"Unpleasantness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... play a part in it, it is wise to put in a convenient room a number of things suitable to dress up in. Then at the last minute there need be no furious running up-stairs to pull things out of closets and boxes, and the unpleasantness will be avoided which sometimes follows when you have taken somebody's best clothes for ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... line they were pursuing, the risk of interference was very small. The marshal's pass would be certainly respected by the officers of the corps under his command; and it was not until they fell in with parties of Soult's troops that any unpleasantness was to be apprehended; though even here the worst that could be looked for, if they met any large body of troops, would be that the mules might be taken, for a time, ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... affairs, and of the actual history of his family, made him cautious; so that he resolved not to mention the truth about himself to any one. Under all these circumstances, Claude saw no other resource but to endure as best he could the unpleasantness of his personal situation, and live in the hope that in the course of time some change might take place by which he could be brought into closer ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... when you 'ear us," said Braddle; "and if you make fools of us again——" And he described consequences which exceeded in unpleasantness the worst that Leander ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... Two Complete Portraits III. Men must have Wine, and Horses must have Water IV. Entrance on the Scene of a Doll V. The Little One All Alone VI. Which possibly proves Boulatruelle's Intelligence VII. Cosette Side by Side with the Stranger in the Dark VIII. The Unpleasantness of receiving into One's House a Poor Man who may be a Rich Man IX. Thenardier at his Manoeuvres X. He who seeks to better himself may render his Situation Worse XI. Number 9,430 reappears, and Cosette wins it ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the major penalty of guilt is borne not by the offenders themselves but by the first generation succeeding. This does need saying occasionally, I suppose, and to that extent The Victim redeems itself from the charge of trivial unpleasantness. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... the front door behind him. As I did so, I heard a cry from within. It was muffled and remote, but unmistakably one of terror and anguish: and, led by an impulse I may live to regret, as it seems likely to plunge me into much unpleasantness, I rushed up the stoop and went in, shutting the door behind me, lest others should be induced ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... enough, about 2 a.m. a little wave forced its way under the tent- cloth. This was a practical demonstration that we had not gone far enough back from the sea, but in the semi-darkness it was difficult to see where we could find safety. Perhaps it was fortunate that experience had inured us to the unpleasantness of sudden forced changes of camp. We took down the tents and re-pitched them close against the high rocks at the seaward end of the spit, where large boulders made an uncomfortable resting-place. Snow was falling ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... his serenity. As we passed along, the negroes were lining the roads on their way homeward, and were shouting and laughing among themselves; and the greetings they gave us as we passed were as civil and good-humored as if no unpleasantness had ever existed. A little after we set out, one man, who had been walking very fast just ahead of us, and had been keeping in advance all the time, came close to Halloway's stirrup and said something to him in an undertone. All I ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... case is nothing, though, beside her son's! To see him, you would say he's ten times worse! His conduct in our late unpleasantness [1] Had won him much esteem, and proved his courage In service of his king; but now he's like A man besotted, since he's been so taken With this Tartuffe. He calls him brother, loves him A hundred times as much as mother, son, Daughter, and wife. He tells him all his secrets And lets him guide ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... dozen noble and righteous reasons ready for you at his finger-ends. But the Vicar with his eyes shut could see clearly that if Gwenda married Rowcliffe the unpleasant event would have its compensation. He would be rid of an everlasting source of unpleasantness at home. He didn't say to himself that his egoism would be rid of an everlasting fear. He said that if Rowcliffe married Gwenda ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... something, because it confirms those other experiments of which it was a copy; but we must remember that a hundred negatives don't settle such a question. Life does get into the world somehow. You don't suppose Adam had the cutaneous unpleasantness politely called psora, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... seldom, Flora and Hilda used to quarrel; sometimes, and more often, Hilda and Anna; nearly every day, as it seemed to Rosalie, Anna and Flora. Rosalie got to dislike these quarrels very much. They went on and on and on; that was the disturbing unpleasantness of them. The parties to them would sit in a room and simply keep it up forever, not arguing all the time, but between long pauses suddenly coming out with things at one another; or they wouldn't speak to one another sometimes for ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... other sources of unpleasantness between Sir Henry and his wife besides her inclination for dancing. Sir Henry had now paid one half-year's interest on the sum of money which had been lent to him by the old gentleman at Hadley, and had been rather disgusted at finding that it was taken as a matter of course. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... more severe than I have done in Canada, when the mercury indicated a much lower degree of temperature. There is almost a trance-like stillness in the air during our frosty nights that lessens the unpleasantness of ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... as kingdom. As for you, ma'am," he bluntly addressed, "we'd protect you to the best of ability, o' course; but you can see for yourself that Hyrum won't feel none too kindly toward you, and that if you'll pull out along with Beeson as soon as convenient you'll avoid a heap of unpleasantness. We'll take the chance on sneakin' you both away, and facin' ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... side by side, the best of friends, and enjoying our pea soup, no one looking at us not in the secret would have readily imagined that any such "little unpleasantness," as I have described had just occurred between us two; though, I am happy to be able to state, this was our first and last quarrel, Ned and I remaining the closest chums ever after and never subsequently having ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... transportation difficult or impossible to obtain, all exposed to inconveniences, some to indignities, some of them on the flimsiest pretence seized and searched as spies, the great mass of them thrown into a state of panic that added greatly to the unpleasantness of the situation in which ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... way of seeing you because I don't want there to be any unpleasantness for you if you are tired of me or like some ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... not October retrospectively associated (in April and glorious May) with the grateful magnificence of ale, none would be so unpopular as the chilly month. There is no period in which so much of what ladies call "unpleasantness" occurs, no season when that mysterious distemper known as "warming" is so epidemic, as in October. It is a time when, in default of being conventionally cold, every one becomes intensely cool. A general chill pervades the domestic virtues: hospitality is aguish, and charity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... she had overstepped the bounds of convention in writing to him in the first place. On the contrary, her humiliation at his long delayed answer was all forgotten now. He had understood her perfectly and accepted her letter in exactly the way she had meant it without the least bit of foolishness or unpleasantness. In short, he had written the sort of a letter that the kind of man she had always thought—hoped—he was would be likely to write, and it gave her a surprisingly pleasant feeling of satisfaction. It was as if she had discovered a friend all of her own not made for her by her family, ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... England and had entertained other visiting monarchs and statesmen and diplomats. Early in 1903 he visited Rome, was received by His Holiness, the Pope, and by the King of Italy, and managed the difficult situation of the moment with a delicacy and tact which prevented even a hint of unpleasantness; and served to greatly increase the traditional friendship of Italy and Britain while sending a glow of appreciation throughout the Roman Catholic world which lives under the British flag, and helping to settle troubles which had arisen in Malta between the Government and the Italian residents. ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... There will probably be some small unpleasantness. Do not join in it. It will end in my being conveyed into the house. Four or five minutes afterwards the sitting-room window will open. You are to station yourself close to ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... worry through Cambridge together—you with a great deal more kudos than I did—and we have been very good friends since, so there can't be any question of impertinence between us, although there might be some unpleasantness for one or both of us. But, anyhow, whatever it is, out with it. Honestly, I don't think you could offend me if ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... Aunt Sarah had committed her murder with every circumstance of brutality and unpleasantness, the victim being one of our schoolfellows whom we neither of ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... had a disastrous influence on the Dutch elements in South Africa would not have occurred. The Jameson Raid would certainly not have been planned and attempted. To this incident can be ascribed much of the strife and unpleasantness which followed, by which was lost to the British Government the chance, then fast ripening, of bringing about without difficulty a reconciliation of Dutch and English all over South Africa. This reconciliation would have been achieved through Cecil ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... of about two hundred feet between himself and the master of the herd. Convinced that Black Beauty would no longer dispute his supremacy, Apache at last pronounced for peace and thought no more about the late unpleasantness. His rival seemed to accept the situation, and rejoined the herd on the subdued status of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... He said this in despair. Then he went on in an audible muse. "When people are young they are not only in their own youth; they are in the youth of the world, the race. They dine, but they don't think of the dinner or the unpleasantness of the diners, and the grotesqueness of feeding in common. They think—" he broke off in defect of other ideas, and concluded with a laugh, "they think of themselves. And they don't think of how ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... some of the professions, particularly the bar, which had been, as I have already said, the profession thought of for me. But I was not indifferent to exclusion from Parliament, and public life: and I felt very sensibly the more immediate unpleasantness of confinement to London; the holiday allowed by India House practice not exceeding a month in the year, while my taste was strong for a country life, and my sojourn in France had left behind it an ardent desire of travelling. ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... use in this kind of talk," he said. "You need not be afraid of any unpleasantness; everyone will understand that you are all quite innocent. I suppose, gentlemen, you want to search my things. I have nothing ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... go. "Most matters connected with a crime are, my dear fellow," said he calmly. "I only hope there will not be any more unpleasantness." ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... Jude. Now let's get down to business. Having to hide somewhere after that little unpleasantness down State, I ran up to St. Ange. Knowing the way about, it was a better place than some others, and I could keep from sight and find things out. I stopped at Laval's haunted shack." Billy shivered. "I kept clear ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... just wanting to see you, sir, and talk to you about it, so that you mightn't have the same unpleasantness as M. Debienne and M. Poligny. They wouldn't listen to ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... proverbial tea-drinking period had not arrived, but Mr. Crampton, notwithstanding this fact, gave afternoon receptions for which his house, by the way, was especially adapted. In 1856, during the Crimean War, an unpleasantness arose between Great Britain and this country in connection with the charge that Crampton had been instrumental in recruiting soldiers in the United States for service in the British Army. Accordingly, in May of the ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... pleased. By way of proof, he cited many interminable liaisons, such as that of Donna Serafina and Morano which, in time became virtual marriages; and he sneered at such a lack of fancy, such an excess of fidelity whose only ending, when it did end, was some very disagreeable unpleasantness. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of us live in a cloud of dust that we do not suspect even the existence of the June day, but if we are fortunate enough once or twice even to get to sneezing from the dust, and so to recognize its unpleasantness, then we want to look carefully to see if there is not ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... girl entrusted him with a large sum which she had taken from her father. If that be so he certainly ought to lose no time in restoring it. It might be done through some friend. I would do it, for that matter. If it be so,—to avoid unpleasantness,—it should be sent back at once. It will be for his credit.' This Mr Broune said with a clear intimation of the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... are probably aware, or perhaps are not aware, a small estate in the Kozelsky district. In old days I used to get something out of it, though now, of course, I have nothing to look forward to but unpleasantness. But enough of politics. Well, in that district I have a little place: the usual kitchen garden, a little pond with carp in it, farm buildings of a sort and a little lodge for my own sinful person ... I am a bachelor. Well, one day—some six years ago—I ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... motionless, staring defiantly. Her face had slowly whitened, and now its unpleasantness matched that of her elderly admirer. Hammon dropped his smoldering gaze to the half-empty glasses, then ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... without warning, which is one of the few bad habits that excellent Indian man has, and this habit has ended in unpleasantness more than once, as when we ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... something about "force of habit" as he led the way down towards the door, and I responded tartly enough about the unpleasantness of his begging customs. "If it were not for your sort and your customs, the Priests' Clan would not be facing ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... best thing you can do is to stay away from home until this unpleasantness blows over. Write to your father and tell him it is all a mistake, and that you are not guilty but that you can't prove it. Ask him to square the thing with Aaron Fairchild and the others, and tell him you are going ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... Claire was afraid to tell you," wrote Uncle George, "how little there was left. In any event, she always shirked doing it, so as to stave off unpleasantness. And when we cabled you how ill she was, it now seems most unfortunate you could not see your way clear to giving up your trip through the chateau country, as your not coming appeared to be on her mind a great deal at the last. I do not wish to seem to criticize you in any way, Robert, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... or so conditions were fairly comfortable. Then the same unpleasantness was experienced as was ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... Mrs. Hawkins said. This chronicle contains enough unpleasantness as it is. There are remarks which, when addressed to one, one ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... mistake. Anywhere through the length and breadth of old Ireland, if 'twas in the Four Courts themselves, and all the garrison round you, you'd be on honour, Colonel, to take no advantage. But here it would not be the cold shoulder and a little unpleasantness, and a meeting or two on the ground, that's neither here nor there—that you'd be like to taste. I'd not be knowing what would happen if it went about that you were ousting them that had the right, and ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... conversation from unpleasantness.] I'm afraid I feel that our position to-night is ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... dismissed her maid, saying that she should not want her services any more that night; and poor Susan was obliged to ascend to her solitary apartment, which she did with many fearful misgivings, and the most dreadful apprehensions in regard to ghosts, coupled with much painful reflection relative to the unpleasantness of sleeping alone—in a ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... children were looking and listening, and must not be allowed to suspect any unpleasantness between herself ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... matters, said the High Priest, but if the King supposed that he did not know the difference between home-grown domestic and frozen imported foreign, it was time his Majesty was disabused of the idea. If, on top of this little unpleasantness, King Merolchazzar were to become an adherent of this new Gowf, the Vizier did not know ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... useless, purposeless existence, wandering about from place to place. During this period she made few notes in the "Commonplace Book," but the few all bore witness to one thing, viz., her ever increasing horror of unpleasantness in ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... unfortunate position at Richmond. She did not tell him quite all the circumstances. She did not repeat the strong expressions which Lord Fawn had used, nor did she clearly explain how wrathful she had been herself. "Lord Fawn has been here," she said, "and there has been ever so much unpleasantness. He is very angry with you about Lady Eustace, and of course Lady Fawn takes his part. I need not tell you whose part I take. And so there have been what the servants call—'just a few words.' It is very dreadful, isn't it? And, after all, Lady Fawn has ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... and unpleasant thing that, however reassuring and convincing the arguments may be with which we succeed in bracing ourselves to meet or disregard unpleasantness, the force of those arguments seldom or never outlasts the frame of mind in which they are composed, and when the unpleasantness is at hand, there we are, just as unreasonably alarmed ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... of the daily visits of Flint and Brady, they were made aware of unmistakable signs of a domestic unpleasantness. They were no sooner seated, than Ben picked up again the grievance which their arrival had compelled him ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... came in; to escape the unpleasantness of being watched or listened to by lurkers—naturally curious by reason of their strained relations—they had arranged that their meeting for to-night should be at the holm-tree on the ridge above named. So soon, accordingly, as Fitzpiers ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... at an end. All has been well, and I have had no unpleasantness. In the great silence surrounding me, I am the only adult, roaming man; this makes me bigger and more important, God's kin. And I believe the red-hot irons within me are progressing well, for God does great things ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... sunk forever, many an unpleasantness has been forgotten, many a half-ripe quarrel has been strangled, and many a friendship has been strengthened and ripened in these services of emotion and love, those hand-shakings of the Mountaineers. The blessings of the peacemakers ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... becomes for them a catastrophe. The smallest unpleasantness presents itself to them in the light ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... is quite as friendly to us in its intentions as the old, and much more energetic. The old Government was a spent force. Mr. Balfour is an agreeable man to deal with, with a will to keep our sympathy, unless the dire need of ships forces him to unpleasantness. The Prime Minister is—American in his ways. Lord Robert has the old Cecil in him, and he's going to maintain the blockade at any cost that he can justify to himself and to public opinion, and the public opinion is ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... up-to-date hospital confinements, the average intelligent woman may enter into pregnancy quite free from the oldtime fears, whose only rewards were grief and cankering care. All fear of childbirth and all dread of maternal duties and sacrifices do not in the least lessen the necessary unpleasantness associated with normal labor. It lies in the choice of every expectant mother to journey through the months of pregnancy with dissatisfaction and resentment or with joy and serenity. "The child will be born and laid in your arms to be fed, cared for, and reared, whether you weep ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... pray allow me to thank Miss Felton most heartily for her kind espousal of my cause," she said, bestowing a luminous smile upon her new friend, "but I would be very sorry to have any unpleasantness arise in the league, and may I ask that no further action be taken in the matter? I know that many people have a mistaken idea of what Christian Science is, and regard it and its adherents with feelings that are regretted when they become more enlightened ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... may refer to a suggestive chapter on "The Enjoyment of Pain" in Hirn's Origins of Art. "If we take into account," says Hirn, "the powerful stimulating effect which is produced by acute pain, we may easily understand why people submit to momentary unpleasantness for the sake of enjoying the subsequent excitement. This motive leads to the deliberate creation, not only of pain-sensations, but also of emotions in which pain enters as an element. The violent ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Elizabeth looked more careworn of late. He did not mention it to her, of course, but it troubled him. He speculated concerning the cause and was inclined, entirely without good reason, to suspect Egbert, just as he was inclined to suspect him of being the cause of most unpleasantness. Something that Mrs. Tidditt said during one of her evening "dropping-ins" supplied a possible base for suspicion in this ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... vain—when, instead of soothing a sorrow, they add poison to its sting. I made no attempt, therefore, to rouse my companion from his reverie; but rode on by his side, silent as he. Indeed, there was sufficient unpleasantness in my own reflections to give me occupation. Though troubled by no heart-canker of the past, I had a future before me that was neither brilliant nor attractive. The foreknowledge I had now gained of squatter Holt, had imbued me with a keen presentiment, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... especially for hardships. Discomfort, even unpleasantness, they did anticipate, but nothing of more importance than inclement weather or possible colds or coughs. And against the latter ills Mrs. Crane had provided both remedies and preventions to such an extent that some were ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... with no ulterior motive. There is always a bare chance that the water level may drop below the suction limit of the shallow pump under abnormal pressure. If it does, an irate customer can descend on the luckless installer of the less expensive pump and cause general unpleasantness if ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... disconcerting is the best word I can think of, that we were not encouraged to proceed. Also the peculiar unpleasantness of ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... auction-rooms presently, and will be sold for no small proportion of the sum which its more delicate charge attains. We remark that the experienced persons who remove these precious sticks, layer by layer, perform their office gingerly. There is not much danger or unpleasantness in unpacking Dendrobes, compared with other genera, but ship-rats spring out occasionally and give an ugly bite; scorpions and centipedes have been known to harbour in the close roots of D. Falconerii; stinging ants are by no means improbable, nor huge spiders; while cockroaches of giant ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... was fast becoming very sick of his new job. There was a lot of unpleasantness attached to the business, too. Why, even in the house where he lived, and in the little cook-shop where he habitually took his meals, the people round him had taken to taunt him with the remissness of the police. More than that one ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... hesitated. He was young, and slightly fastidious as to unnecessary unpleasantness. He believed he would wait until the searchers brought her up, when the ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... afterwards, a heavy storm came on, and we were all sleepless and sea-sick, as long as it lasted. Thanks, however, to a beautiful law of memory, the recollection of that dismal period soon lost its unpleasantness, while the grand forms of beauty the vexed ocean presented, will remain forever, as distinct and abiding images. I kept on deck as long as I could stand, watching the giant waves over which our vessel took her course. ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... bareheaded. She said that her aunt had turned her out, and she was going to walk down the coast to Whale Bay to her grandmother—a long day's ride. The teacher was troubled, because he was undecided what to do. He had to be careful to avoid any unpleasantness arising out of Maori cliquism. As the teacher he couldn't let her go in the state she was in; from the depths of his greenness he trusted her, from the depths of his softness he pitied her; his poetic nature was fiercely indignant on account of the poor girl's wrongs, and the wife spoke ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... permitting himself a discreet question. During dinner and supper-time he used to try to turn the conversation upon physics, geology, or chemistry, seeing that all other topics, even agriculture, to say nothing of politics, might lead, if not to collisions, at least to mutual unpleasantness. Nikolai Petrovitch surmised that his brother's dislike for Bazarov was no less. An unimportant incident, among many others, confirmed his surmises. The cholera began to make its appearance in some places in the neighbourhood, and even 'carried ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... said. "We mustn't have any unpleasantness, and Mr. Hill's first night back amongst us, too. No doubt there's some little mistake. We all get deceived sometimes. Mr. Hill, I hope you won't find everything cold. You're a little late, you must remember, and we ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... brought no advantage to Clerambault's family; his wife's share of the struggle was only the unpleasantness, a general animosity that finally made itself felt even among the small tradespeople of the neighbourhood. Rosine drooped; her secret heart-ache wore upon her all the more because of her silence; but if she said nothing her mother complained enough for two. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... think of no other way of effecting his object, he had begun to taste the bitterness of futile effort, when fortune, always his friend, put him in a position to do what he wanted in the easiest possible way with the minimum of unpleasantness. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... Japanese heart; legends of filial piety; Buddhist miracles, and stories of emperors were among the subjects. Sometimes, however, the realism was brutal, as in one scene representing the body of a woman lying in a pool of blood, with brains scattered by a sword stroke. Nor was this unpleasantness altogether atoned for by her miraculous resuscitation in the adjoining compartment, where she reappeared returning thanks in a Nichiren temple, and converting her slaughterer, who happened, by some extraordinary accident, to go there at ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... speak or think. The disagreeable sensation which such dreams arouse is simply identical with the antipathy which endeavors—usually with success—to restrain us from the treatment or discussion of such subjects, and which must be overcome by all of us, if, in spite of its unpleasantness, we find it necessary to take the matter in hand. But this disagreeable sensation, which occurs also in dreams, does not preclude the existence of a wish; every one has wishes which he would not like to tell to others, which he does not want to admit even to himself. We are, on other ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... sitting very quietly in a corner of the room with another gentleman of his own age by him,—one devoted to literary pursuits and a constant attendant at The Universe. As he said afterwards, he had never known any unpleasantness of that sort in the club before. There were many men of note in the room. There was a foreign minister, a member of the Cabinet, two ex-members of the Cabinet, a great poet, an exceedingly able editor, two earls, two members of the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... I had to try and arrange things for an overdraft with the Bank in Leichardt's Town, but I went down chiefly to consult lawyers about the divorce question, so that it should be done with as little publicity and unpleasantness as possible. It appeared that it could be done all right—as I wrote you. What would have been the good of my havering in that letter over my own feelings and the bad times I had struck? It never was my habit to whine over what couldn't ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... circumstances to you in all their unpleasantness," he began quietly. "Perhaps your woman wit may discover some loophole which has escaped us." Clearly, yet rapidly, he reviewed the salient points of the controversy between Farnham and the "Little Yankee," his own brief connection with ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... together a long time on the beach; the sea just babbled among the stones; and at one time we heard the hollow, sturdy beat of the paddles of an unseen steamer somewhere round the cape. I am glad to say that the peace of the day and scenery was not marred by any unpleasantness between ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... affair seemed most mysterious, sir, therefore I went round and saw the inspector of police this morning, and told him briefly of our strange visitors. I'm rather glad they're gone, for one never likes unpleasantness in a hotel. Yet, of course, the fault cannot be that of the hotel-keeper if he takes ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... get out of the false position in which I find myself. Grandfather Bell has always grumbled about the expense I have been to him in consequence of my father's loss of fortune, and of course that adds to the unpleasantness of feeling that I am practising a fraud upon him. He is just now peculiarly vexed with me for leaving Northampton so suddenly. He considers it an unaccountable caprice of mine, and reproaches me with letting Eulalia slip through my fingers, as he expresses it. Of course, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... custom, however, he succeeded in putting the memory of all this unpleasantness out of his mind with the changing of his office coat, and after dozing a little in his leather chair before the fire, he started out as usual for dinner in the Soho French restaurant, and began to dream himself away into the region of flowers and singing, and to commune with the Invisibles ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... other end of the town there was in progress an event which was destined to augment still further the unpleasantness of our hero's position. That is to say, through the outlying streets and alleys of the town there was clattering a vehicle to which it would be difficult precisely to assign a name, seeing that, though it was of a species peculiar to itself, it most nearly resembled a large, rickety water ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... it was no doubt an inherited disposition, descended to him through long lines of fractious ancestors, and therefore it need not be set down against him in the catalogue of wilful sins. But whether so or otherwise, this little unpleasantness in his disposition was an established fact, and unfortunately there were two railroads to cross between East Schodack and Castleton. On Glazier's first ride to Castleton with the Westfall horse and sleigh, he had just crossed the Boston and Albany Railroad when a freight-train ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... place," Peter Dale began, "we've no wish to commence this meeting with any unpleasantness. At the same time, Mr. Maraton, we did think that after that letter of ours you'd have seen your way clear to come up to London and cut short that visit to Mr. Foley. We were all there waiting for you, and there were some of us that didn't take it altogether ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... returned. "You seem to have a strange faith in your own theory, and plenty of self-reliance, but I am afraid that, like most young people, you have only regarded it from one point of view. Are you aware of the unpleasantness of such a situation? If you came to us you might have nothing of which to complain from Mrs. Morton or myself, but we could not answer for the rest of my household; the servants would regard you as ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... success of the French, and our own failure, did not create any feeling of unpleasantness between the troops of the two nations. As the remnants of the French regiments, engaged in the Malakoff, marched in the morning to their camps, the second division was drawn up on parade. As the leading regiment of Zouaves came along, the English regiment nearest ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... is the result of all feelings which have in them the element of self. If they have been directly selfish, they bring him into conditions of great unpleasantness in the astral world; if, though tinged with thoughts of self, they have been good and kindly, they bring him a comparatively pleasant though still limited astral life. Such of his thoughts and feelings as have been entirely ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... to himself, the color returned to his face, the pain had passed, and at the cost of that temporary unpleasantness he had obtained a place by the cannon from where he hoped to see the Emperor who would be returning that way. Petya no longer thought of presenting his petition. If he could only see the Emperor ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... you could trade on my personal unpleasantness with an owner of the 'Laughing Water' claim," he said hotly, "you have made the mistake of your life. ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... gone weeping to her room after John told her that Consuello played in motion pictures, the girl had never been mentioned by either of them. John refrained from speaking of her because he decided that until he found some way to overcome the prejudice his mother held it would only cause unpleasantness. There had never been a night following that when Mrs. Gallant had displayed her disapproval of Consuello that John had not racked his brain to decide how he could eradicate his mother's intolerant ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... lingered with him. But he doubted her. Yes, he could not conceal from himself certain very ugly facts—facts within his own knowledge. Yet was not his own poignant jealousy misleading him? Was not her refusal to attend the ball perhaps due to some sudden pique or unpleasantness with her giddy stepmother? Was it? He only longed to be able to believe that it might be so. Alas! however, he had discovered the shadow of a strange ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... first impression of unpleasantness I felt a little added zest on account of this element of risk, especially when on inquiry I learned that Roger Dale was rated as one of the most successful and enterprising of the younger banking firms in the city. I saw his advertisements in the newspapers, and gathered ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... nothing to corroborate this story," he said; "but it may be that Miss Grant would rather pay a few pounds than have the unpleasantness of a trial. I will get her in and ask her if you like, but I don't think it will ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... fair fight," said the accused, not without some human vanity, feeling that the camp hung upon his words, "and was settled by the man az was peartest and liveliest with his weapon. We had a sort of unpleasantness over at Lagrange the night afore, along of our both hevin' a monotony of four aces. We had a clinch and a stamp around, and when we was separated it was only a question of shootin' on sight. He left Lagrange at sun up the next morning, and ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Everything has gone so beautifully. There hasn't been a sign of a hitch. Oh, yes, there was one." Her face clouded for a second. Then she looked at Arline brightly. "I'm not going to think of it. There are so many nice things to remember that one little unpleasantness doesn't count, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... without undressing; and five minutes later he was walking down the Rue Montmartre. The weather was still cold and muggy; and a thick fog hung over the city. But the young detective was too engrossed with his own thoughts to pay attention to any atmospherical unpleasantness. Walking with a brisk stride, he had just reached the church of Saint Eustache, when a coarse, mocking voice accosted him with the exclamation: ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... discoursed ... and he discoursed alone; no one, absolutely no one, opposed him, nor did any one agree with him. He especially insisted on the point that they had been wrong in not following his advice when he suggested dining in a shut-up summer-house. There no unpleasantness could have occurred! Then he expressed a few decided and even liberal sentiments on the unpardonable way in which the government favoured the military, neglected their discipline, and did not sufficiently ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... were there transfixed and awestruck. As far as the ascent of the Pyramid was concerned, I am not sure but that I was sometimes tempted to follow his example, when I found how great was the effort required to mount up, in the hot air, the huge blocks of granite, and the unpleasantness of feeling every now and then with what facility one might topple downwards. This sensation was most disagreeably felt when, as generally happened at any very critical place, my Arab friends, who were helping me up, began to talk of 'backshish,' and to insinuate that a small amount given at once, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... manner, was curt, arrogant, with a very strong sense of his own superiority. From the first moment he came to Paris as ambassador, he put people's backs up. They never liked him, never trusted him; whenever he had an unpleasant communication to make, he exaggerated the unpleasantness, never attenuated, and there is so much in the way things are said. The French were very hard upon him when he got into trouble, and certainly his own Government was merciless ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... both Melanchthon and I were unwilling to communicate it even to Your Grace, for it is right to keep confessional matters secret, both the sin confessed and the counsel given, and had the Landgrave not revealed the matter and the confessional counsel, there would never have been all this nauseating unpleasantness.—I still say that if the matter were brought before me to-day, I should not be able to give counsel different from what I did. Setting apart the fact that I know I am not as wise as they think they are, I need conceal nothing, especially as it has already been made ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... summoned, gentlemen, to testify or pronounce on a person's insane condition, let me give you one piece of advice which may spare you much unpleasantness: be unusually cautious of what you say. If you appear as an expert or a witness, and you make a mistake unfavorable to the patient, he will be your enemy for life; even he may at times recover damages for libel. If he is really crazy, he may be all the more dangerous. Do your ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... inconsiderable powers for conscience-guided meddling. The parson had deemed the time ripe for a war on the groggeries of the Flats, with the outcome that most bar-rooms of the town, including that of the Tuscarora House, were found to be violating the Sunday closing law. In the legal unpleasantness which followed, Shelby's name figured as attorney for the hotel proprietor, one of the lawyer's regular clients. It was a purely formal service, without moral implication of any sort, but it bared Shelby's whole legislative ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... seriously to reflect on the unpleasantness of her situation; the threat of a conventual seclusion sounded harshly to her ear. She fancied it would be more advantageous to society that her good offices should continue in requisition, than ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... ball. All the guests were masked or otherwise disguised. Nickie had never encountered a softer thing. He determined to make a night of it at the expense of the host of "White-cliff." To avoid unpleasantness at the door, Nickie boldly climbed up the trellis of a vine, and entered the noisy crowded ballroom through an open window, rolling head over ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... that quarter, but I asked the man, fair and square, how long they had left the house and whether there had been other tenants in the meanwhile. He looked at me queerly for a minute, and told me the Herberts had left immediately after the unpleasantness, as he called it, and since then the ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... a young man with a shrinking horror of the deeper emotions, whether exhibited in woman or man, writhed silently. That was the worst of these Americans! Always getting divorced and causing unpleasantness. How was a fellow to know? Why hadn't whoever it was who first introduced them—he couldn't remember who the dickens it was—told him about this? He had supposed she was just the ordinary American woman doing Europe ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... fool? When she overwhelms me with a cool proposal to set up schools and I don't know what for the European women and children, what could I do but tell her it was the chaplain's business? You won't say that I ought to have encouraged her? Think of all the unpleasantness it would have caused in the regiments! And surely it was only natural to turn aside the matter by pointing out a sphere where her efforts would be more acceptable? Why, if I had said such a thing to Charlotte, or Eliza, or Marian, they would have blushed prettily and said, 'Oh, Papa!' and Marian ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... up from the goose pond. He was lonely and bad-tempered, for his two wives had been killed by a fox that spring, and the Boy had not yet found him a new mate. Young Grumpy looked at the big gray bird and recalled the little unpleasantness of ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... to Quenu of Florent. She habitually prided herself on her patience, and considered, too, that it would not be proper to cause any unpleasantness between the brothers, unless some peremptory reason for her interference should arise. As she said, she could put up with a good deal, but, of course, she must not be tried too far. She had now reached the period of courteous tolerance, wearing an expressionless face, affecting perfect indifference ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... standing upon trucks, or calmly dozing in doorways. They evinced no particularly hostile disposition, but a marked desire to know the business of every chance caller in the block. This caused a passing unpleasantness between one big white goat and the janitress of the tenement on the corner. Being crowded up against the wall by the animal, bent on exploring her pockets, she beat it off with her scrubbing-pail and mop. The goat, thus dismissed, joined a horse at the curb in apparently ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... human characters. All four of them—there are only four who really matter—are admirably drawn, so that the tragedy of their lives holds and convinces you. My complaints against the author are, first, the excess of emphasis that he gives to the physical unpleasantness of his background; secondly, the loose construction that allows the tale to be continually turning back to look behind it. He would keep a lover in the act of embracing the lady of his heart while he explains what the parents of each died of, and all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... Law proved himself an interesting companion, and in spite of the discomforts of the situation the hours slipped past rapidly. Luncheon was a disagreeable meal, eaten while the arroyo baked and the heat devils danced on the hills; but the unpleasantness was of brief duration, and Law always managed to banish boredom. Nor did he seem to waste a thought upon the nature of that grim business which brought him to this place. Quite the contrary, in the afternoon he put his mare through her tricks ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... duties involve much unpleasantness, whereas we cannot mention a holier work, nor any struggle or contest more fitting for a god to attend and play the umpire in, than the guidance of the young and beautiful in the prosecution of their love-affairs. For there is here nothing of an unpleasant nature, no compulsion of any kind, but ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch |
