"Unpretending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was very striking between the atmosphere of this unpretending refuge of the helpless and that of certain of the "laicised" hospitals of France, which I not long ago visited, from which the devoted nuns have been expelled to make way for hired nurses. I made a remark to this effect to the clerk ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... one seemed to miss him, however, and we five, who remained, were soon seated in the spot I have mentioned, and as much abstracted from the scene around us, as if we had been on the rustic bench, under the old elm, on the lawn—if I dare use so fine a word, for so unpretending a place—at Clawbonny. I had my station between Mr. Hardinge and Grace, while Lucy sat next her father, and Rupert next to my sister. My friend could see me, without difficulty, owing to his stature, while I saw the glistening eyes ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... see a short thick-set man come sauntering along, "more fat than bard beseems." As he passes, lost in reverie, many turn round and look at him. Some point him out to their companions, and by what they say, we learn that this is Horace, the favourite of Maecenas, the frequent visitor at the unpretending palace of Augustus, the self-made man and famous poet. He is still within sight, when his progress is arrested. He is in the hands of a bore of the first magnitude. But what ensued, let us hear from his own lips ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... from the writing of history rather than conduced towards it. Varro and the more sagacious men in general evidently gave up the task of annals as hopeless; at the most they arranged, as did Titus Pomponius Atticus, the official and gentile lists in unpretending tabular shape—a work by which the synchronistic Graeco-Roman chronology was finally brought into the shape in which it was conventionally fixed for posterity. But the manufacture of city-chronicles of course did not ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... artificiality of that of the middle of the last century. And in the deliberate double-skirted costliness of the female fashions of our own day,—fashions not intended for courts or wealthy aristocracies, but for everybody,—contrasted as they are with the sober-hued and unpretending habits which all men wear, and in which little more is sought than comfort and convenience, we have an expression of the laborious and the lavish spirit of the times,—the right hand gathering with painful, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... to make use. Some anachronisms may be noted. Wherever they occur, they have been admitted, as aiding in the development of the story, and will probably be considered as of little importance in an unpretending volume, which does not aspire to strict ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... pleasure in folding away heavy garments, and in assuming the attire suiting a sunny season. The clean fresh print dress, and the light straw bonnet, each made and trimmed as the French workwoman alone can make and trim, so as to unite the utterly unpretending with the perfectly becoming, was the rule of costume. Nobody flaunted in faded silk; nobody ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... your advance escape before you, and a happy and grateful community rise up in their clustering cities, towns, and villages, impede your way with demonstrations of respect and kindness, and convert your unpretending journey into a triumphal progress. Such honors frequently attend public functionaries, and such an one may sometimes find it difficult to determine how much of the homage he receives is paid to his own worth, how much proceeds from the habitual reverence of good republican citizens to ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... in his seat. At his side rode a far different figure. Mounted upon a slight-made, active thorough-bred, whose drawn flanks bespoke a long and weary journey, sat Sir Arthur Wellesley, a plain blue frock and gray trousers being his unpretending costume; but the eagle glance which he threw around on every side, the quick motion of his hand as he pointed hither and thither among the dense battalions, bespoke him every inch a soldier. Behind them came a brilliant staff, glittering in aiguillettes and golden trappings, among ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Legge, first Earl of Dartmouth (1672-1750), was St. John's fellow Secretary of State. Lord Dartmouth seems to have been a plain, unpretending man, whose ignorance of French helped to throw important ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... and has always continued in the wrong Church for bigotry, the quiet, unpretending Church of England—a Church which had it been a bigoted Church, and not long suffering almost to a fault, might with its opportunities, as the priest says in the text, have stood in a very different position from which it occupies at present. No! let those who are in search of bigotry, seek ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... measures were devised by Le Fort during the time that he continued in the service of the Czar, and the success which attended all his plans and proposals gave him, in the end, great influence, and was the means of acquiring for him great credit and renown. And yet he was so discreet and unpretending in his manners and demeanor, if the accounts which have come down to us respecting him are correct, that the high favor in which he was held by the emperor did not awaken in the hearts of the native nobles of the land any considerable degree of that jealousy and ill-will which ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... in his neat, serviceable undress uniform, with a cigar between his lips. He had abandoned the swagger frogged coat and silk sash for the unpretending patrol jacket of his brethren in the Line. He had been hard at work all day in barracks, inspecting meals, visiting the hospital, attending parades. He had paid his company personally, had seen every man, and found that there were no complaints. He had attended ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... was born, and has always continued, in the wrong church for bigotry, the quiet, unpretending Church of England; a church which, had it been a bigoted church, and not long-suffering almost to a fault, might with its opportunities, as the priest says in the text, have stood in a very different position from that which it occupies at present. No! let those who are in search ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... place where you men of affairs scheme, plan, and execute," she smiled. "It looks close and hot. Well, I couldn't stand it. I must have open air, sunshine, mountains, streams, and people— real, plain, honest, unpretending people." ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... you; nay, unless you have been labouring at it, and trying to copy it, you do not know the thoroughly grand qualities that are concentrated in it. Simplicity, and intensity, both of the highest character;— simplicity of aim, and intensity of power and success, are involved in that man's unpretending labour. ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... of as a quiet, unpretending person—occupied with domestic duties, who hated society and never went anywhere—in fact, no one ever heard her name mentioned. A great many people didn't know that Grevy had a wife. When her husband became President of the Republic, there was much discussion ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... book-trade is slack—that is, in the summer season—the pair get on together pretty amicably. 'This book,' says the critic, 'may be taken down to the seaside, and lounged over not unprofitably;' or, 'Readers may do worse than peruse this unpretending little volume of fugitive verse;' or even, 'We hail this new aspirant to the laurels of Apollo.' But in the thick of the publishing season, and when books pour into the reviewer by the cartful, nothing can exceed the ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... made the road to heaven. Many a man who was unaffected by what the minister said has been captured for God by the Christian word of an unpretending ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... to attribute her reserve to the awe which he fancied his "elegant presence" inspired! If Ella with all her wealth and beauty placed an invaluable estimate upon his attentions, why should not her unpretending sister be equally in love with him? And the young dandy stroked his mustache with his white fingers, and wondered what Ella Campbell would say if she knew how much her sister admired him, and how very nearly his ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... doctrine in the English Church are regarded by the judicial mind as very faint, and not much to be depended upon; and that these judgments may be the first steps in that insensible process by which the unpretending but subtle and powerful engine of interpretation has been applied by the courts to give a certain turn to law and policy; applied, in this instance, to undermine the definiteness and certainty of doctrine, and in the end, the understanding itself which has hitherto ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... with foreign lands, yet superior to their ladies; so able to see all the meaning of good words, and to value them when offered quietly; so sweet in his manner, and voice, and looks; and with all his fame so unpretending, and—much as it frightened her to think it—really seeming to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Paris, exploring its southern suburbs along the Fontainebleau road, comes upon an ancient pile, extended and renovated by modern hands, whose simple, unpretending architecture would scarcely claim a second look. Yet it was once the scene of an experiment of such momentous consequences that it will ever possess a peculiar interest both to the philanthropist and the philosopher. It was there, in that receptacle of the insane, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... talker, appreciating everything that others said, however humble might be their rank or pretensions, and was quick to testify his perception of any point in their discourse. He arrogated nothing to himself, but was perfectly unassuming and unpretending, entering with heart and soul into the business, or pleasure, or, I had almost said, folly, of the hour and the company. No one's concerns, no one's thoughts, no one's opinions, no one's tastes and pleasures seemed beneath him. He made himself ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... rather hear an unpretending street organ than such abominations; and, indeed, some of the itinerant music is, to our unsophisticated ears, sweet beyond expression, especially when accompanied, as it is sometimes, by a rich Italian or reedy German voice; for whose sake we can forgive the tuneless ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... It was an unpretending little place, with the bill of fare wafered to the door, and red curtains in the windows, setting off a display of joints, cauliflowers, and red herrings. He passed through into a long, low room, with dark-brown grained walls, partitioned off in the usual manner; ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... Nandy,' said Mr Plornish, addressing the old gentleman. 'Sir. It's not too often that you see unpretending actions without a spark of pride, and therefore when you see them give grateful honour unto the same, being that if you don't, and live to want 'em, it ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... unpretending church not far from Phillimore Gardens, in which a little unpretending clergyman preaches every Sunday out of a very shabby pulpit. It lies in Castle Lane, which is a narrow by-way, and the great ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... girls long ago that they should accompany me. We shall go forth to-night by the heavy coach—like the dove of old, my dear Martin—and it will be a week before we again deposit, our olive-branches in the passage. When I say olive branches," observed Mr. Pecksniff, in explanation, "I mean our unpretending luggage." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... his nomination, among which were those of Colonel Donn Piatt—a judge of ability, to say the least—who had written: "The people will find his utterances full of sound thought, and his deportment modest, dignified, and unpretending.... Possessed of a high order of talent, enriched by stores of information, General Hayes is one of the few men capable of accomplishing much without any egotistical assertion of self." General James M. Comly had said: "More than four years' service in the same command ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... out to attend to some business. Manuel drew from his pocket a quarter of a Colombian doubloon, and throwing it upon the counter, told the Dutchman to give him change. The Dutchman picked it up, turned it over several times, and squinting at it, inquired, in a very unpretending manner, what its value was. He knew already, yet this was only done to try Manuel. At the same moment he winked to Dunn, who, stepping up, gave it a significant toss upon the counter. "The divil a bit more than two dollars; all right, Swizer," ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... Roden lived at No. 11, and Mrs. Demijohn lived at No. 10, the house opposite. There had already been some discussion in Holloway about Lord Hampstead, but nothing had as yet been discovered. He might have been at the house on various previous occasions, but had come in so unpretending a manner as hardly to have done more than to cause himself to be regarded as a stranger in Holloway. He was known to be George's friend, because he had been first seen coming with George on a Saturday afternoon. He had also called on a Sunday and walked away, ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... little work ten times its present length, we should have read it to the end with the same interest which its perusal inspired, and arrived, with the same regret that there was not more of it, at its last page. It is simple and unpretending, but as life-like and spirited as any collection of descriptive sketches which we can recall. We realize in it all the vexations of mud, all the horrors of blood, and all the joys of occasional chickens and a good night's rest, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... protesting that the Highlands could not have a superior. This is a sort of argument it is not easy to overcome; and her companion was content to admire the scene before her, in silence, after urging one or two reasons, in support of her opinion, in her own quiet, unpretending manner. ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... wonderful? Plain and bald and homely the house, unpretending the surroundings, simple and primitive the life, that sent forth the world's first beautiful woman, the Woman of the Secret! I have tried to set it all down exactly as it happened—the quaint, old-fashioned dialect, the homely ways, ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... shall be in the highest degree expressive of the infinite space of heaven. I do not mean to say that they did this with any occult or metaphysical motives. They did it, I think, with the child-like, unpretending simplicity of all earnest men; they did what they loved and felt; they sought what the heart naturally seeks, and gave what it most gratefully receives; and I look to them as in all points of principle (not, observe, of knowledge or empirical ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... writer of the unpretending little history from which the last quotation is taken has not given his authority for this statement, and I could not find it, but believed, from the general accuracy of the book, that some authority ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Wreckumoft was a neat, substantial, unpretending edifice, which had been built by a number of charitable people, in order to provide a comfortable residence, with board at moderate terms, for the numerous seamen who frequented our port. It also served as a place of temporary refuge to the unfortunate crews of the numerous wrecks which occurred ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... so daring, so persevering, so tenacious, had been given to a man, history would have counted a Magellan or a Captain Cook the more. But what strikes us as most remarkable about her was the absolute simplicity of her character and conduct; the unpretending way in which she accomplished her really great achievements; her modesty of manner and freedom from pretension. She went about the world as she went about the streets of Vienna; with the same reserve and quietness ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... Piccadilly if not (at that particular hour) at a tea table on the river terrace of the Houses of Parliament. On the other hand, there wasn't a trace of self-importance in his habit, it achieved distinction solely through the unpretending dignity ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... comprehension of which no others of those the priest knew around him could boast. He had met him first very frequently at Ballycloran, had since dined with him at Mohill, and had more than once induced him to join the unpretending festivities of the cottage. There was nothing, therefore, very singular in Captain Ussher's visit; and yet, from what was uppermost in the mind of each of the party, it did surprise ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... the ornaments of society. She it was who soothed the nervous irritability of her mother's sick chamber and perpetual peevishness, and graced her father's drawing-room by a presence that was attractive to both old and young, from its sweetness and unpretending modesty; her two younger sisters called forth all her tenderness, from the extreme delicacy of their health; but her brothers were even greater objects of solicitude—handsome spirited lads—the eldest waiting for a situation, promised, but not given; the second also waiting for a cadetship; ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... side? What a garden-like air of universal cultivation! What beautiful smooth slopes! What green, quiet meadows! What rich round trees, brooding over their silent shadows! What exquisite dark nooks and romantic lanes! What an aspect of unpretending happiness in the clean cottages, with their little trim gardens! What tranquil grandeur and rural luxury in the noble mansions and glorious parks of the British aristocracy! How the love of nature thrilled my heart with a gentle and delicious agitation, and how proud I felt of my dear native ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... regent of the kingdom during his absence, with full powers to carry on the war against the Scots; and the Earl of Surrey at the head of the army, as her lieutenant-general. It is curious to find Katherine—the pacific, domestic, and unpretending Katherine—describing herself as having "her heart set to war," and "horrible busy" with making "standards, banners, badges, scarfs, and the like."[97] Nor was this mere silken preparation—mere dalliance with the pomp and circumstance of war; for within a few weeks afterwards, her general ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... utter great thoughts, and a wealth of passionate feeling which is poetic genius. No man can read this poem without being struck by the fitness and finish of the workmanship, so to speak, as well as by the chastened and unpretending loftiness of thought ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... me by what I saw while going from the adjutant's office to barracks was certainly not very encouraging. The rear windows were crowded with cadets watching my unpretending passage of the area of barracks with apparently as much astonishment and interest as they would, perhaps, have watched Hannibal crossing the Alps. Their words and jeers were ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... made plans and estimated means and resources. These and her general preparations had perhaps a certain disproportion. She had a gold watch, a very good gold watch that had been her mother's, a pearl necklace that was also pretty good, some unpretending rings, some silver bangles and a few other such inferior trinkets, three pounds thirteen shillings unspent of her dress and book allowance and a few good salable books. So equipped, she proposed to set up a separate ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... with a reverence for truth which excludes prejudice and prepossession, and with a profoundly religious spirit. The tone of his thought is manly and vigorous, and his style, with the beauty of which the readers of his essays have long been familiar, is marked by quiet grace and unpretending strength. There are many passages in these volumes of wise reflection and of pleasant humor. In the drawing of character and in the narration of events Mr. Helps is equally happy. The pages of his book are full of lifelike portraits ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... All the public entertainments, All the tragic and the comic, All the festivals and music, All the city's merry-making. 'Round and 'round the gorgeous structure, (Gorgeous in that generation,) Stood in rows the public houses, Primitive and unpretending; But their tenants knew no others, They were simple, frugal tenants, They were happy in ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Column,—the spirit of the proprietors evaporated with the outworks; and the gateway leads to a square court-yard and a building the exterior of which may be described, in the language of guide books when referring to something which cannot be praised, as "a plain, unpretending, stucco structure," with a convenient wooden shed in front, barely to save passengers from getting wet in ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... the comprehension of most of the island episcopalians, but the zeal and disinterestedness of Bishop Willis will, in time, I doubt not, win upon those who prize such qualities. He called in the afternoon, and took me to his pretty, unpretending residence up the Nuuanu Valley. He has a training and boarding school there for native boys, some of whom were at church in the morning as a surpliced choir. The bishop, his sister, the schoolmaster, and fourteen boys take their meals together in a refectory, the boys acting ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... upon the ground floor of a gloomy old house in one of the dingier streets in the Soho district, and in the upper chambers whereof the attorney's wife and numerous offspring had their abode. He came down to his client from his unpretending breakfast-table in a faded dressing-gown, with smears of egg and greasy traces of buttered toast about the region of his mouth, and seemed not particularly pleased to see Mr. Nowell. But the conference that followed was a long one; and it is ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... to the approbation of the public his own exemplary discretion and forbearance. The world begins to know Thackeray rather better than it did two years or even a year ago, but as yet it only half knows him. His mind seems to me a fabric as simple and unpretending as it is deep-founded and enduring—there is no meretricious ornament to attract or fix a superficial glance; his great distinction of the genuine is one that can only be fully appreciated with time. There is something, a sort of "still profound," revealed in the concluding ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... somewhat of the same colour and pattern. The ties of these varied with their texture. The silk ones terminated in a sort of coaching fold, and were secured by a golden fox-head pin, while the striped starchers, with the aid of a pin on each side, just made a neat, unpretending tie in the middle, a sort of miniature of the flagrant, flyaway, Mile-End ones of aspiring youth of the present day. His coats were of the single-breasted cut-away order, with pockets outside, and generally ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... and fancied she could hear the voice of Ethiopian troops hailing the Regent as king—could see Ani decorated with the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, seated on Rameses' throne, and herself by his side in rich though unpretending splendor. She pictured herself with her son and daughter as enjoying Mena's estate, freed from debt and increased by Ani's generosity, and then a new, intoxicating hope came into her mind. Perhaps already at this moment her daughter was a widow, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the harbour by way of the King's palace, which is in the centre of the town, and may be known by the royal flag floating over it. The palace is built of coral stone, and is an unpretending building, reminding one of a French maison de campagne. It stands in about an acre of ground, ornamented with flowers, shrubs, and an avenue of kukui and koa-trees. A native sentry stood at the gate in his uniform of blue coat ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... admiring it; there is, indeed, nothing more here, than an approximately true rendering of a healthy youthful face, without the slightest attempt to give an expression of activity, cunning, nobility, or any other attribute of the Mercurial mind. Extreme simplicity, unpretending vigour of work, which claims no admiration either for minuteness or dexterity, and suggests no idea of effort at all; refusal of extraneous ornament, and perfectly arranged disposition of counted masses in a sequent order, whether in the beads, or the ringlets of hair; this is all you have to be ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Cicero refused to stand up, upon which account particularly he got the love of the people, who looked upon him as a diligent and careful man, ready to help and succor his fellow-citizens. Besides, the people were pleased with his courteous and unpretending salutations and greetings; for he never met any citizen however humble and low, but he returned him his salute by name. He was looked upon as a man well-read in history, and pretty well versed in Aristotle's ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... by my fair and obliging correspondent; and they led me to consider the possibility of rendering a fictitious personage interesting by mere dignity of mind and rectitude of principle, assisted by unpretending good sense and temper, without any of the beauty, grace, talent, accomplishment, and wit, to which a heroine of romance is supposed to have a prescriptive right. If the portrait was received with interest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... this not being open to Mr. Harness's scruples with regard to sacred sinecures, he accepted. His means were always small, his charities great, and his genial hospitality unfailing. He was one of the simplest, most modest, unpretending, honorable, high-minded, warm hearted human beings I have ever known. Goodness appeared easy to him—the best proof how good ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... a metamorphosis in the bearing of the outer man, as a sudden change of fortune. The anemone of the garden differs scarcely more from its unpretending prototype of the woods, than Robert M'Corkindale, Esq., Secretary and Projector of the Glenmutchkin Railway, differed from Bob M'Corkindale, the seedy frequenter of "The Crow." In the days of yore, men eyed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... might be subject to verbal criticism, and could possibly be explained away, as he imagined; but the first appeared to be intimately incorporated with the entire history of Christ's ministrations on earth. These were the declarations of John the Baptist, the simple and unpretending histories of the Gospels, the commentaries of St. Paul, and the venerable teachings of the church through so many centuries of varying degrees of faith and contention, each and all going to corroborate ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... pretensions of men! There was his son lying all but dead, and the man was still unconvinced of the folly he had been guilty of. I could hardly bear the sight of his composure. I shall hate the name of Science till the day I die. Give me nothing but commonplace unpretending people! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... they were rattling through the main street of the little village, and presently stopped before an unpretending little shop, in the window of which were displayed some rather ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... expression in the clear, deep-set eye, a shrewd observant look in the entire features, while it shows a capacity of forehead that will make Hans pass muster with modern phrenologists. The cobbler-bard wrote and sung, and mended his neighbours' boots in an unpretending domicile in a street leading from the principal market, which street now goes by his name. Since his time the house has been almost rebuilt and entirely new fronted. Its old features have been preserved ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... how? not like Goldsmith, by the force of unpretending but congenial merit, but by a course of the most pushing, contriving, and spaniel-like subserviency. Really, the ambition of the man to illustrate his mental insignificance, by continually placing himself in juxtaposition with the great lexicographer, has something in it perfectly ludicrous. Never, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... comfortable, presided over by an evidently clever wife. He took me into his sitting-room, where I inspected his drawings of the sun-spots, made in colour on a large scale. In all his statements he was perfectly modest and unpretending. The following is his story, so far as I can recollect, ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... delightful musical composition and though unpretending and not on the level of Gounod's "Margaretha", it does ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... when she came down dressed for church on Christmas Day in a dark blue velvet jacket, deeply trimmed with silver fox, and a hat and muff en suite, matching with her serge dress, and though unpretending, yet ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... marble counters, and the customers were served from cut-glass goblets, resting on silver salvers. Besides he was a wholesale liquor dealer, and kept great warehouses constantly supplied with the precious stuff. Bennie Phillips' good-natured father was a grocer, on a modest and unpretending scale; but he had a back room in his store where he kept a few barrels of liquor for medicinal purposes, and a clerk in attendance. Tode Mall's father kept an unmitigated grog-shop, or rum hole, or whatever name you are pleased ...
— Three People • Pansy
... will understand that the 'insinuations' of which the poetess complained, were simply the names of the different compositors, indicating the lines at which they severally began to place her effusions in type! . . . MANY a reader will recall, as he peruses the subjoined unpretending sketch, a kindred scene in his own experience, 'when life ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... GEORGIE admonition: He, elated, Vindicated Clergyman's position. People round him Always found him Plain and unpretending; Kindly teaching, Plainly preaching, All ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... white silk, with a white cashmere mantle, was, indeed, ordered from Meta's London dressmaker; but, for the rest, she contented herself with an expedition to Whitford, accompanied by Miss Bracy and her two enchanted pupils, and there laid in a stock of purchases, unpretending and in good taste, aiming only at what could be well done, and not attempting the decorative wardrobe of a great lady. Ethel was highly amused when the Misses Anderson came for their inspection, to see their concealed ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... example. The lithographs to Agassiz's "poissons fossiles" are good in their kind, but it is a far lower and easier kind, and the popularly visible result is in larger proportion to the skill; whereas none but workmen can know the magnificent devotion of unpretending and observant toil, involved in even a single figure of an insect or a starfish on these unapproachable plates. Apply such skill to the simple presentation of the natural history of every English county, and make the books portable in size, and I cannot ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... these humble efforts of mine will commend themselves to your favorable notice. They are (as you will perceive from this letter) an unpretending mite given to aid in elevating us in the eyes of the foreign literary world. "Pulchrum est bene facere reipublicae; etiam bene dicere haud absurdum est." Deeming it to be the duty of every American thus to give his aid ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... brightness as the door opened and closed, and what long, long looks he bestowed upon it, when it stood open for hours together, as it did now in the fine June weather! It was only a simple cottage. Too unpretending for hall or entry, the little parlor opened into the street, and from the window where he stood, Harry could see straight into it. There it was, with its bright papered walls, and gay red carpet, its deep low window seat looking ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a very attractive or inspiriting kind. Canon Beecher—his title was a purely honorary one, not even involving the duty of preaching in the unpretending building which, in virtue of some forgotten history, was dignified with the name of Killinacoff Cathedral—read slowly with somewhat ponderous emphasis. His thirty years in Holy Orders had slightly hardened an originally luscious ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... agencies and machinery directed by the Vicar. It may be new to some readers, especially to Americans, to learn how much of the time and thoughts of our Anglican beneficed clergymen are wanted for things not directly religious. The church, a plain and unpretending edifice, built in the year 1838, is served by the Vicar and two curates. There are daily services, and on Sundays an early celebration. The average attendance at the Sunday morning mid-day service is about one ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... out, and out, and on, and on, and on, and down, and down, and down He sped, until one night, with only one to greet Him, He arrived. His disembarkation so unpretending, so quiet, that it was not known on earth until the excitement in the cloud gave intimation that something grand and glorious had happened. Who comes there? From what port did He sail? Why was this the place of His destination? I question the shepherds, I question the camel drivers, I question ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... queries. I am Monsieur Mangin, the great charlatan of France! Yes, gentlemen, I am a charlatan—a mountebank; it is my profession, not from choice, but from necessity. You, gentlemen, created that necessity! You would not patronize true, unpretending, honest merit, but you are attracted by my glittering casque, my sweeping crest, my waving plumes. You are captivated by din and glitter, and therein lies my strength. Years ago, I hired a modest shop in the Rue Rivoli, but I could not sell pencils enough to pay my rent, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... will give me very great pleasure if you will allow me to dedicate my little book of Malayan Travels to you, although it will be far too small and unpretending a work to be worthy of that honour. Still, I have done what I can to make it a vehicle for communicating a taste for the higher branches of Natural History, and I know that you will judge it only too favourably. We are in the middle of the second ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... sipped their wine, a liquor of unpretending vintage, moderately enjoyed. Mr. Malone, indeed, would much rather have had whisky; but Mr. Donne, being an Englishman, did not keep the beverage. While they sipped they argued, not on politics, nor on philosophy, nor on literature—these topics were now, as ever, totally without ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... gamblers in China to repentance and permanent reform. It is imprudent to predict a permanent place for even the best of Alice Carey's gentle songs; but Phoebe's utterance may very possibly be quoted, from her unpretending station as adviser and alleviator of every-day life, after her name shall be forgotten and her religion shall have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... may be a good, substantial, unpretending man, something after the manner of an American farmer. A German prince or duke, since the absorption of the smaller principalities of Germany by Prussia, may have nothing left him but a barren title and a meagre rent-roll. The Italian prince is even of less account than the German one, ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... never come back!" cried Ardan, hardly able to breathe. "It's perfectly outrageous! Not room enough in infinite space to let an unpretending bullet like ours move about a little without incurring the risk of being run over by such a monster as that! What is it anyhow? ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... after by a pilot boat from Arendal, and he arrived there after dark the same evening, and went to Madam Gjers's unpretending lodging-house ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... calling the attention of the Anglo-American public to the work of the French professor. This was an interesting meeting and we find James' impression of Bergson given in his Letters under date of October 4, 1908. "So modest and unpretending a man but such a genius intellectually! I have the strongest suspicions that the tendency which he has brought to a focus, will end by prevailing, and that the present epoch will be a sort of turning point ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... from his portraits, his face expressed the features of his mind: it is mildness tempering strength; fiery ardour shining through clouds of suffering and disappointment; it is at once meek, tender, unpretending and heroic. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... hungry ones under their care, and when these are satisfied sitting down to the scanty remains. They have a large establishment in London, which I once visited, but which has since been divided into two, the aim of both continuing the same. The sisters wear a very unpretending black gown and cap: when out of doors they add to this a poke-bonnet and thick veil, with a large black shawl. They have a little donkey-cart, which they drive themselves, and which makes daily pilgrimages all over town, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... in the March to Finchley, (its careless innocent face placed directly behind the intriguing time-furrowed countenance of the treason-plotting French priest,) perfectly sobers the whole of that tumultuous scene. The boy mourner winding up his top with so much unpretending insensibility in the plate of the Harlot's Funeral, (the only thing in that assembly that is not a hypocrite,) quiets and soothes the mind that has been disturbed at the sight of so much ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... manners of those with whom an adverse destiny had so singularly connected us. In this we succeeded; for no one, up to the present moment, has imagined either my wife or myself to be other than the simple and unpretending ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... mind. These are generally, whether in the capacity of Cherubim or Cupid, accessories to the rest of the picture; and the underplot of their lovely and infantine play is something almost pathetic from the excess of its unpretending beauty. One of the best of his pieces is an Annunciation of the Virgin:—the Angel is beaming in beauty; the Virgin, ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... bring these remarks to a close. We commend this most unpretending of narratives to the thoughtful consideration of Christians of all denominations. We have greatly overrated the teaching of these facts, if they do not furnish strong incentives to A LIFE OF HOLY EXERTION, AND IMPART AN ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... among books of scientific travel — the only ones worth inquiring for. One chapter from the book of an educated traveller (we don't mean the education of Oxford and Cambridge) is worth volumes of the stuff usually forming the staple of books of travels. And in this unpretending book of the Yankee boy — for its preface is signally of this sort - we have scores of such chapters. The title is not altogether appropriate. It is called 'A Thousand Miles' Walk across South America.' It ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... Thirty-nine years after his death, lord Brougham wrote of Washington that he was "the greatest man of our own or of any age. * * * This eminent person is presented to our observation clothed in attributes as modest, as unpretending, as little calculated to strike or to astonish, as if he had passed unknown through some secluded region of private life. But he had a judgment sure and sound; a steadiness of mind which never suffered any passion or even ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... the sight of Martin Holt because of his unpretending ways, his willingness, nay, his eagerness to learn, his ready submission to the authority exercised by the master of the house upon all beneath his roof, and the absence of anything like presumption or superciliousness on his nephew's part on the score ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... real satisfaction in looking over the book. There are some opinions with which I do not agree; but the main thing about the book is a good thing; namely its hearty, wholesome love of English literature, and the honest, unpretending, but genial and conversational, manner in which that love is uttered. It is a charming book to read, and it will breed in its readers the appetite to ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... wearing that peculiarly pensive expression often communicated by dissipation; an expression which, we regret to say, is sometimes found more pleasing than it ought to be in the eyes of the gentle sex. Habited in a light summer riding-dress, fashioned according to the taste of the time, of plain and unpretending material, and rather under than overdressed, he had, perhaps, on that very account, perfectly the air of a gentleman. There was, altogether, an absence of pretension about him, which, combined with great apparent self-possession, contrasted ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... either to bear ever in mind. Order, precision, directness, are the radical merits of prose thought; and it is more than merely legitimate that they should form the criterion of prose style, because within the scope of those qualities, according to Mr. Saintsbury, there is more than just the quiet, unpretending usefulness of the bare sermo pedestris. Acting on language, those qualities generate a specific and unique beauty—"that other beauty of prose"—fitly illustrated by these specimens, which the reader needs hardly be told, after what has ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... was attracted by an unpretending edifice in front of which some Malay and Indian soldiers were seated. I was asking them what building it was when an Englishman came out and courteously told me that it was the Head Police Station of which he was ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... southerly circuit, the stars trembled in their infinite depths, and the mountains abided in awful might. Within was a piano tinkle of gay music, and demi-toilette, and demi-festival,—the poor, abridged reproduction of city revelry in the inadequate parlor of an unpretending ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... trees in many places arch quite across the walk—giving, even at midday, a half-twilight—and the sigh of the river breeze in their tops, mingling with the constant roar of the rapids, seems to sing a Te Deum for the dead. The graves are simple and unpretending—only an occasional column of any prominence rearing ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... ready to consider the former as true, and the latter as false. The unpretending modesty of real worth they generally mistook for imbecility, or a consciousness of questionable points of character; while bold-faced assurance was thought to be an open exhibition of manliness—the free, undisguised manner of those who ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... of Victoria. Owing to his good taste, the natural beauty of the place has been largely preserved. The oak groves and delicate undergrowth are a great contrast to the rude mill-sites of the Sound, where every thing is sacrificed to sending off so much lumber. He lives at Victoria in a simple, unpretending way. It was made a law in British Columbia, that no white man should live with an Indian woman as wife, without marrying her. He set the example himself, by marrying one of the half-breed Indian women. Some of the chief officers of the Hudson Bay ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... manners were plain and simple, and he liked to talk about everyday matters with plain country people and laugh and jest with them. In a word, he was so great a man 5 that he never thought of appearing greater than other people, but was always the same unpretending John Marshall. ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... sir; an abundant variety," was his reply to Verdant's question, if he could show him any patterns that were fashionable in Oxford. "The greatest stock hout of London, I should say, sir, decidedly. This is a nice unpretending gentlemanly thing, sir, that we make up a good deal!" and he spread a shaggy substance before the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... known. It is the fallow deer that chiefly people our parks. Red deer were also found at Blenheim, in Oxfordshire, when it was visited by Dr. Johnson, as may be seen in "Boswell."] As my father always retained a town-house in Manchester (somewhere in Fountain-street), and, though a plain, unpretending man, was literary to the extent of having written a book, all things were so arranged that there was no possibility of any commercial mementos ever penetrating to the rural retreat of his family; ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... father's only surviving parent, my doting grandmother, whom we were designing to visit, was a plain, unpretending farm-house, snuggly nestled up among the hills of Vermont. There were tall poplar trees and a flower-garden in front, a little orchard and a whole row of nice looking out-buildings in the rear. There was no place on earth so full of joy for me. The ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... of her devotees were Norris, the singer, and Mr. Watts, a rich gentleman-commoner, who had also met her at Oxford. Surely with such and other rivals, the chances of the quiet, unpretending, undemonstrative boy of nineteen were small. But no, Miss Linley was foolish enough to be captivated by genius, and charmed by such poems as the quiet boy wrote to her, of which this is, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... and notable company is present, among them many high civil functionaries, but the charge d'affaires is not there. In the billiard-room the honorable minister of finance plays a game with the honorable minister of the interior. They are both of unpretending manners, polite and affable, and during the pauses of the game they call for and drink their beer in true democratic fashion. M. Forgues learns that his charge lives two leagues out of town, and, hugging his exasperating valise—which, we may ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... of ornithology in vain, to find out the name of this kindly little bird, who certainly deserves honor and favor far beyond his modest pretensions. He comes like the lowly violet, the most unpretending, but welcomest of flowers, breathing the sweet promise ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... Englishman is a gentleman, to be sure, it is as deep in him as the marrow of his bones, and the deeper you know him, the more you are aware of it, and that generation after generation has contributed to develop and perfect these unpretending manners, which, at first, may have failed to impress you, under his plain, almost homely exterior. An American often gets as good a surface of manners, in his own progress from youth, through the wear and attrition of a successful life, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... even through the spectacles with which she reads the Bible. But the dahlia itself—what was that in its first estate, in the country in which it was first found in its aboriginal structure and complexion? As plain and unpretending as the hollyhock; as thinly dressed as the short-kirtled daisy in a Connecticut meadow. It is wonderful, and passing wonder, how teachable and quick of perception and prehension is Nature in the studio of Art. She, the oldest of painters, that hung the earth, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... straight, parallel walks running the whole length, and narrow cross-walks; and yet it is a lovely burial-ground. There are but few trees; but the whole inclosure is a conservatory of beautiful flowers. Every grave is covered with them, every monument is surrounded with them. The monuments are unpretending in size, but there are many fine designs, and many finely executed busts and statues and allegorical figures, in both marble and bronze. The place is full of sunlight and color. I noticed that it was much frequented. In front ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... BUILD WALL till sun go down; den I go home. I wish I could speak English better; but you understand me, sir." We rowed off with many vivas, and this poor mason's "hopes" that we "might find all square at home." At home! Oh, that we had a home!!—an unassuming wife—placens et tacens uxor; an unpretending house, with a comfortable guest-chamber; and no noiseless nursery, unfendered and uncared for! But the bells of Messina, all let loose together, interrupt our pleasing reverie, and our friends, who have been hovering round us in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... there had become much brighter, for Mrs. Turner's work had greatly increased, her quiet, unpretending manner having won for her many kind friends, who kept her fully employed—indeed so much that Lizzie Stevens had given up her hard labour of working for the slopshops, and now helped the widow in her lighter and more remunerative ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... antagonistic to the ultimate law of dramatic art. In the case of great plays, the dramatic representation is most successful from the genuinely artistic point of view—which is the only point of view worthy of discussion—when the just dramatic illusion is produced by simple and unpretending scenic appliances, in which the inevitable "imperfections" are frankly left to be supplied by the "thoughts" or imagination of ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... of Shaftesbury Avenue, and parallel with it, is Gerrard Street, a dingy, unpretending place, but thick with memories and associations. It was built about 1681, and was called after Gerard, Earl of Macclesfield. Wheatley quotes from the Bagford MSS. of the British Museum to the effect that ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... some acquaintance. A fine fellow this, you must know, Delaserre: he paints tolerably, draws beautifully, converses well, and plays charmingly on the flute; and, though thus well entitled to be a coxcomb of talent, is, in fact, a modest unpretending young man. On our return from our little tour I learned that the enemy had been reconnoitring. Mr. Mervyn's barge had crossed the lake, I was informed by my landlord, with the squire himself and ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... discontented in those days, and was dissatisfied with our life in the city because it seemed dull and monotonous to me. When I look back now and remember how poor a return I gave for the love that was given to me—my mother's anxiety, my father's steady, unpretending kindness—I feel how well I have deserved the sorrows that have come to me ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... party arrived before a handsome flight of steps, with two magnificent camphor-trees on either side. The gate at the top being thrown open, we all entered the unpretending yet clean abode of the governor. A few inferior officers were sitting or standing about in the vestibule. They saluted us with a careless air, and one of them then announced our arrival, when the vice-governor, or one of the ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... an obligation or indebtedness that could not be required of him. He may assume authority or office that is his right; if he assumes what does not belong to him, he is said to arrogate or usurp it. A man may usurp the substance of power in the most unpretending way; what he arrogates to himself he assumes with a haughty and overbearing manner. One assumes the robes or insignia of office by putting them on, with or without right. If he takes to himself the credit and appearance of qualities he does not possess, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... that her father, too, refused to listen to the young suitor, and how, during that time of conflict, while she was with her family at Scheveningen, a travelling carriage drawn by four horses stopped one day before her parents' unpretending house. From this coach descended the future mother-in-law. She had come to see the paragon of whom her son had written so enthusiastically, and to learn whether it would be possible to yield to the youth's urgent desire to establish a household of his own. And she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... tyranny or cruelty in any form. He entertained a love for the horse in the stable without bowing down to worship the stage-coachmen, the jockeys, and other ignoble heroes of "horsey" life. He loved his country and "the quiet, unpretending Church of England." He was ready to exalt the obsolescent fisticuffs and the "strong ale of Old England," but he was not blind either to the drunkenness or to the overbearing brutality which he had reason to fear might be held to disfigure the character of the swilling and prize-fighting ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... body or individually, such is the infirmity and selfishness of human nature, that we often surrender to importunity that which we refuse to the dictates of gratitude,—yielding for our own comfort, to the demands of turbulence, while quiet unpretending merit is overlooked and oppressed, until, roused by neglect, it demands, as a right, what policy alone should ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sitting in a low chair on the other side of the hearth, with his knees almost up to his chin and his trousers wrinkled up ever so far above his stout Oxford shoes, leaving a considerable interval of gray stocking. He was a man of about thirty, pale, and unpretending of aspect, who fortified his native modesty with a pair of large binoculars, which interposed a kind of barrier between ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... which the ordnance and ammunition for this warfare are prepared, consist, so far as this country is concerned, of certain establishments, vast in their extent and capacity, though unpretending in external appearance, which are situated in the upper part of the city of New York, on the shores of the East River. As the city of New York is sustained almost entirely by its commerce, and as this commerce is becoming ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... to know that at this time his domestic affairs were in a satisfactory condition: "Plain and unpretending; never kept any liquor in the house—treated my friends to every civility except liquor; used an economy ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... in the life and letters of that most excellent, amiable, and unpretending Lady Russell. [Footnote: Lady Rachel Wriothesley, second daughter of Thomas Earl of Southampton, who married (1) Francis Lord Vaughan; (2) William Lord Russell, the patriot, beheaded July 21, 1683.] There are touches ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... acquire a singular and living force when we perceive them carried out and realised in the actual affairs of life in a degree to which our personal experience is a stranger. Influenced as human nature is by example, these unpretending narratives, whose whole strength lies in the facts which they record, and not in the art of the biographer, undeniably strike the mind with an almost supernatural force. They enchain the attention; they ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... death might well learn a lesson from the fortitude and courage shown by an Atheist as he lay at the point of death, far from home and from all he loved best. The Rev. Mr. Frothingham bore public and admiring testimony in his own church to Mr. Bradlaugh's perfect serenity, at once fearless and unpretending, and, himself a Theist, gave willing witness to the ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... gipsy hat with the same shade. It is, of course, an undoubted fact that women dress for their own satisfaction only, and in accordance with their instincts of "the true and the beautiful;" so it would be mere hypercritical carping to suspect coquetry of lurking in the deft folds of that unpretending blue ribbon, or that, in the face of her grande passion for Du Meresq, she could for a moment occupy herself with the foolish admiration of Alec ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... unpretending. One would think that it was I who was doing the favour and he who was the beggar. I thought of that passage about making the heart of the widow sing for joy. He made my heart sing for joy, I can tell you. Are you coming up ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... English sailor's widow, the Portuguese captain, the boy Xury, and his man Friday. From these allegoric types, Mist might select a model for his own behaviour. When we consider the tone of these Serious Reflections, so eminently pious, moral, and unpretending, so obviously the outcome of a wise, simple, ingenuous nature, we can better understand the fury with which Mist turned upon Defoe when at last he discovered his treachery. They are of use also in throwing ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... of the Pier Hotel, we advanced towards Jorrocks's chosen house, a plain unpretending-looking place facing the sea, which is half the battle, and being but just finished had every chance of cleanliness. "Jonathan Acres" appeared above the door as the name of the landlord, and a little square-built, hatless, short-haired chap, in a shooting-jacket, was leaning against the door. "Mr. ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... unbounded kindness from men of science of all countries, and most profound was her gratitude to them. Modest and unpretending to excess, nothing could be more generous than the unfeigned delight she shewed in recognising the genius and discoveries of others; ever jealous of their fame, and never of ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... voluntary offering of a whole nation, and came direct from the people themselves without any intermediate red tape—the people of the Sandwich Islands. It was a title that came to him freighted with affection, and honor, and appreciation of his unpretending merit. And in testimony of the genuineness of the title it was publicly ordained that an exclusive flag should be devised for him and used solely to welcome his coming and wave him God-speed in his going. From ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... always feel proud and happy, while now, on beholding the liveries covered with gold and silver, I cannot suppress my shame, for I think of the distress of our subjects, and of the misery of our country. Let us begin, therefore, a plain, unpretending existence, my husband; let us set an example of simplicity to our people, and show them that one may be contented, though deprived of the splendors of wealth ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... sisters two dozen," he would say of the Ingoldsbys when he went to bed in the room that was to be burnt down in preparation for his exile. And he believed it. They were honest; they were unselfish; they were unpretending. His sister Molly was not above owning that her young brewer was all the world to her; a fine, honest, bouncing girl, who said her prayers with a meaning, thanked the Lord for giving her Joshua, and laughed so loud that you could hear her out of the rectory garden ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... is, indeed, a lonely, quiet spot, fit place for musing meditation, in a poet’s wanderings. Just a cottage or two to remind one that there is a population, but not obtrusive. The rectory is the second, and larger, of two houses on the right, though now occupied as a farmhouse. It is a quaint, unpretending, old-time residence, uniting manor house and rectory in one. At its eastern end is a semi-ecclesiastical addition, with pointed windows having coloured glass of no particular merit. In the ground-floor apartment in this is a carved mantlepiece, the work of the Laureate’s father. Just beyond ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... were absolutely indescribable as human features, with a certain boyish awkwardness of manner, but with the most urban-like courtesy and affability. From noon till dark, the time is spent in conversation, continued, various, and eloquent. What a presence is there in this humble, unpretending cottage! And as the stream of Olympian sweetness moves on, now in laughing ripples, and again in a solemn majestic flood, what a past do we bring before ourselves! what a present! For this is he that talked with Coleridge, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sorrowing hearts of strong men. If the Irish throngs had no hero to lament, who sustained their glory in the field, and gained for them fresh laurels of victory, theirs was at least a more disinterested tribute of grief, since it was paid to the unpretending merit which laid down, life with the simple prayer of 'God save Ireland!' Amidst all the numerous thousands who proceeded to Glasnevin, there was not, probably, one who would have sympathised with any ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... two, having previously married them to princes of high rank. Cordiella was, however, at last made choice of for a wife by a French prince, who, it seems, knew better than the old king how much more to be relied upon was unpretending and honest truth than empty and extravagant profession. He married the portionless Cordiella, and took her with him to ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... my original plan, I have added more questions and answers in the text of each new English edition of the Catechism, leaving it to its translators to render them into whichever of the other vernaculars they may be working in. The unpretending aim in view is to give so succinct and yet comprehensive a digest of Buddhistic history, ethics and philosophy as to enable beginners to understand and appreciate the noble ideal taught by the Buddha, and thus make it easier ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... from seeking his acquaintance. But as it was, no "English gentleman ever approached him, with the common forms of introduction, that did not come away at once surprised and charmed by the kind courtesy and facility of his manners, the unpretending play of his conversation, and, on a nearer intercourse, the frank youthful spirits, to the flow of which he gave way with such a zest as even to deceive some of those who best knew him into the impression that gayety was, after all, the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... 1893) assumes, "That in all essential respects the identical baptismal confession which Justin learned in Ephesus about 130, and Marcion confessed in Rome about 145, originated at latest somewhere about 120." In some "unpretending notes" (p. 37 ff.) he traces this confession back to a baptismal confession of the Pauline period ("it had already assumed a more or less stereotyped form in the earlier Apostolic period"), which, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... from Rhydland to Abergele we saw Hemmel Park, the seat of Lord Dinorbin, lately burnt down. Near Rhydland is Penwarn, the seat of Lord Mostyn; the house is small and unpretending, the grounds are beautiful. There is a very handsome dog-kennel, in which are kept forty-four couple of fine fox-hounds ready for work, besides old ones in one kennel, and young ones in another: the dogs all in such good order and ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... the place in which the Court is held: in other words, with the ROYAL PALACE of STUTTGART. Take away the gilt cushion and crown at the top of it, and the front facade has really the air of a royal residence. It is built of stone: massive and unpretending in its external decorations, and has two wings running at right angles with the principal front elevation. To my eye, it had, at first view, and still continues to have, more of a Palace-like look than the long ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin |
