"Characterless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could make an Irishman respect an Englishman! He points to some unhappy Kildare, the sole relic of a noble house, whose four uncles were slaughtered in cold blood—that is the only word for this kind of execution, slaughtered—and he, left alone, a boy, grows up characterless and kills an archbishop. Every impetuous, impatient act is dragged before the prejudiced mind. But when Mr. Froude is painting Sir Walter and Spenser, blind no longer, he says: 'I regret—it is very sad to think—that such things ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... attendance. He had rather deep-set blue eyes, which might have been attractive but for a certain keenness in their outlook, which was in a sense indicative of the methods and character of the young man himself; a pale, characterless face, a straggling, sandy moustache, and an earnest, not to say convincing, manner. He was dressed in such garments as the head-clerk of Messrs. Waddington & Forbes, third-rate auctioneers and house agents, might have been ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he selected thirty of his Lieder—those which pleased him most, and consequently pleased the public least. He avoided choosing the most "melodious" of his melodies, but he did choose the most characteristic. (The public always has a horror of anything "characteristic." Characterless things are more likely ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... stream of yellow cars; enjoying in its main thoroughfares the luxury of grass-grown "front gardens," untrodden by the foot of man save as to the path from the gate to the hall door; but blighted by an intolerable monotony of miles and miles of graceless, characterless brick houses, black iron railings, stony pavements, slaty roofs, and respectably ill dressed or disreputably poorly dressed people, quite accustomed to the place, and mostly plodding about somebody else's work, which they ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... it is," was Mrs. Wilkins's quick, surprising reply; surprising because it was so much unlike the rest of her—the characterless coat and skirt, the crumpled hat, the undecided wisp of hair straggling out, "And just the considering of them is worth while in itself—such a change from Hampstead—and sometimes I believe—I really do believe—if one considers ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... mention the pompous, characterless language of King Lear, the same in which all Shakespeare's kings speak, the reader or spectator cannot conceive that a king, however old and stupid he may be, could believe the words of the vicious daughters ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... drunken fellow, named Julian, who was a characterless frequenter of Will's, and Sir Walter Scott has given this account ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... There are in Clavigo no elements of greatness such as appear even through the immaturities of Goetz and Werther. Clavigo himself is so poor a creature as to leave the reader with no other feeling for him than contempt; Marie is characterless; and the other persons in the play have not sufficient scope to become well-defined figures. And the last Act, the only original addition to Beaumarchais' narrative, is in a style of cheap melodrama which, coming from the hand of Goethe, can be regarded only as a weak concession ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... was accepted?" murmured Straws. "Discerning Tortier! Excellent dilettante! Let him henceforth be known as a man of taste!" Here the poet critically examined the bottle. "Nothing vapid, thin or characterless there!" he added, holding it before the blaze in the grate. "Positively I'll dedicate my forthcoming book to him. 'To that worshipful master and patron, the tasteful Tortier!' What did he say, Celestina, when you tendered ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... great deal of tact in conversation; shortcomings of his neighbour never escaped him and, as with most weak characters, he took a mischievous delight in drawing attention to them. It is the revenge taken by characterless people upon those who have a vigorous and spontaneous one. Nevertheless, these outbursts of irony and malignity were not very frequent. He generally appeared a prudent, reserved, melancholy young man, with courteous gentlemanly manners, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... spring and summer especially were they glad. Flanders is not a lovely land, and around the burgh of Rubens it is perhaps least lovely of all. Corn and colza, pasture and plough, succeed each other on the characterless plain in wearying repetition, and save by some gaunt gray tower, with its peal of pathetic bells, or some figure coming athwart the fields, made picturesque by a gleaner's bundle or a woodman's fagot, there ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... Buchanan is a type of artist that every age produces unfailingly: Catulle Mendes is his counterpart in France,—but the pallid Portuguese Jew with his Christ-like face, and his fascinating fervour is more interesting than the spectacled Scotchman. Both began with volumes of excellent but characterless verse, and loud outcries about the dignity of art, and both have—well ... Mr. Robert Buchanan has collaborated with Gus Harris, and written the programme poetry for the Vaudeville Theatre; he has written a novel, the less said ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... heard one man, the man who was so calm and simple, catch his breath. Another man, with a characterless business man's face, was making a great effort to talk of this and that to a young girl sitting next to him, while he watched her with a look of which he was ashamed and which made him blink. And everybody condemned the satyr in terms of ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... parts of life which distinguish her from the other sex, with some subordination to it, but an inferiority which makes her lovely." Thus, her weakness was to be cultivated, rather than her strength; her folly, rather than her wisdom. She was to be a weak, fearful, tearful, characterless, inferior creature, with just sense enough to understand the soft nothings addressed to her by the "superior" sex. She was to be educated as an ornamental appanage of man, rather as an independent intelligence—or as a wife, mother, companion, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... up at him; he was very handsome, and looked so to her, after the broad, blunt, characterless faces of the Walloon peasantry around her. He walked with an easy grace, he was clad in picture-like velvets, he had a beautiful poetic head, and eyes like deep brown waters, and a face like one of Jordaens' or Rembrandt's cavaliers in the galleries where she used to steal in of a Sunday, and ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... do not mean red or flaxen hair, but hair actually resembling burnished gold more than anything else. Its ripples on her brow caught the light like a coronet. This was her one beauty, and it was superb. For the rest, her features were characterless. Her figure was tall and full; not graceful, but sweepingly imposing. At first I noticed nothing about her except the braided ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... in 'Blackwood,' written in 1825 for the express purpose of vindicating his character, admits that his name had been coupled with those of three, four, or more women of rank, whom it speaks of as 'licentious, unprincipled, characterless women.' ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was not a simpleton, or characterless; but if he had been, his prospetts of success would not have been materially damaged by her knowledge of his deficiencies. A union with him was a safe investment, and must be several degrees more supportable than ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... faces side by side in the mirror of his dressing table. His, in spite of the female edging and him being at least eight years younger than me, I think, looked wise, poised, infinitely resourceful with power in reserve, very very real, while mine looked like that of a bewildered and characterless child ghost about to scatter into air—and the edges of my charcoal sweater and skirt, contrasting with his strong colors, didn't ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... differently being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and environment (and Taine and St. Simon): and now I lay the book down once more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte!—And not a pale, characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat. Carlyle teaches no such gospel so the change is in me—in my vision of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Feodor and Dmitri. Feodor, who succeeded his father, was twenty years of age, weak, characterless, though quite amiable. In his early youth his chief pleasure seemed to consist in ringing the bells of Moscow, which led his father, at one time, to say that he was fitter to be the son of a sexton than of a prince. Dmitri was an infant. He was placed, by his father's will, under the tutelage ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... move. She kept her grey eyes upon Oakley Street where the evening mist from the river drew mournful perspectives into view. It was late October. We heard the omnibuses thundering across the bridge. The monotony of that broad, characterless street seemed more than usually depressing. Even in June sunshine it was dead, but with autumn its melancholy soaked into every house between King's Road and the Embankment. It washed thought into the past, instead of inviting it hopefully towards the future. ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... to ventilate, puzzles to propound, remarks to make. A man who has no religion may yet have a great deal to say about religion; and there are people who like far better to hear themselves talking than to listen to any speaker, however wise. No mouth is more voluble than that of a characterless man of feeling. ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... else we must come to socialism, in the shape of Brook Farm communities, or phalansteres a la Fourier, or, worse than either, to mammoth hotels. American tastes incline that way. There we may live in huge gilded pens, as characterless as sheep in the flock, attended upon by waiters, chambermaids, and cooks, who will have a share in the profits, and consequently will be happy to do anything to increase the income of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... her gravely. What a helpless, childish creature she was, with her pretty face, and her baby, and her characterless, frightened way. She was only one of many—poor Liz, ignorant, emotional, weak, easily led, ready to err, unable to bear the consequences of error, not strong enough to be resolutely wicked, not strong enough to be anything ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the unfortunate Rosamond, a most difficult character—nay, a characterless character—for any actress to play! Becket as archbishop and actor, seems to pity her for being so colourless. TENNYSON couldn't do without her, yet he could do very little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... prudence is not to be denied. Any one who believes that any good thing on this earth can be got without those virtues may believe in the philosopher's stone or the fountain of youth. If there were any Utopia its inhabitants would certainly be very insipid and characterless. ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... He felt that the black words which had fallen from his friend's lips—from the lips of Diana Welldon's brother—were the truth. He looked at the plump face, the full amiable eyes, now misty with fright, at the characterless hand nervously feeling the golden moustache, at the well-fed, inert body; and he knew that whatever the trouble or the peril, Dan Welldon could not surmount ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
