"Inopportune" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in Lawyer Ed's heart, so enraged was he at this very inopportune interruption, coming just when he thought he saw Jock wavering. He shouted at her to go in and ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... face the economic troubles of the government Jimenez disbanded part of the army and reduced military expenses. The moment was inopportune, for the implacable Haitians, who continued to consider Santo Domingo as Haitian territory in revolt, were preparing for another invasion. Soulouque, who had attained the presidency of the black republic, made a sudden incursion and marched victoriously as far as Azua. The Dominican government ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... said Arthur kindly. "It's very tiresome of Peggy to disappear at such an inopportune moment, but no harm can have happened to her, you know. It's impossible! As I said before, she has probably some wild prank in her head of which this is a part. I'll give her a lecture when I catch her for spoiling ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... turning the House upside down; and in this her Care, she so well succeeded, that, to her Dismay, he bade her take Pen and Ink, and commenced dictating to her as composedly as if they were in Bunhill Fields. This was somewhat inopportune, for every Thing was to seek and to set in Order; and, indeed, Mother soon came in, all of a Heat, and sayd, "I wonder, my Dear, you can keep Nan here, at such idling, when she has her Bed to make, and her Box to unpack." Father let her go without ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... rejoiced to find her entrance thus inopportune. "I only wished just to be sure it was ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... recognition was thus thrust into the foreground of discussion at a most inopportune time. The Florida treaty had not yet been ratified, for reasons best known to His Majesty the King of Spain, and the new Spanish Minister, General Vives, had just arrived in the United States to ask for certain explanations. The Administration had every reason at this moment to wish ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... It was impracticable to discuss anything seriously in the presence of Frau von Greifenstein, for her inopportune interruptions rendered ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Tavern. Mrs. Hancock was also in the city, and some fine preparations were made. There was a heated discussion. Some of the more sedate people, who never took part in gayeties, represented that this would be a most inopportune time for such a revel when the country was in the throes of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... overcast; and the terrible fact came out gradually that he was not 'nicely disposed.' His relatives failed to understand him, and they gave him up like a puzzle. He was self-contradictory. For instance, though a shocking liar, he was lavish of truth whenever truth happened to be disconcerting and inopportune. He it was who told the forewoman of his uncle's millinery department, in front of a customer, that she had a moustache. His uncle threshed him. 'She has a moustache, anyhow!' said this Galileo when his uncle had finished. Mr. Knight wished Tom to go into the drapery, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... contributed on this occasion, by the defeat of the troops under him, a greater benefit to the cause than often falls to the lot of a commander of an equal force to render by means of a victory" (Grant's "Memoirs"). A tactical success may be not only useless, but actually inopportune, if it is out of accord with the plans of the higher command. On the morning of June 18, 1815, Marshal Grouchy was in {8} pursuit of the Prussians whom Napoleon had defeated on June 16 at Ligny. Although urged "to march to the sound of the cannon" (at Waterloo), Grouchy pushed on eastwards, ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... his especial sympathy at this trying moment. Great, then, was her dismay to find that far from attempting to assuage, he seemed determined, on the contrary, to irritate the wound. Well convinced by experience of the solidity of her virtue, he seized the present apparently inopportune occasion of testing it anew. Assuming great sternness of voice and manner, he told her it was easy to see that her virtue was only superficial, since she manifested so great a want of submission to God's will, and of faith in ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... thrown a searchlight upon the sincerity with which Germany "passed on" the most important request of England and Russia for a little time to save the peace of Europe, and it strongly suggests the possibility that Count Berchtold's most inopportune absence in Ischl was to be the excuse for the gross discourtesy of refusing to give any extension ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... influences were to be concentrated against the President, it became necessary just at this inopportune time to make good the terrible waste in the armies caused by expiration of terms of service and by the bloody campaigns of Grant and Sherman. Volunteering was substantially at an end, and a call for troops would have to be enforced by a draft. Inevitably ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... relief, and Mac, with keen anticipations of a drink, a bathe and a sleep, speedily stumbled off through the scrub after his cobbers. Their line of march lay the length of a long ridge through enemy country, and on this ridge one of the destroyers protecting the flank chose this inopportune moment to cast her attention and her searchlight. Each time it caught him in its brilliant glare on the sky-line, Mac crashed down into the nearest shrub, prickly holly, arbutus or stunted oak, and cursed lowly to himself till the beam lifted. Progressing spasmodically ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... Not less inopportune than the public men of the party, Milton chooses this time for inculcating his views on endowments. A fury of utterance was upon him, and he poured out, during the death-throes of the republic, pamphlet upon pamphlet, as fast as he could ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... upon an inspection of the Journal of the late Conference of Commissioners, that the undersigned voted against many propositions in themselves just and expressive of their sentiments and yours, because inopportune and useless; and against others, because introduced for the very purpose of sowing dissension among the Commissioners and to prevent an agreement by majority upon any thing. In this they must ask your candid construction of their conduct, looking to the crisis, the occasion, the purpose and ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... at a moment most inopportune. It was not less her obvious policy than desire—prompted as well by the necessity of escaping the notice and consequent suspicions of those whom she had defrauded of their prey, as by a due sense of that delicate ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... becoming position adopted by the eighteenth—one who bore the unmistakable emblems of the Imperial army. In this brave and noble-looking personage Mian at once saw her preserver, and not doubting that an inopportune and treacherous death had overtaken him, she ran forward and raised him in her arms, being well assured that however indiscreet such an action might appear in the case of an ordinary person, the most select maiden need not hesitate to perform so ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... to the River Ourcq, I have been anxious to regain my original position on the left flank of the French Armies. On several occasions I have thought of suggesting this move, but the strategical and tactical situation from day to day has made the proposal inopportune. Now, however, that the position of affairs has become clearly defined, and that the immediate future can be forecasted with some confidence, I wish to press the proposal with all the power and insistence which are at my ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... must result to the proprietors of the Company's stock from the sudden alteration. It cannot be said that any constitutional principle was involved in what was merely a commercial regulation, or relaxation of such regulations. Yet it may not be thought inopportune to mention the transaction thus briefly, as one important step toward the establishment of free-trade, which, at the end of fifty years from the time when Pitt first laid the foundation of it, was gradually forcing itself on all our statesmen, as the only sound principle of commercial ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... Snelling were all detained in New York, it was Bob who brought the party home. In the meantime no opportunity had presented itself for broaching to the financier the subject of Willie's invention. The interval during the funeral rites was too inopportune, and Robert Morton had lacked both the inclination and the courage to break in upon such an occasion with an affair so sordid and unpleasant. He had hoped that during the return to the Cape some chance for a talk with ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... suffers from the congestion and nervous excitement which occur at the most inopportune moment possible. Man may suffer physical injury, though there are no grounds for the assertions of Pliny that the menstrual blood is so potent for evil that it will, by a mere touch, rust iron, render a tree sterile, make dogs mad, etc., or that of Paracelsus that ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... distress, revealed as it was in those last contemptuous words, struck Dave as so ridiculous that he laughed outright. It was the second occasion upon which his sense of humour had suffered an inopportune reaction in ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... of conceit, vendor of rare, satirical humor. Amory spread the table of their future friendship with all his ideas of what college should and did mean. Kerry, not inclined as yet to take things seriously, chided him gently for being curious at this inopportune time about the intricacies of the social system, but liked him and was ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... he had to grow, a certain rash greatness of idea; traces of veritable conviction, just resolution; veritable and just, though rash. That of admiration for King Friedrich was not intrinsically foolish, in the solitary thoughts of the poor young fellow; nay it was the reverse; though it was highly inopportune in the place where he stood. Nor was the Holstein notion bad; it was generous rather, noble and natural, though, again, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... whither it seemed good to his sovereign. In vain the cardinal had taken the field with an army of eighteen thousand foot and fifteen hundred light cavalry. The king had learned so well to entrench himself and to moderate his ardour for inopportune pitched battles, that the relieving force could find, no occasion to effect its purpose. The archduke retired. He came to Amiens like a soldier, said Henry, but he went back like a priest. Moreover, he was obliged to renounce, besides the city, a most ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to see that stern spirit giving way to any emotion, conceiving any affection, or working ever for the good of any but himself. Besides, in such an hour as this, the consciousness of the danger in which he stood by virtue of the Pope's death and his own most inopportune sickness, which disabled him from taking action to make his future secure, must have concerned him to the ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... doubt not that the reader who is acquainted with the beautiful lines of Rogers is as much grieved as I am at the interference of the "casket-makers" with the achievement which the poet ascribes to the bridegrooms alone; an interference quite as inopportune as that of old Le Balafre with the victory of his nephew, in the unsatisfactory conclusion of "Quentin Durward." I am afraid I cannot get the casket-makers quite out of the way; but it may gratify some of my readers to know that a chronicle of the year 1378, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... good intentions toward me and my family, though your coming is inopportune, not to say impertinent. We know our own affairs. Colonel Burr and myself are, I conceive, sufficiently experienced in business, and well enough informed in law, to know what we are about. The interference of local officials I shall resent, and if necessary, prosecute. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... consisted of sketch-books, a trifle of haberdashery, a curling-stick that was always tumbling out at inopportune moments, yards of blue ribbon, and a camp-stool strapped outside in company with a Japanese umbrella, a gift from the stout doctor, destined to be cursed in many languages by the unhappy beings into whose backs, eyes, and stomachs it was ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... hands where he would be safe, and whence he might recover him in time of need. While he stood deliberating where he should find a messenger, he saw Bradamante approach. That fair warrior had been parted from Rogero on their way to the abbey of Vallombrosa, by an inopportune adventure which had called the knight away. She was now returning to Montalban, having arranged with Rogero to join her there. To Bradamante, therefore, his fair cousin, Astolpho committed Rabican, and also the lance of gold, which would only be an incumbrance in his aerial ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... remarked diffidently, "that my arrival seemed either opportune or inopportune—I could not quite tell which. Were you in any way troubled or embarrassed by the presence of ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that I had only a dollar or two in my pocket. Therefore the check for fifty dollars that the old gentleman had carefully drawn for me with his quill pen and then had as carefully sanded over was by no means inopportune. I took the shore-car back over the Warren Avenue Bridge, depressed at the thought of leaving the scene of my first acquaintance with the world and at the same time somewhat relieved, in spite of myself, by the consoling thought that I should no longer be worried by the omnipresent anxiety of ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... as Lyveden's health of mind was concerned, itself grievously inopportune, the catastrophe could not have happened at a more opportune moment. Trading upon the heels of his encounter with Valerie, it made a terrific counter-irritant to the violent inflammation which that meeting had set up. Yet if the back of the sickness was broken, disorder and corrective, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... back a little. This dissipates some of the gas and reduces the volume somewhat. Let it rise again, which it will do in a short time, if it has not been allowed to become too light. If dough that has been kneaded and allowed to rise in mass, becomes sufficiently light at some inopportune moment for shaping into loaves, it may be kept from becoming too light and souring, by taking a knife and cutting it away from the sides of the bowl and gradually working it over toward the center. Re-cover and put in a warm place. It will soon assume its former bulk. ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... spoke he unfolded a long, small parcel; it contained a riding-whip. "I am afraid the moment is inopportune," he said; "and yet she will need it. Who knows but ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... also the heiress to a considerable property? Could he have been there, then, by appointment, without the father's knowledge? Was this the common case of a clandestine assignation? Could the father have returned to the house unexpectedly, at an inopportune moment, and found his daughter there, closeted with a stranger—perhaps with a man who had already, for sufficient grounds, been forbidden the premises? Such things might be, in this world that we live in: he ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... Lanyard cursed the man liberally, nothing could have been more inopportune; he needed that uncouth conveyance for his own purposes, and if only it had waited until he had piloted the girl to the station of the Metropolitain, he might have had it. Now he must either yield the cab to the girl or—share ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... not be inopportune to mention that this Government has imposed and collected some $70,000,000 by a tax on cotton, in the production of which the population of the Lower Mississippi is largely engaged, and it does not seem inequitable ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... Belinda's fault, however; Belinda's anxiety to be useful amounted at all times to something very nearly approaching a monomania; the fact simply was, that, her ailment being chronic, it usually evinced itself at inopportune periods. "It's the luck of the family," said Phil. "We never loved a tree or ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that mysterious parcel which it had been so difficult to pack and bring; whose contents he would not explain to her, saying that time would soon show her the purpose thereof. In his zest and his gaiety he had hung it there. How foolish and inopportune that ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... by Neifile brings to my mind another in which also Jew appears, but this time as the hero of a perilous adventure; and as enough has been said of God and of the truth our faith, it will not now be inopportune if we descend to mundane events and the actions of men. Wherefore I propose to tell you a story, which will perhaps dispose you to be more circumspect than you have been wont to be in answering questions addressed to you. Well ye know, or should know, loving gossips, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... meeting in St. James's Hall in the summer of 1868 to protest against the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, some Orange enthusiast, in the hope of disturbing the Bishop, kept interrupting his honeyed eloquence with inopportune shouts of "Speak up, my lord." "I am already speaking up," replied the Bishop in his most dulcet tone; "I always speak up; and I decline to speak down to the level of the ill-mannered person in the gallery." Every one whose memory ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... and then they sat still without talking. The children—must it be confessed?— asked all sorts of inopportune questions. At last Tom was even fain to tell the story of the bear himself, by way of silencing the Brick and Laura; and with much correction from Horace, had got the bear well advanced in smelling at the almond-candy and the figs, when a carriage was heard on ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... she noticed a fly at the door, and paused a moment to consider whether her visit might not be inopportune. It was a beautiful day, and Diana and Mrs. Colwood were probably to be found in some corner of the garden. Mrs. Roughsedge walked round the side ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... But this time will soon have an end: sorrow will embitter your joys ere the frost of age shall have cooled the blood or chilled the imagination; very soon, in a few years, perhaps, it will knock at the door of your soul; and you will be obliged to give this inopportune visitor admittance, to remain with you, perhaps, for the rest of your life. Among the young ladies of your acquaintance are there not some who are unhappy? And can you, without a voluntary illusion, convince yourself that youth is a preservative against misfortune? Are you prepared ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... received your draft for a quarter's rent of the villa. I thank you a thousand times for your admirable punctuality. Decidedly you are of those with whom it is a consolation to do business. Need I assure you that the advent of this money is far from inopportune, since a grateful country, while showering distinctions upon me with one hand, with the other picks my pocket. I find it not a little expensive this famous military service! But then, ever since I can remember, I have found all that afforded me the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... evil genius. His sallow face was perpetually turning up at inopportune moments. When Kenmuir Queen, the prize short-horn heifer, calved unexpectedly and unattended in the dip by the lane, Tammas and the Master, summoned hurriedly by Owd Bob, came running up to find the little man leaning against the stile, and shaking with silent ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... a sort of fire escape. Some enterprising janitor later fixed a spring lock on the upper door to this stairway (surprises had been sprung through this door upon the chapel stage by prankish students at inopportune moments), so that now it was only an exit, and was called by the students "the road to perdition," easy to descend but barred ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... this involved? Cocks had crowed before, even at noon-tide in summer, and the world had outlived the omen! Nevertheless the sound, especially so loud and grating a one, in which the bray of the donkey was so evenly mixed with the hideous scream of the peacock before rain, was an inopportune and impudent one; and the Colonel would have been very likely to wring chanticleer's neck if it had happened to come within the clutch of his fingers. As it was, he determined to cause an immediate abandonment of that stronghold, and sprung up to look for a club or a stone with which the enemy ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... the leaders of the meeting, and felt that he was really a stranger there. It was out of compassion they had drawn him into the meeting; he read in their eyes that the work that had been done was done without him, and that he came at an inopportune moment. Would they have to reckon with him, the hare-brained fellow, now again, or did he mean to emigrate? Alas, he did not give much impetus to the Movement! but if they only knew how much wisdom he had ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... its object became plain to me—as indeed to anyone. For ten minutes, perhaps, a wire must be carried from the overhead line to the chestnut-tree. Creake has everything in his favour, but it is just within possibility that the driver of an inopportune train might notice the appendage. What of that? Why, for more than a week he has seen a derelict kite with its yards of trailing string hanging in the tree. A very calculating mind, Mr. Hollyer. It would be interesting ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... such time as a benefice of at least fifty pounds should fall to him; so that he was kept in hope. After this Dunbar tunes forth a song of welcome to "his ain Lord Thesaurair," in which terror at this functionary's inopportune absence—since quarterday we may suppose—is lost in gratulations over his return. "Welcome," ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... who is too closely associated with his own period to be reckoned among those wide-ranging spirits whom Shelley has called 'the kings of thought.' Nevertheless the new edition of Byron is appearing at a moment which is, we think, not inopportune. There is just now, as by a coincidence there was in the year 1800, a dearth of poetic production; we have fallen among lean years; we have come to a break in the succession of notable poets; the Victorian ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... road. Back of this obstruction Mosby had formed a large part of his command, and our column was stopped by a heavy fire from carbines and pistols in their front and also by a flank-fire from the woods. At this inopportune moment Mosby made a charge which broke our column. The boys were driven back at a furious rate, and had not strength to rally. Some horses giving out, the ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... influence, for it left Wogan weak and tied to his bed; so that it was Gaydon who travelled to Rome and obtained the Pope's passport. Gaydon consequently saw what otherwise Wogan would have seen; and Gaydon, the cautious, prudent Gaydon, was careful to avoid making an inopportune discovery, whereas Wogan would never have rested until he had ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... prisoner with him, he rode through the pickets at the head of his men, receiving and returning their salutes. John Haps, of Company F, Second Kentucky, tightly gripping the prisoner's throat, meanwhile, to prevent inopportune disclosures. Just as the party got clear of the base, they were discovered, and one man's horse falling, he was made prisoner. On the 15th, Breckinridge and Bennett were sent to Baird's mill, eight miles from Lebanon, and eleven from Murfreesboro', where the Second Kentucky ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Suabia, Hessen, and from all the districts of Prussia outside the provinces of Frederick the Great. These entirely voluntary manifestations, which were arranged by no one, and which not infrequently came to me at rather inconvenient and inopportune times, have impressed me with the existence of national harmony. Every one of them has given pleasure to my patriotic heart, and has borne witness to a common feeling existing in all German races—this much I wished to say concerning the stability of the political ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... in the inopportune arrival of the Rev. Lisle Lindsay, whose rather sedate and solemn appearance cast a slight gloom upon everybody's spirits, which deepened when Queenie whispered to Mildred that he looked upon dancing as a frivolous and worldly amusement scarcely to be tolerated ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... Messrs. Cartier and Langevin in the recent distribution of honors as an act of indifference towards themselves. It might be possible, therefore—but you will be the best judge—that the honor now proposed for me might lead to an aggravation of this feeling of dissatisfaction, which arises at the very inopportune moment of the ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... [57] The envoys, however, adroitly concealing the real object of their mission, were permitted to pass unmolested to Saragossa, where Ferdinand was then residing. They could not have arrived at a more inopportune season. The old king of Aragon was in the very heat of the war against the insurgent Catalans, headed by the victorious John of Anjou. Although so sorely pressed, his forces were on the eve of disbanding for want of the requisite funds to maintain them. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... it may not be inopportune to make a break in the record of Cardan's life and work, and to treat in retrospect of that portion of his time which he spent in the composition of his treatises on Arithmetic and Algebra. Ever since 1535 he had been working intermittently at one ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... character; and yet, notwithstanding all, the rock-bed of pride, that cast the angels down from heaven, that led to the fall of man, obtruded itself. This occasion in which it manifested itself was very inopportune; already the look of Calvary was on the Saviour's face, and the sword entering His heart. Surely, they must have been aware that the shadow of the great eclipse was already passing over the face of their Sun. But even this did not avail to restrain the manifestation of their pride. Heedless of ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... which he was asked to take up. The interruption was too much. He flung the papers on the table with remarks more forcible than complimentary concerning the person who had distracted his attention at such an inopportune moment. In 1863 he was made a professor at Cambridge, where, no longer troubled with the intricacies of land tenure, he published one investigation after another with ceaseless activity, to the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... unaccountable sinkings of spirit, nameless and formless fears seemed to surround and haunt her. Once when she arose in the morning she felt an uncontrollable desire to cry, and frequently thereafter this feeling would seize upon her at the most inopportune times. Mrs. Gerhardt began to note her moods, and one afternoon she ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... means to leave a country," added Michel, "When we have not yet arrived there, seems to me rather inopportune." ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... particularly in the way of cleansing the shores of the land, and carrying off the filth that was constantly poured into the sea there-from; which, Peterkin suggested, was remarkably tidy of it to do. Poor Peterkin could never let slip an opportunity to joke, however inopportune it might be: which at first we found rather a disagreeable propensity, as it often interrupted the flow of very agreeable conversation; and, indeed, I cannot too strongly record my disapprobation of this tendency in general: but we became so ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... mothers say, "I try to visit school at least once each year." I wonder if they ever think of that one visit as an injustice to the teacher? Suppose that, as is quite probable, the visitor arrives at an inopportune moment, finding the children in the midst of work which won't "show off," or the air heavy with the echoes of a disciplinary encounter, or the children restless as the session draws to a close, or dull and listless from the heat ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... much to talk about that they could not discuss before the old countess—not that anything was hidden from her, but because she had dropped so far behindhand in many things that had they begun to converse in her presence they would have had to answer inopportune questions and to repeat what they had already told her many times: that so-and-so was dead and so-and-so was married, which she would again be unable to remember—yet they sat at tea round the samovar in the drawing room from habit, and Pierre answered ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... programme laid down by Lalor in 1848. One of Lalor's adherents had been a young priest named Croke. By 1887 he had become Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cashel. He had considered the "No Rent" manifesto inopportune; but now formally sanctioned the "Plan of Campaign," and in a violent letter urged that it should be extended to a general refusal to pay taxes. The Plan was also approved by the Roman Catholic Archbishop ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... what she would have to say to her aunts in her letter of farewell on leaving them would have to be thought out, too, so that no pursuit or inopportune prying into the truth would be ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... to his seat. He was much agitated too, though doing all that was possible to conceal it. My inopportune arrival was evidently a great and unlooked-for vexation to him. He gave me the only look of passionate displeasure I have ever had from him, as he sat down again; but he said ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... time her appearance at a rather inopportune moment, and when daddy rose up from behind the stove to confront the two women, in a voluminous apron and with a smutch across his cheek, Janice could not entirely smother ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... for this! Now you have really started on your wedding tour in the belief of all London, and all outside of London who take the Times; and all our world do take it. And now, if any rumor of this most inopportune disappearance of our bride should get out, why, it will never be believed! That is all! For has not the departure of the 'happy pair' been published in the Times? Yes, I am very glad of the news reporter's indiscreet precipitancy on this ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... fact that your manuscript score arrived at a time most inopportune, I having recently renounced all but my most pressing lessons to plunge myself entirely into an atmosphere of profound creation, I have conscientiously performed the task you imposed upon me. That this task proved very little worth while, I write with double ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... he let it transpire for Clementina's benefit that he had been to Los Gatos only on business, yet there was no opportunity for even a significant glance, and he had the added embarrassment of seeing that she exhibited no surprise nor seemed to attach the least importance to his inopportune visit. In a miserable indecision he allowed himself to be carried away by the high-flown hospitality of his Spanish hostess, and consented to stay to an early dinner. It was part of the infelicity of circumstance that the voluble ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... inopportune appearance with the bill. The young man paid it. When he looked up again Calendar had swung squarely about in his chair. His eye encountered Kirkwood's. He nodded pleasantly. Temporarily confused, Kirkwood ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... very inopportune to Lyon. He rose and walked a step or two, and stood by the fire facing her. He confessed, looking down, that he had not been in Alaska, and he had no desire to go there. "In fact, Miss Debree," he said, with effort at speaking lightly, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... restlessly about the room, stopping now and then to give an ear to any chance noise in the courtyard, and to glance alertly at the door; so that Shere understood that she was expecting another visitor, and that he himself was in the way. An inopportune intrusion, it seemed, was the sole outcome of the two years' anticipations, and utterly discouraged he rose from his chair. On the instant, however, Esteban signed to Shere to remain, and with a friendly smile himself made an excuse ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... a legal and international question, and that upon the whole it had been considered by Her Majesty's Govt. as efficient, though doubtless many ships had been enabled to run it"; and "that at all events there could not be a more inopportune moment for mooting the question both of the recognition of the South and of the efficiency of the blockade. The time was gone by when such measures could, if ever, have been taken—for every mail brought news ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... notwithstanding the eloquence of the Gracchi, the violence of Marius, and the triumph of Caesar, this execrable policy succeeded only too well. The Senate always temporized; the measures proposed by the tribunes might be good, but they were inopportune. It admitted that something should be done; but first it was necessary that the people should resume the performance of their duties, because the Senate could not yield to violence, and force must be employed only by the law. If the people—out of respect for legality—took this beautiful ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... interrupted by a knock at the Master's door. It was most inopportune, for he was on the point of the great disclosure, but common politeness compelled him to answer it, and as the step which we had heard was that of one of the softer-footed sex, he chose to rise from his chair and admit ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Goldsmith of the company. His guests that evening were Johnson, Goldsmith, Davies (the actor and bookseller who had conferred on Boswell the invaluable favour of an introduction to Johnson), Mr. Eccles, and the Rev. Mr. Ogilvie, a Scotch poet who deserves our gratitude because it was his inopportune patriotism that provoked, on this very evening, the memorable epigram about the high-road leading to England. "Goldsmith," says Boswell, who had not got over his envy at Goldsmith's being allowed to visit ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... history of Harrogate during the Elizabethan period, in terms of the only reliable source for such a purpose, and to trace the accumulated errors, as far as possible, to their origin and source, an inquiry which the reprint of "Spadacrene Anglica" at the present time makes not inopportune. ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... far beyond any she had ever known. Mrs. Moss, almost as reticent as Mrs. Haney herself, came and went about the studio brightly, briskly, keeping vigilant eye on her husband's mail, moistening his "mud ladies," and defending him from inopportune callers, insistent beggars, and wandering models. Bertha, though sitting with the stolid patience of a Mississippi clam-fisher, was thinking at express speed. Her mind was of that highly developed type where a hint sets in motion a score of related cognitions, and a word ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... silent. He was conscious that his lack of response seemed both sullen and awkward, but he was for the moment tongue-tied. His habit of inopportune self-analysis had once more asserted itself. He could not understand the curious nature of his mistrust of this woman, nor could he understand the pleasure which her suggestion gave him. He wanted to refuse, and yet he was glad to be able to tell himself that he ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of change now rapidly sweeping away the old order, with whatever beauty and grace it possessed, it might not seem inopportune at the present moment to give a rapid sketch, from the field naturalist's point of view, of the great plain, as it existed before the agencies introduced by European colonists had done their work, and as it still exists in ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... a little stirred; but there was another matter that must be mentioned, though she felt that the time was somewhat inopportune. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the dark And seeing you there, robed in that dazzling white Above these verdant gentlemen, I feel Like one that greets the gracious evening star Thro' a gap in a great wood. Is aught amiss? Why are you all so silent? Ah, my good, My brave Fitzwalter, I most fervently Trust I am not inopportune. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... more inopportune! I never dreamed she'd come— [CYNTHIA comes in veiled. As she walks quickly into the room, VIDA greets her languorously.] My dear Cynthia, you ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... Golden Butterfly was on the sward beside the crippled Cobweb. Mortlake's face was black as night. He fulminated maledictions on the young aviators who had appeared at—for him—such an inopportune moment. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... we left Crowland, and before we had replaced a tire casing that, as usual, collapsed at an inopportune moment, the long English twilight had come to an end. The road to Peterborough, however, is level and straight as an arrow. The right of way was clear and all conditions gave our car opportunity to do its utmost. It was about ten o'clock ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... doorway. Racey lowered a cautious hand and loosened his sixshooter in its holster. He wished that he had taken the precaution to tie it down. It was impossible to foresee what the next few minutes might bring forth. Certainly the coming of Peaches Austin was most inopportune. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... Mrs. Hannah Tracy Cutler, and myself were employed under direction of Mrs. Elizabeth Jones, of Salem, to canvass the State, lecturing and procuring names to petitions to the Legislature for equal legal and political rights for the women of the State. The time chosen for this work was inopportune for immediate success—the opening scenes of the rebellion alike absorbing the attention of the people and their Legislature. Women in goodly numbers came out to hear, but men of all classes waited in the streets, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... encountered Archie and Doodles. Sir Hugh, who had been altogether at a loss to understand what she had meant by the man out of Warwickshire, followed her into the hall, and became more angry than before at finding that his brother had brought a friend to his house at so very inopportune a moment. The wrath in his face was so plainly expressed that Doodles could perceive it, and wished himself away. The presence also of the spy was not pleasant to the gallant captain. Was the wonderful woman ubiquitous, that he ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... natural affection, which a son should have for his father, had vanished with it. He had, on several occasions, made half-hearted attempts at a better understanding, but these attempts had unfortunately fallen on inopportune moments, when the old man was not particularly gracious toward the world in general, and latterly there had been silence between the two. The young man avoided his father as much as possible; he would not have remained at home, had it not been for his mother. Her steady, unwavering affection ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... bolt, but Mr. Clay promptly acknowledged the ticket, and it was elected. Then followed the death of the President in office, the obnoxious vetoes of the newly installed President—Tyler—the division of the Whig party, the nomination of Mr. Clay at this late inopportune time and the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... from that moment. Neither, however, knew of the other's passion, though each hoped as an innocent and youthful love will hope, and each trembled as each hoped. Nothing explicit had been said that evening; but much, very much, in the way of sympathy and feeling had been revealed, and but for the inopportune entrance of Julia and myself, all might ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... am not even apostolic," said the doctor, with one or two contented and discontented grunts. Eleanor understood them; the content was his own, the discontent referred to the speaker whose words were so inopportune. The doctor rose and left the ground. Mr. Rhys had gone even before him; and Eleanor wondered anew whether this man were indeed shy or not. He was so little seen and heard; yet spoke, when he spoke, with such clearness and self-possession. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... presented with delectable sarcasm. The story of the famous singer, who between packing his valise to take the train for his next engagement, studying a new role, running over numerous letters from admirers, makes love to the one caller he cannot get rid of, a woman who chooses that inopportune moment to shoot herself before his eyes, is a typical product of his manner, and a grotesque satire upon the cult of histrionic stars practised ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Quixote very deliberately and phlegmatically replied, "Fair damsel, at the present moment your request is inopportune, for I am debarred from involving myself in any adventure until I have brought to a happy conclusion one to which my word has pledged me; but that which I can do for you is what I will now mention: ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... kegs while Nolan kept watch for inopportune visitors. It was thought inadvisable to unload the camp outfit from the car until the whisky was all removed. The outfit effectually hid what was below—and they were taking no chances. They both breathed freer when the two kegs ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... The intrusion of the abnormal side of Viola's life seemed at the moment not merely inopportune but repulsive. As he entered the drawing-room he found her sitting in a low chair beside a small table on which stood a shaded lamp. Clarke was talking with her, and Serviss could detect even at a distance the depressing change ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... from the burdens imposed on the British taxpayer, it will be admitted that the time chosen by Mr. Gladstone for abruptly raising the taxation of Ireland from 14s. 9d. per head to 26s. 7d. was inopportune, not ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... visit is inopportune, and ought to be shortened," replied Maurice, for the agitated manner and troubled look of Madame de Fleury made him feel that he must be an intruder. "I will only remain long enough to know if you will receive my grandmother, my father, and ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... that Mr Aiken's poetry is merely a chemical compound of the 'nineties, Freud and introspective Imperialism; but we do think it is liable to resolve at the most inopportune moments into those elements, and that such moments occur with distressing frequency in the poem called 'The Charnel Rose.' 'Senlin' resists disruption longer. But the same elements are there. They ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry |
