"Undesirable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there would be a conference, and if the Lords insisted on these amendments the Bill would be lost. I asked if a compromise was not feasible, the Lords abandoning this and the Commons taking the other amendments, which he said would not be undesirable, but difficult to effect. The continual discussions about this Bill have made me perforce understand something of it towards the end of them. I am too ignorant of the details and of the tendency of the Bill to have an opinion of the comparative merits ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... necessity for supporting undesirable material no longer existed; and colored voters had the opportunity not only of supporting Southern whites for all the important positions in the State, but also of selecting the best and most desirable among them. Whether the poor whites or the aristocrats of former days were to ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... struggling for existence. Mr. Jorrocks with his carpet-bag then makes his appearance, driving the hardest bargain that he can, purposing to do the country at the lowest possible figure, followed by a short train of most undesirable nags, with reference to which the wonder is that Mr. Jorrocks should be able to induce any hunting servant to trust his neck to their custody. Mr. Jorrocks knows his work, and is generally a most laborious man. Hunting is his profession, ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... gently, "is a most amusing talker, and sometimes cannot resist saying the witty things that occur to him, however undesirable they may be. We all know they mean nothing. We all understand and love our Kloster. And nobody, as you see, dear child, more than Majestat, with his ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... "From Girl to Woman" that between the ages of nineteen and twenty she was constantly seen mounting the Pyrenees in a daring fashion and entirely unattended? But still, doubtless owing to her charming nature, which was a sweet composition of mischief and kindliness, she remained unspoilt by this undesirable contact with a rude world which should, until her marriage, have been outside her ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... knew, of course, that Barbara had suitors by the dozen, but it had never occurred to him that they were even seriously considered. Notwithstanding the fact that his encounter with "The Censor" had brought her into undesirable notice, she forgave him everything after a moment's consideration. The first few wrenches of resentment were overbalanced by her American appreciation of chivalry, however inspired. "The Censor" had gone for years unpunished; his coarse wit being aimed at every one who had ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... added; "it is socially possible to foregather with the slum in the next ward; it is death to speak to the undesirable neighbor in the back alley. The fact is ordained; but it will take several generations of social scientists to ferret ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... bad habits being contracted by allowing one's children to associate with other children in schools, public or private, and by letting them play in the streets and public parks, where they mingle with more or less undesirable companions, than by having the housework performed by employees who come each day to their work and return to their homes at night when their duties are over. Nevertheless no sensible parents would keep their children ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... condition, now circumstances offered her more eligible prospects, was likely to be a sore point with all her relatives, besides Lucy. Maggie in her crude form, with her hair down her back, and altogether in a state of dubious promise, was a most undesirable niece; but now she was capable of being at once ornamental and useful. The subject was revived in aunt and uncle Glegg's presence, over the tea ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... cowboys from Diamond X ranch watched the sheep herders and their innocent, though undesirable, charges fade away to the south. The Greasers took their wounded with them, and several spare horses they had brought along made up for those that regretfully were shot ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... however, is a very different thing from boldness or obtrusiveness. Courtesy and considerateness are cardinal qualities of the well-equipped salesman, but boastfulness, glibness, egotism, loudness, and self-assertion, are as distasteful as they are undesirable. ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... knows what may have occurred. The mine may be all right, there may be deliverance, but I didn't want to see her before I go. It is possible that I may not be able to keep my composure. There are a hundred things which make an interview between the child and me undesirable." ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... Fairford,' said Redgauntlet; 'I must here interrupt you for your own sake. One word of betraying what you may have seen, or what you may have suspected, and your seclusion is like to have either a very distant or a very brief termination; in either case a most undesirable one. At present, you are sure of being at liberty in a very few days—perhaps ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... for a time impossible to them. These children become exempt persons, and even if they are able to take some part in the class work the time of preparation is heavy on their hands. Exempt persons easily develop undesirable qualities, and their apparent privileges are liable to unsettle others. As a matter of fact those who are able to keep the common life have the best of it, but they are apt to look upon the exemption of others as enviable, as they long for gipsy life when a caravan passes by. With the resource ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... liver and onions, which was in flagrant defiance of the Rule Four which mentioned cabbage, onions and fried fish as undesirable foodstuffs. Outside, the palm leaves were dripping in the night fog that had swept soggily in from the ocean. Her mother was trying to collect a gas bill from the dressmaker down the hall, who protested shrilly that she distinctly remembered having paid that gas bill ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... evidently a time of peace when the calamity that turned the inhabitants to stone came upon them, for only one soldier was in the guard hut—doubtless being there merely to give an alarm, or possibly to keep out undesirable strangers. ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... servitors reappearing to spoil the day's happiness? Whoever employed them now I thought I would call upon, and ask as a personal favor to change her jhampanies' livery. I would hire the men myself, and, if necessary, buy their coats from off their backs. It is impossible to say here what a flood of undesirable memories their ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... is desired, every imperfect or undesirable plant should be rooted out and destroyed, so that none but the best can fertilize each other. In early spring the litter must be either removed from the plants and the ground between the rows given a cultivation to loosen the surface, or it may be raked between ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... retired to rest, however, in the privacy of the billiard-room, I ventured to ask him: "Charles, will you unload Golcondas to-morrow?" Which, I need hardly explain, is the slang of the Stock Exchange for getting rid of undesirable securities. It struck me as probable that, in the event of the invention turning out a reality, Cloetedorp A's might become unsaleable within the next ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... "self-appointed leaders," even when the unions consent to leave these particular matters in their hands. For active cooeperation of the masses in the legal, economic, and political intricacies of such legislation is not only undesirable, but impossible under the present system of society and government. Labor must govern itself through instructed delegates, while such work can be done only by representatives, who must often have the power to act without further consultation ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... trying test of a visit from the elder married sisters; for, as Ethel said, the scent of the tidings attracted both Flora and the Cheviots; and the head-master endeavoured to institute a kind of family committee, to represent to the Doctor how undesirable the match would be, entailing inconveniences that would not end with the poor bride's life, and bringing at once upon Tom a crushing anxiety and sorrow. Ethel's opinion was of course set aside by Mr. Cheviot, but he did expect concurrence from Mrs. Rivers and from ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... drawback to the Horse Show, as Montague gathered from the conversation that went on among the callers: it was public, and there was no way to prevent undesirable people from taking part. There were, it appeared, hordes of rich people in New York who were not in Society, and of whose existence Society was haughtily unaware; but these people might enter horses and win prizes, and even rent a box and exhibit ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... our thinking, or in the acquiring of skill, or in our understanding and appreciation which occur at irregular intervals and which call for a summing up of what has gone before, in order that we may be sure of success in the work which is to follow. It is, of course, undesirable to devote a whole week to examinations on account of the strain and excitement under which children labor. It is entirely possible to know of the achievements of children through examinations which have ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... never had a quarrel in all her life, not even with a schoolmate, and there does not live a soul upon the earth who has met her who has the slightest cause to complain of neglect. Not that she does not welcome the best and gently avoid the undesirable—none is more fastidious than she—but neither rank, wealth, nor social position affects her one iota. She is incapable of acting or speaking rudely; all is in perfect good taste. Still, she never lowers the standard. Her intimates are only ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... escape being impossible, and also undesirable, Thomas Paine wrote the first part ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Madame Blavatsky in a little house at Norwood, with but, as she said, three followers left—the Society of Psychical Research had just reported on her Indian phenomena—and as one of the three followers sat in an outer room to keep out undesirable visitors, I was kept a long time kicking my heels. Presently I was admitted and found an old woman in a plain loose dark dress: a sort of old Irish peasant woman with an air of humour and audacious power. I was still kept waiting, for she was deep in conversation with ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... house through a back-yard which is reached by climbing a wall. Sweeny's front door was always shut on Sundays and his shutters were put up during those hours when the law regards the consumption of alcohol as undesirable. But the sergeant had good reason to suppose that many thirsty people found their way to the refreshment they craved through the back-yard. Sweeny was an object of suspicion and dislike to the sergeant. Therefore ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... arctic travelers and of lumbermen and hunters in the northern woods, that the use of alcohol during exposure to cold, although contributing greatly to one's comfort for the time being, is generally followed by undesirable or dangerous results."—HOUGH AND SEDGWICK: The Elements of ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... persecution in the South, there had been enough trouble with white vagrants to lead to drastic laws for the protection of certain communities. Michigan, which did not until 1827 pass a measure dealing especially with undesirable Negroes, had prior to this time a law providing for selling idle and dissolute persons at auction. At one of the sales in 1821 a Negro bought a white man and ordered him to follow his master, and the order was obeyed. But the benevolent black took his servant ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... a refuge in the family circle but that of kindred. Sometimes they are poor and homeless, for want of a faculty for self-supporting business; and sometimes they have peculiarities of person or disposition which render their society undesirable. These are cases where the pitying tenderness of the Saviour should be remembered, and for his sake patient kindness and tender care be given, and he will graciously accept it as an offering of love and duty to himself. "Inasmuch ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... do I arouse myself from the self-hypnotic state?" You merely say to yourself that upon counting to five you will open your eyes and wake up feeling fine. Many times the subject falls asleep while giving himself posthypnotic suggestions. This is not undesirable since the suggestions will spill over into the subconscious mind as he goes from ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... fish into fishless breeding places is another matter. It may be undesirable to treat certain breeding places with kerosene, as, for instance, water which is intended for drinking, although this has been done without harm in tanks where, as is customary, the drinking supply is drawn from the bottom of the tank. The value of most small fishes for the purpose of ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... for the woman. His practical mind had summed her up at a glance. But he was afraid that his friend might drift into a very undesirable friendship with her. She would enjoy his simplicity, for he seemed to have been born without guile, while his intellectual fascination was not to be denied. Michael was ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... They say in so many words in their resolutions that the right of suffrage is already extended to too many men; and they pay a doubtful compliment to the intelligence of their mothers, wives and sisters by adding that the class of undesirable voters would be swelled by giving the ballot to women. These are men of wealth who would confine the exercise of the right of suffrage to their own class—in fact would ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... individual moral development, were wiped out by barbaric armies that gave unquestioning obedience to the tribal will and worked together like a machine. Up to a certain stage in human development individuality was an undesirable variation and was ruthlessly repressed, sometimes by the execution of the particular offenders, sometimes by the destruction of the group to which they belonged and which they by their divergence weakened. What forces made ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... touched on, however, in our book, which was devoted to exposition rather than argument. Such problems were: How far is political propaganda inseparable from political education, and in what respects is such propaganda desirable or undesirable? How can political differences among the masters themselves be made to play a helpful rather than an injurious part? Does the introduction of politics into the curriculum open a way, as the very able reviewer in The Westminster Gazette suggested, ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... into the hands of an intelligent woman, who had turned out the undesirable tenants, furnished the flats plainly, but comfortably, and had let them to tenants who might be described as solvent, but honest. Krooman Chambers had gradually rehabilitated itself in the ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... when we find parents wise and sensible enough to strengthen the best that is in their children by discreet praise, and at the same time to control the undesirable qualities ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... population of the Northern and Middle States. Now, while we should grant to every human being all the rights we claim for ourselves, and bear in mind the cases of individual excellence of colored people, we must, I think, admit that mulattoism is hybridism, and that it is unnatural and undesirable. It has been brought to its present formidable proportions by several causes,—mainly by slavery. Its evils are to be met and lessened as far as may be, by wise statesmanship and by enlightenment of public opinion. These ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... took place on the bill when in committee. The third reading was moved on the 10th of April, when Mr. Goulburn opposed the measure as pregnant with danger to the church, and tending by its renewed agitation to place the two houses of parliament in an undesirable situation. Another long debate ensued, in which the bill was defended by Colonel Thompson, Lords Morpeth and John Russell, and Messrs. Bulwer, Charles Villiers, and O'Connell; and opposed by Lord Stanley, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... creativity. Human beings are, to a greater or lesser degree, cosmically aware. In the physical field western civilization handsomely rewards initiative. In the social field it has been far less generous. Imagination and cosmic consciousness have been quite generally listed among the undesirable endowments ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... reason why they should not love one another. Alas! they haven't always done so. A large membership of ineffective persons may be only an incubus. Like sailors on my vessel, if they are incompetent they are a hindrance, and in every way expensive and undesirable. I never care to emphasize the large number that the crew of my hospital ship consists of. As long as I can do the work I take pride in the small number I can handle it with. It is far better for the individuals themselves to have more responsibility ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... should say, Mr. March, that this seems a most undesirable engagement for my daughter. What should you say? I ask you to make the case ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... practical magic. Positive magic or sorcery says, "Do this in order that so and so may happen." Negative magic or taboo says, "Do not do this, lest so and so should happen." The aim of positive magic or sorcery is to produce a desired event; the aim of negative magic or taboo is to avoid an undesirable one. But both consequences, the desirable and the undesirable, are supposed to be brought about in accordance with the laws of similarity and contact. And just as the desired consequence is not really effected by the observance of a magical ceremony, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... of good crisp quality, it is essential with radishes to grow them just as quickly as possible. The soil should be rather sandy and not rich in fresh manure or other nitrogenous fertilizers, as this tends to produce an undesirable amount of leaves at the expense of the root. If the ground is at all dry give a thorough wetting after planting, which may be on the surface, as the seeds germinate so quickly that they will be up before the soil has time to crust over. Gypsum or land-plaster, sown on white and worked ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... Nevertheless, although he condemned the whole fabric as it stood, Bentham was an absolute believer in the unlimited power of laws and institutions; nor was he far from wishing to deal with them on the principles applicable to the reform of prisons, as undesirable but necessary instruments of coercion to be despotically administered upon a scientific model, after the fashion of his favourite Panopticon. He was, in short, as Mr. Stephen points out, an unconscious follower of Hobbes, with this difference, that in Bentham's case ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... intelligently choose evil, unless he had some inherited bias or tendency in that direction? For what does the choice of evil mean? It means sorrow, it means pain, it means death, it means everything horrible, everything undesirable, and means that a person deliberately and intelligently pits himself against an infinite and almighty power in what he knows must be an eternally losing battle. Can you conceive of a sane person making such ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... the late election it will not do for any one here to say the women do not want to vote. They displayed as much interest as the men, and, if anything, more.... The result insures Seattle a first-class municipal administration. It is a warning to that undesirable class of the community who subsist upon the weaknesses and vices of society that disregard of law and the decencies of civilization will ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... by so many critics, especially by one of our own countrymen in an essay of rare power, now become classical, that the opportunity of original investigation is impossible, and the attempt undesirable.(522) ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... motor transport, the practice with the French and British has become well defined. The best type of truck is one of medium weight, and of the best construction obtainable. It should be emphasized that medium-priced or inexpensive trucks are undesirable. It is very distinctly the opinion of French and British transport officers that it is better to have too few trucks, all of which are reliable, than to take "any old truck" and have it break down at critical moments during operation. Inferior trucks break down frequently, and break down ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... these early city dwellings of brick was such that as the city grew they became undesirable as places of residence. Business encroached upon them more and more, so that, except for houses which have remained for generations in the same family or have historic interest sufficient to have brought about their preservation by the city, ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... like a taut string, which answers to a breath breathed upon it. Betty did not care for the Temple; had no interest in the old Templars' arms on the sides of the gateways; and thought its medley of dull courts and lanes a very undesirable place. What was it to her where Dr. Johnson had lived? she did not care for Dr. Johnson at all, and as little for Oliver Goldsmith. Pitt, she saw, cared; how odd it was! It was some comfort that Mrs. ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... the moment; and very little that he had to be ashamed of afterwards, either at school or since he left it. Partly through the care of his parents, he had never got into what is called bad company, had formed no undesirable intimacies. He had a natural cleanliness, a natural sense of the becoming, which did much to keep him from evil: he could not consent to regard himself with disgust, and he would have been easily disgusted with himself. If he did not, as I have indicated, set himself with any conscious effort ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... quite naturally be urged in objection, that this apparently desirable result is reached through the degradation of Deity from an 'intelligent personality' to a 'blind force,' and is therefore in reality an undesirable and perhaps quasi-atheistic result."[39] But the question which really presents itself is, "theologically phrased, whether the creature is to be taken as a measure of the Creator. Scientifically phrased, the question ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... to leave the walls within which fate had immured her. Content, or seemingly content, with the only home she knew, she never asked for change or demanded friends or amusements. Visitors ceased coming; desolation followed neglect. The garden, once a glory, succumbed to a riot of weeds and undesirable brush, till a towering wall seemed to be drawn about the house cutting it off from the activities of the world as it cut it off from the approach of sunshine by day, and the comfort of a star-lit heaven by night. And yet the young girl continued to smile, though with a pitifulness of late, ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... discourse between a tiger and a jackal. Listen to it, O Yudhishthira! In ancient times, in a city called Purika, full of affluence, there was a king named Paurika. That worst of beings was exceedingly cruel and took delight in injuring others. On the expiry of the period of his life he obtained an undesirable end. In fact, stained by the evil acts of his human life, he was reborn as a jackal. Remembering his former prosperity, he became filled with grief and abstained from meat even when brought before him by others. And he became ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... heavy air-filled bladder, burst by the compression of his fingers. A new feeling-a new chain of ideas now took possession of him, and leaving the musket where it was, he rose near the spot from which he first started, and still clutching his hairy and undesirable prize, threw it from him towards the boat, into the bottom of which it fell, after grazing the ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... I did," he jested. "I remembered how I was asked to quit here, too. In the days when General Fred Furniss was also looked on as an unruly, rather undesirable member of the student body ... we ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... it that way. Certainly he would be a blend of all the characteristics which you, Jay{1}, consider undesirable. But—if released by hypnotism and suggestion, he might be suitable for the job ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... the views of Diocletian were humbler and more prudent. He held to the opinion of Augustus and Hadrian, that Rome did not need any enlargement of her territory, and that the absorption of the East was especially undesirable. When he and his son-in-law met and interchanged ideas at Nisibis, the views of the elder ruler naturally prevailed; and it was resolved to offer to the Persians tolerable terms of peace. A civilian of importance, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... gone on longer in this strain, and given the unhappy little Prince half-a-dozen undesirable gifts, if it had not been for the good Fairy Genesta, who held the kingdom under her special protection, and who luckily hurried in just in time to prevent further mischief. When she had by compliments and entreaties pacified the unknown Fairy, and persuaded ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... after some perfunctory objections on the part of Mrs. Home-Davis, who wished it put on record that she had been overruled by Mary's obstinacy. If undesirable incidents should happen, she wanted to say, "Mary would go by herself, without waiting for me. She's of age, and ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... lectures appear desirable, but second thought will show that they may be dispensed with, not only without loss, but with much gain. The most obvious objection is that too much time would be consumed in transcribing short-hand notes. Another is that much of the material in a lecture is undesirable for permanent possession. The instructor repeats much for the sake of emphasis; he multiplies illustrations, not important in themselves, but important for the sake of stressing his point. You do not need these illustrations in written form, ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... must first be a member of a church of approved standing.[b] In more liberal Plymouth and Connecticut, the franchise, at first, was made to depend only upon conduct, though it was early found necessary to add a property qualification in order to cut off undesirable voters.[23] In the Connecticut colony, it was expressly enacted that church censure should not debar from civil privilege. When advocating this amount of separation between church and civil power, Thomas Hooker was not moved by any such religious ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... have had an undesirable way of expressing itself, but there was no denying the truth of what it said. Its words carried conviction. Mr Pickering replaced the ring in his pocket, and, burying his head in his hands, groaned ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... wife, whose wretched health has been a trouble and annoyance to us for years past, has now, I grieve to say, under pressure of this sad misfortune, quite lost her reason. I am sorry to say that she would be capable of interrupting us here, in a most undesirable manner to all parties, and therefore request that our first happy meeting may not take place ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... after money that he even overworked his farms, and now his old farm was so impoverished that it was unable to grow a heavy crop. This was the principal reason he had for letting it to such an undesirable tenant as Bill Cavers. No wide-awake tenant would take it, and, besides, if he had rented it to almost any person else, he would have had to spend some money fixing up the house, which was in a ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... listen to what happens. Some Armenian—the Armenians are the pawnbrokers of Asia Minor—moves into that village and in three months he has a mortgage on everything in it, including that brass bed. Then the Turkish Government, which regards him as an undesirable citizen, tells him to move along; and Mister Armenian piles all the stuff the inhabitants have mortgaged to him into an oxcart and starts on his way, escorted by the Sultan's troops. On top of the load is Yusuf Bulbul Ameer's brass bed. Yusuf looks out of his doorway and sees the bed ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... restored to consciousness two tortured Chinese and heard the true story of his daughter's adventures. This seems to be overdoing the unities. And I wondered whether the puzzled look on young Handley's face was due to this same wonder or to the reflection that if he had shed one undesirable father-in-law he had let himself in for another. For, needless to say, they had all met in the famous opium scene when Stacey was naturally not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... human nature is the best qualification for a wife and mother, and she was consequently quite unprepared for any possibility which had not formed part of her own simple and limited personal experience. She never suspected, for one thing, that a servant's conversation could be undesirable if her appearance and her character from her last mistress were satisfactory; and, therefore, when Kitty had gone, she put Anne in her place without misgiving, Anne's principal recommendation being that she was a nice-looking girl, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... also a Liberal, gave notice to oppose the resolution affirming with a curious liberalism, that "it is undesirable to change the immemorial basis of the franchise, which is that men only shall be qualified to elect members to serve in this House." Thus after a silence of four years, years of apparent inertia, but really ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... described as I now proceed to give it. There is a scene in the play representing a modern parlor in which two unprecedented English ladies are inform'd by the impossible Yankee that he is not a man of fortune, and therefore undesirable for marriage-catching purposes; after which, the comments being finish'd, the dramatic trio make exit, leaving the stage clear for a moment. At this period came ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... many know, almost surrounded by the rapid Tagus, and entrance to its narrow confine is only to be gained by two gates. To pass either of these barriers in open day would be to court a publicity singularly undesirable at this time, for Esteban Larralde was slipping down the social slope, which gradual progress is the hardest to arrest. If one is mounting there are plenty to help him—those from above seeking to make unto themselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; those ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... data shows, to a considerable extent, how the pitching stands in relation to the batting, as to whether the one or the other dominates too much in the efforts of the rulemakers to equal the powers of attack and defence. If the pitching has the best of it than we have a predominance of the undesirable class of pitchers' games, in which the minority of the fielders only bear the brunt of the contest. On the other hand, if the batting rules the roost, then we have too much of the old slugging style of play, in which the outfielders are mostly brought into play, and but little chance to see skilful ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... "superior adult," and 16 alternative tests. The alternative tests, which are distributed among the different groups, are intended to be used only as substitutes when one or more of the regular tests have been rendered, by coaching or otherwise, undesirable.[17] ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... old men were sulky and sad, and spoke of leaving Vao for good and settling somewhere far inland. It is not surprising that the whole race has lost the will to live, and that children are considered an undesirable gift, of which one would rather be rid. What hopelessness lies in the words I once heard a woman of Vao say: "Why should we have any more children? Since the white man came they all die." And die they certainly do. Regions that once swarmed with people are now lonely; where, ten years ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... hot tailor-shop. He panted "Press m' suit while I wait?" They gave him a pair of temporary trousers, an undesirable pair of trousers belonging to a short fat man with no taste in fabrics, and with these flapping about his lean legs, he sat behind a calico curtain, reading The War Cry and looking at a "fashion-plate" depicting ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... when the British conquered the Cape and thousands of Englishmen streamed out to Africa to make their fortunes, the Boer at once bristled with resentment. His isolation was menaced. He regarded the Briton as an "Uitlander"—an outsider—and treated him as an undesirable alien. In the Transvaal and the Orange Free State he was denied the rights that are accorded to law-abiding citizens in other countries. Hence the Jameson Raid, which was an ill-starred protest against the narrow, copper-riveted Boer rule, ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... with the most violent gestures. Several of them clung like cats to the sides of the ship, with nails which might have rivalled those of a Chinese Mandarin; and we had recourse to long poles as the only means of freeing ourselves from such undesirable appendages. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... transports. Without cavalry we could gain no information beyond a quarter of a league. Without artillery we could not fight battle, or keep positions steadily. It was necessary to march, to avoid a battle, which the want of supplies made undesirable. It was necessary to occupy a certain space, to avoid being taken in flank, and that without cavalry to gain information and unite the columns. This difficulty, together with the excessive and sudden cold, rendered our position difficult. Some men, whom nature ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... influences from without. It may, however, be unfortunate and extremely inconvenient to be so organized unless one recognize and gain the power of closing himself, of making himself positive to all detrimental or undesirable influences. This power every one, however sensitively organized he ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... Wellington Street and the Savoy, is a well-known maker of fowling-pieces, who gave me a terrible start the other day; and probably not me alone, but many passers-by who chanced to look upwards at his windows. For he is at the moment advertising the most undesirable article in the world, a commodity for which I can conceive of no demand whatever. Yet there—the result of the caprice of adhesive cement or the desire of one letter of the alphabet to get level with its neighbour and be dropped too—the amazing notice is, in conspicuous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... friends; for to discard them is undesirable, Yet it is better to drop thy friends, O my daughter, than to drop thy 'H's'. Dost thou know a wise woman? yea, wiser than the children of light? Hath she a position? and a title? and are her parties in the Morning Post? If thou dost, cleave unto her, and give up ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... That consummation, undesirable as it may seem to many, would perhaps be the best for the peace of the trades. These Trades' Unions, still tainted with some of the violence, secrecy, false political economy which they inherit from the evil times of 1830-40, last on simply, I believe, because the workman feels that they are his ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... and that his evident intentions and effects are hopelessly lost unless interpreted in this spirit: then we relegate Plautine drama to a low plane of broad farce, where verisimilitude to life becomes wholly unnecessary because undesirable; where the canons of dramatic art become inoperative; where, contrary to what KArting says, we are not asked to believe that "everything is happening in a perfectly natural manner"; where the poet may stick at nothing provided the laugh be forthcoming; where all the apparently absurd conventions ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... Melanchthonianism') desirable and practicable, and that I now regard all such modifications of our creed as hopeless. In the mean time an increased knowledge of the spirit, methods, and literature of the Missouri Synod has convinced me that such alterations are undesirable, that the elements of true Pietism, that a sense of the necessity of personal religion, and the importance of personal assurance of salvation, can be maintained in connection with a Lutheranism modified 'by the Puritan element.'" (Jacobs, 369; Neve, 113.) In 1906 the Observer ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... is made by heating iron until all the undesirable elements are burned out by air blasts which furnish the necessary oxygen. The iron is placed in a large retort called a converter, being poured, while at a melting heat, directly from the blast furnace ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... Miss Smith, you are making a very grave mistake. I regard Zora as a very undesirable person from every point of view. I look upon Mr. Cresswell's visit today as almost providential. He came offering an olive branch from the white aristocracy to this work; to bespeak his appreciation and safeguard the future. Moreover," and Miss Taylor's voice ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... acknowledgments have been overlooked, I trust the injured person will forgive me when I have had already to quote so many authorities for so small a book. The popular character of the work renders it undesirable to load the pages with footnotes of reference; and scholars will generally see for themselves the source of the information given ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... angry. This, of course, must be the man of whom Mr. Galbraith had spoken, and, aside from the fact that he seemed undesirable, Patty felt that Mona had no right to invite him without asking ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... them and make them work. They, too, are very frequently objects of hazing in its severest form. At best, though, plebe camp is rather hard, its Numerous drills, together with guard and police duty, make it the severest and most undesirable portion of the four years a cadet spends at ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... maintained. The book, when it appeared in 1857, gave infinite pain to a number of people, including Mr. Bronte and Mr. Nicholls; and Mrs. Gaskell's subsequent experiences had the effect of persuading her that all biographical literature was intolerable and undesirable. She would seem to have given instructions that no biography of herself should be written; and now that thirty years have passed since her death we have no substantial record of one of the most fascinating women of her age. The loss to literature has ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... even on the physical plane that a "a Man thinketh in his heart so is he." The great thing to avoid is Fear and Worry thoughts. These and all other undesirable thoughts are due to bad health partially but it is even a greater truth that physical degeneration is due to bad thinking. Fear affects the heart. During epidemics such as plague, cholera, etc., you generally first project the deadly germs of Fear-Thoughts upon yourself and thus by weakening your ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... sent; attacks on Luzon by the Dutch and English are expected, but result in the enemy capturing only a few Chinese vessels. Silva mentions the pitiably small forces of the colony for defense, and urges that reenforcements and other aid be sent for this purpose. Undesirable inhabitants of the country are being sent away, especially the Japanese, who are more dangerous than the Chinese. Silva refers to the difficulties between the governor and auditors, and asserts that these are due to the existence of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... well-equipped community, in which no one was under an unavoidable urgency to work, the greater proportion of productive operations could be made sufficiently attractive to make them desirable occupations. As for the irreducible residue of undesirable toil, I owe to my friend the late Professor William James this suggestion of a general conscription and a period of public service for everyone, a suggestion which greatly occupied his thoughts during the last years of his life. He was profoundly convinced ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... with delicacy, with qualities that were immature and required development, with absence of qualities that were desirable and required implanting, with unfortunate tendency to qualities that were undesirable and needed repression and nipping in the bud. He placed these children, thus handicapped or endowed, before the principals of selected schools; he desired that terms and full particulars might be placed before him to assist him in the anxious task of right selection. ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... produces effects upon the tobacco which ruin its character. From the time the tobacco is cut until the final stage in the curing the persons engaged in preparing it for market must be on a constant watch to prevent the growth within it of undesirable organisms. The preparation of tobacco is for this reason a delicate operation, and one that will be very likely to fail unless the greatest care is taken. In the several fermentative processes which occur in the preparation there is no question that micro-organisms aid the tobacco ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... knowing what is about to happen; many of them, however, finding themselves clutched by demons before they are half awake. It would be a very terrible picture to one who should really see Jesus, the Saviour, in that inexorable judge; but it seems to me very undesirable that he should ever be represented in that aspect, when it is so essential to our religion to believe him infinitely kinder and better towards us than we deserve. At the last day—I presume, that is, in all future days, when we see ourselves ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... assiduity to do justice to six of them. His habits were decidedly convivial, and he spent a good deal of time at the general musters, drinking and carousing with the other ne'er-do-weels. You may be sure he was no favorite of Mrs. Todd's; and she represented to him all that is most undesirable in womankind, his taste running decidedly to rosy, smiling, easy-going ones who had no regular hours for meals, but could have a dinner on the table any time in fifteen minutes ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... descend to formal dinners, she was almost as much admired and envied and copied as she might fondly have hoped to be. She managed her life on modern lines of efficiency, planned ahead what she wished, tutored herself not to think of anything undesirable as being even in the range of possibility, trod lightly upon the sensitive souls of others, and asked no quarter herself, aimed high, and enjoyed her life and its ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... dilemma. Ill and suffering, so that he was not able to work to diminish his load of debt, desperately in love with a cold-hearted woman, who used these debts as a lever for postponing what on her side was certainly an undesirable marriage; and enormously proud, so that failure in his hopes would mean to him not only a broken heart, but also almost unbearable mortification; Balzac, crippled and handicapped, with his teeth set hard, his powers concentrated on one point, that of winning Madame Hanska, was ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... which similar clubs are sooner or later subjected; disputes with neighboring land-owners were gradually adjusted; troubles arising from poachers, dishonest keepers, and night guards had been, and continued to be, settled without harshness or rancor; minks, otters, herons, kingfishers, and other undesirable intruders were kept within limits by the guns of the watchers, although by no means exterminated; and the wealthy club was steadily but unostentatiously making vast additions to its splendid tracts of forest, hill, ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... community at Leyden, in the Fortune, the Anne, the Charity, and the Handmaid, and the numbers steadily increased. The settlers were in the main a homogeneous body, both as to social class and to religious views and purpose. Among them were undesirable members—some were sent out by the English merchants and others came out of their own accord—who played stool-ball on Sunday, committed theft, or set the community by the ears, as did one notorious offender ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... in youthful masculine society of the place and time). Sylvia snubbed the masculine jays of college partly because it was a breath of life to her battered vanity to be able to snub some one, and partly because they seemed to her, in comparison with the smart set, seen from afar, quite and utterly undesirable. She would rather have no masculine attentions at all than such poor provender for ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... particularly by the need of forced labor and the desirability of a reduced population in the acquired territory. So also the "personally conducted" dealings with the Armenians by use of the Turks should probably also best be explained as an endeavour to reduce the numbers of an undesirable population beforehand, without incurring unnecessary blame. All these things are, at the most, misleading indications of what the Imperial policy would be like under settled conditions and in ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... that my foolish young heart would sigh, 'Oh! that I had wings'—not as a dove, to fly home to its nest and croodle there—but as an eagle, to swoop away over land and sea, in a rampant and self-glorifying fashion, on which I now look back as altogether unwholesome and undesirable. But the thirst for adventure and excitement was strong in me, as perhaps it ought to be in all at twenty-one. Others went out to see the glorious new worlds of the West, the glorious old worlds of the East—why should not I? Others ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... says the heiress, turning promptly upon him. It is strange how undesirable the very richest heiress can be at times. "Why, it's only just this instant that you told me nothing would keep you away from the Court next spring. ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... is produced it must be purified and the sulphureted hydrogen at least must be removed. One method of accomplishing this is by washing the gas with water and ammonia, which also removes some of the carbon dioxide and hydrocyanic acid. Various other undesirable constituents are removed by chemical means, depending upon the conditions. The purified gas is now delivered to the gas-holder; but, of course, all this time the pressure is governed, in order that the pressure in the mains will ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... engagement of Roland Clewe and Margaret Raleigh work on the great machine which was to generate the Artesian ray had so far progressed that it was possible to make some preliminary experiments with it. Although Clewe was sorry to think of the very undesirable companion which Samuel Block had carried with him into the polar regions, he could not but feel a certain satisfaction when he reflected that there was now no danger of Rovinski gaining any knowledge of the ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... with only a few inches of space between each, were representations of some peculiar kind of beetle,—it was the same beetle, over, and over, and over. The artist had woven his undesirable subject into the warp and woof of the material with such cunning skill that, as one continued to gaze, one began to wonder if by any possibility the creatures ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... to be married to the man she loved, the man she had told him she could not live without, the man of her own choice, of her own heart—he himself smoothed the way for her, had taken away his own undesirable person, had stepped aside, leaving the field to his rival, and ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... however, is not a very important consideration, as the Saturnians are not a prolific race. The great object of life being the product of the largest possible quantity of bread-roots, and women not being so capable in the fields as the stronger sex, females are considered an undesirable addition to society. The one thing the Saturnians dread and abhor is inequality. The whole object of their laws and customs is to maintain the strictest equality in everything,—social relations, property, so far as they can be said to have anything which can be so called, mode of ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... pages the local of all the gangs that were stationed in this manner upon the seaboard of the kingdom would be as undesirable as it is foreign to the scope of this chapter. Enough to repeat that the land, always the sailor's objective in eluding the triple cordon of sea-borne gangs, was ringed in and surrounded by a circle of land-gangs in every respect identical with that described as ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... to be rid of his young friend as were any of the others in the hotel. Urmand himself would have been very glad to be back at Basle. He had come to regard any farther connection with the inn at Granpere as extremely undesirable. The Voss family was low. He had found that out during his present visit. But how was he to get away, and not look, as he was going, like a dog with his tail between his legs? He had so clear a right to demand Marie's hand, ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... point of view the marriage relation has for its end the procreation of children for the upbuilding of the Kingdom of God. If circumstances are such, through reasons of health or economy, that children seem undesirable, the remedy is plain, self control. The theory that human beings have no more control over their appetites than beasts, while it has much to support it in contemporary life, cannot be admitted from the point of view of religion. Self-control is always possible, and is constantly exercised ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... a subject on which argument is alike useless and undesirable. We must observe and be ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... an end, she would gladly have filled the place of a daughter to the duchess. But the duchess did not require a daughter; and a daughter with pronounced views, plenty of back-bone of her own, a fine figure, and a plain face, would have seemed to her Grace of Meldrum a peculiarly undesirable acquisition. So Jane was given to understand that she might come whenever she liked, and stay as long as she liked, but on the same footing as other people. This meant liberty to come and go as she pleased; and no responsibility ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... it was based upon the dinginess of Fred's clothes and prospects. Their new broad tolerance of the Holtons did not cover the tragic implications of Fred's raiment. They meant to protect Phil in every way, and yet there was ground for despair when she chose the most undesirable young man in the county to sit with in the intimacy of the refreshment hour at her own coming-out. Mrs. Fosdick leaned back from her table to ask Amzi in an angry whisper what he meant by allowing Phil to invite ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... weird sound struck against the silence with the impact of a blow. Nothing more undesirable could have happened. Again Mack bayed, and the echoing bell tones of his voice took on a strange similarity to a tocsin of warning. Rustling and crackling across the men's fancies the influences of the North moved invisible, alert, ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... for fear of breaking the circuit of their circulation. Any system of ventilation, or anything else, that insists on all windows being kept shut is radically wrong. It is only fair to say, however, that most of these systems of ventilation attempt the impossible, as well as the undesirable thing of keeping people shut up too long. No room can be, or ought to be, ventilated so that its occupants can stay in it all day long without discomfort. In ventilating, we ought to ventilate the people in the room, as well as the ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... the promised but undesirable dinner drop into their mouths. With a groan Oscar Brown rolled over on his side and allowed his portion to fall slowly out. But Jimmy Preston, amid howls of joy from the onlookers, jumped to his feet and tore the ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... the ideal food for the very young, is for that reason often undesirable for the old, and it is a great mistake for such to drink much of it with ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... this will have an immense influence upon the evolution of the race to higher goals. I do not know any force of the future on which we can count more hopefully than on the refinement resulting from the struggle for offspring and the survival of the fittest to be parents. Undesirable families will become extinct. The unborn will subtly mould the born to higher things. Childlessness will become again what it was in the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... stone, and interest from a gold mine; and his office was besieged in consequence by all that numerous class of persons who have still some reputation to lose, and find themselves upon the point of losing it; by those who have made undesirable acquaintances, who have mislaid a compromising correspondence, or who are blackmailed by their own butlers. In private life Michael was a man of pleasure; but it was thought his dire experience at the office had gone far to sober him, and it was known that (in the matter of investments) ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this Lenin and Stalin must have been inspired to create their Goulags to which not only Russian and Estonian "petit Bourgeois," but also other undesirable ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the fullest conviction, not merely that such a solution is undesirable, but that it never could by any possibility be put into practice. It ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... one of the mistakes of the vulgar to be rude and gruff in order to repel an undesired acquaintance. In reality, nothing freezes out a bore more effectually than the icy calm of dignified courtesy. There are exquisitely polite ways of sending every undesirable person to limbo. The perfect self-command of the well-bred man enables him to do this to perfection, but without giving offense. Moreover, as most people worth seeking are men and women of earnest lives and crowded occupations, no one need feel personally ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... them. These act much more readily on the vegetating cell than on the more resistant spore. A thorough knowledge of the effect of these antagonistic forces is essential, for it is often by their means that undesirable bacteria may be ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... Europeans are fined by stopping their pay for a certain number of days and sometimes a man is revocated, which means he is sent home without being paid for the six months or year previously. In this way men who drink hard when they have the opportunity, who are habitually insubordinate, or who are undesirable, are weeded out rapidly. Penal offences are of course tried in the Courts and punished with imprisonment. It is indeed curious after travelling in America and our colonies, to find, sturdy, rough, ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... week or two after Joan Hartley's return Mr. Robert Vyner went about in a state of gloomy amazement. Then, the first shock of surprise over, he began to look about him in search of reasons for a marriage so undesirable. A few casual words with Hartley at odd times only served to deepen the mystery, and he learned with growing astonishment of the chief clerk's ignorance of the whole affair. A faint suspicion, which ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... two ways in which it is possible to get rid of anger, worry, fear, despair, or other undesirable affections. One is that an opposite affection should overpoweringly break over us, and the other is by getting so exhausted with the struggle that we have to stop—so we drop down, give up, and DON'T CARE any longer. Our emotional brain-centres strike work, and we ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the Times, pointed out that he had let so many undesirable aliens into the country that he did not see that a few more made ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... I said, in my very stupidest manner, "is one of the difficulties which has occurred to me. A man who has been engaged as a Brother finds himself saddled with an undesirable acquaintance ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of his origin had an undesirable reputation, for its inhabitants were loose-livers, and the scandal of the surrounding countryside. But even in this environment the monk's family had made themselves conspicuous by their low and unmentionable ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... young man reading for the Bar in London is none the worse for a few friends. He must often feel pretty lonely on a Sunday, for example. And he may also—now I'm going to be impertinent and paternal again—he may also pick up undesirable acquaintances, male—and female. Don't you get feeling lonely, with your home far away in Wales. Consider yourself free of this place at any rate, and my wife and I can introduce you to some other people you might like to know. I might introduce you to Mark Stansfield the ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... opportunity of speedily testing the effects of absence, the count proposed that he should at once set out for the French frontier to meet his father. Under the existing circumstances, he said, it was undesirable that he should remain under the same roof with his daughter longer than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... most or all of the European capitals, and of Washington and Cairo just as well. He could be interviewed on behalf of his chief, and could be trusted not to utter one single word of which his chief could not approve. He would see any undesirable visitor, and in five minutes talk him over into the belief that it was a perfect grief to the Minister to have to forego the pleasure of seeing him in person. He was to be trusted with any secret which concerned his position, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... borrowing half-crowns. He smelt of rum. He was altogether undesirable. It was plain to the clerks that Pascoe disliked him. But he was evidently under Eldrick's protection, and he did his work and did it well, and there was no doubt that he knew more law than either of the partners, and ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... at the flag-officer's disposal; for to open fire upon a place where there were so many helpless creatures, innocent of any greater offense than behaving like a set of spoiled children, was a course that could not be contemplated unless in the last necessity, and it was undesirable to provoke acts which might lead to any such step. The United States officers who were necessarily sent to communicate with the authorities did so, in the opinion of the authorities themselves, at the peril of their lives from ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan |
