"Unflattering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the king, at whose table sat only the Duke of Clarence and the earl's family, was gracious as day to all, but especially to the Lady Anne, attributing her sudden illness to some cause not unflattering to himself; her beauty, which somewhat resembled that of the queen, save that it had more advantage of expression and of youth, was precisely of the character he most admired. Even her timidity, and the reserve with which she ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he missed the easiest balls, fascinated in watching the movements and graceful attitudes of his opponent. Her feet, which even in the unflattering tennis-shoes looked small and dainty, seemed merely to skim over the ground like the wings of a passing swallow; and the most daring bounds and leaps, which in others would have been grotesque, she accomplished with the easy ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... character-drawing is often crude, the action, though full of effective by-play, extremely slight, and the sensational climax has little relation to human nature as exhibited in Norway, or out of it, at that or any other time. But the sting lay in the unflattering veracity of the piece as a whole; in the merciless portrayal of the trivialities of persons, or classes, high in their own esteem; in the unexampled effrontery of bringing a clergyman upon the stage. All these have long since passed in Scandinavia, into the category of the things which ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... that liberties might be taken with the Americans which would seem hazardous "to a military man unacquainted with the character of the enemy he had to contend with, or with the events of the last two campaigns on that frontier." The deduction was unflattering but very much after ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... to-day, magnificently, behind Messina; but the Health-office having no inducement to open its eyes prematurely, will not, for some time, send its delegates on board, to announce our liberty to land. We have nothing for it but to look over the boat, or study haggard faces reflected in the unflattering mirror of a beautiful sea. The hauling about of things on deck is always pleasant, as a signal of voyage over! The sun still shines full upon the long row of houses on the quay—fishing boats are entering with abundance of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... say nothing about it. But she resolved altogether that she would not display her anger to Mrs Baggett. Mrs Baggett, after all, had done it for the best. And there was something in Mrs Baggett's mode of argument on the subject which was not altogether unflattering to Mary. It was not as though Mrs Baggett had told her that Mr Whittlestaff could make himself quite happy with Mrs Baggett herself, if Mary Lawrie would be good enough to go away. The suggestion had been made quite in the other way, and Mrs Baggett ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... He could see the sleeve of her blue corduroy jacket; her eyes he could not see. She was a stranger. Had he idealized her? He was apologetic for his unflattering doubt, but ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... literature or merely writing verse. He conforms to all the canons of taste in his own day; he is devout and reverent; he shuns excesses of diction, and he courts originality; his verse seems to himself and to his unflattering friends instinct with the spirit of his time, but twenty years later it is old-fashioned. Keats, with all his feeling of certainty, stood with head uncovered before that power which gives poetical gifts to one, and withholds them from another. Above all would he avoid self-delusion ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... opinion of diplomatists was also somewhat unflattering, for, of a certain embassy visited by him on his ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... To this unflattering description, Saint-Simon adds the fact that his "large, pasty face was so covered by pimples that it looked like one large abscess.'" Such, then, was the repulsive lover who found favour in the eyes of the Regent's daughter, and for whom ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... the symmetry they would otherwise have possessed, and influencing their own practices in such a way as to contract the basis on which Christian fellowship rests. A second prize essay, called "The Peculium," takes a still more practical view, and points out in the most unflattering way that the Friends, by eliminating from their system all attention to the arts, music, poetry, the drama, &c., left nothing for the exercise of their faculties save eating, drinking, and making money. "The growth of Quakerism," says Mr. T. Hancock, the author of this outspoken ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... indeed, as a cause celebre of the first magnitude. The interest in the case was largely due to the belief that Lieutenant Bilse's novel—for he had given his terrible arraignment of the army the outward semblance of a novel—presented a true, if highly unflattering, picture of conditions as they exist in many German garrison towns. This impression was borne out by the evidence, which tended to corroborate the account given by Lieutenant Bilse of the moral tone and the ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... coachman driving an open carriage hailed confidentially. Alixe entered and with a dexterous play of draperies usurped the back seat. Rentgen made no sign. He had her in full view, the moon streaking her disturbed features with its unflattering pencil. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker |
