"Inelegant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... professional seeker after the night romance of Paris, the French have a phrase which, be it soever inelegant, retains still a brilliant verity. The phrase is "une belle poire." And ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... to the one that comes from a too rapid drop in an elevator. So Henry had come to her at the first possible moment to protest against "this Tom Reynolds." "He has had a bad recitation," she thought, "and now he is going to take it out on me," and then she called her brother a hard and inelegant name, as people will when angry with their dearest relatives. Had Nancy been of a satirical nature she might have made something of her brother's adoption of Freudian methods; but she was not, and she knew only ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... Edmund Kean. To the mind of the satirist there appears to be no difference in the abilities of the two performers, as the scales exactly balance. On the right, the portico of Covent Garden is overshadowed by the inelegant but massive proportions of Drury Lane; the intervening space being occupied by various figures and details, among which is a "patent clapping machine." An advertisement board carried by one of the figures clearly shows that the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... life of Celestine V. by the cardinal of St. George (Muratori, tom. iii. P. i. p. 613, &c.,) we find a luminous, and not inelegant, passage, (l. i. c. 3, p. 203 &c.:)— ————genuit quem nobilis Ursae (Ursi?) Progenies, Romana domus, veterataque magnis Fascibus in clero, pompasque experta senatus, Bellorumque manu grandi stipata parentum Cardineos apices necnon fastigia dudum Papatus iterata tenens. Muratori (Dissert. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... of similar misunderstanding of Benvenuto's easily intelligible though inelegant Latin, to a blunder which would be extraordinary in any other book, by which our translator has ruined a most characteristic story in the comment on the 112th verse of Canto XIV. of the "Purgatory." We must give here the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... told me to follow them. I readily complied. But here a new difficulty occurred. The Moors, accustomed to a loose and easy dress, could not reconcile themselves to the appearance of my NANKEEN BREECHES, which they said were not only inelegant, but, on account of their tightness, very indecent; and as this was a visit to ladies, Ali ordered my boy to bring out the loose cloak which I had always worn since my arrival at Benowm, and told me to wrap it close round me. We visited the tents of four different ladies, at ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... The carcase of Robert Louis Stevenson, An active, austere, and not inelegant writer, who, at the termination of a long career, wealthy, wise, benevolent, and honoured by the attention of two hemispheres, yet owned it to have been his crowning ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clean, orderly camp-park out of the wilderness of creosote bushes and mesquite. I remember that for some offence against the powers of the day I was then "serving time" for a short while and, among other things, I cut shrub on the site of Tucson's Military Plaza, with an inelegant piece of iron chain dangling uncomfortably from my left leg. Oh, I wasn't a saint in those days any more than I am a particularly bright candidate for wings and a harp now! I gave my superior officers fully as much trouble as ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... principal ones that run from gate to gate, invariably narrow. The temples are, nearly, all alike, of the same awkward design as the dwelling-houses, but on a larger scale; and the objects that are known in Europe by the name of pagodas, are of the same inelegant kind of architecture, from one extremity of the empire to the other, differing only in the number of rounds or stories, and in the materials of which they are constructed. The manners, the dress, the amusements ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... it be our knowledge of the tigers in India, as we sit here. Exactly what do we MEAN by saying that we here know the tigers? What is the precise fact that the cognition so confidently claimed is KNOWN-AS, to use Shadworth Hodgson's inelegant but valuable form ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... barbaric simplicity. Metal seems to be scarce, and not many kinds are found. There is no silver, zinc, or platinum; but only gold, copper, tin, lead, and iron. Gold is found in beads, ear-rings, and other ornaments, which are in some instances of a fashion that is not inelegant. [PLATE XVI., Fig. 3.] Copper occurs pure, but is more often hardened by means of an alloy of tin, whereby it becomes bronze, and is rendered suitable for implements and weapons. Lead is rare, occurring only in a very few specimens, as in one ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... 'good for sore eyes,' as you sometimes say;" and with this inelegant remark Miss Alfaretta walked away while laughing, happy Jim sped downwards to the vine-wreathed lodge at the great entrance gate. He had been happy all that summer, never more so; yet happier than ever now as he ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... 'shot' or 'fall' of stars, as the Swedish 'stjernifall', the Italian 'stella cadente', and the English 'star shoot.' In the woody district of the Orinoco, on the dreary banks of the Cassiquiare, I heard the natives in the Mission of Vasiva use terms still more inelegant than the German 'star snuff.' ('Relation Historique du Voy. aux RĀgions Equinox.', t. ii., p. 513.) These same tribes term the pearly drops of dew which cover the beautiful leaves of the heliconia 'star spit.' In the Lithuanian ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... her more than once. People smiled, not unkindly, when they mentioned Mrs. Errol, a good sort, they said; but, like many another woman of inelegant exterior, how good a sort only her Maker knew. She was large in every way. It was the only word that described her; large-boned, large-featured, and so stout that she wheezed—a fact which in no way limited her activity. Her voice was as deep as a man's, and it went even deeper ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Lesleys, Lady Anne, and the music very much. . . . Sir Thomas H. you always do very well. I have only taken the liberty of expunging one phrase of his which would not be allowable—'Bless my heart!' It is too familiar and inelegant. Your grandmother is more disturbed at Mrs. Forester's not returning the Egertons' visit sooner than by anything else. They ought to have called at the Parsonage before Sunday. You describe a sweet place, but your descriptions are ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... mentioned the double use of words, such as "left" in the same form and sound, but different in meaning. Even where there is no obscurity, the juxtaposition of the same word twice used in two senses is inelegant, e.g. (Bain), "He turned to the left ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... young man's inability to clothe his splendid body in that fashion which her culture demanded. His simple and primitive views of life—as natural as the instinct which governs all creatures in his God-cultivated world—were now unrefined, ignoble, inelegant. His fine nature and unembarrassed intelligence, which found in the wealth of realities amid which he lived abundant food for his intellectual life, and which enabled him to see clearly, observe closely and think ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... the first to come out of it, responding to her voice a good deal as if she dashed cold water in his face, his eyes breaking away from Barbara's, his lips parted in a nervous smile. He ran a hand through his hair—an inelegant gesture for him at table—and ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... to an established hack that is supposed to add some functionality to the original. Usually derogatory, implying that the original was being overextended and should have been thrown away, and the new product is ugly, inelegant, or bloated. Also /v./ phrase, 'to hang a bag on the side [of]'. "C? That's just a bag on the side of C ...." "They want me to hang a bag on the side of ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... jocular, guard carefully that your wit be not sharp, so as to, give pain to any person; and before You write a sentence, examine it, even the words which it is composed, that there be nothing vulgar or inelegant in them. Remember, my dear, that your letter is the picture of Your brains; and those whose brains are a compound of folly, nonsense, and impertinence, are to blame to exhibit them to the contempt of the world, or the pity of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... it seemed, and she always did them well. Kitty had an idea, a very foolish one, of course, that she could only work when alone and quiet, say in her bedroom, or in the barn, or lying in the grass in the garden, or in the woods. All of which was inelegant, unladylike, and nonsensical. Kitty must get the better of such ideas at once, and must learn her lessons as Anna did, sitting primly at the square table in ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... home. And yet she could not be accused of being old-fashioned. None would dare to despise her. She was what Hilda could never be, had never long desired to be. She was what Hilda had definitely renounced being. And there stood Hilda, immature, graceless, harsh, inelegant, dowdy, holding the letter between her inky fingers, in the midst of all that hard masculine mess,—and a part of it, the blindly devoted subaltern, who could expect none of the ritual of homage given to women, who must sit and ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... deals with the whole matter of a life, and yet is rarely wearisome, which condescends to the most fastidious particulars, and yet sweeps all away in the forthright current of the narrative,—such a style may be ungrammatical, it may be inelegant, it may be one tissue of mistakes, but it can never be devoid of merit. The first and the true function of the writer has been thoroughly performed throughout; and though the manner of his utterance may be childishly awkward, the matter has been transformed and assimilated by his unfeigned ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... themselves to sleep on straw mattresses, with pillows of the same material, to wear none but low shoes; to make their simple dress without plaits, and as scant as convenience for working would allow; not to be ashamed of patches, no matter how numerous or inelegant; to eat only broken bread; in short to live in every respect like the poorest classes of society. These, and innumerable other practices of mortification, were constantly observed by the greater part of the community from the beginning. But in ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... effect, for when she came back, with a small tin pan of bread and milk, and a piece of bacon hanging to a fork, his back was not the least elevated, and he proceeded immediately to the hearth where the provender was deposited, and to use an inelegant Westernism, "walked into it;" Phillis meanwhile going home, perfectly satisfied with the result of her exploration. Bacchus's toilet was completed, he was just raising up from the exertion of putting on his slippers, when Phillis ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... and catered to the excessive and uncritical thirsts of the ruck of range society, and he had objected vigorously to the placing of the second sign in his place of business; but at the close of an incisive if inelegant reply from the marshal, the sign went up, and stayed up. Edwards' language and delivery were ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... learned, was not edifying. God is an eternal and unchangeable being. The handsome edifice was burned to the ground. The plants and animals in the aquarium were brought from abroad. Though the style is antiquated, it is not inelegant. The arbitrary proceedings of the British Parliament exasperated the Americans. God is the bountiful Giver of all good. The President made a short inaugural address. By combined effort success is sure. One of Scott's novels is called The Antiquary. It is barbarous ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... but worn into appealing lines, as if he had suffered from loneliness and misapprehension. He looked, with his careful precision of dress, as if he were the object of cherishing care on the part of elderly unmarried sisters, but I knew Mari' Harris to be a very common-place, inelegant person, who would have no such standards; it was plain that the captain was his own attentive valet. He sat looking at me expectantly. I could not help thinking that, with his queer head and length of thinness, he ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... that last assertion of her mother's, but remained half sitting on the table, with her feet stretched out in front of her, and her hands supporting her on either side, which brought her shoulders up to her ears. It was a most inelegant attitude, and peculiarly exasperating ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his situation by —— College, Oxford, and was a sound, well-built scholar, but (like most men whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A miserable contrast he presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favorite master; and, besides, he could not disguise from my hourly notice the poverty and meagerness of his understanding. It is a bad thing for a boy to be, and know himself, far beyond his tutors, whether in knowledge ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... the quirk in human nature that shows great gratification at the sight of a man betting on something where he is bound to be the loser: in inelegant language, this relates simply to the universal impulse to laugh at a "sucker." It is just like standing in front of a sideshow tent after you have paid your good money, gone in, and been "stung," ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... is a worthy gentleman. Let him cease to dusk the radiancy of Ariosto's sunny stanzas, and I shall be the first man who will do justice to his merits. He certainly tattles prettily about tenses and terminations, and is not an inelegant grammarian." ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... dressing, even the manner and speech, of such worthy models as came within her range of vision—like her daughter, she had an eye for fitness and beauty; that which was merely fashionable though truly inelegant, did not appeal to her. She was swift to appreciate ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... inelegant exclamation with feeling. "Poll, you're the best little sport I ever knew. You always understand. Any other girl would have said that running was bad for my heart, and expected ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... his study, his day's work over, his feet in slippers, after the comfortable but inelegant fashion which Sir Walter Scott reprobates, amusing himself with a volume of old Reports. He was a knowing man enough, a keen country lawyer, but honest, and therefore less ready to suspect the honesty of others. He had a great belief in his young partner's ability, and, though he knew him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... ten-strike, I hear," he volunteered, in an expressive, if inelegant, idiom of the money game; "there's a story going the rounds that Mills and Severance have been gunning together and that some one else got burned. Anyway, I hear they've lined their ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the floor of the House. Conkling, although unable to reply effectively, demeaned himself with great dignity. His manners were placid and his reply was in measured terms. It was in striking contrast to what Mr. Blaine said. To use a phrase graphic if inelegant, he jumped on Conkling with both feet and literally tore him to pieces without any attempt at dignity. This controversy with Conkling probably caused the defeat of Mr. Blaine for the nomination—first, in conventions prior to 1884, and finally after he became the ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... with such unbounded applause, might have taken some interest in those of poor Benito. Perhaps the absurd and vulgar scene, in which the prince pretends a fit of the cholic, had some share in occasioning the fall of the piece. This inelegant jeu de theatre is ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... of the two negatives employed is joined to another word, it forms a pleasing and delicate variety of expression; as, "His language, though inelegant, is not ungrammatical;" ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... can pick up," declared John, dropping calmly into the inelegant expression, "he told 'em ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... of many joints or of small stones; shafts which are therefore not tapered, and rather thick and ponderous in proportion to the weight they carry; the latter school being evidently somewhat imperfect and inelegant as compared with ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... barest living, thumped away gaily with her iron in the noisy and stifling laundry. Her wages supported her even beyond the point of comfort; so that her dress profited until sometimes she cast a sidelong glance of impatience at the neat but inelegant apparel of Dan—Dan the constant, the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... dispensed his bounties as in Heaven. So saying, with dispatchful looks in haste She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent What choice to choose for delicacy best, What order, so contrived as not to mix Tastes, not well joined, inelegant, but bring Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change; Bestirs her then, and from each tender stalk Whatever Earth, all-bearing mother, yields In India East or West, or middle shore In Pontus or the Punick coast, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... dictionaries, the force it names is no less a reality of the popular consciousness, and the word itself no less a part of popular speech. Men who possessed the thing were just the men to snub elegance and stun propriety by giving it an inelegant, though vitally appropriate name. There is defiance in its very sound. The word is used by vast numbers of people to express their highest ideal of manliness, which is "real grit." It is impossible for anybody to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... the boats, behind lay all our loves and fortunes—was ever Highland heart but swelled on such a time? Sturdy black and hairy scamps the Irish—never German boor so inelegant—but venomous in their courage! Score upon score of them ran in on us through the Arches. Our lads had but one shot from the muskets, then into them with ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... always held its August meeting at the Beauforts'. The sport, which had hitherto known no rival but croquet, was beginning to be discarded in favour of lawn-tennis; but the latter game was still considered too rough and inelegant for social occasions, and as an opportunity to show off pretty dresses and graceful attitudes the bow and arrow held ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... character. He was a pompous little man to whom the inelegant applied the term of runt. He never could have passed the army examination, for he had no instep. He walked like a duck, flat-footed, minus the waddle. He was pop-eyed, and the fumes of strong drink had loosened the tear-ducts so that his eyes swam in ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... much prosperity resulted to the little town of Chantilly. As with all other laces, the introduction of machinery killed the industry as an art, and the only Blonde laces now made are by machine, and are quite inartistic and inelegant. Hand-made Chantilly in black silk is still manufactured, but it ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... . . . Here Karl Karl'itch used an inelegant expression, which showed plainly that he was no unqualified admirer of the new judicial institutions. "What is the use of applying to the justices? The nearest one lives six miles off, and when I go to him he evidently tries to make me lose as much time as possible. I am sure to lose nearly a ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... squatting down, on their hams, ready to receive her. She then took each by the head and neck, and pressed their heads between her legs—they sitting, she standing—not in the most decent way, and made over them, with her whole body, certain inelegant motions, not to be mentioned. She then put their hands and arms behind their backs, and after several other wild cries and jumps, and having for a moment thrown herself flat upon the ground, she declared to each and all ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... a long veil, surmounted by a diadem, hangs from the back of the head. This statue is in no respect narrow or flat, as may be seen especially from the side view given by Di Cesnola;[77] but it is short and inelegant, though not wanting in dignity; and it is disfigured by sandalled feet of a very disproportionate size, which stand out offensively in front. The figure has been viewed as a representation of the goddess Astarte or Ashtoreth;[78] but the identification can scarcely be regarded ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... this night of horror, Antwerp, to use an inelegant but descriptive expression, developed a violent case of the jim-jams. The next night and every night thereafter until the Germans came in and took the city, she thought she saw things; not green rats and pink snakes, but large, sausage-shaped balloons with bombs dropping ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... En-Noor and several distinguished ladies of Tintalous assisted. It was the usual singing business, with Moorish hammering on tambourines. The dance was performed by men, mostly in imitation of the women, and was also of the usual inelegant and indelicate description. However, there was a little mixing of the derwish dances. The thing went off to the great satisfaction of the Kailouees, and was kept up ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... am a man of quick thought and resource. In the inelegant phrasing of the day, me ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... great depth, and ships of large burden are enabled to penetrate into the very heart of the town. The general style of building offers little to admire; the houses being for the most part flat-fronted, monotonous, and graceless, without any species of architectural decoration to relieve their inelegant uniformity. It is the position of the city, the air of lightness given to it by the water, which traverses it in every direction, and the life and movement of the port, that form its chief recommendations. In their architectural ideas ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... slovenly woman would her petticoats on a very dirty day, in order that he might feel the full warmth of the fire. His wig was put on all awry, with the tail straggling about his neck; his scanty grey trousers and short black gaiters, made in the worst possible style, imported an additional inelegant appearance to his uncouth person; and his limp, badly-starched shirt-collar almost obscured his eyes. We shall never be able to claim any credit as a physiognomist again, for, after a careful scrutiny of this gentleman's countenance, we had come to the conclusion that it bespoke nothing but conceit ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... laughing Aileen with her, for she was an impulsive little woman; but at whatever opening in the crowd she and her friend presented themselves, they were sure to find the diver's ridiculously broad and now inelegant back ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... was, her cool comment stung her mother to fury. The poor lady pointed a finger at Ruth, and spluttered (there is no more elegant word for the very inelegant exhibition),— ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... "Ah, what inelegant words," he chid. "Thou dost miscall my purpose. Look, my daughter. Have I not served thee with hand and heart all thy life, asking nothing, sacrificing much? I, for one, have a debt against thee, and thou ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... lesson and style. The plots are more monotonous and sometimes unnecessarily coarse and rough; the lessons are more obscure and sometimes are of doubtful value; and the style is much less forcible, in fact is often labored and inelegant. Yet many of the stories are attractive and harmless. They may be used to make the transition from fairy tales to more elevated literature. Their very imperfections can be utilized to discourage the reading ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... original should always be kept in mind, without too apparent a deviation from the sense. Where it is otherwise, it is not a version but an imitation."[429] Grainger says in the introduction to his Tibullus: "Verbal translations are always inelegant, because always destitute of beauty of idiom and language; for by their fidelity to an author's words, they become treacherous to his reputation; on the other hand, a too wanton departure from the letter ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... a place-name is correct which makes bad grammar of the original. The apparatus of Indian synthesis was cumbersome and perhaps inelegant, but it was nicely adjusted to its work. The grammatical relations of words were never lost sight of. The several components of a name had their established order, not dependent upon the will or skill of the composer. When we read modern advertisements of "cheap gentlemen's traveling bags" ...
— The Composition of Indian Geographical Names - Illustrated from the Algonkin Languages • J. Hammond Trumbull
... did not grow up elegant, to fit the name. The name grew inelegant to fit her. During her earliest years the witty little children called her Elephant until they tired of the ingenuity and allowed her to lapse indolently from Ellar ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Livingstone is a well-drawn character; so well, so naturally painted, that he hardly deserves to be the hero of a farce. Although exceedingly soft, he is a well-bred fool—though somewhat fat (for the actor is Mr. David Rees); he is not altogether inelegant. The gentleman who does the theatrical metaphysics in the Morning Herald has described him as a capital specimen of "physical obesity and moral teunity,"[3]—which we quote to save ourselves trouble, for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... did reverence England as once we reverenced her, this is what I would say:—"Upon my country do not visit my sins. Upon my country's fame let me fasten no blot. Wherever I am wrong, inelegant, inaccurate, provincial, visit all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... never use an incorrect, an inelegant, or a vulgar phrase or word, in any society whatever. If you are gifted with wit, you will soon find that it is easy to give it far better point and force in pure English than through any other medium, and that brilliant ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... their business to control the arts, literature and society. And those who do this are for the most part unbearable. After swearing by Voltaire they have gone back to spirituality and mysticism, the last drawing-room craze. Now that a firm faith in science is regarded as brutish and inelegant, they fancy that they rid themselves of their caste by feigning amiable doubt, and ignorance, and innocence. What they most fear is that they may carry a scent of the schools about with them, so they put on extremely Parisian airs, venture on somersaults and slang, and assume ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... briskly in the direction of the "big house." Scarlet-coated horsemen, and high-born maids and matrons, with all the medley of the Hunt in their train, cantered along the winding road—a mirthful, laughter-loving company. There were the General, stout and inelegant, wont to take his fences carefully, who changed his weight-carrying mount thrice during the day, and liked a gateway better than a thorny hedge, and for the last fifteen years had never been in at the death; and ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... only French lessons in disguise, but were lectures on ethics, morals, and good manners, imperfectly concealed by the mask and domino of amiable entertainment. She translated into English after the following manner the facts her swift young perceptions gathered. There were things it was so inelegant to say that only the most impossible persons said them; there were things it was so inexcusable to do that when done their inexcusability assumed the proportions of a crime. There were movements, expressions, points of view, which one must avoid as one would avoid ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... too slowly nor too hastily, nor as if gulping the wine, nor too frequently, nor without water—as drunkards do. Wipe your lips before and after drinking, and do not breathe too loudly then or at any other time, for that is very inelegant. ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... must have been penetrated with the same sentiment, for he rode up close to the cart and grasping the mud guard, turned on his saddle and wistfully shaking his bead, gave vent to his feelings by the following very inelegant but extremely expressive ejaculation: ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... of Aulus Gellius, who have lamented the loss of a chapter of which the title only has descended to us. That chapter would have demonstrated what happens to all languages, that some neologisms, which at first are considered forced or inelegant, become sanctioned by use, and in time are quoted as authority in the very language which, in their early stage, they were ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... quite forgetting that the number of seats he had provided was already filled by guests previously asked. The result was what might be expected, and it was often simply bare good fortune if everybody had enough to eat. But, "though the dinner might be careless and inelegant, and the servants awkward and too few," the talk was always pleasant, and no invitations to dine were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... which their poets made shipwreck.[27] Let us, however, rejoice for the sake of the critical reputation of Vauvenargues that he was unable to read Shakespeare. One for whom Moliere is too eccentric, grotesque, inelegant, was not likely to do much justice to the mightiest but most irregular ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... fingers daintily, and, holding by head and tail, nibble as children bite an apple. Whether indeed these little fish are caught by the angler, I know not; but this is certainly the way they are eaten—if inelegant, honi ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... don't step so lively as they do up here, and old Colonel Tayloes, he used to say there ain't nothin' so inelegant as hurry, lessen 'tis worry. But of course I shouldn't have had no discussion in my mind about that bell. I got a ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... poet, glancing with a significant sneer over Vincent's somewhat inelegant person, "I thought of your lordship's ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was Jerry's relieved, inelegant comment to Susan Atwell, as she moved to the right. Susan stifled an irrepressible chuckle and sobered her face for ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... amusing myself with Levi's book, in answer to Dr. Priestley. It is a curious and tough work. His style is inelegant and incorrect, harsh and petulant to his adversary, and his reasoning flimsy enough. Some of his doctrines were new to me, particularly that of his two resurrections: the first, a particular one of all the dead, in body as well as soul, who are to live over again, the Jews in ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... despite its antiquity, came immediately from Holland; the claw and ball foot of ancient Oriental use; the straight, square, uncompromising early Georgian leg; the carved lattice-work Chinese leg; the pseudo-Chinese leg; the fretwork leg, which was supposed to be in the best Gothic taste; the inelegant rococo leg with the curled or hoofed foot; and even occasionally the spade foot, which is supposed to be characteristic of the somewhat later style of Hepplewhite. His chair-backs were very various. His efforts in Gothic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... these letters. We shall only remark in general, that the chief objections against them are, that they are supposed to have passed through the earl of Morton's hands, the least scrupulous of all Mary's enemies; and that they are, to the last degree, indecent, and even somewhat inelegant, such as it is not likely she would write. But to these presumptions we may oppose the following considerations: 1. Though it be not difficult to counterfeit a subscription, it is very difficult, and almost impossible, to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... inelegant reply, "I know you can, for I saw you handle that bay outlaw they ran in on you this morning: seven years old and no wrangler in Pima could ride him. Old Cap Pike said it was a damn shame to put you up against that sun-fisher as an introduction ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... anything with 'a wet finger' is to do it easily. 'It seems not very improbable that it alluded to the vulgar and very inelegant custom of wetting the finger to turn over a book with ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... purposes of display, he feels himself thoroughly established. He sits aloof from the common herd, and looks out of his window upon the poor man, and says—"Put that dirty wretch off my steps immediately!" On Sabbath days he finds the church, but mourns the fact that he must worship with so many of the inelegant, and says, "They are perfectly awful!" "That man that you put in my pew had a coat on his back that did not cost five dollars." He struts through life unsympathetic with trouble, and says, "I cannot be bothered." Is delighted with some doubtful story of Parisian life, but thinks that ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... he resembled Ben Jonson in extreme corpulence, and proposed him for the model of dramatic writing, seems to have affected the coarse and inelegant debauchery of his prototype. He lived chiefly in taverns, was a gross sensualist in his habits, and brutal in his conversation. His fine gentlemen all partake of their parent's grossness and vulgarity; they usually open their dialogue, by complaining of ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Mackintosh; though it speaks of a time after Reynolds had received the honor of knighthood. "There was something singular," said he, "in the style and economy of Sir Joshua's table that contributed to pleasantry and good humor, a coarse, inelegant plenty, without any regard to order and arrangement. At five o'clock precisely, dinner was served, whether all the invited guests were arrived or not. Sir Joshua was never so fashionably ill-bred as to wait an hour perhaps for two or three persons of rank or title, and put the rest ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... attention and solicitude. We may as well here observe, that although so favoured by nature, still there would have been considered something wanting in him by those who had been accustomed to move in the first circles, to make him the refined gentleman. His movements and carriage were not inelegant, but there was a certain retinue wanting. He bowed well, but still it was not exactly the bow of a gentleman. The nursery-maids as they passed by said, "Dear me, what a handsome gentleman!" but had the remark been made by a higher class, it would have been qualified into "What a handsome ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... we regret to say, Captain Guy swore a good deal, and became perfectly unheroic and inelegant and unromantic. But his oaths had more effect upon his unruly followers than his protests, and they sat looking at him in a half-sullen, half-shamefaced manner, and would have probably succumbed to his influence had not attention been diverted and aroused by the ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... baubles pleased me most was a large coffer of some precious wood, containing enamelled flasks of oriental essences, enough to perfume a zenana, and so fragrant that I thought the Mogul himself a Dutchman, for lavishing them upon this inelegant nation. If disagreeable fumes, as I mentioned before, dissolve enchantments, such aromatic oils have doubtless the power of raising them; for, whilst I scented their fragrance, scarcely could anything have persuaded me that I was not in the ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... tall, stiff, fair man of about thirty, with a tousled head and inelegant but durable clothing. He had a drooping moustache, which prevented Mr Cowlishaw from ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... been trained in a world which had passed away. They gave place in no long time to a younger generation of wits; and of that generation, from Dryden down to Durfey, the common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman. The influence of these writers was doubtless noxious, yet less noxious than it would have been had they been less depraved. The poison which they administered was so strong that it was, in no long time, rejected with nausea. None of them understood the dangerous ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gradually upon it. Crabshaw, eyeing him askance, said, by way of reproach, for his not alighting and assisting him in person, "Thatch your house with t—d, and you'll have more teachers than reachers."—Having pronounced this inelegant adage, he made shift to stand upon his legs; and now, the knight lending a hand, was mounted upon Gilbert, though not without a world of ohs! and ahs! and other ejaculations of ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... introduced him to our readers, the traveller and his young companion stopped at the door of an old-fashioned inn, or rather at the porch thereof; for the door itself, with a retiring modesty, stood at some distance back, while an impudent little portico with carved oak pillars, of quaint but not inelegant design, stood forth into the road, with steps leading down from it to the sill of the sunk doorway. An ostler ran out to take the horse, and helped the boy down tenderly and carefully. Sherbrooke ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... many imitations to be circulated under his name. The most ancient of these is the Nux elegia, which, if not Ovid's, must be very shortly posterior to him; it is the complaint of a walnut tree on the harsh treatment it has to suffer, sometimes in very difficult verse, [54] but not inelegant. Some of the Priapeia are also attributed to him, perhaps with reason; the Consolatio ad Liviam, on the death of Drusus, is a clever production of the Renaissance period, full of reminiscences of Ovid's verse, much as the Ciris is filled ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... affords—more closely and markedly even than literature—to the all-important truth that men stand or fall according as they look up to the Ideal or not. For example, the Architecture of Egypt, her pyramids and temples, cumbrous and inelegant, but imposing from their vastness and their gloom, express the ideal of Sense or Matter—elevated and purified indeed, and nearly approaching the Intellectual, but Material still; we think of them as of natural scenery, in ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... legitimate claims—that he is doing what in the nature of things must produce unhappiness; and he will alter his course. But until you do this—until you demonstrate that his proceedings are essentially inconvenient or inelegant, essentially irrational, unjust, or ungenerous, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... by Boswell in his Hebrides, post, v. 37. In spite of the 'elaboration of homage' Johnson could judge freely of an archbishop. He described the Archbishop of Tuam as 'a man coarse of voice and inelegant of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... flight of singing-birds that passes from one grove to another, carrying its music with it back and forward,—why should she not love these gracious outward signs of those inner harmonies which none could deny made beautiful the lives of many of her fellow-worshippers in the humble, yet not inelegant ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... itself as euphonious to her infantile ears, and she is now treating me to the most ludicrous and accurate imitations of it every time she opens her mouth. Of course I shall not allow this, comical as it is, to become a habit. This is the way the southern ladies acquire the thick and inelegant pronunciation which distinguishes their utterances from the northern snuffle; and I have no desire that S—— should adorn her mother tongue with either peculiarity. It is a curious and sad enough thing to observe, as I have frequent opportunities of doing, the unbounded insolence and ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... into my possession, our Creole lady-correspondent reiterating to the end her inability to divine what could be wanted with "an almost illegible scrawl" (griffonage), full of bad spelling and of rather inelegant diction. But if old manuscript was the object of desire, why, here was something else; the very document alluded to by Francoise in her memoir of travel—the autobiography of the dear little countess, her beloved Alix ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... that inelegant, inconsistent architectural mixture of the ancient and modern, considered apart, though it properly enough is usually considered with the Palais de Justice, was formerly the dwelling or guardhouse of the Concierge of the Palais de la Cite. His post was not merely that of the keeper ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... from the sound I have heard gorillas give when enraged, or from the one you can hear them giving when they are what the natives call "dancing" at night. I noticed that their reach of arm was immense, and that when they went from one tree to another, they squattered across the open ground in a most inelegant style, dragging their long arms with the knuckles downwards. I should think the big male and female were over six feet each. The others would be from four to five. I put out my hand and laid it on Wiki's gun to prevent him from firing, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... to confess it, these two inelegant objects on a very elegant piece of furniture are the hero ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... orator immediately proceeds to notice the shortness of Richard's stature,—a comment not likely to have been peculiarly acceptable in the Rous Roll, the portrait of Richard represents him as undersized, but compactly and strongly built, and without any sign of deformity, unless the inelegant defect of a short neck can be so called.] commended Richard's "princely countenance," the compliment was not one to be disputed, much less contemned. But now as he rose, obedient to a whisper from the duchess, and followed her to the window, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he uttered now were not of classic heroism. They were simple, colloquial, inelegant. For Stern, his ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... guid cause";[232] and two of them, Archibald and John Hamilton, soon after apostatised, betook themselves to the Continent, and rose to high office in the Universities of Louvain and Paris, where the one in not inelegant Latin, and the other in courtly Scotch, sought to vindicate their conduct, and to traduce and refute their former co-religionists. Some of the masters of the Old College also, as Bannatyne has recorded, hated the plain-speaking ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... one of the most inelegant of the genus, being of a dull grey colour, and not particularly graceful in its form. Its plumage, moreover, does not consist of webbed feathers, but rather more resembles hair; nor does its voice make up for the plainness of its appearance, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... recounts how in the course of the interview Sopater succeeded in convincing the Singhalese monarch of the greater power of Rome as compared with that of Persia, by exhibiting the large and highly finished gold coin of the Roman Emperor in contrast with the small and inelegant silver money of the Shah. This story would, however, appear to be traditional, as Pliny relates a somewhat similar anecdote of the ambassadors from Ceylon in the reign of Claudius, and of the profound respect excited in their minds by the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... sullen displeasure, But the tenants of air were enraged beyond measure. The PEACOCK display'd his bright plumes to the Sun, And, addressing his Mates, thus indignant begun: "Shall we, like domestic, inelegant Fowls, [p 4] As unpolished as Geese, and as stupid as Owls, Sit tamely at home, hum drum with our Spouses, While Crickets and Butterflies open their houses? Shall such mean little insects pretend to the fashion? Cousin Turkey-cock, well may you be in a passion! If I suffer such insolent airs ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... in Poetry, is not inelegant nor injudicious, and has something of vigour beyond most of his other performances: his precepts are just, and his cautions proper; they are, indeed, not new, but in a didactick poem novelty is to be expected only in the ornaments and illustrations. His poetical ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... student when returning from Europe or America at once resumed his national dress, for if he dared to continue to favor the Western garb he was looked upon as a "half-foreign devil". Since the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1911, this sentiment has entirely changed, and the inelegant foreign dress is no longer considered fantastic; on the contrary it has become a fashion, not only in cities where foreigners are numerous, but even in interior towns and villages ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... raspingly, with a pathetic note of pleading, 'haven't I always taught you to say preserve?' She was not pleading against the inelegant word, ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... former suggests a type of behavior which is artless, spontaneous, and free from the restraints of custom. The latter implies fully as great lack of knowledge of social usage, and, in addition, conduct which is primitive and perchance inelegant. Thus, the.................. youth was the first to enter the car, and his.................. little sister warmly kissed him in the presence of the king. We may also say that a country boy is.................. with respect to ...
— Stanford Achievement Test, Ed. 1922 - Advanced Examination, Form A, for Grades 4-8 • Truman L. Kelley
... deacon Theodosius, with the bishop and clergy, was dragged in chains from the altar to Palermo, cast into a subterraneous dungeon, and exposed to the hourly peril of death or apostasy. His pathetic, and not inelegant, complaint may be read as the epitaph of his country. [84] From the Roman conquest to this final calamity, Syracuse, now dwindled to the primitive Isle of Ortygea, had insensibly declined. Yet the relics were still precious; the plate of the cathedral ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... the upper petticoat, the suncurinu, when they go abroad, and bringing it over the head and shoulders, so as to form a sort of hood. So far from this fashion giving them, as might be supposed, a dowdy appearance, it is not inelegant when the garment is gracefully arranged. It has generally broad stripes, and is often of silk or a fine material. The under-petticoat, of cloth, is either of a bright colour, or dark with a bright-coloured border. Both of them are worn ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... A French bedroom is a bitter mockery—a ghastly attempt to serve two masters which succeeds in being agreeable to neither. It is a thing of traps and delusions, constructed on the assumption that it is inelegant to be known to wash or to sleep, and yet pervaded with suggestions of uncleanness compared with which a well-wrung bathing sponge, well en evidence, is a delightful symbol of purity. This comes of course from that supreme French quality, the source of half the charm of the French mind ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... dear friend, a very fine plan! By the way, let us hope this Graevenitz girl talks a little better French than does her sister-in-law. I verily believe Madame Friedrich de Graevenitz prefers peasant German to our own speech, and at court no word of that inelegant language could ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... the problem of the unemployed had been most satisfactorily met and overcome. No one starved in the public ways, and no rags, no costume less sanitary and sufficient than the Labour Company's hygienic but inelegant blue canvas, pained the eye throughout the whole world. It was the constant theme of the phonographic newspapers how much the world had progressed since nineteenth-century days, when the bodies of those killed by the vehicular traffic or dead ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... digging at Newstead was the having it mounted in silver, and converted into a drinking-cup. This whim has been commemorated in some well-known verses of his own; and the cup itself, which, apart from any revolting ideas it may excite, forms by no means an inelegant object to the eye, is, with many other interesting relics of Lord Byron, in the possession of the present proprietor of Newstead Abbey, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... see into what a predicament your precious advice has brought me; how much more practical my own arrangement was! The handkerchief looked inelegant, if you like, but it would have prevented me this trouble. Why did I swerve from my principles? Why was I led astray by ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... certain small words are in the language for a purpose. "And," "a," "the," are important, and their elimination often makes a letter bald, curt, and distinctly inelegant. ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... enthusiast fell at first sight? In any case nothing apparently occurred to disturb the amiability of either monarch. It was doubtless agreed that they should form a dual alliance, absolute and exclusive.[9] "I have often slept two in a bed," the suave but inelegant Napoleon was heard to say at a subsequent meeting, "but never three." Savary declared that the smiling and complacent young Czar thought the remark delightful. The meaning of the riddle, if riddle there be, was, of course, that Austria could no longer count ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... some of us. In order to establish herself in the estimation of the average Persian, as all that a woman ought to be, the European lady would have to conceal her face and cover her shapely, tight-fitting dress with an inelegant, loose mantle, whenever she ventured outside her own doors. With something of a penchant for undertaking things never before accomplished, I proposed one morning to take a walk around the ramparts that encompass the Persian ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... about the canoes before we go any further. Among the Society Islands, the art of building them, like all native accomplishments, has greatly deteriorated; and they are now the most inelegant, as well as the most insecure of any in the South Seas. In Cook's time, according to his account, there was at Tahiti a royal fleet of seventeen hundred and twenty large war canoes, handsomely carved, and otherwise adorned. At present, those used ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... if that very inelegant word may be applied to any action performed by so elegant a ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... then you can believe as much as you choose, as all the rest of the world takes the liberty of doing; for although the grave old Roman writers put it in their books for truth, it is very much doubted by our modern wiseheads, because it is so unreasonable, and so inelegant (as our dainty critic says). As though the world was always reasonable, forsooth! or undoubted historical facts did not sometimes lack the important ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... hand or hands off the handlebar, a thing simple in itself, but complex in its consequences. This particularly was a feat Mr. Hoopdriver desired to do, for several divergent reasons; but at present it simply led to convulsive balancings and novel and inelegant modes ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... eating game or poultry do not touch the bones with your fingers. To take a bone in the fingers for the purpose of picking it, is looked upon as being very inelegant. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... granted Marie Louise 500,000 francs for her toilet, but she never spent the entire amount. She had little taste in dress, and would have made a very inelegant appearance had she not been well advised. The Emperor was present at her toilet those days on which he wished her to appear especially well, and himself tried the effect of different ornaments on the head, neck, and arms of the Empress, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... enough to say that Balzac knew nothing of the art of painting young girls; they make use of the inelegant, unpolished word rate to qualify his portraits of this genre. To be sure, Balzac's triumph is, we admit, in his portraits of mothers or passionate women who know life. Certain authors, without counting George Sand, have given us sketches ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... Manuel returned, led us into another apartment, where a not inelegant dinner was served up to us. Knowing the habits of my countrymen, we sat over some very fine claret, after Josephine had retired. I took this opportunity to reproach him, in the mildest terms that I could use, with ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Private, in Papers, and in Printshops, that are the reasons why I cannot more fully enjoy, the Amusements so various and pleasing of London. How often have I wished that I possessed as little Personal Beauty as you do; that my figure were as inelegant; my face as unlovely; and my appearance as unpleasing as yours! But ah! what little chance is there of so desirable an Event; I have had the small-pox, and must therefore submit to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of the wise, where they talk not of the mother of Andromache or of the sons of Niobe, but of the deeper causes of things human and divine; he who looks closely will see that even the barbarians had intelligence (mercurium), not on the tongue but in the breast.' Himself writing a vigorous and not inelegant Latin, and a master of clear exposition, he despised the purism of pedants and the current over-estimate of borrowed forms, especially when joined, as they often are, with one- sidedness, and involving indifference to the wider truth of the things themselves. Looking at Pico, we can ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... really something very romantic in the style of its architecture, and by no means inelegant; perhaps it is better suited for the peculiar situation of this marine palace than a more classical or accredited order would be. It has been likened, on its first appearance, to a chess-board; but, in my thinking, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... her investigations in the kitchen in a little while to Frances, who waited alone before the happy little fire in the chimney. She sighed as she resumed her rocking-chair by the window, and crossed her seldom idle hands over her comfortably inelegant front. ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... plump, coarse looking dame of about forty, and while all her aim is to appear an elegant woman of fashion, all her success is to seem an ordinary woman in very common life, with fine clothes on. Her manners are bustling, her air is mock-important, and her manners very inelegant. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... which the passer-by rarely cares to linger; for the commerce of the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis was of that steady, unpretending, money-making sort that despises mere shop-front attractions. Grocers, stationers, corn-chandlers, printers, cutlers, leather-sellers, and such other inelegant trades, here most did congregate; and to the wearied wayfarer toiling along the dead level of this dreary pave, it was quite a relief to come upon even an artistically-arranged Magasin de Charcuterie, with its rows of glazed tongues, mighty Lyons sausages, yellow terrines of ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... originally combined in some structure, of which the chief object was the large figure of S. Mary, often mentioned in the Rolls of the Custos Capellae, and which must have occupied a canopied niche, blocking up the whole of the middle light from sill to transom."[10] The design of the east window is inelegant, the transom is heavy, and the tracery in the large circle at the top spoils the effect of the window ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... strongest matter in the world, ill-worded and ill-delivered. Your business is negotiation abroad, and oratory in the House of Commons at home. What figure can you make, in either case, if your style be inelegant, I do not say bad? Imagine yourself writing an office-letter to a secretary of state, which letter is to be read by the whole Cabinet Council, and very possibly afterward laid before parliament; any ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... addressed to "Messrs. Herapath and Oakshott," and was signed by Wake of the Fifth, although written in the inelegant hand of Master ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... corridor of a German flat is often uncomfortably choked with articles of household use: lamps, for instance, and a refrigerator, and the safe in which the mistress locks her food; spare cupboards too, and neat piles of papers and magazines. It will be inelegant, but it will be orderly ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... like domestic, inelegant Fowls, As unpolish'd as Geese, and as stupid as Owls, Sit tamely at home, hum-drum with our Spouses, While Crickets and Butterflies open their houses? Shall such mean little Insects pretend to the fashion? Cousin Turkey-cock, well may you be in a passion! If I suffer such insolent airs to prevail, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... another. "Drapes," those flimsy, go-as-you-please looking bunches of poor taste knotted, cascaded, and festooned over mantels, pictures, and chair backs, we have outgrown, confining our efforts in this line to the silk draught curtain to conceal the inelegant yawn of an open grate; and even this is being ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... encourage a dangerous commerce with evil spirits, who were supposed to take upon themselves, at these unhallowed altars, the names and characters of these foul deities. Not only, therefore, the temple of Cybele, with its gigantic portico, its huge and inelegant statues, and its fantastic hieroglyphics, was thrown down and defaced when the empire was converted to the Christian faith, but the very ground on which it stood was considered as polluted and unhallowed; and no Emperor ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Earth God hath dispenst his bounties as in Heav'n. 330 So saying, with dispatchful looks in haste She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent What choice to chuse for delicacie best, What order, so contriv'd as not to mix Tastes, not well joynd, inelegant, but bring Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change, Bestirs her then, and from each tender stalk Whatever Earth all-bearing Mother yeilds In India East or West, or middle shoare In Pontus or the Punic Coast, or where 340 Alcinous reign'd, fruit of all kindes, in coate, Rough, or ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... manuscript shows little evidence of revision. In fact, the expression is so homely and natural that his grandson, William Temple Franklin, in editing the work changed some of the phrases because he thought them inelegant ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... cross, the transept of which is composed by large side chapels, whose roofs lie east and west, parallel to the body of the church. The tower, which is situated at the south-west angle of the west front, is strong, plain, and far from inelegant, being built with coarse lime stone, on which a new spire was erected since 1775, when a set of eight musical bells were fixed there, by Mr. Rudhall, of Glocester; the weight of the tenor being more than twenty-three hundred, and the key ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... our different pursuits in life, he concludes with the following preference of a college one, which, we find in the Specialities of his life, he was greatly devoted to in his youth. The lines, which are far from inelegant, seem indeed to come from his heart, and make him appear as an exception to that too general human discontent, which was the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... Bones, and repeated the inelegant remark many times. All this happened almost within sight of the quay on which Sanders and Hamilton were waiting. It was a very important young man who ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... must learn to walk"—and the joys of the dinner-party are not to be partaken of without a long preliminary course of training, as many a young man has learned to his sorrow when he discovered that his inelegant use of knife and fork was causing humorous comment up and down the "board" and was drawing upon himself the haughty glances of an outraged hostess. The first requisite of success in dining out is the possession of a complete ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... to him as a crime, was his bad English. He spoke our language, but not well. His accent was foreign: his diction was inelegant; and his vocabulary seems to have been no larger than was necessary for the transaction of business. To the difficulty which he felt in expressing himself, and to his consciousness that his pronunciation was bad, must be partly ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Suite" is better. The six children's pieces of opus 41, "Mysteries of the Wood," make considerable appeal to the fancy and imagination, and are highly interesting. They show Grieg's influence very plainly, and are quite worth recommending. This cannot be said of his most inelegant "Valse Elegante," or of his numerous dances, except, perhaps, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... eyebrows, staid and dignified, and, as she said of herself, intellectual. She read a great deal, used phonetic spelling, called her husband, not Dmitri, but Dimitri, and he secretly considered her unintelligent, narrow, inelegant, was afraid of her, and did not like to be at home. He had begun being unfaithful to her long ago—had been unfaithful to her often, and, probably on that account, almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... something voluptuous and bold. The forehead is broad, but low; and the wavy hair, with its tendril curls, comes down almost to the fine arched eyebrows, and then, falling into masses, sets off white shoulders which seem to designate an inelegant amount of embonpoint. There is nothing elevated in the whole countenance, as Lely has painted her, and her history is a disgrace ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... sister, "had a certain air upon them of hunter and huntress; yet withal a certain air of being the objects of the chase rather than the followers." This phrase lacks elegance—and Dickens is not often inelegant, as those who do not read him may be surprised to learn—but the impression is admirable; so is that which follows: "An indefinable kind of pause coming and going on their whole expression, both of face and form." Here is pure, mere impression ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... an aversion to the married state. Sigonius, a learned and well-known scholar, would never marry, and alleged no inelegant reason; "Minerva and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... their aprons, and from the use of always holding it down to one side of the face, all have a continued languishing manner of holding their heads one way—picturesque enough as expressive of a transient emotion, but shocking and inelegant in 'all' and always. The language Arabic, corrupted with Italian, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman |
