and trusted himself wholly to his imagination. So may be seen the inspired schoolmaster who has beneath his hands the wretched verses of a dull pupil. For awhile he attempts to reduce to reason and prosody the futile efforts of the scholar, but anon he lays aside in disgust the distasteful task, and turning his eyes upwards to the Muse who has ever been faithful, he dashes off a few genial lines of warm poetry. The happy juvenile, with wondering pen, copies the work, and the parent's heart ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... detest them altogether; I wish the concoctors of the Cheltenham and Oxford, and the concoctors of every other scheme, including the solicitors and engineers, were at rest in Paradise. Gentlemen, I detest railroads; nothing is more distasteful to me than to hear the echo of our hills reverberating with the noise of hissing railroad engines, running through the heart of our hunting country, and destroying that noble sport to which I have been accustomed from my childhood." And at Tewkesbury, one speaker contended that "any ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... state in which, at that time, he took any active interest. Subsequently, as you know, he became interested in the divorce laws, and the various methods whereby a man, especially a king, might rid himself of a distasteful wife; and after he saw the truth in Anne Boleyn's eyes, he adopted a combined policy of church and state craft that has brought us a deal of senseless trouble ever since—and is ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... show an eager anticipation for the future as planned for him. A life devoted to business was to him a selfish one. Something within him was insistently calling him to a higher vocation; although apparently acquiescing to his father's plans, the prospect daily became more and more distasteful to him. ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... keen psychologist, and he perceived clearly enough that Phil Abingdon was one of those women in whom a certain latent perversity is fanned to life by opposition. Whether she was really attracted by Ormuz Khan or whether she suffered his attentions merely because she knew them to be distasteful to others, he ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... by one Power, must be submitted to the Congress if the examination was not to prove illusory. This was a just line of argument. Nevertheless it was natural to suppose that some parts of the Treaty must be more distasteful than others to Great Britain; and Count Schouvaloff, who was sincerely desirous of peace, applied himself to the task of discovering with what concessions Lord Beaconsfield's Cabinet would be satisfied. He found that if Russia would consent to modifications of the Treaty in Congress excluding ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... to fashionable congregations, are distasteful to most readers, and in no very high favor with us. A deep interest in the welfare of South Carolina, and the high esteem in which we held the better, and more sensible class of her citizens, prompted us to sit down ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... company. Because of the prominence of the Shippens, it was thought that the gallant young French Officers, would be assigned to them. Marjorie rejoiced at this although the Shippen girls evinced no such sentiment. Whether it was because the French alliance was distasteful to them or because their Tory leanings took precedence, they preferred other guests for partners. But as the matter was to be decided by lot, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... Woodward would have willingly postponed the reading of Charley's story so as to enable Katie to go to bed after the accident, had she been able to do so. But she was not able to do so without an exercise of a species of authority which was distasteful to her, and which was very seldom heard, seen, or felt within the limits of Surbiton Cottage. It would moreover have been very ungracious to snub Charley's manuscript, just when Charley had made himself such ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... severely from American privateers, and she would be forced to help the South, at least to the extent of keeping Southern ports open. Finally, Lyons concluded, all of this letter and advice were extremely distasteful to him, yet he felt compelled to write it by the seriousness of the situation. Nevertheless, he would exert every effort and use ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... peculiarly distasteful to Harry under the circumstances, and I would not give him pain for the ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... is extremely distasteful to the employers because it is efficient; because it means a new order, a new system in the labor world in this country. The meaning of this can be gathered, in some measure, from the recent experiences in the steel strike of this country, where they acted as ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... young. Of late I've made deliberate effort to remain a fool; but a man has got to be a fool or a coward down to the very hard-pan of his soul if the logic of recent events has no effect on him. I don't think I am exactly a coward, but the restraint of army-life, and especially roughing it, is very distasteful. I kept thinking it would all soon be over, that more men were in now than were needed, and that it was a confounded disagreeable business, and all that. But my mind wasn't at rest; I wasn't satisfied with the ambitions of my callow youth; and, as usual when one is in trouble ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... written nothing, nor had he prepared or collected any material for future use. No thought of taking up authorship as a profession had entered his mind. Even the physical labor involved in the mere act of writing was itself distasteful. Unexpectedly, however, he now began a course of literary production that was to continue without abatement during the little more than thirty years which constituted ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... but not every teacher can make him learn. He will not work joyously unless he feels that liberty is his, whether he is busy or at rest; he must feel the flush of victory and the heart-sinking of disappointment before he takes with a will the tasks distasteful to him and resolves to dance his way bravely through a dull routine ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... taste. The hunting farmer of the old school generally rides in a chimney-pot hat; but, in this particular, the younger brethren of the plough are leaving their old habits, and running into caps, net hats, and other innovations which, I own, are somewhat distasteful to me. And there is, too, the ostentatious farmer, who rides in scarlet, signifying thereby that he subscribes his ten or fifteen guineas to the hunt fund. But here, in this paper, it is not of him I speak. He is a man who is so much less the farmer, in that he is the more ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... and he found it hard to distract his mind even for a moment from the thought of his misfortunes. Nothing but a strong mental effort in another direction could any longer fix his attention, and though any kind of work was for the present distasteful to him, it was at least a temporary relief from the ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... "Pen," he called across the room, "what about that drink?" The girl by him reached over and touched a bell. As she did so, Peter saw the curls that clustered on her neck and caught the perfume of her hair. It was penetrating and peculiar, but not distasteful, and it did all that it was meant to do. He bent, and kissed the back of her neck, ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... or in the influence of the French. There can be no doubt, however, that the rapid increase of duelling at this time was due to the fact that conditions were ripe for its reception. A spirit had been fostered by the life upon the plantation which made it distasteful to gentlemen to turn to law for redress for personal insults. The sense of dignity, of self reliance there engendered, made them feel that the only proper retaliation against an equal was to be found ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... to divine the other's inquiring disposition, though it had different effects on the elder and younger character. Jane Mohun suspected that she had on her ferret look, and guessed that Gillian's disgusted air meant that the idea of her turning over Lady Merrifield's drawers was almost as distasteful as that of the ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... uninviting to him as yet. The two lines of trestle-beds, with their unkempt occupants, were suggestive of—well, anything but congenial sleeping companions. The atmosphere was close and stuffy, and the yellow glimmer of the two oil-lamps, one stationed at each end of the room, gave the place a distasteful suggestion ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... not distasteful to me. It reminded me of days out hunting, when I have come suddenly upon him at the edge of the watercourse, and have shared his melons and his conversation. I anticipate for him some not unagreeable ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... moment. It would sound very absurd to the captain for him to say that there was a passenger on the ship whom he desired very much not to meet, and yet, after all, that was what made the thought of the voyage so distasteful to him. ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... decently sympathetic with the Reform movements in the Canadas. At the same time, Melbourne and his ministers were only too glad to ship him out of the country. There was no question of his great ability and statesmanlike outlook. But his advanced Radical views were distasteful to many of his former colleagues; and his arrogant manners, his lack of tact, and his love of pomp and circumstance made him unpopular even in his own party. The truth is that he was an excellent ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... the period embraced by the preceding chapter; except perhaps the marriage of Catharine, the young queen of Navarre, with Jean d'Albret, a French nobleman, whose extensive hereditary domains, in the southwest corner of France, lay adjacent to her kingdom. This connection was extremely distasteful to the Spanish sovereigns, and indeed to many of the Navarrese, who were desirous of the alliance with Castile. This was ultimately defeated by the queen-mother, an artful woman, who, being of the blood royal of France, was naturally disposed ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... sentiments except the tyrannical one which suddenly usurped the empire of her heart. She yielded to its influence, and the too natural consequence in a mind unattuned to soft emotions was, that the attentions of Adrian became distasteful to her. She grew capricious; her gentle conduct towards him was exchanged for asperity and repulsive coldness. When she perceived the wild or pathetic appeal of his expressive countenance, she would relent, and for a while resume her ancient kindness. But these fluctuations shook ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... husband found these observations distasteful. He waited till Sunday, and then told his wife to get dressed ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... Francis' son, Charles, who had caught the infection of plague while sleeping at Abbeville. Later the misalliance of the princess was cautiously touched upon. That lady, said Francis gravely, to whom the gaieties of the court at the present time could not fail to be distasteful, had left the chateau immediately upon her return. Ever of a devout mind, she had repaired to a convent and announced her intention of devoting herself, and her not inconsiderable fortune, to a higher and more spiritual life. Charles, who at ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... to Elsie's cheek, and her eyes beamed with pleasure. Mr. Dinsmore, too, looked very much gratified, and the old gentleman could not fail to perceive that the difference he made between the children was quite distasteful to both parents. ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... Chevalier, picking up his hat and thrusting his sword into its scabbard; "I dare say this moment is distasteful to us all." ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... her old friends, in possession of her old income. As regarded money, they would all be sufficiently well provided for. For himself, his fellowship and his prescribed stipend would be more than enough. But there was something in the proposition that was very distasteful to him. He did not begrudge the money to his mother; but he did begrudge her the right of having it from any one ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... run Cheery-looking apathy—not far removed perhaps from despair Contrivances that hold even the best of women together Could not cry! Detached, and perhaps sarcastic face Electors, who, finding uncertainty distasteful Excellent manners that have no mannerisms Faculty of not being bored with his own society Feeling of irritation which so rapidly attacks the old Few things that matter, but they matter very much Having that passion for work requiring ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... by leaving her name out of the discussion then," I interposed coldly. "Even her presence on board is distasteful under ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... ill-fitting uniform, Heaven knows how long she went on. I was distracted by a clergyman passing on the outside of the ring of listening women and children, and looking, I chose to think, somewhat sourly askance at the distasteful ceremonial. I wished to stop him, on his way to the Minster, if that was his way, and tell him that so Christianity must have begun, and so the latest form of it must always begin and work round after ages and ages to the beauty and respectability his own ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... St. George, edging his way toward the steps of the club as he spoke. He was now entirely through with Harding; his financial forebodings were as distasteful to him as his comments on his clothes ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... acquaintance, he got his prints, too, if he could. He believed that one's character was revealed in one's finger-prints, and he studied them very carefully. It was a sort of hobby; but it was, for some reason, distasteful to Senor Silva. He not only refused to allow prints to be made of his fingers, but he pooh-poohed my father's theories, and they used to have some terrific arguments about it. One night, after a particularly hot argument, Senor Silva made the assertion ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... the Alps would be greasy with being climbed. I think it is clear what he meant. To one who loves Nature for himself, has his own discovering eyes for her multiform and many-mooded beauty, it is distasteful to have some excursionist effect of spectacular scenery labelled and thrust upon him with a showman's raptures; and, in revulsion from the hypocritical admiration of the vulgar, he turns to the less obvious ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... doctor. But still he hesitated. His law practice, writing, lecturing, claimed part of him; his Sunday School work and lay preaching, a second and evergrowing stronger part. His law practice became more and more distasteful, his service to the soul needs of others, ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... humorous, or too ingenious, or too profound. Yet the English reader likes, or thinks he likes, eloquence; he has a keen sense of humour, and a fair appreciation of wit; and he would be much hurt if he were told that ingenuity and profundity were in themselves distasteful to him. How, then, to give him enough of these qualities to please and not enough to offend him—as much eloquence as will stir his emotions, but not enough to arouse his distrust; as much wit as will carry home the argument, but not enough ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... 'Sieur Matta,' he cried, 'do you suppose it can be any amusement to Monsieur le Comte to be plagued with your ill-timed jests? For my part, I am so weary of the game, that I swear by Jupiter I can scarcely play any more.' Nothing is more distasteful to a losing gamester than a hint of leaving off; so the Count entreated the Chevalier to continue, and assured him that 'Monsieur Matta might say what he pleased, for it did not give him the least uneasiness ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... in this volume of the progressive steps of his clerical education, beyond the intimation that it was wearisome and distasteful. Talleyrand disliked references to his ecclesiastical career. It had not been a respectable one; and if M. Colmache really got from him the stories which he tells in his book, we need not be surprised ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... her grave Dombey resolved to cast Mrs. Trotter off forever, and send her away from the city. He accordingly arranged with her to take an annual allowance and go to New York with her family, vowing that he could no longer endure her presence, which was grown distasteful to him. ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... mind of Berselius that Tirard was not talking to him. Tirard was talking to the man who was dead—the other Berselius. The new rifle for the army, which filled Tirard's conversation, would have been an interesting subject to the old Berselius; it was absolutely distasteful to the new. ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... were ever distasteful; she had but one philosophy, which was 'to bear up well,' and when, not that, 'as well as you could.' She saw scores of things around her to be remedied, or, at least, bettered, by a little exertion, and not one which could be helped by a vain regret. For the loss of that old barbaric splendour and ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... said. "You may be subpoenaed. If you know nothing, you can tell nothing. If you know about the business, you might tell something which would ruin us." The mere presence of a stranger has always been distasteful to him. The custom of espionage has made him suspect that others are as watchful as himself. He has been described erroneously as a master of complicated villainy. He is, for evil or for good, the most single-minded ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... principles of his favorite arts. This new pursuit proved so congenial to his taste, that from thenceforward his medical books were entirely neglected. The elder Galilei, a man of liberal acquirements and enlarged mind, did not require the devotion of his son's life to a distasteful pursuit. Fortunately the young man's talents attracted notice, and in 1589 he was appointed mathematical lecturer in the University of Pisa. There is reason to believe that, at an early period of his studentship, he embraced, upon inquiry and conviction, the doctrines ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... unintelligent recruit is transmuted into the precious metal of the soldier who wins battles seems to be somewhat as follows: Of his own volition he has taken on a certain job and his dogged pride or obstinacy will not allow him to be beaten by it, however little enthusiasm it may arouse in him and however distasteful it may be to him at first. He offers no "ca' canny" service, but plods on and does his best in his own way. The lack of the enthusiastic temperament does not seriously retard the progress of his military education, and without much ado he ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... of thinking about Knox which may be called platonically Puritan. Sweet enthusiasts glide swiftly over all in the Reformer that is specially distasteful to us. I find myself more in harmony with the outspoken Hallam, Dr. Joseph Robertson, David Hume, and the Edinburgh reviewer of 1816, than with several ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... of that," I replied. "But it is a woman's privilege to repel those attentions if distasteful to her. You seem disinclined to accord ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... to make science pleasant and attractive, and every lesson which he gives in the use of pure, correct English, free from exaggeration, from slang, and from mannerism, goes far to render such miserable and pernicious trash distasteful even to ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... permission, there was no lack in our five steerages and second cabin; and he avoided the rough and positive with a girlish shrinking. Mackay, partly from his superior powers of mind, which rendered him incomprehensible, partly from his extreme opinions, was especially distasteful to the Irishman. I have seen him slink off with backward looks of terror and offended delicacy, while the other, in his witty, ugly way, had been professing hostility to God, and an extreme theatrical readiness to be shipwrecked on the spot. These utterances ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the two others, impatient and curious. It was easy to see how distasteful the conversation was to the Marchese Loria. He answered Sir Roger's questions only by an effort; and as for her cousin, even he was moved out of the imperturbable sang-froid which sometimes pleased, sometimes irritated Virginia, according ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... house, however. There are a few European ones, scattered about the Tartar City, looking so out of place, so insignificant and ugly! The foreigners who live here a long time seem to like them, however. They tell us that after a time China gets on one's nerves. Chinese things become utterly distasteful, and one becomes so sick of Chinese art and architecture and furniture that one must approximate a home like those of one's own country. Therefore there are a certain number of these "foreign-style" houses to be found, furnished with golden oak furniture, ugly and commonplace to a degree. ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... ghosts are often represented as "all loath to leave the body that they love," they are generally quite as loath to return to it, when once they have left it, though whether it is the process of returning or the continuance of a life which they have left that is distasteful to them is not very clear. The painfulness of the process of restoration to life after drowning seems to favour the ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... had no absolute authority which could enforce obedience on a creature at once so stubborn and so volatile. So she made no further opposition, fearing that anything like violent measures might prove distasteful to ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... was drawing on Mark Waring to talk about his daily life—sympathizing with him about his hard, distasteful work, and pitying his loneliness, she never guessed how her words were being branded, one by one, on the earnest, steadfast heart, that her own lofty nature was not worthy to understand. In a week after their first ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... of the Telegraph alien and distasteful. There all was different; the men had little joy in their work, little interest in it, save perhaps the newspaper man's inborn love of a good story or a beat. They were all cynical, without loyalty or faith; they secretly made fun of the Telegraph, of its ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... flowers, and I saw a great and horrible black gulf underneath, and that one false step should cast me down therein. Nor will any thing comfort me, at those times, but to talk with my Protection, that can alway dispel the gloom. But the things around, that I have been bred up in, do grow more and more distasteful unto me ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... the followers of individual branches of study. The Divinity, for example, must be an avowed believer; and as this, in the present day, is unhappily considered by many as a confession of weakness, he is fain to choose one of two ways of gilding the distasteful orthodox bolus. Some swallow it in a thin jelly of metaphysics; for it is even a credit to believe in God on the evidence of some crack-jaw philosopher, although it is a decided slur to believe in Him on His own ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is cold, haughty, and formal; and this attitude is repaid, with interest, in scorn and hatred. There is no concealing the fact that to the mild Gentoo the Eurasian is a very distasteful object. ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... Cowgate with a motley assortment of pallbearers. There was a good-tempered Irish laborer from a near-by brewery; a decayed gentleman, unsteady of gait and blear-eyed, in greasy frock-coat and broken hat; a flashily dressed bartender who found the task distasteful; a stout, bent-backed fagot-carrier; a drunken fisherman from New Haven, suddenly sobered by this uncanny duty, and a furtive, gaol-bleached thief who feared a trap and ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... missionary may not be able to see it for a long time, but if he everlastingly keeps at it, he will surely find that, after a few years, familiarity has made the difficult easy. Most people will find, as well, that it has even made the distasteful pleasant! ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... their zeal for the established faith with all the warmth of persecution. To the Germans national freedom was of wholly minor moment, in comparison with the freedom of the soul; the orthodoxy of England was as distasteful to the disciples of Luther as the orthodoxy of Rome—and the interests of Europe were sacrificed on both sides to this foolish and fatal disunion. Circumstances indeed would not permit the division to remain in its first intensity, and their common ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... aunt, of course, is a Frenchwoman; she has different ideas. But you, I can't believe that you care for this society, for people like Kronopolski and—and Rainham. Oh, it hurts me, and I imagine how distasteful it must be to you, that you must suffer these people. I want to take you away from ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... and destroy their unworthy efforts. For this reason Blucher, with his heroic soul, is as much an eyesore to them as Stein, with his plans of liberation and his energetic action for constitutional reform. One wishes to create a new Prussia, the other a new state, and both these ideas are utterly distasteful to some, for they cling to the rotten old system, and new ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... States. He couldn't kill the man in cold blood, justly as he may have deserved the fate, and the thought of causing his arrest and dragging his own name into the publicity of court proceedings was little less distasteful to him. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... breakfast in good spirits. He saw a way out of his difficulties. Though he had no false pride, he felt that a blacksmith's life would be distasteful to him. He was fond of study, and had looked forward to a college course. Now this was out of the question. It seemed that he was as poor as his friend, Dan Clark, with his own way to make in the world. When he left school, at the beginning ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... the rehearsals as well. Yet these educative impressions tended to make me feel ever more and more dissatisfied with my work at the theatre. On the one hand, the members of the company became gradually more distasteful to me, and on the other I was growing discontented with the management. With regard to the staff of the theatre, I very soon found out the hollowness, vanity, and the impudent selfishness of this uncultured and undisciplined class of people, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... to her mother about the Prince to avoid talking to me. Her face was burning, and, in order to conceal her agitation, she bent over the table as if she were short-sighted and made a show of reading the newspaper. My presence was distasteful to her. I took my ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... down the grocery bill, though I insisted on feeding the horses even better than before. It is never economy to stint one's working cattle, especially when one demands the utmost from them, besides being a procedure which is distasteful to any merciful man. However, though we had to hire more horses, wondering how we would ever pay for them when the contract was finished, the track crept on along the treacherous slope, where we ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... of the counting-house in comparison with the sea was so distasteful to him that I was anxious whenever he went out alone, or even with Griffith, who despised the notion of, as he said, sitting on a high stool, dealing in tea, so much that he was quite capable of aiding ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scorched prairie. The round of unrelieved, monotonous labour. Farming; can mind of man conceive a life more deadly? No—no! I want to get away from it all; back to the life in which I was my own master, unfettered by duties and distasteful labours for which I am responsible to others. From the beginning my life has been a failure. But that was not originally my fault. I worked hard, and my ideals were sound and good. Then I met with misfortune. My life was my own to make or mar after that; what I chose to do with it was my own ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... written between 1766 and 1780; but they are the letters of an old woman, and they bear upon every page of them the traces of a mind to which the whole movement of contemporary life was profoundly distasteful. The new forces to which the eighteenth century gave birth in thought, in art, in sentiment, in action—which for us form its peculiar interest and its peculiar glory—were anathema to Madame du Deffand. In her ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... I had gone through these books, what was my state of mind? I had derived entertainment from their perusal, but they left me more listless and unsettled than before, and I really knew not what to do to pass my time. My philological studies had become distasteful, and I had never taken any pleasure in the duties of my profession. I sat behind my desk in a state of torpor, my mind almost as blank as the paper before me, on which I rarely traced a line. It was ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Dominique You, and his rabble of Baratarians, caused New Orleans a great deal of annoyance, but like many other doubtful characters, they have, since their death, become entirely picturesque, and the very idea that Lafitte was not a first-class blood-and-thunder pirate is as distasteful to the people of New Orleans to-day, as his being any kind of a near-pirate at all, used to be to their ancestors. Nevertheless Frank R. Stockton, who made a great specialty of pirates, says of Lafitte: "He never committed an act of piracy in his life; he was ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... first sense of injury had passed away, Fred felt as if he had been at fault to allow himself to be so easily overcome, and, distasteful as was the work in the breaker, he had fully resolved to remain and assert his ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... this most distasteful of subjects roused her to fury. A purple flush suffused her face, and her cheeks puffed in and ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... how close a parallel to classical training could be made out of that palaeontology to which I refer. In the first place I could get up an osteological primer so arid, so pedantic in its terminology, so altogether distasteful to the youthful mind, as to beat the recent famous production of the head-masters out of the field in all these excellences. Next, I could exercise my boys upon easy fossils, and bring out all their powers of memory and all their ingenuity in the application of my osteo-grammatical ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... address me thus? I have answered your questions, be kind enough to leave me now, your presence is growing distasteful." ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... to follow up the strong traditions of his race. At the beginning of his reign, the Ulema was resolved, if possible, to prevent the new Sultan from carrying on those reforms which had ever been so distasteful to the Turks, grating at once against their religious associations and their pride of race, and which recent events had certainly proved not to be productive of those good results anticipated by Sultan Mamoud. To attain this object, the Muftis adopted the expedient of working on the religious ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... In this distasteful period of inaction, he applied himself diligently to the study of native languages, and was able to report to his mother ere long that he had passed the interpreter's examination. What also eased the irksomeness of his situation ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... he drew nigh the house. They were then passing from the ball to the supper-room, and he found the tumult so distasteful to his mood of still ecstasy that he would not have entered had he not remembered that he had in his pocket a note ready if needful to slip into her hand, containing only the words, "Meet me for one long ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... into Lowestoft, less than two miles distant. At this time, be it remembered, Dr. MacOubrey was eighty-one years of age. Now, as to the general untidiness of Borrow's home at the time of his death—the point is a distasteful one, but it had better be faced. Henrietta was twenty-three years of age when her mother married Borrow. She was sixty-four at the time of his death, and her husband, as I have said, was eighty-one years of age at that time, being three years older than Borrow. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... is the be-all and end-all of Miss Martin's presence. It would be cruel, and unfair, if a girl of her age were forced into a distasteful prominence in connection with a crime with which she is no more related than ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... point of view, the whole thing was a thoroughly good egg; but Mr. Brewster, his father-in-law, thought differently, Archie had neither money nor occupation, which was distasteful in the eyes of the industrious Mr. Brewster; but the real bar was the fact that he had once adversely criticised one ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... man lifted above earthly things, even by simplicity and purity. Simplicity ought to be in the intention, purity in the affection. Simplicity reacheth towards God, purity apprehendeth Him and tasteth Him. No good action will be distasteful to thee if thou be free within from inordinate affection. If thou reachest after and seekest, nothing but the will of God and the benefit of thy neighbour, thou wilt entirely enjoy inward liberty. If thine heart were right, then should every creature be a mirror of life and ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... breast. During the night the nondescript lidded article was brought into requisition. When the cell doors were opened at six o'clock in the morning every prisoner put out his "slops," which were emptied by the cleaners. This scavenger's work must be very distasteful, but so anxious are the prisoners to get out of their cells that there are always plenty of candidates for the office. The tins are kept clean by means of brick and whitening, which are passed into the cells every evening in little cotton bags. My dust-pan, at least, ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... unconscious centre of her ambitions wore a perplexed frown. Mahony was much exercised just now over the question of medical attendance for Polly. The thought of coming into personal contact with a member of the fraternity was distasteful to him; none of them had an inkling who or what he was. And, though piqued by their unsuspectingness, he at the same time feared lest it should not be absolute, and he have the ill-luck to hit on a practitioner who had heard of his stray spurts of doctoring and written ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... thought the matter over, and perhaps I should have been induced even to go so far as to survey the lady from a distance, and argue the point with my mother pro and con. But the fact is, the thing was distasteful, and wouldn't bear thinking about, much less arguing. I was too lazy to go and explain the matter, and writing was not my forte. Besides, I didn't want to thwart my mother in her plans, or hurt her feelings; and so the long and the short of it is, I solved the difficulty and cut the knot ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... Beret," said Alice; "that is one novel I have found wholly distasteful to me. I tried to read it, but could not do it, I flung it aside in utter disgust. You and mother Roussillon are welcome to hide it deep as a well, for all I care. I don't enjoy reading about low, vile people and hopeless unfortunates; ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... his argument a little, but, as far as he was concerned, he was through. The whole situation was distasteful to him. The longer he stayed here, the less it seemed to ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... I had rather we didn't put it in that way," Mallard resumed, with a curious doggedness, as if her tone were distasteful to him. "My own part in the business is accidental. Please tell me: is it, or not, your own belief that a delay ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... me with any attentions, which he perceived would be at that moment distasteful, but exhibited the most marked desire to cultivate the acquaintance of Auguste, to whom he showed a degree of deference, though himself somewhat the senior, as to a military man, that flattered his esprit de corps, mingled with ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... has brought to me. The interest taken in an author is fragile: his next book, or your next year of culture, might see the interest frosted or outgrown; and himself, in spite of all, you might probably find the most distasteful person upon earth. My case is different. I have bad health, am often condemned to silence for days together - was so once for six weeks, so that my voice was awful to hear when I first used it, like the whisper of a shadow - have outlived all my chief pleasures, which were active ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... difference between them the philosopher may find, perhaps, some explanation of the difference in the character and results of the revolutions which came so near together in the two countries. Nothing, moreover, could well be conceived more distasteful to Washington than the Frenchman's conduct except the Frenchman himself. There was about the man and his performances everything most calculated to bring one of those gusts of passionate contempt which now and again had made things unpleasant for some one who had ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... week after their birth Isabella fell slightly ill. Her mother and grandmother undertook the nursing, and as the husband found them both with the twins whenever he came to see the infants and their mother, the sick-room grew distasteful to him. Again, as before their birth, he sought compensation outside of the house for the annoyance caused by the women at home; but the memory of the little boys haunted him, and when he met his companions at the tavern he invited them to drink the children's health ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... another's blighted heart, and of still another's darkened life, awaited me beyond these turbid waters! My way was dark, and my path obscure before me. Chart and compass were blurred and numb. To remain in New Jedboro, and to remove to Charleston, seemed equally distasteful. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... the risen Christ will also lead to patient persistence in duty. If we have Him before us, the distasteful duty which He sets us will not be distasteful, and the small tasks, in which great faithfulness may be manifested, will cease to be small. If we have Him before us we have in that risen Christ the great and lasting Example of how patient continuance in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... well aware. Soon these would leap on him, and that with an ugly clamour which he consciously turned from in repulsion and weary disgust. For he was very tired, as he now realized. The anxiety endured during his tedious cross-country journey, the distasteful tragic-comedy of the scene de seduction so artlessly made him by unlucky Theresa Bilsen, followed by this prolonged vigil; lastly the very real tragedy—for such it in great measure remained and must remain—of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... however, especial reasons why this alliance should be distasteful, both to Philip of Spain upon one side, and to the Landgrave Philip of Hesse on the other. The bride was the daughter of the elector Maurice. In that one name were concentrated nearly all the disasters, disgrace, and disappointment of the Emperor's reign. It was Maurice who had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... undecided whether chants or marches were Miss Keith's passion, and, perhaps, which propensity would render the young lady the most distasteful to herself. Ermine thought it merciful to divert the attack by mentioning Mr. Clare's love of music, and hoping his curate could gratify it. "No," Mr. Keith said, "it was very unlucky that Mr. Lifford ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... need hardly say, gave inexpressible pleasure to Ruby, and was not altogether distasteful to Minnie, although she felt anxious about Mrs Brand, who would naturally be much alarmed at the prolonged absence of herself and the captain. However, "there was no help for it"; and it was wonderful the resignation which she ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... of every sort swarming through the city, many were luxurious and some were criminal. On these last, the Venetian Senate determined to lay its hands, and in the first years of the seventeenth century all these questions, and various other matters distasteful to the Vatican, culminated in the seizure and imprisonment of two ecclesiastics charged with various high crimes,—among ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... to certain minds an ambiguous and even distasteful association; but I think it will only do so to such minds as are reluctant to analyse, to the furthest limit, their own capacity for the kind of "love" I have attempted to describe; and possibly also such minds as are debarred, by some sub-conscious ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... princes, much as he esteemed a few. Frequent and just were his complaints about their incapacity, their lawlessness, and their vices. He also liked to treat the nobility with irony; the coarseness of most of them was highly distasteful to him. He felt a democratic displeasure toward the hard and selfish jurists who managed the affairs of the princes, worked for favor, and harassed the poor; for the best of them he admitted only a very doubtful prospect of the mercy of God. His whole heart, on the other ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... found in their voluminous systems. Their pretentiousness, their omniscience, their large fortunes, their impatience of argument, their indifference to first principles, their stupidity, their progresses through Hellas accompanied by a troop of their disciples—these things were very distasteful to Plato, who esteemed genius far above art, and was quite sensible of the interval which separated them (Phaedrus). It is the interval which separates Sophists and rhetoricians from ancient famous men and women such as Homer ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... the swift, twenty-four cylinder launch—a racing model—sat Captain Alden and Rrisa. The captain wore his aviator's helmet and his goggles, despite the warmth of the night. To appear in only his celluloid mask, even at a time like this when darkness would have hidden him, seemed distasteful to the man. He seemed to want to hide his misfortune as fully as possible; and, since this did no harm, the Master let him have ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... the public-house parlour, would have called for his grog, and would have laughed and talked with the company assembled as familiarly as if he had known them all his life. But the very thought of whiling away the time in this manner was distasteful to him. The new situation in which he was placed seemed to have altered him to himself already. Thus far, his life had been the common, trifling, prosaic, surface-life of a prosperous young man, with no troubles to conquer, and no trials to face. ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... first and last conversation with him that the influence of his powerful protection was so strong that all active criticisms of Johnny ceased, and only a respectful surveillance of his movements lingered in the settlement. I do not know that this was altogether distasteful to the child; it would have been strange, indeed, if he had not felt at times exalted by this mysterious influence that he seemed to have acquired over his fellow creatures. If he were merely hunting ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... he respected sincere religious feelings, equally did he detest that hypocrisy which despises in secret the idol it adores in public. Even at the transition period of what has been called his skepticism, it was extremely distasteful to him to speak against religion, to despise and mock even the hollow worship practiced outwardly from human motives and personal interest. In Livadia at this time he met with a Greek bishop, whose actions were quite at variance ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... by no means uncommon, and might last for an indefinite period. Meanwhile the young man was now, by slow and painful application, doing his utmost to recover his lost power and skill. Naturally, the subject was distasteful to him, and he shrank from discussing it. Here the voice again spoke to me through the tube, telling me to observe the young man, and especially his face. On this I scanned his countenance with attention, and remarked that it wore a singularly odd look,—the look of a man advanced in years ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... Richier, he was employed as translator in the scandalous Hirschel lawsuit, so dramatically set forth by Carlyle in his Life of Frederick, though Lessing's share in it seems to have been unknown to him. The service could hardly have been other than distasteful to him; but it must have been with some thrill of the anche io! kind that the poor youth, just fleshing his maiden pen in criticism, stood face to face with the famous author, with whose name all Europe rang from side to side. This was in February, 1751. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... hotel, and drug store had been visited. This work was continued daily, and during the week union prayer-meetings were held every night. One drug store responded to the appeal; one hotel closed its bar; the visits became distasteful to one dealer, and ...
— Two Decades - A History of the First Twenty Years' Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of New York • Frances W. Graham and Georgeanna M. Gardenier
... distasteful levity, but anon made a noble amend by abruptly offering me his foot as if he had no longer use for it, and I knew by intuition that he expected me to take off his boots. I took them off with all the coolness ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... chapter of existence. This is what we all like to think of as the condition of mind and circumstances in which age is best met. But we are grieved to say that this was not in the least Lady Randolph's pose. Anything more distasteful to her than this quiet could not be. It was her principle and philosophy to live in the present. She drew many experiences from the past, and a vast knowledge of the constitutions and changes of society; but personally it did not amuse her to think of it, and the ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... there! Even Boardman and Warner seemed averse to any conversation upon the subject," soberly said Atwater. "I judge that the memory of Ferris is a most distasteful topic to them all. I presume that the papers of old Hugh probably have revived matters, which might as well be buried in Ferris' lonely grave out there on the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... cold to Ramon, and he, I believe, is suspicious of my intentions toward his father. Therefore, the situation is strained. It is very hard to know what is right in a case of this sort. The young are impressionable and reckless. Often what seems to them distasteful is in reality a blessing. It is not every love-match that turns out so happily as yours, my dear friends. Well, I suppose I am weak. With Gertrudis I cannot be severe; but unless it becomes necessary to make conditions with my old friend Alfarez, I should ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... else for Tarzan of the Apes, it had to some extent taught him to crave the society of his own kind, and to feel with genuine pleasure the congenial warmth of companionship. And in the same ratio had it made any other life distasteful to him. It was difficult to imagine a world without a friend—without a living thing who spoke the new tongues which Tarzan had learned to love so well. And so it was that Tarzan looked with little relish upon the future he had mapped out ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... which is like a superstition, that the pursuit is not interfered with, however unsportsmanlike it may be, and when illegal, and when practised by only a very few persons in any district, where to others it may be secretly distasteful or even prejudicial. ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... reason for mixing with people who were certainly as a rule utterly distasteful and repugnant to me, was because I could not bear to leave Adelaide alone. I pitied her in her lonely and alienated misery; and I knew that it was some small solace to her to have me ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... thought me narrow, Jerry, because I laid my life and yours along pleasant byways and ignored the beaten track. I've never told you why the world had grown distasteful to me. I think you ought to know. It may be worth something to you. The old story, always new—a girl, pretty, insincere. I was just out of the University, with a good education, some prospects, but no money. We became engaged. She was going to wait ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... to vent itself in hastening the realization of his schemes of improvement, for he was well aware they would be worse than distasteful to the Macruadh. Their first requirement was the removal of every peasant within his power capable of violating the sanctity of the deer forest into which he and his next neighbour had agreed to turn the whole of their property. While the settlement of his daughter was pending, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... of humanity to Ireland was not more distasteful to the electors of Bristol than a small instalment of toleration to Roman Catholics in England. A measure was passed (1778) repealing certain iniquitous penalties created by an Act of William the Third. It is needless to say ...
— Burke • John Morley |
