"Unvarnished" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unvarnished truth. A mysterious power dealt the cards for me with unfailing instinct; a fortunate combination of events placing in my hands, precisely at the moment of their greatest value, clear opportunities ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... death-blow. I hope, my dear cousin, you will forgive me for being very candid on this point, but I really do not think that anybody in England had any idea of the real state of affairs here. The sooner therefore that they are put in possession of the truth unvarnished the better. The great and imperative necessity is that the four Powers of Europe should strike together, otherwise things will become much worse than they are even at present. Everybody is very civil and obliging to me, the Sultan has put me into one of his best Palaces, very nicely fitted up, and ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... as most people imagine, consists in telling one truth—unvarnished, unadorned truth—he is indeed a friend: yet, hang it, I must be candid, and say I have had many other, and more agreeable, proofs of Hobhouse's friendship than the truths he always told me; but the fact is, I wanted ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... sitting beside her was the notorious bandit of the Shoshone fastnesses. She was not in the least afraid. A sure instinct told her he was not the kind of a man of whom a woman need have fear so long as her own anchor held fast. In good time she meant to let him have her unvarnished opinion of him, but she did not mean it to be an unconsidered one. Wherefore she drove the machine forward toward the camelbacked peak he had indicated, her eyes straight before her, a frown ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... mouldy cell which reeked of soldiers' boots and leggings, an unvarnished table, two sorry chairs, a window closed with a grating, a crazy stove which, while letting the smoke emerge through its cracks, gave out no heat—such was the den to which the man who had just begun to taste the sweets of life, and to attract the attention of his fellows with his ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... tissues, and run down, grab, and give one dexterous fatal shake to a tissue of lies. One of Dr. Brown's terriers is not more swift, exact, and uncompromising after vermin. This excellent sense for unvarnished realities has been attributed by some to their habit of visiting so many interiors—of men and of their houses—whose swell-fronts are pervious to the sincerity of pain. We never see a doctor's chaise anchored at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... will feel doubly repaid. The scenes I have to describe, the story I have to tell, would require the pen of a Fenimore Cooper to do them justice. Feeling myself unable to relate all I experienced and suffered, in an adequate manner, I will merely offer the public, a simple, truthful, unvarnished tale and for every fact thereof, I give my word that it is no fiction, but ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... to all this let us take the unvarnished truth as in the reported simple words of the German ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... short journey to the landlord's, commenced, in her own way, a lecture upon agricultural economy, which, though plain and unvarnished, contained excellent and practical sense. She also pointed out to him when to speak and when to be silent; told him what rent to offer, and in what manner he should offer it; but she did all this so dexterously and sweetly, that honest Peter thought the new and corrected views which she furnished ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... old bump—I mean the blundering old chump?" spluttered Harry Rattleton. "Didn't stop to say a word? Well, somebody ought to say something to him! I'd like the privilege. It would do me good to give him an unvarnished ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... to remember, Garth, that every word I write, is the simple unvarnished truth. If you look back over your remembrance of me, you will admit that I am not naturally an untruthful person, nor did I ever take easily to prevarication. But, Garth, I told you one lie; and that fatal exception proves the rule of perfect truthfulness, which has always otherwise held, between ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... produce an attractive and interesting work, with such a subject. There never was a life which stood less in need of the embellishments of rhetoric, which could rest more confidently and securely upon its plain, unvarnished truth, than that of Count Cavour. He was a man of the highest order of greatness; and when we have said that, we have also said that he was a man of simplicity, directness, and transparency. A man of the first class is always easily interpreted and understood. The biographer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... appears galvanised into some fleeting semblance of vitality by the extravaganza presented to it, for the language of hyperbole is the natural expression of Eastern thought, and penetrates into mental recesses unknown and unexplored by the relater of unvarnished facts. The quick response of the native mind to Nature's teaching, and the wealth of tradition woven round flower and tree, mountain and stream, foster the love of marvel and miracle in those whose daily wants are supplied ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... Luther and debauch a nun. Schrader is the most candid and consistent asserter of the papal claims. He does not shrink from the consequences of the persecuting theory; and he has given the most authentic and unvarnished exposition of the Syllabus. He was the first who spoke out openly what others were variously attempting to compromise or to conceal. While the Paris Jesuits got into trouble for extenuating the Roman doctrine, and had to be kept up to the mark by an abbe who reminded them that ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... face turned rosier. He was not used among his docile Canadians to any such speech as this. The unvarnished fashions of New England honesty ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... or fiction, whichever you like. Here's a fact, plain and unvarnished. Born and bred in New York. Swell stable. Swell coachman. Swell master. Jewelled fingers of ladies poking at me, first thing I remember. First painful experience—being sent to vet. ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... in a hundred other little ways the change showed, ways difficult to define in detail, but all proving—not the coarsening effect of leading the primitive life, but, let us say, the more direct and unvarnished methods that became prevalent. For all day long we were in the bath of the elements—wind, water, sun—and just as the body became insensible to cold and shed unnecessary clothing, the mind grew straightforward and shed ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Soldiers reading this plain, unvarnished account of an Oriental battle might feel inclined to criticise Santa Coloma's tactics; for his men were, like the Arabs, horsemen and little else; they were, moreover, armed with lance and broadsword, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... as a plain, unvarnished, Teutonic lie that fuel has become so scarce in the States that minstrel shows will soon be abolished by Federal order because of ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... lesson, to be sure, for one so young to learn so thoroughly. Perhaps some reader will say that this was cynical, the result of disappointment. But it was not cynical, neither was it the result of disappointment. It was unvarnished truth, and more's the pity, but truth it was none the less. It was one of those hard facts, which he of all men, needed to know at the threshold of his experience with the world. Such a revelation proves disastrous to the many who go down to do business in that world. Ordinary and weak and neutral ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Such is the plain unvarnished account of the late transactions in Servia, in which the true character of Russian policy, and the means by which it is carried out, have been unveiled before the eyes of Europe in a manner sufficient to enlighten those which are not closed in wilful blindness. "Europe has been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... show myself in pride and triumph in that place into which their partiality had brought me, and to appear at feasts and rejoicings in the midst of the grief and calamity of my warm friends, my zealous supporters, my generous benefactors. This is a true, unvarnished, undisguised state of the affair. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... very little to criticise regarding this Life. Of its kind it could not be more satisfactory. It is not the work of the theorist, the analyst, critic, or the eulogist. It is the full, plain, unvarnished story of the life of "the good son, devoted husband, affectionate father; the generous, faithful friend; the urbane and cultivated host; the lover of children; the lover of his country; the lover of liberty ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... General Potter Condemned the Priests to Ride Asses Three Times a Day, as a Good Enough Punishment for their Intriguing; also, a Plain and Unvarnished Account of the ever-Memorable Battle of "The Miracle," in which Old Battle, the Greatest War Horse of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... to be perhaps the best contribution to the literature of the war that has yet been written. It is a plain soldierly narrative of what the writer actually did and saw, set down in unvarnished language, yet in English which it is a pleasure to read for ...
— Mr. Edward Arnold's New and Popular Books, December, 1901 • Edward Arnold
... a further inclination to laugh. He had wasted too much time already, and was anxious to get back to the ranch. He quite realized that Joe knew what he was about, if his legs were hors-de-combat, for, after delivering himself of this, his unvarnished opinion, he wisely sought the safer vantage-ground ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... of these unhappy women ventured to write a plain, unvarnished, but poignant, description of her inner life, where would she find a publisher daring enough to let his name appear on the cover ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... public recognition of their marriage; an acknowledgment that might make further separation difficult, if not impossible, for the present. All her pride and independence of spirit revolted against this unvarnished statement of fact; and the memory of Michael's random remark heightened her nervous apprehension. Yet, on the other hand, Love—who is a born peace-maker—argued that, after all, he might not be sorry to have his hand forced by so clear a proof ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... it is after all only one point of view, and that there is probably much to be said on the other side. The unhappiest feature of drifting into a habit of positive and continuous talk is that one has few friends faithful enough to criticise such a habit and tell one the unvarnished truth; if the habit is once confirmed, it becomes almost impossible to break it off. I know of a family conclave that was once summoned, in order, if possible, to communicate the fact to one of the circle that he was in danger of becoming ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Gloria Gaynor, flushed up because Mark King said in blunt, unvarnished fashion: "I like you very much." The grave sobriety went out of her eyes; they shone happily. When they reached the "funny little store" she was humming a snatch of a bright little waltz tune. And she was thinking, without putting ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... hot imperious words that crowded to his lips. These were plain unvarnished facts, and he must bow to the inevitable, however distasteful it might be. For the present then, Ramabai should be permitted to go unharmed. But Ramabai might die suddenly and accidentally in the recapture of the Colonel Sahib. An accidental death would certainly extinguish ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... and I am their chief," was the remark made by the Dey of Algiers to the English Consul in 1641, and the man spoke the plain unvarnished truth. Yet at this time the Algerines had no more than sixty-five ships, and no organisation which could have held out for twenty-four hours against such attacks as had been successfully resisted on many occasions ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... one read this plain unvarnished tale without admiring the stern resolution, the unbending pride, the loftiness of spirit that seemed to nerve the hearts of these self-taught heroes and to raise them above the instinctive feelings of human nature? When the Gauls laid waste ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... plain, unvarnished truth that this accomplished and semi-historical personage raced a horse of his own, which turns out now to have been the famous Rainbow, an animal of such marvellous speed, courage, and endurance ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... "I will tell you a plain, unvarnished tale;" and he gave them, in full detail, the adventure he had ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... proposed arrival some months before, and wrote to Mrs. C—— to beg they would leave their elder children in England, and only bring the babies with them, for the little ones thrive well enough at Sarawak. I also gave a plain unvarnished account of the place. But Mr. C——, having made up his mind to bring all his family out, put the letter in his pocket; and we were very sorry when they arrived, a party of nine, having lost one child at Singapore. They only stayed one month; the lady was so disgusted with the place—"no ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... natural basis of man. The Apologists undoubtedly believe that virtue consists negatively in man's renunciation of what his natural constitution of soul and body demands or impels him to. Some express this thought in a more pregnant and unvarnished fashion, others in a milder way. Tatian, for instance, says that we must divest ourselves of the human nature within us; but in truth the idea is the same in all. The moral law of nature of which the Apologists ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... she would detect his hollowness at once, and he feared a glance of scorn from her blue eyes more than the lightning of heaven. He resolved to leave the Lake House on Monday, and from New York write to Miss Burton the unvarnished truth, assuring her that he knew himself to be unworthy even to speak to her again. Then, as soon as he could complete his preparations, he would go abroad and give ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... their Journal in three volumes of the Family Library, and to say that they are, in interest, equal if not superior to any of the Series would be praise inadequate to their merits. The simple, unvarnished style of the Narrative is just suitable for a family fireside. We intend to quote a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... small, twinkling black beads of eyes and a Satyric sensualism about the mouth would indicate a temperament fatally in the way of any apostleship save that of polygamy, even without the aid of an induction from his favorite topics of discourse and his patriarchally unvarnished style of handling them. Men, everywhere, unfortunately, tend little toward the error of bashfulness in their chat among each other, but most of us at the East would feel that we were insulting the lowest member of the demi-monde, if we uttered before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... recognised by the art journals. The execution of the work occupied Sharples's leisure evening hours during a period of five years; and it was only when he took the plate to the printer that he for the first time saw an engraved plate produced by any other man. To this unvarnished picture of industry and genius, we add one other trait, and it is a domestic one. "I have been married seven years," says he, "and during that time my greatest pleasure, after I have finished my daily labour at the foundry, has been to resume my pencil or graver, frequently until a late ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... there is one thing that I may claim to be above all others, it is 'unvarnished'. I have a brutal frankness in expressing my own opinion. If, through nice feeling, I try to disguise it, my manner shrieks ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... was duty. He seemed to see the smoke- blackened cabin and the mother of the boy sitting, with drawn face, in dread of the hours. He felt the racking nerve-tension of a life in which the father went forth each day leaving his family in fear that he would not return. Then, under the spell of the unvarnished recital, he seemed to witness the crisis when the man, who had dared repudiate the lawless law of individual reprisal, paid the price ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Carpets. Blocks to prevent Sofas and Tables from rubbing against Walls, and to hold Doors open. Footstools. Sweeping Carpets. Tealeaves. Wet Indian Meal. Taking up and cleansing Carpets. Washing Carpets. Straw Matting. Pictures and Glasses. Curtains and Sofas. Mahogany Furniture. Unvarnished Furniture; Mixtures for. Hearths and Jambs. ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... will begrudge her the praise she received, since she really earned it. She sowed the seeds, and it was only right that she should reap the fruit. And of all the praises that were heaped upon her none equalled the simple unvarnished story of her own deed. To describe her exploit, with no word of comment, was to load her with commendation of the highest kind. And it is well indeed when that can be said of any woman—which is always the case when her life is right. On the whole, even now people get pretty much what ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... parish priest, was himself rather reluctant to incur the displeasure, or challenge the power of the Lianhan Shee, by driving its victim out of the parish. The opinion of these persons was, in its distinct unvarnished reality, that Father Felix absolutely showed the white feather on this critical occasion—that he became shy, and begged leave to decline being introduced to this intractable pair—seeming to intimate that he did not at all relish ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... practical question was this: Was the treaty to be drafted on the basis of the existing state of possession or on the basis of the status before the war? The British note stated their case in plain unvarnished fashion; it insisted on the status uti possidetis—the possession ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... plain, unvarnished history of the internal slave trade carried on in this country, would shock and disgust the reader to a degree that would almost render him ashamed to acknowledge himself a member of the same community. In unmanly and degrading barbarity, wanton cruelty, and horrible indifference to every human ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... that, Ken. Just think of the fascinating Frenchmen I shall probably meet, with their waxed moustaches and their dandified manners. How can I help liking them better than a plain, unvarnished American boy?" ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... The plain and unvarnished truth is that at the beginning of this, the twentieth century, when Germany is the supreme political and commercial Power on the Continent of Europe, the study of German is steadily going back in the United Kingdom. In some parts it is actually dying out. In many important ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... London of which the merchants from Canton spoke so many strange and incredible things, I now send you filial salutations three times increased, and in accordance with your explicit command I shall write all things to you with an unvarnished brush, well assured that your versatile object in committing me to so questionable an enterprise was, above all, to learn the truth of these matters in an undeviating and yet open-headed ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... expense and the loss of precious time. I have nothing to explain to you which you are not already perfectly well acquainted with by my late letters. I was fully aware at the time I was writing them that I should afford you little satisfaction, for the plain unvarnished truth is seldom agreeable; but I now repeat, and these are perhaps among the last words which I shall ever be permitted to pen, that I cannot approve, and I am sure no Christian can, of the system which has lately been pursued in the large sea-port cities ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... have here stated is the simple, unvarnished truth; yet it is but yesterday that the subject has really ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... about this plain, unvarnished story that appeals to every heart. That a man, no matter what his crimes, should have his nervous system thus cruelly undermined; that his physical and mental faculties should be slowly but surely filched from him in this deliberate fashion, is an idea not to be borne ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... more pleasing of the two; but it must be remembered that he was writing long after the time he mentions, and that his recollections were no doubt somewhat mellowed by Jane Austen's subsequent fame; whereas Philadelphia Walter's is an unvarnished contemporary criticism—the impression made by Jane on a girl a ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... quite done with his unvarnished tale, and when Mr. Smoothbore had given him a parting nod in sign that he had done with him, Sergeant Balais rose, for the first time, with an uplifted finger, as though, but for that signal of delay, the honest landlord would have fled incontinently, and ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... reply, but instead Bonhag continued with: "I'd better teach you your new trade now. You've got to learn to cane chairs, so the warden says. If you want, we can begin right away." But without waiting for Cowperwood to acquiesce, he went off, returning after a time with three unvarnished frames of chairs and a bundle of cane strips or withes, which he deposited on the floor. Having so done—and with a flourish—he now continued: "Now I'll show you if you'll watch me," and he began showing Cowperwood how the strips were to be laced through the apertures ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... at the door. Her first favorable impression of the gallant young Southerner had been changed by the course of events and she was now morally certain that the envious Dusty Rhodes had come nearer the unvarnished truth. To be sure he had apologized, but Wunpost himself had said that it was only to gain a share in the mine—and how lamentably had Wunpost failed, after all his windy boasts, when it came to a conflict ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... apprenticeship in the Danish navy. Hrolf Wisby, who messed with Prince Karl when he was a naval cadet, says that the lad was at first little more than a piece of court furniture. Any one who is familiar with the appalling frankness and unvarnished brusquerie of grown-up Danes can judge whether the hazing and horse-play on a Danish man-of-war was agreeable, and whether it was medicinal in a case of congenital self-esteem. Prince Karl lived the life of an ordinary middy, scrubbed decks, mended his own clothes, slept in a hammock, and ate ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... arts which spring from the composition of language. Here the art of logic, aiming solely at conviction, addresses the understanding with cool deductions of unvarnished truth; rhetoric, designing to move, in some particular direction, both the judgement and the sympathies of men, applies itself to the affections in order to persuade; and poetry, various in its character and tendency, solicits the imagination, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... as he had promised,—if she should still require it; but he would first try what a letter would do,—a plain unvarnished tale. Might it still be possible that a plain tale sent by post should have sufficient efficacy? This was his plain tale ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... The plain unvarnished tale of the travel in Midian, undertaken by the second Expedition, which, like the first, owes all to the liberality and the foresight of his Highness Ismail I., Khediv of Egypt, forms the subject of these volumes. During the four months between ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... an unvarnished but unexaggerated picture of the actual state of Oude, with many remedial suggestions; but direct annexation formed no part of the policy which Sir William Sleeman recommended. To this measure he was strenuously opposed, as is distinctly ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... which he there met, and which he has engraven on the minds of his readers, in his own peculiar style, in characters never to be erased; for my part, as I first approached Calais I thought but of Sterne and his plain, unvarnished tale, of the trifles he encountered, around which he contrived to weave an interest which is felt even by the inhabitants of Calais to this day; although they knew his works but through the spoiling medium of translation, still they never fail to exhibit to the Englishman ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... decently. It is a point, which it takes the key of the play—Lord Bacon's key, of 'Times,' to put in. It wants but a comma, but then it must be a comma in the right place, to make English of it. Plain English, unvarnished English, but poetic in its fact, as any prophecy that Merlin was ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... as well that the chauffeur had not the slightest notion that he had conveyed a murderer to London when he began to tell his tale to his employer and the detectives. They wanted a plain, unvarnished story, and got it. On leaving the offices in Bishopsgate Street, Fenley asked to be driven to Gloucester Mansions, Shaftesbury Avenue. Tom had seen the last of him standing on the pavement, with a suitcase on the ground at his feet. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night—of the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told, in her own quiet way a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rabidly devoured the ideal;—I pronounced judgment ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... some day, be the disintegration of the existing organisations in order to build up a more perfect habitation of God through the Spirit? I do not wish to exaggerate. God knows there is no need for exaggerating. The plain, unvarnished story, without any pessimistic picking out of the black bits and forgetting ail the light ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the king, in an imperious voice, "silence while I am speaking! I really feel sorry that you have compelled me to speak to you so plainly and unreservedly; but as you are always boasting of being a truthful man, I hare told you my opinion in unvarnished language, and will add that, if you should be unwilling to change your disrespectful conduct, the state cannot count very confidently of ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... period of authentic history, or that which was stored up in his memory, he grew eloquent, and the narrative glowed with the living fire of the hero. Julia was quite as much interested as Desdemona in the story of the swarthy Moor. His "round, unvarnished tale," adorned only with the flowers of youthful simplicity, enchained her attention, and she "loved him for the dangers he had passed;" loved him, not as Desdemona loved, but as a child loves. She was sure now that he was not a bad boy; that even a good boy ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... skilled preacher in the pulpit, he simply led you captive by his earnestness and evident thorough belief in all that he uttered; so that "those who came to scoff, remained to pray." No hard, metallic repetition by rote was his; but the plain, unvarnished story of the gospel which he felt and of whose truth he was assured, animated by a broad spirit of Protestantism that led him to extend a raising hand to every erring brother, and see religion in other creeds besides ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... will endeavour, as far as I am able in these cold printed pages, to reveal exactly what occurred, without any exaggeration or hysterical meanderings. My only object being to present to you a plain, straightforward, and unvarnished narrative of those amazing occurrences, and in what astounding ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... nothing jovial in these responses. Tom Reade knew men well enough to recognize this fact. Moreover, Tom knew the plain, unvarnished, honest and deadly-in-earnest men of these south-western plains well enough to know the ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... may be those who will object that the plain, unvarnished tale of my friend "Hy" Smith, which follows, is lacking in the robust qualities that truth alone can bring; to them I recommend the attitude of the Injun. But I must add this: Heaven forbid that I should have to stand good for any of Hy's stories! Still, some of what I considered ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... had gone well since her departure, and where she found Adam more tractable and reasonable than she had had reason to anticipate. He listened to all Joan's messages, agreed with her suspicions and seemed contented to abide by her decision. The plain, unvarnished statement which Mrs. Tucker gave of the misery and gloom spread over the place affected him visibly, and her account of the two girls, and the alteration she had seen in them, did not tend to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... fellows are those Cossacks who drag the steamer off the sand-banks, and are often entertaining companions. Many of them can relate from their own experience, in plain, unvarnished style, stirring episodes of irregular warfare, and if they happen to be in a communicative mood they may divulge a few secrets regarding their simple, primitive commissariat system. Whether they are confidential or not, the traveller who knows the language will ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Before the Mast"] is a classic because it took no thought of being a classic. It is a plain, unvarnished tale, not loaded up with tedious descriptions. It is all action, a perpetual drama in which the sea, the winds, the seamen, the sails—mainsail, main royal, foresail—play the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... of distinguishing myself in the active service of my country in this way as a soldier, and as a volunteer yeomanry cavalry man too, I must entreat the indulgence and particular attention of the gentle reader, while I give a faithful narrative, an unvarnished tale, of the whole affair. This being the solitary instance in which I was called into the field of battle while I was in the service, I must entreat those who do me the honour to read my Memoirs, to extend their forgiveness to me if I should prove somewhat tedious; but to my fair readers, my ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... draw nearer to her, she touched her horse's flank. Something in the nature of a revelation had come to her during that brief halt by the roadside. For the first time she had caught a glimpse, plain and unvarnished, of the actual man that inhabited the giant's frame, and it had given her an odd, disturbing suspicion that the strength upon which she leaned was in simple fact scarcely ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... truthful, unvarnished account of the real facts. On the evening of the day before Wallingford's murder, I was in the big saloon at Bull's Snug between half-past six and seven o'clock. Mallett came in, evidently in search of somebody. It turned out that I was the person he was looking for. ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... the disinterment of the cod-fish, when he felt himself gently pulled by the skirts of the coat. Looking round, he discovered that the individual who resorted to this mode of catching his attention was no other than Mr. Wardle's favourite page, better known to the readers of this unvarnished history, by the distinguishing ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... personage of high standing in Greece, who was the first to inspect them, and who, seeing his own name and conduct mentioned in no flattering terms, destroyed them in order to hide from England the unvarnished truth told of himself. Count Gamba often speaks of this journal in the letters addressed at this period ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... two sons, had engaged himself in commercial pursuits—as his wife was accustomed to say when she spoke of her husband's labours; or went into trade, and kept a shop, as was more generally asserted by those of the Mackenzie circle who were wont to speak their minds freely. The actual and unvarnished truth in the matter shall now be made known. He, with his partner, made and sold oilcloth, and was possessed of premises in the New Road, over which the names of "Rubb and Mackenzie" were posted in ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... laborers, because they are too few, I ask an indulgent public to allow my deep and abiding sympathies for the oppressed and sorrowing of every nation, class, or color, to plead my excuse for sending forth simple, unvarnished facts and experiences, hoping they may increase an aspiration for the active doing, instead of saying what ought to be done, with excusing self for want of ability, when it is to be found in Him who is saying, "My grace is sufficient for ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... was considered by his friends to be a cynic; and a French cynic is not without cruelty. He once told Wanda that he had seen men and women do much worse than throw their lives away, which was probably the unvarnished truth. But there must have been a weak spot in his cynicism. There always is a weak spot in the vice of the most vicious. For he sat alone in his room at the Hotel de l'Europe, at Warsaw, long into the night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and thinking thoughts which he would at any other juncture ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... couch remote of Eos bright, Or of the sun's mysterious sleep at night? They, in an instant, vanished all; A little chart portrays this earthly ball. Lo, all things are alike; discovery But proves the way for dull vacuity. Farewell to thee, O Fancy, dear, If plain, unvarnished truth appear! Thought more and more is still estranged from thee; Thy power so mighty once, will soon be gone, And our poor, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... "a candle or just a plain, unvarnished light, would 'a' went out. It must have bin ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... man to be hanged, he would have said, and he was hanging him. Nor was it possible to see his lordship, and acquit him of gusto in the task. It was plain he gloried in the exercise of his trained faculties, in the clear sight which pierced at once into the joint of fact, in the rude, unvarnished gibes with which he demolished every figment of defence. He took his ease and jested, unbending in that solemn place with some of the freedom of the tavern; and the rag of man with the flannel round his neck ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Company, and Jack Jones from the stoke hole were surrounded instantly. Some would gladly have escaped observation. Every man among the survivors acted as though it were first necessary to explain how he came to be in a life-boat. Some of the stories smacked of Munchausen. Others were as plain and unvarnished as a pike staff. Those that were most sincere and trustworthy had to be fairly pulled from those who ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... the details I promised you about my first interview with Lord Byron. I give them to you in all their simplicity. I make no attempt at style; but simply tell unvarnished truth; for, with regard to Lord Byron, I consider truth the most important thing,—his name is the greatest ornament of the page whereon it is inscribed. I will also send you, madam, if you desire, my second and third interview with this noble, admirable man, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... because he was, as the title of this volume designates him, a "SEEKER AFTER GOD." Whatever may have been the dark and questionable actions of his life—and in this narrative we shall endeavor to furnish a plain and unvarnished picture of the manner in which he lived,—it is certain that, as a philosopher and as a moralist, he furnishes us with the grandest and most eloquent series of truths to which, unilluminated by Christianity, the thoughts ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... believe what I say," concluded the lecturer, "just come out to New South Wales and see for yourselves if I have not told you the plain, unvarnished truth; and I repeat what I have said before, that although it is no place for the idle rich, for the man or the woman who wants to work it ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... that took place and happened, I will proceed and relate the plain and unvarnished history of it. And what I set down in this epistol, you can depend upon. It is the plain truth, entirely unvarnished: not a mite of varnish will there be ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... vegetables, sometimes fruit, sometimes a big fish, was passed by one priest to another in the sunlight until all the offerings were reverently placed by a special dignitary on one of those unpainted, unvarnished, undecorated but exquisitely proportioned altars which are an artistic glory of Shintoism. The shrine was wholly open on the side of the rice field, and the high priest was in full view as he stood before the altar ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... also writing letters "to the folks back East," and the opinions he expressed about the Bad Lands were plain and unvarnished. ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... he bequeathed his name. The material is all beside me in a pigeon-hole, but I scorn to appear vainglorious. Tonti is dead, and I never saw anyone who even pretended to regret him; and, as for the tontine system, a word will suffice for all the purposes of this unvarnished narrative. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... emblematic of the true man, is both unreasonable and uncharitable. Nor, I think, will that reader grasp the way to see the truth who cannot teach himself what has in Cicero's case, been the effect of daring to tell to his friend an unvarnished tale. When with us some poor thought does make its way across our minds, we do not sit down and write it to another, nor, if we did, would an immortality be awarded to the letter. If one of us were to lose his all—as Cicero lost his all when he was sent into exile—I think it might well be that ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... impulses and large hearts; with boys who delight in playing pranks, and who are ever ready for any sort of mischief; and with boys in whom human nature is strongly engrafted. They are boys, as many of us have been; boys in the true, unvarnished sense of the word; boys with hopes, ideas, and inspirations, but lacking in judgment, self-control, and discipline. And the book contains an appropriate moral, teaches many a lesson, and presents many a precept worthy of being followed. It is ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... Killigrew, but I have no suitable clothes." Which was plain unvarnished truth. "And I do not possess an opera-hat." ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... the dictation of laws; and the laws showed (as they do now) what the real, unvarnished attitude of these fine, exhorting moralists was towards the poor. Poverty was virtually prescribed as a crime. The impoverished were regarded in law as paupers, and so repugnant a term of odium was that of pauper, so humiliating ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... no fairy tale, but the unvarnished truth. The page of the princess listened, and immediately repeated all that ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... is not meant to be sensational, but a plain, unvarnished tale of truth—some parts hard and very sad. It is a narrative of my personal experience, and being in no sense a literary man or making any pretense as a writer, I hope the errors may be overlooked, for it has been to me a difficult story to tell, arousing ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... better engineer than four-fifths of the so-called engineers today, who think what they don't know would not make much of a book. Don't deceive yourself with the idea that what you get out of this will be merely "book learning." What is said in this will be plain, unvarnished, practical facts. It is not the author's intention to use any scientific terms, but plain, everyday field terms. There will be a number of things you will not find in this book, but nothing will be left out that ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... difficulty and danger, is more powerful as a deterrent than any dissuasive. It sounds such an unbiassed appeal to common-sense, as if the reporter said, 'There are the facts; we leave you to draw the conclusions.' An 'unvarnished account of the real state of the case,' in which there is not a single misstatement nor exaggeration, may be utterly false by reason of wrong perspective and omission, and, however true, is sure to act as a shower-bath to courage, if it is unaccompanied ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... consarned gossip takes t' handlin' her name lightly. That girl's put in my care by Billy, an' Billy an' me have stood by each other through many a gale. An' now, Mark Tapkins, I'd like t' hear what ye've got t' say out plain an' unvarnished. I don't want no gibin'. I only got one way o' hearin' an' talkin'." Mark drew back from the calm, lowering face ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... found the plain, unvarnished story of each day's work as much as they cared to send in at night, for the builders were now putting down four and five miles of road every working day. Such road building the world had never seen, and news of it now ran ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... authorities to the Filipinos or to any other authority? Would not any change in the present administration be singularly unwise? Of course, the views and arguments set forth here are extremely unpopular among the politicians of the native ruling class. But then no Filipino likes the plain, unvarnished truth, a fact that should receive full weight in considering any demand or request of native or racial origin, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... flight of the living, not to entomb the dead—of lying in jungles and cypress-swamps while fierce men and baffled hounds were panting for his blood—of vicissitudes and perils more like the wild creations of some fevered dream than the plain and unvarnished reality: nothing of all this came before him to trouble his young hopes or cloud his ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... of sacrifices cheerfully made for the security of the Church. While wondering at her heroism, you love her for her charity, and revere her for her piety. Let Catholics read her life, and they will embalm her in their hearts. Her unvarnished actions are a nobler eulogy than even the unfading wreath flung by a master's hand on the grave of the martyred ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... earnestness after his boy. To me his manner was one of almost reverential courtesy; scarcely durst I ask him how he had left Laurie, but while the question was faltering on my tongue, Spira came out with it in round, unvarnished terms, saying, "Is our good Englishman ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... Florence is feeble and discreditable, but at the same time historically instructive, since it shows to what a point the noblest of the Florentines had fallen. All Pitti's invectives against the Ottimati, bitter as they may be, are justified by the unvarnished narrative we read upon the pages of Varchi and Segni concerning this most vicious, selfish, vain, and brilliant hero of historical romance. Married to Clarice de' Medici, by whom he had a splendid family of handsome and vigorous sons, he was more than the rival of his wife's princely relatives ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... may England long be proud, And ever foster, by good wholesome laws, Those trades which help so mightily her cause! O, may that day be distant that shall bring Neglect of thee, from whom such good doth spring! Hail, peaceful Commerce! still a hearty hail! As I proceed with my unvarnished tale. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... now. Absinthe, erst but a point in the 'personality' he had striven so hard to build up, was solace and necessity now. He no longer called it 'la sorciere glauque.' He had shed away all his French phrases. He had become a plain, unvarnished, Preston man. ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... only tell a plain, unvarnished tale," said Tom, "but it's one that ought to be told, and in this very spot. Perhaps you don't any of you know, that in Dr. Marks' school it's awfully hard to ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... date of February 21, 1900, a thrilling story was told, it being the official and unvarnished account of a disastrous hunting trip taken by five of the post soldiers, the dispassionate routine language but giving it verisimilitude; while the subsequent happenings serve to show what kind of government seems most ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... was that the duke was beginning to show a genuine, sympathetic feeling for that savage. For several reasons: in the first place he liked audacious, pushing fellows, lucky adventurers. Was he not one himself? And then the Nabob amused him; his accent, his unvarnished manners, his flattery, a trifle unblushing and impudent, gave him a respite from the everlasting conventionality of his surroundings, from that scourge of administrative and court ceremonial which he held in horror,—the conventional phrase,—in so great horror that he never finished the period ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... called crude as a work of poetic art. In rhyme and rhythm it is quite regular, and the impression which it leaves upon the mind is that it was the work of an educated man, keenly interested in the unvarnished life of a Yorkshire farm, keenly interested in the vocabulary and idioms of his district, and determined to produce a poem which should bid defiance to all the proprieties ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... unvarnished truth, the General's return was not altogether of a triumphant character. After very narrowly escaping with his life from an outbreak at Travancore, incited by a native minister who owed him a grudge, he had given proof of courage and spirit during some ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... emphatically enunciated, the colour will forsake his cheek, his speech will alter and be broken, and he will feel himself unable to turn it off lightly, as a thing of no impression and validity. In this way the erroneous man, the man nursed in the house of luxury, a stranger to the genuine, unvarnished state of things, stands a ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin |
