"Unconvincing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sick. He had expected McNabb's anger at his foolish whim, and knew that he deserved it—but that McNabb should accuse him of theft! Sick at heart, he faltered his answer, and in his own ears his voice sounded strange, and dull, and unconvincing. "You think ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... magical freedom of an unassisted gun to move two feet. And on such rules as these we fought a number of battles. They were interesting, but not entirely satisfactory. We took no prisoners—a feature at once barbaric and unconvincing. The battles lingered on a long time, because we shot with extreme care and deliberation, and they were hard to bring to a decisive finish. The guns were altogether too predominant. They prevented attacks getting home, and they made it possible for a timid player to put ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... indifferent result. They were Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran. The former sought the Rocky Mountains for his subjects; the latter, the Yosemite and the Yellowstone; but neither of them succeeded in transferring to canvas more than a pale and unconvincing presentment of the wonders of ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... pension was denied January 9, 1884, because there was no record of the alleged diseases, and no satisfactory proof of their contraction in the Army was produced, and because of the meager and unconvincing evidence of disability found by the surgeon on an ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... incomprehensible parricides, of inexplicable incest, of gods faded beyond symbolism, of that Relentless Law we did not believe in for a moment, that no modern western European can believe in. We thought of the characters in the unconvincing wigs and costumes of our school performance. No Gilbert Murray had come as yet to touch these things to life again. It was like the ghost of an antiquarian's toy theatre, a ghost that crumbled and condensed into a gritty dust of construing ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... uninstructed guests (she was rather that kind of person), and a great music-room for her to play RACHMANINOFF in and flirt with the Other Man. This is all the tale. Eventually the flirtation becomes serious and the Little Lady is driven to suicide, with a death scene of rather unconvincing sentiment. The fact is, I am afraid, that Capuan ease does not altogether suit the super-strenuous beings whom Mr. JACK LONDON designs. They are too energetic for it, and, lacking an outlet, tend to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... that man up to, which would have transformed his Judas from woodenness into breathing life. As it was, with no one in the village apparently who was worth his salt as a felon to teach him, his performance was unconvincing, and Judas became a figure to laugh rather than to ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... Scott with that solemnity he could assume to bolster a baldly unconvincing statement. "Not now, Bob. Not now, I ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... rightful need of vengeance, let him look into himself. Let him consider his feelings on the death of some notorious traitor or criminal; not satisfaction, but awe, is the uppermost feeling in his heart. Death sobers us all. But away from death this may be unconvincing; and one may still shout of the glory of floating the ship of freedom in the blood of the enemy. I give him pause. He may still correct his philosophy in view of the horror of a street accident or the ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... all, what right had he to assume that she would gratuitously intermeddle in the disastrous fates of others? A rigorous respect for the rights of privacy was written into the rules of the game as she played it. He argued, with logic irrefutable as it was unconvincing, that this alone ought to stay her hand; yet he knew, by the power of their own yearning, one for the other, that in the great cause of love, whether for themselves or for Camilla Van Arsdale and Willis Enderby, she would resistlessly follow the impulse born ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... looked out of the window, heard the unromantic honk-honk of a piratical night-owl taxicab on the street so far below. He steadied his mental equilibrium, and looked again at the self-possessed young woman, whose regal manner was as convincing as all the other details were unconvincing. On the table lay a fortune in jewels and rings and a necklace. He had not noticed them before. He remembered the Spanish conversation which he had heard through the bathroom door. He realized from the size and elegance of the rooms that this must ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... wreck her digestion and ruin her teeth, but she had confounded him utterly by displaying twin rows as sound as pearls, as white and regular as rice kernels. Her digestion, he had to confess, was that of a Shetland pony, and he had been forced to fall back upon an unconvincing prophecy of a toothless and dyspeptic old age. He pictured her at this moment propped up in the middle of the great mahogany four-poster, all lace and ruffles and ribbons, her wayward hair in adorable confusion about her ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... arrow, and promptly shoots a Swan, one of the prides of Montsalvat. He is too stupid to understand that he has done any wrong—wrong to a helpless bird or his own nature. Gurnemanz explains in very unconvincing accents; Parsifal, the poor, "pure" fool, bursts into tears, breaks his weapons and throws them away. And now the reader must bear with me if I am both tedious and inexplicable in my explanation. At some unknown period in the past it was prophesied that only the "pure fool" taught ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... that part which is visible even to the unobservant eye and audible to the indiscriminating ear. This is a matter of notes and tones quite apart from any real meaning or value. Such would be an academic exercise, or a technically correct but unconvincing ballad. It might possibly make some appeal to the intellect by by virtue of the "exhibition of balance and symmetry, the definiteness of plan and design, the vitality and proportion of organic growth,"[25] but this would not suffice to ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... work up enthusiasm for the various avenues to well-being his discussion with Johnson opened. But they remained disheartening prospects. He imagined himself wonderfully smartened up, acquiring style and value in a London shop, but the picture was stiff and unconvincing. He tried to rouse himself to enthusiasm by the idea of his property increasing by leaps and bounds, by twenty pounds a year or so, let us say, each year, in a well-placed little shop, the corner shop Johnson favoured. There was a certain picturesque interest in imagining cut-throat economies, but ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... cleaners was an unfortunate misuse of the machine. It has never convinced the woman purchaser that it would accomplish the more trying task of removing "grimed-in" soil, even while it fascinated her as a spectator and even while she left as a purchaser. She doubted her own machine because of the unconvincing test. ...
— The Consumer Viewpoint • Mildred Maddocks
... sometimes beginning a sentence, and stopping, as one fearful of trespassing on prohibited ground. When Mr. Trew called, he and Mrs. Mills conferred in undertones, breaking off when the girl came near, and speaking, in an unconvincing way, of an interesting murder in South London; Trew thought the police could find the missing man if they only went the right way about it. Great Titchfield Street, from eight o'clock in the morning till nearly eight at night, appeared to be enveloped in a dense ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... knew from personal experience that you cannot even draw a cow or buy a carpet in Serbia without the knowledge of the Serbian police, the conduct of the Serbian Government was entirely unconvincing, and the obvious reply to Serbia's "We know nothing," was "But it is your business to know and to take such steps as to make it impossible in the future for a gang of students in a pot-house in the capital to ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... doubt assailed me. Nothing had seemed more certain yesterday than that Norden was the scene of the rendezvous, but that was before the seven siels had come into prominence. The name Norden now sounded naked and unconvincing. As I wondered why, it suddenly occurred to me that all the stations along this northern line, though farther inland than Norden, were equally 'coast stations', in the sense that they were in touch with harbours (of a sort) on ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... that he should have done it some other way. What does he mean by allowing his retreat to be cut off like that? What does he mean by using a shotgun when silence was his one chance of escape? Come, Mr. Holmes, it's up to you to give us a lead, since you say Mr. White Mason's theory is unconvincing." ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... difficult to find, couched in such euphemistically appreciative language, so accurate a summary of the intention and quality of this book. Casanova is pale, diffuse, and unconvincing, indeed, beside the d'Annunzio who so early gave his full measure as the supreme novelist of sensual pleasure in this book. As Arthur Symons so well says, "Gabriele d'Annunzio comes to remind us, very definitely, as only ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... to marry is removed. These arguments are generally used with the greatest gravity by bachelors. If men have families to support, women by the hundreds support brothers and sisters and weak parents. That they are incapable of doing as much sounds unconvincing to one who has seen the work of sweat-shops. The argument that men have more expensive tastes to satisfy is too feeble to deserve attention. Finally, when men argue that women should be forced to marry by giving them smaller wages, they are simply reverting to the ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... from our couch let us arise! Hark to the cock's arousing cries! He chides the sluggard's slumbrous ease, And shames his unconvincing pleas. ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... environment. The fixed polarity of cuttings from full grown stems cannot be destroyed; it is the expression of previous development. Vochting speaks of polarity as a fixed inherited character. This is an unconvincing conclusion, as nothing can be deduced from our present knowledge as to the causes which led up to polarity. We know that the fertilised egg, like the embryo, is fixed at one end by which it hangs freely in the embryo-sac ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... rapped and heaved and slid about. A chair crawled to my lap and at last to the top of the table, apparently of its own motion. A little rocking-chair moved to and fro precisely as if some one were sitting in it, and so on. It was all unconvincing at the time, but as I look back upon it now, after years of experience, I am inclined to think part of it at least was genuine. And this brings me to say to Mrs. Quigg, and to any other doubter, that you have only to step aside into silence and shadow and wait ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... declared absurd a little while earlier. And the two are forced at last to walk their different ways. Unfortunately the dialogue is heavy and stilted. The play is a tract rather than a piece of art, and the tirades of Fedor are equally unconvincing when he speaks for or against that "fiction" which is killing both his own and the girl's hope of happiness in mutual love. Yet the play marks a step forward in ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... had never listened to words so original and well chosen. In comparison, the brilliant and graceful speeches I had placed on the lips of my heroines became flat and unconvincing. ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis
... second was the most probable; but they were all unconvincing; and he shuffled them carelessly together and ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... equivalents gave a semblance of actuality to what in fact was nothing but mind-play? Even Wells, whose literary style he admired as one of the beauties as well as one of the wonders of the world, had been a disappointment. He had seemed singularly halting and unconvincing. ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... far as he understood it, that was in him. We astonished ourselves and our hearers by the irregular and fragmentary nature of the creeds we produced, clotted at one point, inconsecutive at another, inconsistent and unconvincing to a quite unexpected degree. It would not be difficult to caricature one of those meetings; the lecturer floundering about with an air of exquisite illumination, the audience attentive with an expression of thwarted edification ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... was the first time he had spoken to her in that way. She stammered something about "general principles," but he was regarding her so fixedly that her attempt at dissembling was most unconvincing. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... advance another theory more plausible still, and equally unconvincing, I might urge that the word was derived from the negro hut-removals already mentioned. Here, at least, we have a very ancient custom, which would be familiar to British seamen visiting West Indian seaports. The object moved was a shanty; the music accompanying the operation was ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... to force himself to obey her wish, and the struggle nearly kept him from recalling the original object of his visit. Remembering, he tried to tell Alaire what he had learned from Phil Strange; but so broken and so unconvincing was his recital that he doubted if she understood in the least ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... Still it was unconvincing to Mortimer. The horses might be good, the man honest, and the girl pure and sweet, but the life itself was distasteful. Reason as one might, it was allied to gambling. Mortimer rose with a sigh, the whole thing wearied him. Why should he distress his mind over the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... like most characters which are chosen and built up to exemplify a preconceived theory, quite unconvincing. In his foreword Wezel analyzes his heroine's character and details at some length the motives underlying the choice of attributes and the building up of her personality. This insight into the author's scaffolding, this explanation ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... eloquent. He had no great command of language, but he stirred the hearts of the people, because he told a simple story, which, while from the standpoint of the cold critic it might appear unconvincing, was, when listened to by patriotic Englishmen, full ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... something of a problematic figure and in many ways an unconvincing hero for a play with ostensibly, a strong moral theme. His basic character is presented as that of an honest uncomplicated soldier; in his first appearance(2.1), he has already been slighted by the Dons, and presents an unkempt appearance and rails against the ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... "You are very kind, Mr. Morrow, but I do not think that I should speak of it to anyone. And indeed, my fears are so intangible, so vague, that when I try to formulate my thoughts into words, even to myself, they are unconvincing, almost meaningless. Yet I feel ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... a little too like one of those fantastic wrenchings of veracity of which Dickens was so often guilty in the finishing chapters of his stories. Character is never made over in the twinkling of an eye; and this is why the end of the 'Doll's House' seems unconvincing. Nora, the morally irresponsible, is suddenly endowed with clearness of vision and directness of speech. The squirrel who munches macaroons, the song-bird who is happy in her cage, all at once becomes a raging lioness. And this is not so much an awakening or a revelation, as it is a transformation; ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... friends, and the feelings of Elena towards them, and her own self-communings are interwoven with unfaltering skill. All the most complex and baffling shades of the mental life, which in the hands of many latter-day novelists build up characters far too thin and too unconvincing, in the hands of Turgenev are used with deftness and certainty to bring to light that great kingdom which is always lying hidden beneath the surface, beneath the common-place of daily life. In the difficult art of literary ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... drama, it is an example of wildly improbable romanticism, and might have been written in the thirties, except that in that case the comedy element would not be so insipid as it is, but would have tasted of the pungent realism which was the virtue of the best romantics. The characters are unconvincing, the love-story a poor parallel ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... had descended like a mantle upon Daniel Levy: no uncommon reaction in the case of very passionate men, and yet in this case ominous, sinister, and completely unconvincing so far as I personally was concerned. I longed to tell Raffles what I thought, to put him on his guard against his obvious superior in low cunning. But Raffles would not even catch my eye. And already he looked insanely pleased with ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... after anything so short, simple, and unconvincing as that three minutes with the clergyman to-day. The utter unreality of that had seemed to blend with the silent, snowy day, and with the dulled and dreamy condition of her own brain. Snow was falling softly ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... expedition gives me nothing, yet surely there will be 2 or 3 days out of the whole journey which I shall remember all my life with ecstasy or bitterness, etc., etc.... So that's how it is, sir. All that is unconvincing, but you know you write just as unconvincingly. For instance, you say that Sahalin is of no use and no interest to anyone. Can that be true? Sahalin can be useless and uninteresting only to a society which does not exile thousands of people to it and does not spend millions of roubles on it. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov |
