"Unambitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Some that do not appear superficially such; but in which he seems the most deeply instructed; and to which, no doubt, he has so much ow'd that happy Preservation of his Characters, for which he is justly celebrated. Great Genius's, like his, naturally unambitious, are satisfy'd to conceal their Art in these Points. 'Tis the Foible of your worser Poets to make a Parade and Ostentation of that little Science they have; and to throw it out in the most ambitious Colours. And whenever a Writer of this Class shall attempt ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... useful, unambitious life was drawing to a close. Let us describe its last scene in the words of ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... submitted herself to the control of a secular legislature, the members of which were not even bound to profess belief in the Atonement. In the face of such enormities what could Keble do? He was ready to do anything, but he was a simple and an unambitious man, and his wrath would in all probability have consumed itself unappeased within him had he not chanced to come into contact, at the critical moment, with a spirit more excitable and daring ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... effect upon the mind, or that the streets have a helpful one. The men who are formed by the schools, and polished by the society of the capital, may yet in many ways have their powers shortened by the absence of natural scenery; and the mountaineer, neglected, ignorant, and unambitious, may have been taught things by the clouds and streams which he could not have learned in a college, or ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... celerity, would be thought rather a suspicious piece of literary handiwork; and besides the indecent haste, so incompatible with thoroughness, the misrepresentations of Smollet are patent. Goldsmith, as unambitious in research as he was genial in expression, made so agreeable a story, that, with all its imperfection, his sketch still finds readers; while the rarely quoted work of Henry most conveniently enumerates, at the end of each reign, details economical and social which identify ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Washington into a history, where an ancient elbow chair occupied the most prominent place. However, he determined to proceed with his narrative, and speak of the hero when it was needful, but with an unambitious simplicity. ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... head against the carved back of his chair and looked at the other in his kindly, unambitious optimism. He had lost most that the world accounts of worth, but life had dealt gently by him, on the whole, since it had never infringed upon the sensitiveness ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... however, of the simple and unambitious Territorial soldiers, whose life and work are described in these pages, lies more in their spirit than in any actual achievements. All of them came from the industrial North, where the business of life is fiercely competitive, and where each man is wont to seek ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... now shew thee the entire confidence which I place in thee. I have only two sons remaining, who are as yet but infants. It is my design that thou take them home with thee, and educate them as thy own. Train them up in the humble unambitious pursuits of knowledge. By this means shall the line of Caliphs be preserved, and my children succeed after me, without aspiring to my throne whilst I ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... sole, entree, leg of mutton, and apple tart' used to be the unambitious menu of the old-fashioned inn. The entree was terrible, but the fish, meat, and sweet were excellent. I will say nothing of the entrees now; I am not in a position to say anything, for not being of a sanguine temperament, and having ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... FitzGerald was unambitious of University distinctions and was not in the technical sense a reading man, but he passed through his course in a leisurely manner, amusing himself with music and drawing and poetry, and modestly went out in the Poll in January 1830, after a period of suspense ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... spur of necessity to act eventually on the laboring classes. Englishmen, indeed, may well think that at times the good influences of this competitive jostling for employment are overrated and its evil underrated. But this is far from true of the negro race. To their slow and unambitious temperament, influences of this kind are almost unalloyed good, as the great superiority in the population of Barbadoes to that of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... to have been this. Alexander Pope, the elder, was a man of philosophical desires and unambitious character. Quiet and seclusion and innocence of life,—these were what he affected for himself; and that which had been found available for his own happiness, he might reasonably wish for his son. The two hinges upon which his plans may be supposed to have turned, were, first, the political ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... this with alacrity. He seemed delighted to welcome such a visitor, as his life, for several weeks, had been quite isolated. The retirement and agreeable scenery of this inland town harmonized with his feelings; he was unambitious, happy in his domestic relations, and had managed, from time to time, to execute a portrait or dispose of a sketch, and thus subsist in comfort; so that an accidental and temporary visit to this secluded region had unconsciously lengthened into a whole summer's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... it!" insisted her husband, "don't you, Tommy? You know the sort of life you're leading, don't you? You know what a miserable, aimless, selfish, unambitious, pitiable existence an unmarried man leads who lives at his club; ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... heart of the assassin of her lover, or of Marie Antoinette, who by one look from the balcony of her castle quieted a mob, her own scaffold the throne of forgiveness and womanly courage. I speak not of these extraordinary persons, but of those who, unambitious for political power, as ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... her, abruptly, one dreary late afternoon of April when she felt immensely languid and unambitious: "You're going to succeed—unless you marry some dub. But there's one rule for success—mind you, I don't follow it myself, I can't, but it's a grand old hunch: 'If you want to get on, always be ready to occupy the job just ahead of you.' Only—what the devil is ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... old colonial strain, elegant to a fault, and refined to uselessness, of tastes and pursuits that took him out of the ordinary atmosphere; languid more for the want of a spur, than from lack of nerve and ability; and unambitious for want of an object, rather than from want of power to climb, was really smothered by the softness and luxury of his surroundings, rather than reduced by the poverty and feebleness of his nature; had really the elements of manly strength and ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... memoirs of its class. His narrative style is clear and pleasant, if never vivid or impressive. It harmonizes with the complexion of truth, and truth is the first thing we ask from the diarist and observer. Our confidence is won by his direct and unambitious way of telling what he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... learned the accomplishments of the age, as if desiring that he should make some personal effort to recover the victory which was passing into the hands of the Templar and his associates. But, though both stout of heart and strong of person, Athelstane had a disposition too inert and unambitious to make the exertions which Cedric seemed ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Southern groups were the poorer farmers, who lived on the semi-sterile lands which the planters refused to occupy or in the pine barrens of the eastern Carolinas, and the landless class which hung on to the skirts of slavery. Unambitious, ignorant, and improvident, frequently the "ne'er-do-wells" of the old families, ignored by the wealthy and spurned by the slaves, who gave them the name of "poor white trash," their lot was hard, indeed. They ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... would consent to assume the lower characters of the drama. For the first parts there were candidates more than enough; but most of these were greatly too high-spirited to play the fool, except they were permitted to top the part. Then amongst the few unambitious underlings, who could be coaxed or cajoled to undertake subordinate characters, there were so many bad memories, and short memories, and treacherous memories, that at length the plan was resigned ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... better sermon for you to give and for your congregation to hear; it is the better fitted to accomplish the end of all worthy preaching, which, as you know, is not at all to get your hearers to think how clever a man you are. The simple, unambitious instruction into which you have thrown the teachings of your own little experience, and which you give forth from your own heart, will do a hundred times more good than any amount of ingenuity, brilliancy, or even piety, which you may preach at second-hand, with the feeling that somehow ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... my unambitious book will be mostly devoted to impressions gained in Ireland and Scotland and on the Continent in ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... St. Ange! The trees grew, and the scar was healed. The soft, pine-laden breezes touched with heavenly fragrance the dull-faced women, the pathetic children, and the unambitious men. Everything was run down and apparently doomed, until one day the endless chain which encompasses the world, in its turning dropped the Golden Bead of Love into St. Ange! Down deep it sank to the bottom of the crucible. Jude Lauzoon was blinded by it and stung to life; Joyce ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... grass which the herds are cropping, the strain rises. Two or three long, silver notes of peace and rest, ending in some subdued trills and quavers, constitute each separate song. Often you will catch only one or two of the bars, the breeze having blown the minor part away. Such unambitious, quiet, unconscious melody! It is one of the most characteristic sounds in Nature. The grass, the stones, the stubble, the furrow, the quiet herds, and the warm twilight among the hills are all subtilely expressed in this song; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but, in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men's bonds, and mortgages, and title-deeds. All who know me, consider me an eminently safe ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... me ungrateful, meanwhile, to the sweet queen, for thus singling out and distinguishing an obscure and most unambitious individual. No indeed, I am quite penetrated with her partial and most unexpected condescension ; but yet, let me go through, for her sake, my tasks with what cheerfulness I may, the deprivations I must suffer would inevitably keep me from all ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... rich domain, That far beneath him on the plain, Waves its wide harvests and its olive groves; More dear to him his hut, with plantain thatch'd, Where long his unambitious heart attach'd, Finds all ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... prevailing expression of thoughtful, preoccupied aloofness. His crisp dark hair is graying at the temples. EDWARD BIGELOW is a large, handsome man of thirty-nine. His face shows culture and tolerance, a sense of humor, a lazy unambitious contentment. CURTIS is reading an article in some scientific periodical, seated by the table. MARTHA and BIGELOW are sitting nearby, laughing ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... we fancy, in passing a quiet village hidden among its orchards, that this at least must be the abode of peace, and unambitious contentment! But alas! when we enter the cottages, what do we find? there, as everywhere else, distress and need, passion and unsatisfied longing, fear and remorse, pain and misery; and by the side of these, Ah! how few joys! ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... wonder that I look proud of my love. Ah, me! ah, me! would that I knew how to tell you! Give me your love; you shall never repent it. I will make home heaven for you. Men say that I have beauty and talent. Ah, me! I would use every gift I have for you; help you to win high honors that cold, unambitious natures never dream of. Ah, love me; love me, cousin! You will find no one else ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... the latest mischief from the North. Aaron Burr is going West, but with, I warrant you, no thought of the setting sun. The Ancient Iniquity in Washington smiles with thin lips and pronounces that all men and Aaron Burr are unambitious, unselfish, and peace-loving—but none the less, he looks askance at the serpent's windings. The friends of Burr are not the friends of Jefferson. There are Federalists—'tis said they increase in numbers—who ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... gentle, peaceful, unambitious people. They came as the friend, not the hereditary enemy, of the savage. They tendered the calumet—a symbol well understood by every Indian—and were received as allies and brethren. They had no national prejudices to overcome: the copper color of the Indian was not an insuperable ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... leaving was sadder. No exile ever turned towards foreign parts with heavier sorrow. Her diadem was a crown of thorns. Her mother's grief augmented her own. Without her children, Josephine, naturally unambitious, found no consolation in the thought that her son was a Viceroy, her daughter a Queen. Before she left Paris Hortense, in terror before the thought that the Emperor would no longer be near to defend her, told her all her domestic ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... successful man, and there is not one of us, successful or unsuccessful, ambitious or unambitious, whose reflections have not often led him to a conclusion equally dissatisfied. Why should I or anybody pretend that ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... her. He had never asked her to argue with him. He had not condescended so far as that. Had he done so, she thought that she would have brought herself to think as he thought. She would have striven, at any rate, to do so. But she could not become unambitious, tranquil, fond of retirement, and philosophic, without an argument on the matter,—without being allowed even the poor grace of owning herself to be convinced. If a man takes a dog with him from the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... London, here in Charing Cross Road, shabby, careless, unambitious, unmethodical. It was here in the real London that she wished to begin her real life. From the time of her first meeting with him in the book-shop, her deepest imagination had never left Rodd, and she knew all that he had been through. She ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... over Darius, and march to the river Indus, are no part of this history: it is enough to say that he died at Babylon eight years after he had entered Egypt; and his half-brother Philip Arridaeus, a weak-minded, unambitious young man, was declared by the generals assembled at Babylon to be his successor. His royal blood united more voices in the army in his favour than the warlike and statesmanlike character of any one of the rival generals. They were ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... "Mansfield Park" and "Clarissa." Then there were Mrs. Susannah Rawson's tales, Miss Catherine Sedgwick's, and "The Coquette." She had further privately endeavored to read the "Nouvelle Heloise" in French; but this bored her, and—one regrets to say—the unambitious though immoral heroine impressed her as an idiot. As a more up-to-date romance, she had acquired from a corner bookstore a lavishly pictured novel in octavo, entitled "The Ballet Girl's Revenge." She could not sew, nor wash, nor cook, nor keep house or even ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... According to the unambitious belief of the Osages, a people living on the banks of one of the lower tributaries of the Missouri, they are sprung from a snail and a beaver. The Mandans believe their ancestors once lived in a large ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... his studies, "which he took to be his portion in this life," he rose to distinction as a robber of orchards, seems so probable, upon the whole, that I am willing to accept it as a postulate. That he married—that, in fullness of time, he was hanged, or (being a humble, unambitious man) that he was content with deserving it—these little circumstances are so naturally to be looked for, as sown broadcast up and down the great fields of biography, that any one life becomes, in this respect, but the echo of thousands. Chronologic successions ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... exemplary members of the church, and brought up their children with a great deal of care. They were in every respect dissimilar. He was tall, thin, and dark-complexioned; she was almost short, very fair, and portly in appearance. Mr. Meeker was a kind-hearted, generous, unambitious man, who loved his home and his children, and rejoiced when he could see every body happy around him. He was neither close nor calculating. With a full share of natural ability, he did not turn his talents to accumulation, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... seen how unambitious Lord Byron was as a child, and with what facility he allowed his comrades to surpass him in intellectual exercises, reserving for his sole ambition the wish of excelling them in boyish ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... and the pious Addison, to the same fiery purgation. That Italian literature was not crushed by them long ago is, perhaps, the strongest proof of the irrepressible vigor and marvellous vitality of the Italian mind. Not to be on the "Index" would call a blush to the cheek of the most unambitious of authors,—would carry a presumption of worthlessness with it from which even the penny-a-liner would shrink with dismay,—and to the poet and historian would sound like a sentence of perpetual exclusion from all those cherished hopes which irradiate with heavenly light the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... his ancestral grange. His cornfields, his dairy and his cider press, his greyhounds, his fishing rod and his gun, his ale and his tobacco, occupied almost all his thoughts. With his neighbours, in spite of his religion, he was generally on good terms. They knew him to be unambitious and inoffensive. He was almost always of a good old family. He was always a Cavalier. His peculiar notions were not obtruded, and caused no annoyance. He did not, like a Puritan, torment himself and others with scruples about ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... daughter Hector sprung. Fair Alixirrhoe, so fame reports, Daughter of two-horn'd Granicus, brought forth, By stealth, AEsacus 'neath thick Ida's shade. Wall'd cities he detested; and remote From glittering palaces, secluded hills Inhabited, and unambitious plains; And scarce at Troy's assemblies e'er was seen. Yet had he not a clownish heart, nor breast To love impregnable. By chance he saw Cebrenus' daughter, fair Hesperie—oft By him through every ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... London to my rural solitudes, and taste once more, as always, those pure delights of Nature which the Poets celebrate—walks in the unambitious meadows, and the ever-satisfying companionship of vegetables and flowers—I am nevertheless haunted now and then (but tell it not to Shelley's Skylark, nor whisper to Wordsworth's Daffodils, the disconcerting secret)—I am incongruously ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... bridge of the river Axius, shaking out his cloak, he threw all into the river. This excited very bitter resentment among the Macedonians, who felt themselves to be not governed, but insulted. They called to mind what some of them had seen, and others had heard related of King Philip's unambitious and open, accessible manners. One day when an old woman had assailed him several times in the road and importuned him to hear her, after he had told her he had no time, "If so," cried she, "you have no time to be a king." And this reprimand so stung the king that after thinking ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Edward, his doings, his sayings, and his prospects. The only thing that seemed to worry Mr Waller was the problem of how to employ his son's almost superhuman talents to the best advantage. Most of the goals towards which the average man strives struck him as too unambitious for the prodigy. ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... sleep in Grecian bedrooms, and to sit by German hearths. On the other hand, though sensible of the honor attached to being bit by a flea lineally descended from an Athenian flea that in one day may possibly have bit three such men as Pericles, Phidias, and Euripides, many quiet unambitious travellers might choose to dispense with 'glory,' and content themselves with the view of Greek external nature. To these persons we would recommend the plan of carrying amongst their baggage a tent, with portable camp-beds; one of those, as originally ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... confusion and became a regular government. It was also an army devoted to military exercises, but organized with a view to self-defence and not to conquest. It was not quick to move or easily excited; but stolid, cautious, unambitious, procrastinating. For many centuries it retained the same character which was impressed upon it by the hand of the legislator. This singular fabric was partly the result of circumstances, partly the invention of some unknown individual in prehistoric ...
— Laws • Plato
... designated by a Legislative Caucus or meeting of Representatives in the Assembly, simply because no fairer and fuller expression of the party's preference would be tolerated. And if, passing over the mob of Generals and of Politicians by trade, the choice should fall on some modest and unambitious citizen, who has earned a character by quiet probity and his bread by honest labor, I shall hope to see his name at the head of the poll in spite of the unconstitutional overthrow of Universal Suffrage. After this, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... character of this undeniable sobriety there is indeed a positive advantage in a plain girl as a wife. It should never be forgotten that the man who marries a plain girl never need be jealous. He is in the Arcadian and fortunate condition of a lover who has no rivals. A sensible unambitious nature will recognize in this a solid benefit. Plain girls rarely turn into frisky matrons, and this fact renders them peculiarly adapted to be the wives ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... their own doors—nay, should forsake their own kith and kin who are suffering under it—the mother who bore them, the sisters who love them with all a sister's tender and solicitous love, and run off to emancipate the fattest, sleekest, most contented and unambitious race under heaven." ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... departed made their arduous way to the Hall of Judgment [Footnote: "The Nations Around," pp. 49, 50.] Accordingly, we find that the Egyptians made no attempt to extend the limits of their empire in this direction, while the monarchs of the Mesopotamian region seem to have been equally unambitious of conquest beyond the mountain ranges which bounded the valley of the Tigris on the east. Mesopotamia, then, on the east, Egypt on the west, Armenia and Asia Minor on the north, and Arabia on the south, seem, in the view of the contemporaries ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... functions. The picture of this highly developed state, however, is not such as would tempt us to emulation. As a machine it works; as an ideal it lacks any presentation of the thing we call beauty. The apotheosis of intelligence in the concrete example leaves us unambitious in that direction. ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... was lazy, and shiftless, and unambitious: he was content to be assistant editor of the Mail; content to be bullied and belittled by old Rogers; content to go on his own idle, sunny way, playing with his small, chubby son, foraging the woods with a dozen ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... small honour, as Greatness of Soul to great honour; a man may, of course, grasp at honour either more than he should or less; now he that exceeds in his grasping at it is called ambitious, he that falls short unambitious, he that is just as he should be has no proper name: nor in fact have the states, except that the disposition of the ambitious man is called ambition. For this reason those who are in either extreme lay claim to the mean as a debateable land, and we call ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... nothing less, than the work of the greatest song-writer—as surely as Shakespeare is the greatest dramatist—ever born of English race. The apparent or external variety of his versification is, I should suppose, incomparable; but by some happy tact or instinct he was too naturally unambitious to attempt, like Jonson, a flight in the wake of Pindar. He knew what he could not do: a rare and invaluable gift. Born a blackbird or a thrush, he did not take himself (or try) to be ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... the offerings of interested servility, or the effusions of partial zeal; enumerating the virtues of men in whom no virtues can be found, or predicting greatness to those who afterwards pass their days in unambitious indolence, and die leaving no memorial of their existence, but a dedication, in which all their merit is confessedly future, and which time has turned into a ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... only they inherit something of his own wise and tender nature, a deep and lasting joy. I think that if he had married an adoring and sympathetic wife, he might almost have grown exacting—perhaps even selfish, because he is the sort of man that requires to have the best part of him evoked. He is unambitious and in a way indolent; and if everything had been done for him—his wishes anticipated, sympathy lavished upon him—he would have had no region in which to exercise that self-restraint which is now a necessity of the case. We are very liable ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and handsome a dish in a large family, or one where many visitors are received, that it is well worth while to learn the art of boning birds in order to achieve them. Nor, if the amateur cook is satisfied with the unambitious mode of boning hereafter to be described, need the ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... of losing popularity. The truth was that big Tom had so long presided over the daily gatherings that the new occupant of the premises was regarded merely as a sort of friendly representative. Being an amiable and unambitious soul, Ethan in fact regarded himself in the same light, and felt supported and indeed elevated by the fact that he stood in the shoes of a public character so universally popular ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... having all but reached the limits of my appointed space, without apparently having gone one step nearer to the fulfilment of the task on which I set out. I can only ask you to take the will for the deed in the meantime. And after all, if this unambitious actor had only been what I imagined him to be, I could not have produced an apter example. But he had the impertinence to live his life in his own way, and that did not happen to accord with the theories I had been led to form about it. Shall I never be able ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... afternoons. Weak-minded though it was, Professor Valeyon loved to listen to it. It suited him better than the full-toned rush and splash of a heavier water-power; there was about it a human uncertainty and imperfection which brought it nearer to his heart. Moreover, weak and unambitious though it was, the fountain must have been possessed of considerable tenacity of purpose, to say the least, otherwise, doing so little, it would not have been persistent enough to keep on doing ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... both the lyre and flute from the teachings of the best masters, sought the conversation of the learned, but was especially eloquent in speech, and effective, even against the best Athenian opponents. He was modest, unambitious, patriotic, intellectual, contented with poverty, generous, and disinterested. When the Cadmea was taken, he was undistinguished, and his rare merits were only known to Pelopidas and his friends. He was among the first to join the revolutionists, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the poor Irish of the co. Longford and the squires and squirees, that it would not have occurred to me to give a literary form to my impressions about the classes parallel to them in Russia. My brother used, in pointing out the beauties of her unambitious works, to call attention to their extreme simplicity and to the distinction with which she treated the ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... of some enviable and unattainable attribute. Even the friendly pig, who (did but parents permit) should eat of his bread and drink of his cup, and be unto him as a brother, — which among all these unhappy bifurcations, so cheery, so unambitious, so purely contented, so apt to be the guide, philosopher, and friend of boyhood as he? What wonder that at times, when the neophyte in life begins to realise that all these desirable accomplishments have had to be surrendered one by one in the process of developing a Mind, the course ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... yet this little Creature of a Father, ridiculously and unambitious, would spoil this Lady, to make up a simple Citizen's Wife—in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... points in the book of which I think very highly. The style is simple and unambitious—the characters, most of them faithfully drawn from real life, are quite fresh, and the incident, which is also much of it fact, is often ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... the world; and it was concluded That they should part, and take three several ways. Death told them, they should find him in great battles, Or cities plagu'd with plagues: Love gives them counsel To inquire for him 'mongst unambitious shepherds, Where dowries were not talk'd of, and sometimes 'Mongst quiet kindred that had nothing left By their dead parents: 'Stay,' quoth Reputation, 'Do not forsake me; for it is my nature, If once I part from any man I meet, I am never found again.' And so for you: You ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... pick its symbols where its ignorance permitted, Velasquez seemed the first bored celebrant of boredom. I was convinced, from some obscure meditation, that Stevenson's conversational method had joined him to my elders and to the indifferent world, as though it were right for old men, and unambitious men and all women, to be content with charm and humour. It was the prerogative of youth to take sides and when Wilde said: 'Mr. Bernard Shaw has no enemies but is intensely disliked by all his friends,' I knew ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... anaesthetic &c 376; stupefied, chloroformed, drugged, stoned; palsy-stricken. indifferent, lukewarm; careless, mindless, regardless; inattentive &c 458; neglectful &c 460; disregarding. unconcerned, nonchalant, pococurante^, insouciant, sans souci [Fr.]; unambitious &c 866. unaffected, unruffled, unimpressed, uninspired, unexcited, unmoved, unstirred, untouched, unshocked^, unstruck^; unblushing &c (shameless) 885; unanimated; vegetative. callous, thick-skinned, hard-nosed, pachydermatous, impervious; hardened; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... her work and came to sit by the sofa and stroke her boy's head. If the doctors were overworked and spent, so too was he. The hour of trial had not found him wanting. His unambitious, simple spirit, that sought no wider duty than merely to fulfil the moment's call as he best could, met and conquered a stress of work that would have disheartened many a bolder hero. He never thought of it in the light of duty at all. There was nothing heroic or high-minded about ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... wealthy people with cheap and inferior material. The result will be a sham that will deceive no one, and you will soon tire of it, and the sooner the better. Be honest. If you have only cheap material to work with, be satisfied with unambitious undertakings. Let them be in keeping with what you have to work with—simple, unpretentious, and without any attempt in the way of deception. The humblest home can be made attractive by holding fast to the principle ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... a bustler, or a whiner; no dirty children to offend the eye, or squalling ones to wound the ear; with admitted claims to the gratitude, confidence, and affection of her hostess: might not these suffice to make a lowly, unambitious ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... fair prospect of a fruitful alliance of Theosophy with Buddhism. In this island, now the centre of the Buddhist world, I found Madame Blavatsky comparatively unimportant, the great personage being Colonel Olcott. The Buddhists are a mild, speculative, unambitious people, easily overborne by the aggressive missionaries, and were without any leader to defend their rights before Olcott came. He came to their rescue in a case where their procession was attacked by Catholics, while enshrining relics of Buddha,—the Catholics thinking it a mockery of their own ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... the back of the narrow gardens of Milman's-row, which is parallel with, but further from town than Beaufort-row, and affords a grateful shade in the summer time. We resolved to walk quietly round, and then enter the chapel. How strange the changes of the world! The graves of a simple, peace-loving, unambitious people were lying around us, and yet it was the place which Erasmus describes as "Sir Thomas More's estate, purchased at Chelsey," and where "he built him a house, neither mean nor subject to envy, yet magnificent and commodious enough." How dearly he loved this place, and how ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... allowed his mind to be a quiet meeting-place for memories and hopes. So that, naturally enough, since succeeding to the agricultural calling, and up to his present age of thirty-two, he had neither advanced nor receded as a capitalist—a stationary result which did not agitate one of his unambitious, unstrategic nature, since he had all that he desired. The motive of his expedition to-night showed the same absence of anxious regard ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... out in the political world of Greece as a singular anomaly: a politician who never made speeches and never gave interviews: a silent man in a country where every citizen is a born orator: an unambitious man in a country where ambition is an endemic disease. To find a parallel to his position, one must go back to the days when nations, in need of wise guidance, implored reluctant sages to undertake the task of guiding ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... decline to dispute—falling back thankfully upon the blessed stronghold of unambitious story-tellers—namely, that my vocation is to describe what IS—not make fancy-sketches of millennial days, when rectitude shall be the best, because most remunerative policy; when sincerity shall be ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the result, and we are of opinion, that, with the exception of the superabundant cricketing and hunting technicalities before mentioned, the work has been exceedingly well performed. The book is written in an unambitious, straightforward, gentlemanly style, that carries conviction with it; and as we rise from a perusal of it, with occasional stoppings, we feel that the "Times" correspondent has now at least no excuse for harsh judgment of Mr. Smith, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... honor may await you because you possess the qualities that win success. You are brave, firm, and persistent, also enterprising; with these qualities, in this land, any young man can win a success against the great throng of unambitious ...
— A Desperate Chance - The Wizard Tramp's Revelation, A Thrilling Narrative • Old Sleuth (Harlan P. Halsey)
... watch and chain—unambitious to add a charge of larceny to his other troubles, should Fate arrest him before the return of Rochester, he came down the corridor to a landing giving upon a flight of stairs, up which, save for the gradient, a coach and horses might have ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... shared his fate. And cared he for the freedom of the crowd? He raised the humble but to bend the proud. He had hoped quiet in his sullen lair, But Man and Destiny beset him there: 900 Inured to hunters, he was found at bay; And they must kill, they cannot snare the prey. Stern, unambitious, silent, he had been Henceforth a calm spectator of Life's scene; But dragged again upon the arena, stood A leader not unequal to the feud; In voice—mien—gesture—savage nature spoke, And from his eye the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... mildly desired an office, possibly in the Cabinet, he despatched South to get himself elected to Congress, for he must have powerful friends in that body to support the great measures he had in contemplation; and that not unambitious statesman, after a hot fight with Patrick Henry, was obliged to content himself with a seat in the House. Before he went to Virginia he and Hamilton had talked for long and pleasant hours over the Federal leader's future schemes. In ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... gentle wife; Aruns, the younger, to an aspiring and ambitious woman. The character of the two brothers was the very opposite of the wives who had fallen to their lot; for Lucius was proud and haughty, but Aruns unambitious and quiet. The wife of Aruns, enraged at the long life of her father, and fearing that at his death her husband would tamely resign the sovereignty to his elder brother, resolved to murder both her father and husband. Her fiendish spirit put into the heart of Lucius thoughts of crime which ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... which I owe to the encouraging kindness of my readers, that they have not forgotten "Rambles Beyond Railways," and that the continued demand for the book is such as to justify the appearance of the present edition. I have, as I believe, to thank the unambitious purpose with which I originally wrote, for thus keeping me in remembrance. All that my book attempts is frankly to record a series of personal impressions; and, as a necessary consequence—though my title is obsolete, and my pedestrian adventures are old-fashioned—I have a character of my own ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... disposition, and had a clear perception of moral propriety and good conduct. This family, though not in actual possession of excessive affluence and honours, was, nevertheless, in their district, conceded to be a clan of well-to-do standing. As this Chen Shih-yin was of a contented and unambitious frame of mind, and entertained no hankering after any official distinction, but day after day of his life took delight in gazing at flowers, planting bamboos, sipping his wine and conning poetical works, he was in fact, in the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... nor with unhallow'd lays Touch the fair fame of Albion's golden days: The thoughts of gods let Granville's verse recite, And bring the scenes of opening fate to light. My humble Muse, in unambitious strains, Paints the green forests and the flowery plains, Where Peace descending bids her olives spring, And scatters blessings from her dove-like wing. Ev'n I more sweetly pass my careless days, Pleased in the silent shade with ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... to stand on,— We've showed too much o' wut Buregard calls abandon, For all our Thermopperlies (an' it's a marcy We hain't hed no more) hev ben clean vicy-varsy, 160 An' wut Spartans wuz lef' when the battle wuz done Wuz them thet wuz too unambitious ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... consent of their fellow-men. The president of the company thought out within his own mind a beautiful town. He had power with which to build this town, but he did not appeal to nor obtain the consent of the men who were living in it. The most unambitious reform, recognizing the necessity for this consent, makes for slow but sane and strenuous progress, while the most ambitious of social plans and experiments, ignoring this, is ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... mechanical sort there is little need of in the world now, it could be speedily dispensed with at a thousand points were human patience not cheaper than good machinery, but there will still remain ten thousand undistinguished sorts of work for unambitious men.... ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... there is the ambitious farmer and the unambitious farmer; the farmer who rides hard, that is, ostensibly hard, and the farmer who is simply content to know where the hounds are, and to follow them at a distance which shall maintain him in that knowledge. The ambitious farmer ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... sight. The "crossing" of two country roads had probably resulted, at some far-back period, in farmers' building their residences on the four corners, so as to be neighborly. Farm hands or others built little dwellings adjoining—not many of them, though—and some unambitious or misdirected merchant erected a big frame "store" and sold groceries, dry goods and other necessities of life not only to the community at the Crossing but to neighboring farmers. Then someone started the little "hotel," mainly to feed the farmers who came ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... the Parliament divided against itself, but so likewise was the army; and the new Protector had neither the courage nor the ability to put down strife with a strong hand. Richard Cromwell was a man of peaceful disposition, gentle manners and unambitious mind, whom fate had forced into a position for which he was in no way fitted. By one of those strange contradictions which nature sometimes produces, he differed in all things from his father; for not only was he pleasure-loving, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... still under the paternal roof were contrasts. Caroline was a constant invalid, gentle, sincere, unambitious, devoted to her mother, whose death nearly killed her. Amelia affected popularity, and assumed the esprit fort—was fond of meddling in politics, and after the death of her mother, joined the Bedford faction, in opposition ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... example, began to write, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, there was no reason to suppose that the future of Italy was ever to differ very much from its past. Italian civilization had long worn a fixed character, and Italian literature had reflected its traits; it was soft, unambitious, elegant, and trivial. At that time Piedmont had a king whom she loved, but not that free constitution which she has since shared with the whole peninsula. Lombardy had lapsed from Spanish to Austrian despotism; the Republic of Venice still retained ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... hours before the end. The elder Browning had almost completed his eighty-fifth year. To the last he retained what his son described as "his own strange sweetness of soul." It was the close of a useful, unworldly, unambitious life, full of innocent enjoyment and deep affection. The occasion was not one for intemperate grief, but the sense of loss was great. Miss Browning, whose devotion during many years first to her mother, then to her widowed father, had been entire, now became her brother's ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... Lord Semple confused all by false hopes; Charles was much in the hands of Irishmen—Sheridan, Sullivan, O'Brien, and O'Neil; already a "forward," or Prince's party was growing, as opposed to the waiting policy and party of the disheartened and unambitious James. To what extent English Jacobites were pledged is uncertain. There was much discontent with the Hanoverian dynasty in England, but the dread of popery was strong among the middle classes. The butchers were advised that Catholics ate no meat ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Blanchminster's dinner was spoilt for him. He sat distraught, fingering his bread between the courses which he scarcely tasted, and giving answers at random, after pauses, to the Bishop's small-talk. He was wounded. He had lived for years a life as happy as any that can fall to the lot of an indolent, unambitious man, who loves his fellows and takes a delight in their gratitude. St. Hospital exactly suited him. He knew its history. His affection, like an ivy, clung about its old walls and incorporated itself in the very mortar that ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... prayer was granted. The veteran laid by his arms, battered in a thousand conflicts; hung his sword and lance against the wall, and, surrounded by a few friends, gave himself up apparently to the sweets of quiet and unambitious leisure. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... to waste one's evenings and it takes a stout ambition and a firm resolution to separate oneself from a jolly, fun-loving, and congenial family circle, or happy-hearted youthful callers, in order to try to rise above the common herd of unambitious persons who are content to slide along, totally ignorant of everything but the requirements ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... pretty well paid in falling a victim to the eloquence which her obstinacy stirs up. Nor is it altogether certain whether her conduct springs from a pride that will not listen where her fancy is not taken, or from an unambitious modesty that prefers not to "match above her degree." Her "beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on," saves the credit of the fancy-smitten Duke in such an urgency of suit ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Tennessee Valleys and in large parts of Kentucky and Missouri where the Southern staples would not flourish, and in great tracts of the pine barrens where the quality of the soil repelled all but the unambitious. The tobacco and cotton belts remained as the debatable ground in which the two systems might compete on more nearly even terms, though in some cotton districts the planters had always an overwhelming advantage. In the Mississippi ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... supervision of the whole matter here brought together—prefaces, texts, and notes—and the correction of errors on the part of his predecessors, occasioned by a variety of causes. In carrying out even this unambitious programme, there was a fair share of labour and difficulty, and, of course, it has involved the addition of a new crop of notes scattered up and down the series, as well as the occasional displacement of certain illustrative ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... could expect the Commons to give their concurrence to a measure "by which they and their posterities are to be excluded from the Peerage." The commoner who, after this way of putting the matter, assented to the Bill, must either have been an unambitious bachelor, or have been blessed in a singularly unambitious wife. Steele, who, as we have seen, had fought gallantly against the Bill with his pen, now made a very effective speech against it. He showed that the {177} measure would, alter the whole constitutional ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... strong personality of Cosimo and his masterful manipulation of commercial and political affairs, perhaps the unambitious rule of his son Piero was a necessary and healthful corollary. Piero de' Medici maintained the ground his father had made his own, and gave away nothing of the predominance of his family, and he made way, after a brief exercise of authority, for ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... modes of life, is struck with the rude and uncomfortable appearance of every thing about this people,—the rudeness of their habitations, the carelessness of their agriculture, the unsightly coarseness of all their implements and furniture, the unambitious homeliness of all their goods and chattels, except the axe, the rifle, and the horse—these being invariably the best and handsomest which their means enable them to procure. But he is mistaken in supposing them indolent or improvident; ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... of clay underlying the land all around them, and thenceforward maintained themselves from the products of the soil, then, as now, proverbial for its fruitfulness. It descended to their children, most of whom were equally plodding and unambitious with themselves. All continued the old occupation of looking to the soil for subsistence; and so long as the forty acres were kept together, they lived well. But as descendants multiplied, and one generation succeeded to another, so the little farm became subdivided ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... nerve. I should be more inclined to question the desire," Lord Redford said. "For a man in his position he has always seemed to me singularly unambitious. I don't think that the prospect of being Prime Minister would dazzle him in the least. It is part of the genius of the politician too, to know exactly when and how to seize an opportunity. I can imagine him watching it come, examining it through his eyeglass, ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
