"Unattractive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but you referred to "the lot," ' said Wych Hazel. 'There was the usual mingling, I think, of attractive and unattractive.' ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... I can see her cold, grey-green eyes to this hour, her white starched shirt and her sharp steel belt buckle—ugh! It should be illegal, in a Republic where there are so many less sensible laws, for any woman to be so ostentatiously unattractive.... ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... Raphael impose silence upon them; they murmur vague formulas of enthusiasm, and go off to rhapsodize—this time with sincerity—over some Magdalen of Guido, or some Madonna of Carlo Dolce. I make large allowance, therefore, for this unattractive aspect which belongs to fresco-painting; but in this case, the execution is by far too repulsive. The mind may be content, but the eye suffers. Painting, which is altogether a plastic art, can express its ideal only ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... nose at Cain's vegetables. The mealiest potatoes, the tenderest green peas, had no charm for him; and even the leeks, the garlic, the onions, and the cucumbers, which were afterwards so beloved by his Jewish favorites, were quite unattractive. In the language of Scripture, "Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... higher in it; while to those who are already at the top, it is chiefly a compliance with custom, and with the supposed requirements of their station. To a person of any but a very common order in thought or feeling, such society, unless he has personal objects to serve by it, must be supremely unattractive: and most people, in the present day, of any really high class of intellect, make their contact with it so slight, and at such long intervals, as to be almost considered as retiring from it altogether. Those ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... to Yucca Flats to change into. And when he tried to picture himself in a spare suit of Dr. O'Connor's, the picture just wouldn't come. Besides, the idea of doing a modified strip-tease in, or near, the O'Connor office was thoroughly unattractive. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... tells us," resumed Gregory, "that he is not meek. Ah, how little he knows himself! His words are, indeed, extravagant; his appearance is ferocious, and even (to an ordinary taste) unattractive. But only the eye of a friendship as deep and delicate as mine can perceive the deep foundation of solid meekness which lies at the base of him, too deep even for himself to see. I repeat, we are the true early Christians, only ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... was a remnant of a real castle that had once protected the village of Belton. The house itself was an ugly residence, three stories high, built in the time of George II, with low rooms and long passages, and an immense number of doors. It was a large unattractive house—unattractive that is, as regarded its own attributes but made interesting by the beauty of the small park in which it stood. Belton Park did not, perhaps, contain much above a hundred acres, but the land was so broken into knolls and ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... halted at a lonely log-house which served as a sort of inn or resting-place, the proprietor finding compensation for the dreariness of his situation in the large profit derived from an illegal but thriving traffic in liquor. A more unkempt, unattractive establishment could hardly be imagined, and if rumour was to be relied upon, it had good reason to be haunted by more than one ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... for moderate amounts of methaqualone, small amounts of heroin, and cocaine bound for Southern Africa and possibly Europe; a poorly developed financial infrastructure coupled with a government commitment to combating money laundering make it an unattractive venue for ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... printing or engraving, the mechanical make-up—all these things contribute to the IMPRESSION a letter makes upon the recipient even BEFORE THE MESSAGE IS READ. Many letters come to nothing because their dress is unattractive, cheap, slovenly; and so progressive business men are learning to select their stationery with care to insure for it both tone and dignity. The kind of paper to select—the size, the tint and the quality—is described and ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... Encke's position when the curtain rises on our story at Potsdam, and shows us Wilhelmine, an unattractive maid of ten, the Cinderella of her family, for whom there seemed no better prospect than a soldier-husband, if indeed she were lucky enough to capture him. She was, in fact, the "ugly duckling" of a good-looking ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... of an opposite type to ours, and, though I say it, their type was a singularly unattractive one; perhaps it may have been the original of those caricatures of our compatriots by which French comic artists have sought to avenge Waterloo. It was stiff, haughty, contemptuous. It had prominent front teeth, a high nose, a long upper ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... unattractive. Eyes wide apart and widely expanded, so that the entire circle of the iris was exposed, although the eyeball itself was not a fleur de tete, but rather sunk into excessively spacious orbital cavities in the skull. The part of the eyeball which is usually white was ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Winn quite alone. She was sitting at a table drawn up into the bow-window, busily engaged in covering books with whitey-brown paper. On her right was a pile of gaily bound volumes, blue, red, and purple, which were quickly reduced to a pale brown, unattractive appearance in her practised hands, and placed in a pile on her left. Delia thought Mrs Winn looked whitey-brown as well as the books, for there was no decided colour about her: her eyes were pale, as well as the narrow line of hair which showed beneath ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... low in stature, and usually are rather corpulent. In their movements on foot they are heavy and ungraceful, and they are, on the whole, a slovenly and unattractive race of men. But the instant they mount their horses they seem to be entirely changed, and surprise the spectator with the ease and elegance of their movements. Their great and distinctive peculiarity as horsemen is the power they have acquired of throwing themselves suddenly on either ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... attached such importance was observed. A woman (the younger of the two seen in the phaeton) drove up for Major Calvin Blake; a youngish rather than a young woman, slight, with an effect of stateliness, and not unattractive. Her husband, a tall and pleasant enough looking man, came down the stairs, and when he saw the woman his face lighted swiftly—and rather wonderfully, when one considers that she was not unexpected. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... results in a certain repellent manner, commonly regarded as the apparel of righteousness, and is further responsible for the fatal mistake of making the surroundings of "good influences" singularly unattractive; a mistake which really deserves a reprimand quite as severe as the equally reprehensible deed of making the surroundings of "evil influences" so beguiling. Both are akin to that state of mind which narrows the entrance into a wider morality to the eye of a needle, and accounts for the fact ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... after my conversation with this unattractive child I was in my brougham, with the windows up, and I sat back, a paper before my face lest any one should look in. Naturally I was afraid of being seen in company of William's wife and Jenny, for men ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... flat. The skiff being now only a drag upon them, it was broken up and burnt for the sake of the ironwork. On account of the damage to the salt pork caused by the sinking of this boat, the strictest economy of diet had to be exercised, and though an abundance of fish was caught, they had become unattractive to their palates. The continuation of the voyage down the course of the Murray was henceforth a monotonous repetition of severe daily toil at the oar. The natives whom they encountered, though friendly, became a nuisance from the constant handling and embracing that the ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... soon again dismissed him, and who now assumed the lead at Wittenberg with a passionate and ambitious, but undeterminate zeal. The other was the Augustine monk, Gabriel Zwilling, who had introduced himself to notice as a fiery preacher in the convent church, and in spite of his unattractive appearance and weak voice had drawn together a large congregation from the town and university, and fascinated them with his eloquence. A young Silesian wrote home from the university of Wittenberg about him, saying: 'God has ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... become much simpler, and especially less expensive, for unmarried men than it used to be. Even if a hostess asks a favor in return for weeks of hospitality, the sacrifice she requires of a man is rarely greater than a cotillion with an unattractive debutante whom she is trying to launch; or the sitting through a particularly dull opera in order to see her to the carriage, her lord and master having slipped off early to his club and a quiet game of pool. Many people who read these lines ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... the young man thoughtfully, "there are other things worth living for—duty. An unattractive nose would not interfere with that. Some people think it is rather more important than love. I ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... spoken of as being the most obscure and the least attractive of Browning's poems; it has even been called "the most illegible production of any time or country." Hard, very hard, it undoubtedly is; but undoubtedly it is far from unattractive to the serious student of poetry, who will find in it something of the fascination of an Alpine peak: not to be gained without an effort, treacherous and slippery, painfully dazzling to weak eyes, but for all that irresistibly fascinating. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... slouching on the box seat in his unattractive disguise, must have been as much astonished as Monny and Brigit when the gatekeeper returned with another big negro to say that the ladies would be welcomed by Mabella Hanem. The two girls were wildly delighted. Fenton's emotions were ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... conclude that this kind of Attention is a common faculty among men. On the contrary it is quite rare, and is seen only among those of "strong" mentality. Anyone may fasten his Attention upon some passing, pleasing thing, but it takes a trained will to fasten it upon some unattractive thing, and hold it there. Of course the trained occultist is able to throw interest into the most unattractive thing upon which it becomes advisable to focus his Attention, but this, in itself, comes with the trained ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the eyes of the two men as they met was war. Waldo had come back with the determination that while there was life there should be hope. He had until this time regarded Bulchester's marked attentions with the amusement that the nobleman's unattractive exterior was likely to meet with in a rival. Added to that was Waldo's conceit, which made him look through the large end of the telescope in viewing others. But now he had heard Katie's dallying—why hadn't she finished the fellow up quickly?—he had read the determination ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... historical events connected with the conquests of Spanish armies, or the discoveries of Spanish fleets, and have thus placed within the reach of writers at the present day materials for lack of which even the able histories of ROBERTSON and his contemporaries became meagre and unattractive. The historians of our era are making the best possible use of these copious and invaluable collections. The first result of their efforts was WASHINGTON IRVING'S magnificent 'Life of COLUMBUS,' one of the most polished and perfect works of its class in the English language, and which has done as ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... is palpable that the characterisation of the hostess in the First Part of Henry IV., in its original form, was not the same as that presented in the Second Part of this play in which she is represented as Mistress Quickly, an old, unattractive, and garrulous widow. In the First Part of Henry IV. she is mentioned only once as Mistress Quickly. In Act III. Scene iii. the prince addresses her under this name ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... There was no mistaking the kindliness in his eyes, or the look of rather wan beseeching in his thin, pinched face. In his golfing suit of Harris tweed he was not an unattractive figure, even if ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... were dirty-looking, handed by dirtier hands, coming out of filthy receptacles and weighed in equally unattractive scales. These were previously sampled by millions of flies. I asked some of the passengers who went in for these dainties to give their opinion. Many of them used choice expressions as to the quality but were satisfied to state that they were helpless in the matter; they ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
... alone he found happiness, who could not await the evening that would bring him to her, who declared that his affection would never cool, and their whole wedded life would be one continuous honeymoon, now finds her company tedious, her home unattractive. He looks upon his home as his boarding and lodging-house, upon his wife as the kitchen scullion, or as the nurse of his children, for which services he generally allows her so many dollars a week. At the breakfast table his face is buried in the morning paper. He rises without ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... marshes as a condition of the atmosphere, premonitory of the fierce electric storms and the earthquake which visited the city that same night. The greenish light beat full on the sunken doorway, so that only the lowermost steps remained in shadow. However unattractive the temporary complexion of the sun, I was glad of his company as I descended the steps. The twisting dragons of the doorhandle attracted me as I drew near. As for the dog, I had exorcised it from my imagination with those nimble drops of water; and for the old door, ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... not act upon the first impulse communicated to one of his friends, and forthwith retire from public life, he with this incident lost all zest for it. Occasionally he spoke, choosing the level, unattractive field of the Civil Service Estimates. It was a high tribute to his power and capacity that on the few occasions when he spoke the House filled up, not only with the contingent attracted by the prospect of anything ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... would have been different if she had been able to doubt, even a little, of his unreconciled state, as she doubted of Lord Warburton's; unfortunately it was beyond question, and this aggressive, uncompromising look of it was just what made it unattractive. She could never say to herself that here was a sufferer who had compensations, as she was able to say in the case of her English suitor. She had no faith in Mr. Goodwood's compensations and no esteem for them. A cotton factory was not a compensation for anything—least ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... accomplish in this direction, however, is nullified to the lovers of the beautiful, by the war he constantly wages upon our song birds, destroying their young, and substituting his unattractive looks and inharmonious chirps for their beautiful plumage and ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... harsh and dry. But it is well built, and, as seen from the river, apparently prosperous. The Ohio is here crossed by the once famous million-dollar bridge of the Baltimore & Ohio railway. The wharf is at the junction of the two streams, but chiefly on the shore of the unattractive Little Kanawha, which is spanned by several bridges, and abounds in steamers and houseboats moored to the land. Clark and Jones did not think well of Little Kanawha lands, yet there were several families on the river as early as 1763, and Trent, Croghan, and other Fort Pitt fur-traders ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... impossible to shower affection on him as on a little boy; and he is always getting in the way. If he talks with a childish lisp he is called a baby, and if he answers in a grown-up way he is called impertinent. In fact any talk at all from him is resented. Then he is at the unattractive, growing age. He grows out of his clothes with indecent haste; his voice grows hoarse and breaks and quavers; his face grows suddenly angular and unsightly. It is easy to excuse the shortcomings of early childhood, but it is hard to tolerate even unavoidable lapses ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... suddenly from the wild regions of Tierra del Fuego and the unattractive Falklands, Valparaiso appeared to us a very beautiful place. It is very irregularly built—at the bottoms of valleys, on the tops of hills, and on their steep and sometimes rugged sides, rising directly out of the blue ocean, with ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... whom a lady or gentleman should be especially polite. All elderly persons, the unattractive, the poor, and those whose dependent positions may cause them to fear neglect. The gentleman who offers his arm or gives his time to an old lady, or asks a very plain one to dance, or attends one who is poorly dressed, never looses ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... boys by such phrases as this, "I dearly love the muse, although I must admit that I have never been the recipient of any of her favors." This took so well that later he was encouraged to say, "The Old Metaphysics is positively unattractive, but the New Metaphysics is to me most lovely, although I can not boast that I have ever been honored by any of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... set of small drawers or a cabinet will do. Matchboxes or pillboxes are excellent for small specimens. For display purposes, glass-covered cases are best to prevent handling of the shells. A shell's beauty is often deceptive. Many unattractive and drab shells are worth hundreds of dollars while the most colorful are frequently valued at a dollar or less. The rarity of a species determines its value. A truly valuable shell may come from deep, inaccessible waters ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... said Johnson, when Mr. Polly came down to breakfast, and Mrs. Johnson looked up brightly. Mr. Polly had never felt breakfast so unattractive before. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... humblest pretensions. It was a weather-stained, unpainted wooden edifice of one story, standing at no great distance from the meeting-house, and capable of containing comfortably, probably a hundred people. The interior was almost as rude and unattractive as the exterior, the walls being coarsely plastered and dingy with smoke that had escaped from a cast-iron stove which stood in the centre of the room. Benches with backs were placed parallel to one another, and facing a sort of rostrum or reading-desk, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... glanced at the presents laid out on the dining-room table, but they looked unattractive. Even the brown plush monkey she had bought for Thor with such enthusiasm seemed to have lost his wise and humorous expression. She murmured, "All right," to her mother, lit her lantern, and ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... told Miss Linton a story or two about certain experiences of his own in the Rockies, the car was approaching the city. Presently they were drawing up before the group of wide-porched, long buildings, not unattractive in aspect, which formed the hospital known as the ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... stirred before my eyes in inaccessible forbearance. Long did I watch with shaking knees that window dawning upon space, as the shepherd watches the rising of Venus. That evening, when I had come in and was alone for a moment—Marie was busy below in the kitchen—alone in our unattractive room, I retired to the starry window, beset by immense thoughts. These spaces, these separations, these incalculable durations—they all reduce us to dust, they all have a sort of fearful splendor from which we ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... mother was well born, and a girl of great beauty and charm. She was of foreign blood, and her parents, after the foreign custom, selected for her, at the age of seventeen, a man of mature years and unattractive personality, but some fortune. The family lived in a seaport town, and your mother attracted the eye of a young seafaring man, holding a government position. An intense and uncontrollable love sprang up between them. Your mother had been kept in ignorance of God's ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... little, meek, awkward, slim creature absolutely demolished them. Oh! she did it in such a fine, simple, unworldly sort of way. I only wish you had seen her! They were twitting her about not going in for all the fun here, and, above everything, for keeping her room so bare and unattractive. You know she has been a fortnight here to-day, and she has not got an extra thing— not one. There isn't a room in the hall like hers— it's so bare and unhomelike. What's ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... been a marked change in the forms of Sunday worship, especially in the general adoption of responsive readings or more elaborate rituals. The tendency has been away from the bare and unattractive service of the Puritan churches, which was the acme of individualism in worship, towards the more social conception that brings the whole congregation to join in the act and in the spirit of devotion. This social conception of worship had its first distinct expression in a Unitarian church ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... "the eternal idea of the body" does not imply that we are false to love when we are unable to change our natural repugnance in the presence of the repulsive and the offensive into attraction to these things. Love certainly does not mean a morbid attraction to what is unattractive. The sexual emotion, the emotion which we call "being in love," does sometimes include this morbidity, just because, by reason of its physiological origin, it tends to remain the slave of the physiological. But although love does not imply a morbid attraction to ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... the rougher girl, "if you want to go home you have a swell chance right now, but if you want to come with me quit simping and come," and she picked up her own bag in bad temper, gave her brilliant scarf a twist and started off for the jitney, leaving Dagmar to take the unattractive choice ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... they lived in, that had long since declared them both born to single blessedness; affirming it impossible that the pale, retiring bookworm should ever summon courage to seek a wife, or be able to obtain one if he did, and equally impossible that the plain-looking, plain-dealing, unattractive, unconciliating Miss Millward should ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the points of association connected with sentiment (and all personal civilities and attention have this root) grows upon one like carelessness in dress, until an entire community may get to be as ungracious in deportment, as it is unattractive in attire. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... long age of lethargy. Toryism of a stolid clownish type still held the thrones of collegiate power. Yet the eye of an imaginative scholar as he gazed upon the grey walls, reared by piety, munificence, and love of learning in a far-off time, might well discern behind an unattractive screen of academic sloth, the venerable past, not dim and cold, but in its traditions rich, nourishing, and alive. Such an one could see before him present days of honourable emulation and stirring acquisition—fit ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... and feet from the railing of the porch. They returned this inspection in silence—on Sylvia's part with the keen and welcoming interest she always felt in new people who were well-dressed and physically attractive, but as for Judith with a frankly hostile curiosity, as at some strange and quite unattractive ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... the name of everything that is eccentric should you go there for? The most uninteresting, out-of-the-way, altogether unattractive little hole in all Germany? What can have put Silberbach in ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... which he recognized (from sketches he had seen) as a "prairie schooner"; in front of another store he saw a spring wagon of the "buckboard" variety. That was all. The aroma of sage-brush filled his nostrils; the fine, flint-like, powdered alkali dust lay thick everywhere. It was unattractive and dismal. ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Annuals" and other books of this period could be traced, artists as famous as Charles Keene might be found to have contributed. But, owing to the mediocre wood-engraving employed, or to the poor printing, the pictures are singularly unattractive. As a rule, they are unsigned and appear to be often mere pot-boilers—some no doubt intentionally disowned by the designer—others the work of 'prentice hands who afterwards became famous. Above all they are, essentially, illustrations to children's books only because they ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... Wade, and, finding her at home, proceeded there at once, to "fix" matters; a thing by no means hard to accomplish, for Kitty Wade found the prospect of a lonesome vacation very unattractive, and ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... Would we in trim our honours wear, We must preserve them from the air; What is familiar men neglect, However worthy of respect. Did they not find a certain friend In Novelty to recommend, (Such we, by sad experience, find The wretched folly of mankind) 560 Venus might unattractive shine, And Hunter fix no eyes but mine. But Fame, who never cared a jot Whether she was admired or not, And never blush'd to show her face At any time in any place, In her own shape, without disguise, And visible to mortal eyes, On 'Change exact at seven o'clock Alighted on the weathercock, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... most hospitably, and in spite of its only being a quarter before eleven when the feast began, the chicken sandwiches entirely disappeared. There were only four, and half a dozen small sponge-cakes which proved to be somewhat dry and unattractive. ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... I whispered to the youngest, when Mrs. Thorne had withdrawn with Carrie for a few minutes. They were certainly very unattractive children; nevertheless, my heart warmed to them, as it did to all children. I ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Colonial Affairs is naturally, to some extent, discouraged by the knowledge that the subject is an unattractive one to a large proportion of the reading public. It is difficult to get up anything beyond a transient interest in the affairs of our Colonial dependencies; indeed, I believe that the mind of the British ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... a word which we owe to the French Communists, and which signifies a fellowship in gain and loss, in honour and dishonour, in victory and defeat, a being, so to speak, all in the same bottom, is so convenient, that unattractive as confessedly it is, it will be in vain to struggle against its reception. The newspapers already have it, and books will not long exclude it; not to say that it has established itself in German, and probably in other European ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... the town I asked where this mine was situated, and I was directed to the left bank of the river Divonne, in a little dale, traversed by a ravine, after which the mine had been named. This dale is as unattractive as the town. ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... Abelard could visit Heloise without restraint. He was her teacher, and the two spent hours together, nominally in the study of Greek and Hebrew; but doubtless very little was said between them upon such unattractive subjects. On the contrary, with all his wide experience of life, his eloquence, his perfect manners, and his fascination, Abelard put forth his power to captivate the senses of a girl still in her teens ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... attempted to purify that part of my table where his elbow had rested by rubbing it hard with the napkin which I had taken clandestinely from the linen-closet. And the repulsion extended itself to the very books, already unattractive enough to me, which he touched; I even tore certain leaves out of them because I suspected that he had handled ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... more and more splendid in order to mark the differences of rank, and much grand effect was thus produced; but the merits of the sculpture was less than formerly, and the monuments of this age are wanting in spirit, stiff and unattractive. The costume of the time, too, was so ugly that it served to give a grotesque air to many figures, and thus added to the general appearance of decline which marked the English tomb-sculpture of the fourteenth century. It compares unfavorably with the German monuments of the same period, and the realistic ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... offer, notwithstanding all the importunities of her parents, who could not feel reconciled to the loss of so splendid an alliance. The devout maiden, in the conflict, exposed herself, bonnet-less, to sun and wind, that she might render herself unattractive, tanned, sun burnt, and freckled, so that the emperor might not desire her. She succeeded in repelling the suit, and the emperor married Claudia of the Tyrol. The court of the Elector Palatine was brilliant in opulence and gayety. Eleonora ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... when my private secretary, Mr. James H. LeRoy, was one day approaching Malolos, he was sternly commanded by a sentry to halt, the command being emphasized as usual by presenting to his attention a most unattractive view down the muzzle of a Krag. He was next ordered to "salute the flag," which he finally discovered with difficulty in the distance, after being told where to look. The army way is right and necessary in war, but it makes a lot of bother ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... her character really out of style and out of date? If this were true, it would be unfortunate; for the kind of girl that Lisa represents will become obsolete only when purity, modesty, and gentleness in women become unattractive. We have not yet progressed quite so far as that. Instead of saying that Lisa is a type of the Russian girl of 1850, I should say that she is a type of ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... pictures intended to be viewed from a great distance. His decorations present very little opportunity for the eye to rest upon them, and they are altogether too involved, in their turbulent compositions. Their color is not unattractive, no matter how cold, and of sufficient interest to atone for the lack of dignified design. The subjects of all of these are by no means unattractive, and a description of them reads far better ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... blew there for Weber's land-claim. Mulinuu, for which Becker had intrigued so long and so often, for which he had overthrown the municipality, for which he had abrogated and refused and invented successive schemes of neutral territory, was now no more to the Germans than a very unattractive, barren peninsula and a very much disputed land-claim of Mr. Weber's. It will scarcely be believed that the tale of the Scanlon outrages was not yet finished. Leary had gained his point, but Scanlon had lost his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I found these women unattractive and even repellent, and yet as I walked about the level I occasionally caught fleeting glimpses of genuine beauty of face and form, and more rarely expressions of a seeming high ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... Grenfield, the heroine of Fetters on the Feet (ARNOLD), she is living with some Quaker cousins and spending most of her time in mending stockings. So many people make stockings who refuse absolutely to mend them that I imagine there must be something peculiarly unattractive in this work of restoration, and it was a fortunate day for Margaret when the pedantic young man of the house proposed to marry her. After this we discover that she has both a history and a will of her own. She leaves the Quakers, and goes as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... low building, unattractive in itself, but its gardens with every beautiful device of native art, fountains, bridges, shrines, fantastically trimmed trees, flowers, winding ways, ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... though during that silence she gave no sign of distress or agitation. It was for her obviously a moment of reflection. Her lips were compressed a little in a characteristic, capable manner. I looked at her with a friendliness I really felt towards her slight, unattractive, and dependable person. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... with his definition of taste—"Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to our moral nature in its purity and perfection." This will not do; for taste will take material sources, unattractive in themselves, and by combination, or for their contrast, receive pleasure from them. All literature and all art show this. That taste, like life itself, is instinctive in its origin and first motion, we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... checked at the entrance to the theatre by the appearance of Appleton. He was coming from within the building, and with him were two women, one elderly and unattractive, the other a plump young person with bright blue eyes in a saucy face that had more claim to piquant effrontery than to beauty. She was simply dressed and was all smiles ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... were beggared, and as I heard afterwards, driven to such extremities that one of them died of her misery and the other became a lodging-house keeper. The details do not matter, but I may explain that these ladies were unattractive in appearance and manner and broke down beneath my cross-examination which made them appear to be telling falsehoods, whereas they were only completely confused. Further, I invented an ingenious theory of the facts which, although the judge regarded it with suspicion, convinced an unusually stupid ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... their failings. At Johannesburg I had been specially struck by men, who knew them from long experience, telling me how fully they appreciated the good points of the burghers—for instance, their bravery, their love of their country, and their simple, unquestioning, if unattractive faith, which savoured of that of the old Puritans. Against these attributes their pig-headedness, narrow-mindedness, laziness, and slovenliness had to be admitted. All these defects militated against their living in harmony with a large, increasing, and up-to-date community like the Johannesburg ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... fashions from Paris. Others have described the Martians as pot-bellied and hairless, with goggle eyes, powerful arms, and curly, gelatinous legs, the result of millions of years of universal culture and Subway congestion. A race so unattractive could not but be virtuous. One feels instinctively that there is no graft bound up with the digging of the ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... pity that such pretty customs die out. Wedding parties must have looked so attractive going along these country roads. The fashion that has replaced it is unattractive. To-day they think it much more chic to hire a big barge and drive down to Esbly and have a rousing breakfast and dance in the big hall which every country hotel has for such festivities. Such changes are in the spirit ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... that is better adapted to them. Again, the success with which these pupils carry a schedule of five or six subjects, besides other work not recognized in the treatment of this study, and retrieve themselves in the unattractive subjects of failure pleads for a recognition of their ability and enterprise. Their difficulty is without doubt frequently more physiological than psychological, except as they are the victims of a false psychology, that either disregards or misapplies the principles which Thorndike terms the ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... cannot alter the point. You may know the call was wrong, but grin at it, and the crowd will join you. These things are the essence of good sportsmanship, and good sportsmanship will win any gallery. The most unattractive player in the world will win the respect and admiration of a crowd by a display of real sportsmanship ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... the first five of which are amusingly described in his book "Crotchets and Quavers." More than twenty years later he attempted to continue the story in a musical journal, and gathering the disconnected chapters together, issued them in an unattractive form under the title "Flats and Sharps." The first book is, to some extent, a contribution to musical history, though its strong personal equation and its effort to be entertaining mar its value and influence. The impression ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... would like to go on being acquainted with you, Betty, and have the chances of other men. You're not an unattractive girl, you know—or maybe you don't know. And he's human. I have a sort of idea he'll try and make some change in his way of life, so that it may be possible ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... into Royal Society. Of course that means some of the young men of the Royal Level cannot marry. But some men decline marriage of their own free will; if they are not possessed of much wealth they prefer to go unmarried rather than to accept an unattractive woman as a wife when they may have their choice of mistresses from the most beautiful virgins intended for the Free Level. There is always an abundance of marriageable women on the Royal Level and with ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... him in what surroundings this preposterous offer, that she should leave the Convent and fly with him to Warwick, had been made to Seraphine. Her swollen countenance would be equally unattractive, whether lifted in cell or cloister, or where white clouds chased one another across the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... is very nearly the most stupid and the most unattractive child I have ever seen. And I, you must remember, am blood brother to Cain and Seth as well ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... alluring, engaging, enticing, magnetic, prepossessing, personable, winning, mesmeric, taking, seductive, bewitching. Antonyms: unattractive, repellent, repulsive, forbidding, repugnant. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... and at first not unattractive. Robust, fond of display, ambitious, intelligent enough to dabble in letters and art, he piqued himself on being chivalrous and brave. But he wasted his life and ruined his health in the pursuit of pleasure. His face, as it has come down to us in contemporary ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... have faded past all power to recall and reproduce them. The real Washington was as essentially Southern as Richmond or Baltimore. 'Lincoln and his vandals,' fresh from the North and West, were thronging the wide, squat, unattractive city, from which the bolder and braver rebel element ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... father for the law, at the completion of his legal studies he was admitted an advocate of the parlement of Paris in 1785. His professional success was not great; his manner was violent, his appearance unattractive, and his speech impaired by a painful stammer. He indulged, however, his love for literature, was closely observant of public affairs, and thus gradually prepared himself for the main duties of his life—those of a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... triumph in the art of self-disguise. Excepting the one case of seeing her face close, with a strong light on it, nobody who now looked at Magdalen could have suspected for an instant that she was other than an ailing, ill-made, unattractive woman of fifty ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... cloudy, winter's afternoon, and the place seemed dull and gloomy. The Boston Music Hall is, at best, bare and vast, and by daylight is particularly unattractive. The great organ pipes appear cold and lustreless, and the light tints on the walls are not very comforting. The orchestra of the Harvard Musical Association were upon the stage, under the leadership of Carl Zerrahn, and a few privileged subscribers, numbering a hundred or two, were ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... Mdecine did little credit to the school after which it was named, and it was a most unattractive crowd that usually thronged its ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Noyon we turned off to the left and halted for half an hour at Landrimont, a little village full of big trees. We had omelettes and coffee at the inn, then basked in the sun and smoked. Noyon was unattractive. The people did not seem to care what happened to anybody. Perhaps we thought that, because we were very tired. Outside Noyon I dozed, then went ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... old man plying his twine-shuttle in front of the door. The fact that he was Emmett's father and ignorant of the secret which Richard shared, made an object of intense interest out of an otherwise unattractive and commonplace old man. Now that interest grew vast and overshadowing as the children ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... be a mere fancy of mine; but I have often thought that the extreme badness of the printing may have been partly owing to this cause; that the Poet may have left the manuscript in a more unfinished and illegible state, from a sense of something ungenial and unattractive in the subject-matter ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... bench without a back, with a Mavor's spelling book in hand, to begin the foundation of my education, are so many and great that it is difficult to realize the state of things that existed, or that men of intelligence should have selected such a dry and unattractive method of imparting instruction to children of tender years. It is to be feared that there are many of our Canadian youth who do not appreciate the vantage ground they occupy, nor the inviting opportunities that lie within the reach of all to obtain a generous education. There is absolutely ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... in God, in goodness at all, in the story of Bethlehem, does not rest on evidence so diverse in character and force as Mrs. Ward supposes. At his death Elsmere has started what to us would be a most unattractive place of worship, where he preaches an admirable sermon on the purely human aspect of the life of Christ. But we think there would be very few such sermons in the new church or chapel, for the interest of that life could hardly be very varied, when all such sayings as that "though He was rich, for ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... celebrated Lord Marmaduke Pulsifer," or, "confidential companion, to the wife of the late distinguished Christopher Quill the American Poet"—why should not a like privilege be extended the labour-worn author, when he ushers the crude and unattractive offspring of his own undaunted energy into the ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... no longer graded for high-speed cars but were scarcely tilted at all, when they didn't slant the wrong way. Its crossings were blind, level and unprotected by traffic lights. Neat unattractive clusters of mass-built houses interspersed with occasional clumps of woodland had been replaced with long stretches of pine woods, only occasionally relieved by houses and barns of obviously antique manufacture. Some of these ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... sister of Octavius, his fellow-triumvir and general rival. It was evidently from political considerations that he married Octavia, who was a stately and noble woman, but tedious in her dignity, and unattractive in her person. And what a commentary on Roman rank! The sister of a Roman grandee seemed to the ambitious general a greater match than the Queen of Egypt. How this must have piqued the proud daughter of the Ptolemies,—that she, a queen, with all her charms, was not the equal in the eyes ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... theory of a descent from the apes is clearly due in most men to feeling rather than to reason. They shrink from the notion of such an origin just because they see in the ape organism a caricature of man, a distorted and unattractive image of themselves, because it hurts man's aesthetic complacency and self-ennoblement. It is more flattering to think we have descended from some lofty and god-like being; and so, from the earliest times, human vanity has been pleased to believe in our origin from gods or demi-gods. ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... of delicate consideration for the convalescent Andrea was still very pale and thin, which made his eyes look extraordinarily large, the somewhat sensual expression of his mouth forming a singular and not unattractive contrast to the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... while Cleopatra had looked on, wistfully it is true, but not enviously at her sister's astonishingly successful career: for was not Baby only a child after all? And, from the age of eleven to fourteen, Leonetta had been so outrageously gawky and unattractive, no matter how beautifully she happened to be clad, that Cleopatra's feelings of uneasiness about her sister were laid to rest as if for ever ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... sweetmeats were nicely packed in straw baskets, of a different manufacture from those before-mentioned, and were very superior to the common sort which is brought from the coast in small coarse earthenware basins, exceedingly unattractive in ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... we reached Jerusalem friend Jeremy was ripe for almost anything except the plan we had agreed on. Having talked that over pretty steadily most of the way from Abu Kem, it seemed already about as stale and unattractive to him as some of his oldest tricks. And Jerusalem provided plenty of distraction. We hadn't been in Grim's quarters half an hour when Jeremy was up to his ears in a dispute that ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... told you the truth," answered Feversham, stubbornly, and Nejoumi took a different tone. He called for food, and the raw liver of a camel, covered with salt and red pepper, was placed before Feversham. Seldom has a man had smaller inclination to eat, but Feversham ate, none the less, even of that unattractive dish, knowing well that reluctance would be construed as fear, and that the signs of fear might condemn him to death. And, while he ate, Nejoumi questioned him, in the silkiest voice, about the fortifications of Cairo and the strength ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... Mr. Franklin took his seat at the fireside. Benjamin was reading, the unattractive tallow candle furnishing ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... decorated with red velvet and mussed artificial flowers, was tipped over her forehead. Her features were not bad, but her nose was blotched, her face strongly freckled and her red hair very untidy. Only the mild blue eyes redeemed the unattractive face—eyes very like those of Mary Louise in expression, mused Mr. Conant, as he critically ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... him, his demand was constant. The first broods of English sparrows had long before united in a mob, and established themselves in the grove, and the nests were a second time full of gaping infants calling ever for more. The energies of even this unattractive bird were so severely taxed that he spared us his comments on things in general, and our affairs in particular. In the wood, young high-holes thrust their heads out of the door and called; blackbird and martin babies flew over with their parents, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... papers will be presented in full; and those works will in all cases be carefully examined for such valuable and striking passages as will be likely to interest the American reader, to whom the entire articles in which they appear may be unattractive. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... did. One of the friends is quite nice-looking, but with such dirty nails. It appears you don't wash much till you are married, it is not considered bien vu, in fact rather lance, and you can't have fine under-clothes, it has all got to be as unattractive as possible, and that shows you are as good as gold and will make ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... familiarly affectionate action by which the artist (with the permission of his sitters, of course) had connected the two figures in a group. Eustace had briefly told me, in the days of our courtship, that he had more than once fancied himself to be in love before he met with me. Could this very unattractive woman have been one of the early objects of his admiration? Had she been near enough and dear enough to him to be photographed with her hand in his? I looked and looked at the portraits until I could endure them no longer. Women are strange creatures—mysteries even to themselves. ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... Annabel's own eyes. She was a sympathetic girl. She wished she could bring herself to put her arm round Joy—to give her a word of encouragement—but she couldn't. There was something that repelled her in the convulsed form; the thin body with its narrow, heaving shoulders; the unattractive blond head. ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... too much stress on what you have been telling me," I observed quietly as we approached that unattractive building. "No man will believe a girl who has just accepted his suit to ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... as to almost persuade the reader who wanders in the neglected field of ancient humor, that no man of the later centuries was ever capable of a single witty and original thought. It is not long since I met with an anecdote, stating that Alexandre Dumas, who had a very unattractive wife, one day surprised a gentleman in the act of tenderly embracing her. In a compassionate and astonished tone the novelist exclaimed: 'Poor man! why do you act so? I am sure that nobody could have compelled you to it against your will.' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... or twice behind them to the small occupant of the brougham. On this occasion he took with him a mysterious and powerful handle, and Caroline knew that this was precisely equivalent to running away with the horses. He hurried around an unattractive corner, and Gleggson sat alone in front. Five, ten minutes passed. They seemed very dull to Caroline, and she reached for the plum-colored tube and ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... this, some time since, in one of my botanical rambles in the town of Beverly, which is, for the most part, too densely populated to suit the habits of these solitary birds. On one of these excursions, after walking several hours over a rather unattractive region, I arrived at a very romantic spot, known by the unpoetical name of Black Swamp. Nature uses her most ordinary materials to form her most delightful landscapes, and often keeps in reserve prospects of enchanting beauty, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... buildings, and is distinguished by incomparable natural beauty; hence it is less adapted to industries, and has no agricultural colony in its neighbourhood. Dana City, on the other hand, which is specially suitable for industry, and is in the midst of agricultural land, is unattractive to many on account of its ceaseless and noisy business activity. And, in general, we Freelanders are not fond of large towns; we love to have woods and meadows as near us as possible, and those who are able to live in the country do it in preference to living ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... freedom. True, Archie had snubbed her and kept her in order; but one tyrant is preferable to many. At home the thirty-years-old Mattie was only one of the many daughters,—the old maid of the family,—the unattractive little wall-flower who was condemned to wither unnoticed on its stalk. Here, in her brother's vicarage, she had been a person of consequence, whom only the master of the house presumed ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... is twice as large as the Malaspina in Alaska, which was the largest known glacier until Shackleton discovered the Beardmore. Those who knew the Ferrar Glacier professed to find the Beardmore unattractive, but to me at any rate it was grand. Its very vastness, however, tends to dwarf its surroundings, and great tributary glaciers and tumbled ice-falls, which anywhere else would have aroused admiration, were almost unnoticed in a stream which stretched in places forty miles ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... letter—if I write at all I must write as I think. It seems Ellen has told you that I am become a governess again. As you say, it is indeed a hard thing for flesh and blood to leave home, especially a good home—not a wealthy or splendid one. My home is humble and unattractive to strangers, but to me it contains what I shall find nowhere else in the world—the profound, the intense affection which brothers and sisters feel for each other when their minds are cast in the same mould, their ideas drawn from the same source—when they have clung to each other ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... grey," hazel eyes with very long, very finely marked eyebrows (secretly they are the joy of my life!) good features, and a sulky expression. The old Evelyn used to be very good-looking—(she's dead now, so I can say so, as much as I like)—this new one is good-looking too, in a disagreeable, unattractive kind of way. If you saw her dining at the next table in an hotel you would say, "Rather a fine-looking girl!" And the man with you would reply, "Think so! Too much of a temper for my fancy. Glad she don't belong to me." I realised ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... possessing a singular, if unaccountable, charm. Everybody liked Charley, though nobody respected him. He was a scamp, but a lovable scamp, while Jane, with the best intentions in the world, had managed to make every virtue unattractive. When people condemned him, they said that he was "utterly unprincipled"; when they softened in their judgment, they admitted that he had "the best ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... well-to-do in the world,—but, as the pioneer leader of a new theology, in a country where theology was the all-absorbing interest, he had to breast the reaction that ever attends the advent of new ideas. His pulpit talents, too, were unattractive. His early training had been all logical, not in the least aesthetic; for, like the ministry of his country generally, he had been trained always to think more of what he should say than of how he should say it. Consequently, his style, though not without a certain ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... grey and unattractive, and unfortunately the unprepossessing but valuable outer coat is polished away. This is done in a mortar hollowed out of a section of a tree trunk or out of a large stone. One may see a young man or a young woman pounding ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... companions. He was disappointed in her: he concluded to himself that she did not show that fine perception which he was disposed to expect from so dainty a little sprite. Yet, notwithstanding all these disappointed expectations, it is astonishing how he haunted that room where the society was so unattractive, and bore Mrs Fred's spiteful speeches, and suffered his eyes and his temper to be vexed beyond endurance by the dismal sight of his brother. The children, too, worried their unfortunate uncle beyond ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... hate her by instinct," declared Mrs. Musgrave recklessly, "though her scented notes to me always begin, 'Dearest Daisy'! She always disapproved of me openly till baby came. But she has found another niche for me now. I am not supposed to be so fascinating as I was. She prefers unattractive women." ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... here and there, volumes of unattractive binding, and presenting titles little suggestive of a holiday in Campania; works which it would be misleading to call theological; the feeblest modern echoes of fierce old Puritans, half shame-faced modifications of logic which, at all events, was wont to conceal no consequence ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... confining myself to-night to a single topic. When I spoke to a friend of mine in London the other day he said, "What are you going to speak about?", and I told him. He is a very experienced man and he said, "It is a most unattractive subject, India." At any rate, this is the last place where any apology is needed for speaking about India, because it is you who are responsible for my being the Indian Minister. If your 2,500 majority had been 2,500 the ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... the heart of God himself—which forms the most sacred mystery of Christianity; and into this innermost temple of sorrow had Raphael penetrated. He is a sacred poet, and his poetry has precisely that trait which Milton lacks—tenderness and sympathy. This picture, so unattractive to the fancy in merely physical recommendations, has formed a deeper part of my inner consciousness than any I have yet seen. I can recall it with perfect distinctness, and often return to ponder it ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... good thing by trying to overdo it, Lilly. It is as bad for a young girl to permit herself to be educated into one of those bold, unwomanly woman's-rights girls as it is for her to be frivolous and empty-headed. When women get too smart they get unattractive." ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... side. To my notion the later was a lot the more attractive, for the face was rounder and softer and didn't have a certain kind of—well, hardness, as if you had a will and could ride rough shod. Not that you look so frightfully unattractive." ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... school unacquainted with any history except that of the United States; which, dealing with less simple and primitive times than that of Greece, is apt to be so unattractive that the child never afterwards reads any historical works. It has been my intention to write a book which will give children pleasure to read, and will thus counteract the impression that ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber |
