"Unobtrusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sensing something climacteric in his atmosphere, kept aloof from him, and regarded him from the dusk of her corner with wonder and a pity that she could not explain. The Christian on the other hand seemed always in an unobtrusive way to be at the Maccabee's elbow. The apparition with the long white hair, however, ran away and was found on the streets by the Christian and brought back to the cavern, where he hid in a dark shadow in the remote end of the crypt and ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... took her station in the wings—silent, unobtrusive, eager to keep out of everybody's way, eager not to miss a word of the play. The man over her head, busy with his lights; the one or two shirt-sleeved, elderly men who invariably stood dispassionately watching ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... handed over the card in question, a small, unobtrusive bit of pasteboard, laid in solitary grandeur on a very ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... possession when I appeared on the scene, and though I did my best to be unobtrusive, my presence was not so welcome as I could have wished. Every morning when I came slowly and quietly up the little path from the gate, bird-notes suddenly ceased; the grosbeak, pouring out his soul from the ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... its hopeless impracticability, were things to dream of, not to tell. Picotee was quite an unreasoning animal. Her sister arranged situations for her, told her how to conduct herself in them, how to make up anew, in unobtrusive shapes, the valuable wearing apparel she sent from time to time—so as to provoke neither exasperation in the little gentry, nor superciliousness in the great. Ethelberta did everything for her, in short; and Picotee obeyed orders with the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Dunham. "I have done nothing of the kind. Her talk was like any pleasant talk; it was refined and simple, and— unobtrusive." ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... Preparing the children, with Helen's help; preparing herself, in the quiet of her "House of Gods"—a tiny room above the studio—in much the same spirit as she had prepared for the great consecration of marriage, with vigil and meditation and unobtrusive fasting—noted by Nevil, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... he cowered with his servants, his taste for pictures and bric-a-brac, and his little branch of inquiry into Venetian history, whatever it was, ready to let himself or anything he had for hire at a moment's notice, but very pleasant, gentle, and unobtrusive; a cheat and a liar, but of a kind heart and sympathetic manners. Under his protection Mrs. Vervain set up her impermanent household gods. The apartment was taken only from week to week, and as she freely explained to the ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... said the marquis courteously, pleased with the calm, self-possessed, unobtrusive bearing of the man. "They tell me ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... general scandal of his mother's violent detestation of his wife, all this was most unpleasant. But Louison, the wife, upon sufficient pressure, had brought her child to the Melroses, and had doubtfully disappeared, and Theodore had returned from his wanderings to live, silent and unobtrusive, in his mother's home, for several years, and to die with his daughter beside him, and be duly laid in the Melrose plot at Woodlawn. And Leslie—Leslie had repaid them all, ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... his new-found cousin devoted himself in the most cousinly way. Tender, respectful, unobtrusive, bestowing on him enough, and not too much of his society; never interfering, and yet always at hand with any assistance required: he was exactly the companion which the earl needed, and liked constantly beside him. For, of course, Malcolm, fond ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... abundance of the objects of choice; and by the difficulty which everyone, but a specialist in each department, must find in drawing a due distinction between discoveries which strike the imagination by their novelty, or by their practical influence, and those unobtrusive but pregnant observations and experiments in which the germs of the great things of the future really lie. Moreover, my limits restrict me to little more than a bare chronicle of the events which ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... there is a certain nobleness in the treatment, both of sentiment and incident, which is not often found. We imagine that few can read it without deriving some comfort or profit from the quiet good sense and unobtrusive words of counsel ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... other books, as Warburton says, tell us ABOUT the East, this is the East itself. And yet in his company we are always ENGLISHMEN in the East: behind Servian, Egyptian, Syrian, desert realities, is a background of English scenery, faint and unobtrusive yet persistent and horizoning. In the Danubian forest we talk of past school- days. The Balkan plain suggests an English park, its trees planted as if to shut out "some infernal fellow creature in ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... upon the other side of the problem. He esteemed it precisely as important to protect the Californians from the Japanese as to protect the Japanese from the Californians. As in the Alaskan and Venezuelan cases, he proceeded without beat of drum or clash of cymbal. The matter was worked out in unobtrusive conferences between the President and the State Department and the Japanese representatives in Washington. It was all friendly, informal, conciliatory—but the Japanese did not fail to recognize the inflexible determination behind this courteous ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... soon discovered. He could remain silent for hours. Probably he had never been of a very expansive nature, and prison discipline had strengthened an inborn reticence to a reserve of iron. He was not a disconcerting companion, because he was absolutely unobtrusive, but with all the good-will in the world Babbacombe found it well-nigh impossible to treat him with that ease of manner which came to him so spontaneously in his ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... I consented, reflecting mournfully over those shabby ribbons and that lemon-colored bow. If there is anything like help in the world that I receive most gratefully, it is the prompt recognition of a need, and unobtrusive aid for it. A short time before the day appointed for us to go to the city, our Clara came down stairs dressed in a beautiful dark shade of blue Foulard silk, with a lace ruff about her throat, ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... went about their work again. Rube and Seth took in their crops, and devoted spare time to building operations. And the district of White River continued its unobtrusive prosperity. ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... the format was such as to give the impression indicated, an impression deepened by the extremely Gallic freedom of the illustrations. There can be little doubt that had the works been issued in an unobtrusive form, without illustrations, they would have attracted less attention of the undesirable kind which they afterwards received. The use of the term "Realistic" was the more remarkable as Zola had previously invented the word Naturalisme to distinguish his work from that of the Realistic ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... Steve—the latter never talked; in place of words he used the poker—not in any fiendish way; heaven forbid! but in a mild, unobtrusive manner, intelligible only to himself and Randolph. In this system of fireworks stenography, so to speak, a series of slow, deliberate pokes under the fire implied contemplation; poking down from above stood for disagreement; ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... followed close at his heels. The six porters stole along fifty yards in the rear. They were quite as anxious for meat —promptly—as anybody, and were as unobtrusive as shadows. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... development of one's philosophy of life. As a matter of educational procedure insuring that young people will learn to interpret life, especially those aspects that the larger sex-education touches so definitely, there appears to be no more natural and unobtrusive way of approach than that offered by the study of literature. I am convinced that many teachers of literature may be efficient workers in the cause of the larger sex-education, supplementing the scientific teaching ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... this Spartan statement, Mary and the fat lady became aware for the first time of a subtle, silent force in the domestic economy. But so unobtrusive was this influence that one had to scrutinize very closely, indeed, to detect the evanescent personality of Mrs. Dax's husband. Leander was his name, but it is safe to say that he swam no Hellesponts for the masterful wife of his bosom. Otherwise he was slender, willowy, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... unconscious egotism, that the reader cares only for the narrative, and nothing for the narrator. Stories told to interested listeners by "grandma," an "old hunter," or some loquacious "stranger," usually need to be so revised that the intrusive relater will disappear, merged in the unobtrusive author. Indeed, it is policy so to revise them, for the editor usually considers the author who begins thus too ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... Polly's husband was called in to gaze upon her. A little man was Aunt Polly's husband, with black side whiskers and a head partly bald; a most quiet and unobtrusive person, looking just what he had been represented,—a "plain, sensible man," who attended to his half of the family affairs, and left the other half to his wife. He gazed upon Helen and blinked once or twice, as if blinded by so much beauty, and then took the end ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... these are abundant enough in the southern country; and by their quiet, unobtrusive, and softer beauties, would seem, and not inefficiently or feebly, to supply in most respects the wants of those bolder characteristics, in which nature in those regions is confessedly deficient. Whatever may be the want of southern ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the silent figure of Drummond at the other table—watching, watching. She felt sure that it was to him that the Surety Company had turned over the work of shadowing Halsey. Day after day, probably, the unobtrusive detective had been trailing Halsey from the moment he left his apartment until the time when he returned, if he did return. There was nothing of his goings and comings that was not already an open book to them. Of what use was it, then, for ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... so well—in his quiet, unobtrusive manner he was making himself so agreeable. Oh, if he would only have stayed with her, and been indeed the son of her right hand, and given himself to the work; and then for a moment there was a filmy look in the mother's eyes, and she listened a little ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... prints on the dagger. At any rate Fairfield was suppressing something. It could do no harm to continue the watch that had been set upon him. So Foyle left Green and his companion to continue their unobtrusive vigil. ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... are the light of the world.'—'Ye are the salt of the earth.' The light guides and gladdens; the salt preserves and purifies; the dew freshens and fertilises; the light, conspicuous; the salt, working concealed; and the dew, visible like the former, but yet unobtrusive and operating silently like the latter. Some of us had rather be light than salt; prefer to be conspicuous rather than to diffuse a wholesome silent influence around us. But these three types must all be blended, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... which in earlier years played therein. And, bless you, Madam, I meet every day, in my down-town walks, some strange animated fossils, more repellent than any I ever beheld in the Natural History cabinet. These bear the unfamiliar look which belongs to a fabulous age, and rest, silent and unobtrusive, in their half-opened cerements. The others wear a very familiar form, which belongs to our day, yet they are the exponents of a dead life which animated the buried bones of barbarism. The innocent Megatheria and Ichthyosauri crawled and paddled and died in their day; but these living fossils ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... yet only threatened. He was solvent; he had still a reserve. It behoved him merely to avoid the risks of speculation, and to check, in natural, unobtrusive ways, that tendency to extravagance of living which was nowadays universal. Could he not depend upon ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... swiftly, cheered by the brilliance of philosophy and genius. The journals of the day were read, Madame Roland being usually called upon as reader. When not thus reading, she usually sat at her work-table, employing her fingers with her needle, while she took a quiet and unobtrusive part in the conversation. "This kind of life," says Madame Roland, "would be very austere, were not my husband a man of great merit, whom I love with my whole heart. Tender friendship and unbounded confidence mark ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... direct. His familiar acquaintance with the ancient Scriptures is very remarkable; though we might not always acquiesce in the critical accuracy of his application. His reference to the Epistles written by St. Paul to the same Church at Corinth that he was then addressing, affords one of those unobtrusive and undesigned collateral evidences to the Holy Scriptures, which are as abundant in the primitive writings, as they are invaluable. No one can read this Epistle of Clement, without acquiescing in the expression of Jerome, that ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... arm-chair by the fireside, holding a book which he scarcely looked at, and watching the long rolls of smoke from his pipe. He disliked new acquaintances; nevertheless, the friends to whom Hermann introduced him found in him a quiet, unobtrusive, and well-informed companion. He pleased everybody. There was something strange and yet attractive in his person; there was a "charm" about him, people said. Hermann felt the attraction without being able to define in what it consisted. Their former friendship had been renewed ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... the fourth and last of the male members of our humble dwelling, to whom let me also present you. This is a young gentleman of a very meek and unobtrusive disposition. He never raises his voice to a high pitch, or makes a noise when performing any little job that requires skill. It would seem as if his good parents were inspired in bestowing a name upon him. They called him Lifter. We have slightly varied the name, took a small grammatical ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... consulted with Captain Henry, of the Nouvelle Bretagne and, as they talked on the poop deck of the newly-arrived steamer, a cry came from the people on shore that another ship was in sight. An hour later a black-painted, unobtrusive-looking steamer came slowly into the bay and dropped anchor. She looked like a collier, and flew the red ensign of England; but Henry knew her. She was the Legaspi, Spanish gunboat from Manila, and had chased him from the Philippines. ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... known and appreciated her services, and from whom she held her commission, passed a series of resolutions, as a tribute to her worth, and her blessed memory, in which she was described as one who was "gentle and unobtrusive, with a heart warm with sympathy, and unshrinking in the discharge of duty, energetic, untiring, ready to answer every call, and unwilling to spare herself where she could alleviate suffering, or minister to the comfort of others," ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... silver cup which figures in Robert's sketch was every night made use of in the scene depicting the champion's pot-house sanctum. Among the frequenters at these rehearsals was a quiet man of unusually unobtrusive deportment and conversation,—this man was Thurtell, the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... she was cold, repellent, haughty; his quiet smile remained unaltered. His superior, and thoroughly cultivated intellect, and the unaffected simplicity of his manner, characterized by singular candor, rendered him an unusually agreeable companion; but Beulah rebelled against the unobtrusive yet constant care with which she fancied he watched her. The seclusion of her life, and the reserve of her nature, conspired to impart a degree of abruptness to her own manners; and to one who understood her character ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... and was furious. Nothing could be urged against them; they were unexceptionable. The doctor, a chatty, straightforward, energetic man, of great intellect and learning, and emphatically a gentleman; his wife attracting by her unobtrusive gentleness; his daughter by her grace and modest self-possession. Whatever Maude Kirton might do, she could never, for very shame, again attempt to disparage them. Surely there was no just reason for the hatred which took possession of Maude's heart; a hatred that could ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... dress of a gentleman we had met, who was so perfectly dressed that we paid no attention to his clothes. His style is called transparent, because at first we are not conscious of his manner; and unobtrusive, because we never think of Newman himself, but only of the subject he is discussing. He is like the best French prose writers in expressing his thought with such naturalness and apparent ease that, without thinking of style, we receive exactly the impression ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... times. Where Utterson was liked, he was liked well. Hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the light-hearted and the loose-tongued had already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit awhile in his unobtrusive company, practising for solitude, sobering their minds in the man's rich silence after the expense and strain of gaiety. To this rule Dr. Jekyll was no exception; and as he now sat on the opposite side of the fire—a large, well-made, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he did not even know her name. The house was just such a one as he might have imagined to be her home—beautiful, with the air of a longer family tradition than is commonly found in the Middle West—unobtrusive but complete. And the furnishings of the room in which he was standing were in quiet ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... our resting place. They kept rather apart from us, and kindled their fire in a little hollow about fifty paces to our right; nor did they venture to approach the tents unless we called to them, so that by their quiet and unobtrusive conduct they made up in some measure for the unruly proceedings of others of ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... scandalize the believers by any public expression of his opinions, and did not indeed make himself conspicuous in any way during the campaign. Never consulted on political questions, he confined himself to his military duties and fulfilled them in a conscientious and unobtrusive manner. After many mistakes and disappointments, the army reached Constantinople and the treaty of San Stefano was signed, but much that had been obtained by that important document had to be sacrificed at the congress of Berlin. Prince ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Eleanor's own individuality, any one in search of that very unobtrusive quality would have found it more in the expression of her eyes and in the childlike lines of her lips than in her toilets. It is possible that Mrs. Hubert might have regarded it as an unkind visitation of Providence that the results of her lifetime of effort in an important ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... on a walk in June to sit and look at the grass. How tame and dreary would be the landscape without it! How soul starved would have been mankind, condemned to live without the restfulness of its unobtrusive beauty! That is why the first command, after the waters had been gathered into one place and the dry land appeared, was, "Let the earth bring forth grass." The grasses cover the earth like a beautiful garment from Kerguelen land in the Antarctic regions to the extreme limit of ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... question of who will ultimately marry whom. But by sedulously dwelling on the non-essentials of life, she contrives to remind the reader of its vast essentials. By talking to us skilfully about the many things that do not matter, she suggests to us, inversely and with unobtrusive irony, the few things that really do. Her very message, therefore, is immediately dependent upon her faultless art. If she had done her work less well, the result would have been ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... earliest converts were his bosom-friends and the people of his household, who were intimately acquainted with his private life. Nor does a man easily begin an ambitious course of deception at the age of forty; having lived till that time as a quiet, peaceful, and unobtrusive citizen,[390] what was he to gain by this career? Long years passed before he could make more than a handful of converts. During these weary years he was the object of contumely and hatred to the ruling tribe in Mecca. His life was hardly safe from them. Nothing could ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Under that unobtrusive character, he hoped in time to accommodate his feelings to the change of fortune which Providence had allotted to him. He must forget his nobility, his pride, and his sensibility; he must earn his subsistence. But by ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... acquaintance, Miriam's love, like that of all proud, reserved natures, was intense. Ackermann's attentions to her were graceful and delicate, and he ever manifested toward her in his whole manner that silent devotion, unobtrusive and indescribable, which is so gratifying to woman. It was evident that he understood her thoroughly: whether he appreciated her as thoroughly was another matter, about ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that Cairo (CONSTABLE) has provided me with what I have been waiting for, I am more than delighted to present my acknowledgments. Mr. WHITE'S subject is pat to the moment; moreover it is handled with such unobtrusive skill that one absorbs a serious problem without being anxiously conscious that all the play of intrigue and adventure is covering a much deeper motive. When Mr. WHITE sent Daniel Addington to Egypt to meet Abdul Sayed, who had been at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... complacently to any details their visitors could impart. For in his private capacity a policeman, provided that he be otherwise "a dacint lad," which to do him justice is commonly the case, may join, with a few unobtrusive restrictions, in our neighborly gossips; the rule in fact being—Free ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... barely three hundred dollars a year—eked out to this amount by some small pay for offices connected with the church, of which he was a prominent member. From this income he paid his pulpit tithe, gave to the poor, and lived independent and respectable. Mother endeavored in an unobtrusive way to add to his comfort; but he would only accept a few herrings from the Surrey Weir every spring, and a basket of apples every fall. He invariably returned her presents by giving her a share of his plums ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... exploits of the conqueror and the intrigues of the demagogue are faithfully preserved through a succession of ages, the persevering and unobtrusive efforts of genius, developing the best blessings of the Deity to man, are often consigned ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... which is rarer than all others in the nineteenth century. In our love of stimulants, and our numbness of taste, which craves the red pepper of a biting vocabulary, we of the present generation are apt to overlook this almost obsolete and unobtrusive quality; but we doubt if, since Chaucer, we have had an example of more purely objective narrative than in "The Courtship of Miles Standish." Apart from its intrinsic beauty, this gives the poem ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... where dwell the high gods of poesy and romance. From the master, too, they learned to know their own wonderful woods out of which the near-by farms had been hewn. Many a home, too, owed its bookshelf to Alex Day's unobtrusive suggestions. ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... the Bell's, Miss Hart, proved herself a most unobtrusive and retiring person. She was strangely reserved, no doubt, and would reveal none of the secret which she had dimly alluded to on the night of her arrival to Mrs. Bell, but she was chatty and pleasant enough to the girls when ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... whose name is lost in oblivion, said in tones which would melt a heart of stone: "Shall an oak and a rose tree receive the same culture? Better to us is the clear, steady, softened, silvery moonlight of woman's quiet, unobtrusive influence, than the flashes of electricity showing that the true balance of nature is destroyed. Aye, better a thousand times is it than the glimmering ignus fatuus rising from decayed hopes and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... mother, and two sisters,"—he had expected to continue in an unemotional tone; but a deep respiration usurped the place of speech. He stooped quickly to pick up his hat, and, as he rose again and looked into his listener's face, the respectful, unobtrusive sympathy there expressed ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... the reach of great intellectual gift or conscious effort. Joseph Worcester was a modest, shrinking Swedenborgian minister. His congregation was a handful of refined mystics who took no prominent part in public affairs and were quiet and unobtrusive citizens. He was not attractive as a preacher, his voice trembled with emotion and bashfulness, and he read with difficulty. He was painfully shy, and he was oppressed and suffered in a crowd. He was unmarried ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... white linen, but coloured threads may occasionally be introduced with advantage. It is a durable method of work, and particularly suitable for the decoration of various house-linens, things that must undergo daily wear and wash; its rather unobtrusive character too makes it the more suitable for this purpose. The work is used in conjunction with other kinds of embroidery, perhaps making a neat finish to an edge, or lightening what would otherwise be too ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... thought, it did not prevent the steps as she came out a few hours later in the freshness of white muslin, with her umbrella, prayer-book, and an unobtrusive ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... went on to certain batteries of big guns which had played their part in hammering the Austrian left above Monfalcone across an arm of the Adriatic, and which were now under orders to shift and move up closer. The battery was the most unobtrusive of batteries; its one desire seemed to be to appear a simple piece of woodland in the eye of God and the aeroplane. I went about the network of railways and paths under the trees that a modern battery requires, and came presently upon a great ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... subject of Lucia Catherwood, but praised her, though now and then with slight reservations, letting fall the inference that she was her good friend and would be a better one if she could. Such use did she make of her gentle and unobtrusive sympathy that Prescott felt his heart warming once more to this ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... already begun to impress a peculiar character, still plainly discernible after the lapse of a hundred and sixty years, had sent him to the Convention; and he sate there, in his modest greatness, the unobtrusive but unflinching friend of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of her husband touching the weather, that she resigned herself to Highland miseries in a species of happy contentment, and thus lived in what may be likened to a species of mild moonshine of her own. Tilly, poor, delicate, unobtrusive Tilly, was at all times satisfied to bask in the moonlight of her mother's countenance. As for Jacky—that arch-imp discovered that wet weather usually brought his victims within doors, and therefore kept them constantly within reach of his dreadful influence. He ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... trains, where groups of young voices or extreme fashions in dress become quite unintentionally conspicuous. Experienced from within, the life, despite its many little roughnesses, its small lapses in taste, is gracious and gentle, selfless in unobtrusive ways, and ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... remained some weeks; and the church was very much revived, and there was a large ingathering. This was originally the home of Bro. Archie Glenn, now conspicuous in building up the University at Wichita. From the first Bro. Glenn, though modest and unobtrusive, was known as a solid and helpful member of the church. He always had the confidence of the people of Brown County, and was by them elected to various public offices, at last becoming Lieutenant-Governor of the State. But his business not prospering to suit him, he removed to Wichita, ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... denounced under the epithet of Carpet-bagger and Scalawag were honorable and true men; but a majority of these were unobtrusive and not brought strongly into popular view, while many of those who became entrusted with the power of State governments and found themselves unexpectedly in possession of great authority were not morally equal to its responsibility. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... original herd comprised Apollo, six cows and four calves, or half-grown cattle. The new acquisition brought the count up to twenty-six cows and twenty young animals. The vanquished bull was very meek from that time forward, and the surprising thing was that Apollo was thereafter the same quiet, unobtrusive ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... for the wants of their distressed families. We have already alluded to the foundation of the Royal Literary Fund, which arose from the feelings of pity and regret excited by the death of Floyer Sydenham in a debtors' prison. It is unnecessary to record its history, its noble career of unobtrusive usefulness in saving from ruin and ministering consolation to those unhappy authors who have been wounded in the world's warfare, and who, but for the Literary Fund, would have been left to perish on the hard battlefield of life. Since its foundation L115,677 has been spent ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... may be; and if we were to transport and set loose herds of long-necked camelopards, trumpeting elephants, and rhinoceroses of horrible aspect, the little birds would soon fear them as little as they do the familiar cow. But they greatly fear the small-sized, quiet, unobtrusive, and meek-looking cat. Sparrows and starlings that fly wildly at the shout of a small boy or the bark of a fox-terrier, build their nests under every railway arch; and the incubating bird sits unalarmed amid the ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... handle. It spread around her like a garment, as she sat on her chair, and its ends touched the floor. Michel thought there was nothing more wonderful in the world than this glory of hair, its rings and ripples shining in the firelight. The widow's jaws worked in unobtrusive rumination on a piece of pleasantly bitter fungus, the Indian substitute for quinine, which the Chippewas called waubudone. As she consoled herself much with this medicine, and her many-syllabled ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Mrs. Ashton, "for I must rely upon my labor for a support for the future." Through the influence of these kind friends Mrs. Ashton soon obtained an abundant supply of work; and, when she became somewhat acquainted with the people of Rockford, her gentle and unobtrusive manner gained her many warm friends. Agreeable to her mother's wishes, Emma soon became a pupil in the seminary for young ladies, which was at that time under the direction of Miss Hinton, a lady who possessed ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... its origin or aim; but, placed as I was, I could hardly help it. He laid himself open to my observation, according to my presence in the room just that degree of notice and consequence a person of my exterior habitually expects: that is to say, about what is given to unobtrusive articles of furniture, chairs of ordinary joiner's work, and carpets of no striking pattern. Often, while waiting for Madame, he would muse, smile, watch, or listen like a man who thinks himself alone. I, meantime, was free to puzzle over his countenance and ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... did not observe Melissa; did not suspect that state of deliciousness which, starting from the skin, slowly crept into her very soul. She stood there, very unobtrusive, drinking in the sadly sweet sounds. Up on the stained-glass window the sunlight filtered through blue-and-red-and-golden angels, sending shafts of heavenly colour across the floor; and the fibres of her soul, enmeshed in music, seemed to stretch out to mingle with that ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... was terminated at its other end by a broad stone archway, which showed as in a semi-circular frame the glint of scarlet geraniums in the distance, and in the shadow cast by this embrasure was the small unobtrusive figure of a girl. She stood idly watching the hens pecking at their food and driving away their offspring from every chance of sharing bit or sup with them,—and as she noted the greedy triumph of the strong over the weak, the great over the small, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... Boots, who kills the ogre and marries the princess—the typical lover in fiction from the remotest Aryan antiquity down to the present time—appears in Andersen in a hundred disguises, not with the rudimentary features of the old story, but modernized, individualized, and carrying on his shield an unobtrusive little moral. In "Jack the Dullard" he comes nearest to his primitive prototype, and no visible effort is made to refine him. In "The Most Extraordinary Thing" he is the vehicle of a piece of social satire, and narrowly ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... amuse you. You will laugh," whispered the two young men, as they passed through the room, and took up an unobtrusive position ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... arbitrary governments the vengeance of the despot has seldom been known to extend beyond the circle of his court; his victims have been among the ambitious candidates for power and distinction. The retired pursuits of unobtrusive industry have proved a sanctuary, which has remained ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... cheerfulness and mirth beneath the wand of this enchanter! How many a combatant beaten down in the battle of life—and nowhere is the battle of life more sharply waged than in the commonwealth of America—has caught new hope, new courage, new force from the manly lessons of this unobtrusive teacher! ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Dahlias. These should be painted some unobtrusive color. If this is done, and they are taken proper care of in fall, they will last for years. This is true of racks ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... were alone. "My Helen," would she say, "you will be the means, through the blessing of God, of saving your father's life. I really feared for him for the first week or two; but he begins now to look more like himself, and I think, by a continuance of the same attention and unobtrusive kindness, you will in time reconcile him in some degree to his loss, and bring him again into his former habits of employment ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... said she, with a placid smile. "Methinks it is like water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the heart of a ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... Lambert-Howell. Around him was space—a full meter on all sides. It was, he realized, a distinction—symbolic accolade for anyone who had the temerity to down a man like Vernay. It was also a gesture of caution. No one was anxious to block the view of a man who had downed a vicious fighter with an unobtrusive gesture. And no one was anxious to be too close when Vernay might ...
— Alarm Clock • Everett B. Cole
... disdain to show themselves on the surface. The sublime beauty of the landscape, in which, as often elsewhere, the golden radiance of the setting sun is seen battling with masses of azure cloud, has not been exceeded by Titian himself. With all the daring yet perfectly unobtrusive and unconscious realism of certain details, the conception is one of the loftiest, one of the most penetrating in its very simplicity, of Venetian art at its apogee. The divine mansuetude, the human and brotherly sympathy ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... endure to make part of the public pageant that it was thought well should mark the real wedding at Bowstead. So their banns were put up at St. Clement Danes, and one quiet morning they slipped out, with no witnesses but the Major, Aurelia, and Eugene, and were wedded there in the most unobtrusive manner. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with some basket in their hands, which betokened an evening not passed absolutely in idleness. No fear there of unruly questions on the way, or of insolence from the ill- conducted of the other sex. All was, or seemed to be, orderly, sleek, and unobtrusive. Probably, of all modes of life that are allotted to man by his Creator, life such as this is the most happy. One hint, however, for improvement, I must give even to Portland: It would be well if they could make their streets of ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... California had become the great financial institution of the West. Ralston was the Rothschild of America. Through him Central Pacific Railway promoters borrowed $3,000,000 with less formality than a country banker uses in mortgaging of a ten-acre farm. Two millions took their unobtrusive wing to South America, financing mines he had never seen. In Virginia City William Sharon directed a branch of the Bank of California and kept his eye on mineral investment. Benito sat in Ralston's office one morning, smoking and discussing the Montgomery street ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... importance occurred during the years 1859 and 1860 in Minnesota. The state continued to grow in population and wealth at an extraordinary pace, but in a quiet and unobtrusive way. The politics of the nation had been for some time much disturbed between the North and the South, on the question of slavery, and threats of secession from the Union made by the slave-holding states. The election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of the United States, in 1860, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... the successful party, that of William of Orange, of course brought them into disgrace: and though they were never molested on that account, they retired to their estate, and found it convenient to be as unobtrusive as possible. Thenceforward you heard no more of the Rockvilles in the national annals. They became only of consequence in their own district. They acted as magistrates. They served as high sheriffs. They were a substantial county family, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... at first, so insignificant was the man. His manner was quiet and unobtrusive, his face pale, and his figure fragile. On better acquaintance, however, there was a squareness and firmness about his clean-shaven lower jaw, and an intelligence in his widely-opened blue eyes, which marked him as a man of character. He erected a ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... June saw Mrs. Dunmore settled in her country-house for the summer. It was a pretty, unobtrusive cottage, standing upon a sloping lawn, and facing the east. In the distance lay a sylvan lake, beyond which, through the trees, gleamed the white spires of an adjoining village. All around were lofty mountains covered ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... travelers have led us to believe were inseparable from foreign birth; his finger-nails were in no way conspicuous; he did not, as a French count, a former adorer of Edith's, had done, indulge an unmasculine taste for diamond rings (possibly because he had none); his politeness was unobtrusive and subdued, and of his accent there was just enough left to give an agreeable color of individuality to his speech. But, for all that, Edith could never quite rid herself of the impression that he was intensely ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... a brother of John who for many years was the principal physician in the town of Salem. He had several grants of land, and was a worthy, peaceable, unobtrusive citizen. He seems to have kept out of the heat of the various contentions that occurred in the village; and, although his influence was sometimes decisively put forth, he evidently did nothing to aggravate them. He died April 11, 1689, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... speech; for in society he was the shyest and most undemonstrative of men. To a single friend whom he trusted, he would pour out his inmost heart; but let two or three be gathered together, above all, introduce a stranger, and he instantly became a quiet, unobtrusive listener, though never a ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... west face of the stonework opposite to the north-east tower pier. As one turns round the corner into the north ambulatory or choir aisle, it will be noticed that on the wall is a monument by Flaxman to Lady Clarke; it is small and unobtrusive, but the sculpture is thoroughly good and worthy ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... their poise and their silence in the presence of strangers is not due to moroseness or the absence of active thought. They have learned in the woods, if they are to be successful in their hunts, to be personally as unobtrusive as possible, often to remain motionless, and all the while to watch and listen alertly. Whenever they can be of real assistance, no one can more quickly or ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan |
