"Graceless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... oxen—lowing in their hunger for a meal. They were beef for the army, and never again, I suppose, would it be allowed to them to fill their big maws and chew the patient cud. There, on the brown, ugly, undrained field, within easy sight of the President's house, stood the useless, shapeless, graceless pile of stones. It was as though I were looking on the genius of the city. It was vast, pretentious, bold, boastful with a loud voice, already taller by many heads than other obelisks, but nevertheless ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... he said kindly. 'I ask ye not to tarry in what ye must deem a graceless household;' and he looked sadly across at his two sons, boys in age, but seniors in excess. 'I would we had mair lads like you. I fear me a heavy reckoning ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... handsomely, as he had broken them in London handsomely once before, when, mad with jealousy, he had fled like a thief in the night, burned his boats behind him, and, as he thought, obliterated every trace by which that loved and graceless woman could discover his real name or family holding; and now had come home prepared to do his duty to society and himself. That is, prepared to marry a nice girl of his own kind, keep the estate well in hand, and set an example ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... he gathered that graceless group around him. Kneeling in their midst, he prayed for help to make them see that he wanted to be their friend, that he was acting for their interests, that he knew as well as they did the hankering ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... intellectual luxury, and in the luxuries of a country we find the refinements of the nation. It was not invention but fancy that made Greece great. A novel-reading nation is a progressive nation. At one time the most successful publication in this country was a weekly paper filled with graceless sensationalism, and it was not the pulpit nor the lecture-platform that took hold of the public taste and lifted it above this trash—it was the publication in cheap form of the English classics. And when the mind of the masses had ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... I am vain, And that my trumpeter is dead, I'll drop this graceless, boasting strain, And sing of ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... hopeless to stem the tide upon this occasion. With all her guests on a lovely spring day anxious to attend an entertainment not three miles off, what was there to be said? No possible pretext could be devised for preventing them. Why, oh, why had she persuaded that graceless dragoon to leave Aldershot and share the peace and tranquillity of home? She might have remembered how foreign peace and tranquillity were to Jim's mercurial disposition; and then, Lady Mary reflected ruefully, that flirting Suffolk girl was certain to be present at the sports. In her ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... is out; the land is roused; Where is the coward who sits well housed? Fie on thee, boy, disguised in curls, Behind the stove, 'mong gluttons and girls! A graceless, worthless wight thou must be; No German maid desires thee, No German song inspires thee, No German Rhine-wine fires thee. Forth in the van, Man by man, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... Day-kau-ray. No one could tell her age, but all agreed that she must have seen upwards of a hundred winters. Her eyes dimmed, and almost white with age—her face dark and withered, like a baked apple—her voice tremulous and feeble, except when raised in fury to reprove her graceless grandsons, who were fond of playing her all sorts of mischievous tricks, indicated the very great age ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... chased a woman to death, but were afterward cut to pieces by the enraged neighbors. Hers is but one of the many ghosts that haunt the neutral ground, and the croaking of the birds of ill luck that nest at Raven rock is blended with the cries of her dim figure. Still, graceless as these fellows were, they affected a loyalty to their respective sides, and were usually willing to fight each other when they met, especially for the plunder that was to ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Ross to him; and as he became aware that she was a pleasant-looking lady of middle age, who regarded him with very friendly and truthful eyes, he vowed to himself that he would bring Mr. Ogilvie to task for representing this decent and respectable woman as a graceless and dangerous coquette. No doubt she was the mother of children. At her time of life she was better employed in the nursery or in the kitchen than in flirting with young men; and could he doubt that she was a good house-mistress when he saw with his own eyes how spick ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... graceless-graceful stride of the elephant was eyed, And the capers of the little horse that cantered at his side! How the shambling camels, tame to the plaudits of their fame, With listless eyes came silent, masticating as ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... poor merchant do in such a predicament, when his Sovereign stooped to beg as a favour what his lonely heart yearned to grant? Before he was many minutes older he was clasping his child to his breast; and was even shaking hands with her graceless husband. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... pointed to the aged father of the defendant, leaning in the most approved attitude upon the shoulder of his son. Either this, or the want of evidence, or the eloquence of the pleader, had its due effect. Caelius was triumphantly acquitted; and it is a proof that the young man was not wholly graceless, that he rose afterwards to high public office, and never forgot his obligations to his eloquent counsel, to whom he continued a stanch friend. He must have had good abilities, for he was honoured with frequent letters from Cicero when ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... one of the vilest in all the pack of professors? Yes, says the soul, I do. Says Satan, Dost thou not know that thou hast horribly sinned? Yes, says the soul, I do. Well, saith Satan, now will I come upon thee with my appeals. Art thou not a graceless wretch? Yes. Hast thou an heart to be sorry for this wickedness? No, not as I should. And albeit, saith Satan, thou prayest sometimes, yet is not thy heart possessed with a belief that God will not regard thee? ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the worry, proving him only too likely a graceless jealous middle-age curmudgeon, a senile sentimentalist, thus did he upbraidingly mock himself—were there not signs of Damaris developing into a rather thorough paced coquette? She accepted the homage offered her with avidity, with many small airs and graces—a la Henrietta—of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... pinched the arches of her tender mouth. She took me for a vision, and she lay With her sleep's smile unaltered, as in doubt Whether real life had stolen into her dreams, Or dreaming stretched into her outer life. I was not graceless to a woman's eyes. The girls of Damar paused to see me pass, I walking in my rags, yet beautiful. One maiden said, "He has a prince's air!" I am a prince; the air was all my own. So thought the lily on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... original quarrel. He added an irritating anecdote in order to provoke the poet still further. It described Pope as introduced by Cibber and Lord Warwick to very bad company. The story was one which could only be told by a graceless old representative of the old school of comedy, but it hit its mark. The two Richardsons once found Pope reading one of Cibber's pamphlets. He said, "These things are my diversion;" but they saw his features writhing with anguish, and young Richardson, as they went home, observed ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... disguising our names as too certain to betray our objects, and baiting our invitation with some hints which we had ascertained were likely to prove temptations under his immediate circumstances. He had a graceless young son whom he was most anxious to wean from his dissolute connections, and to steady, by placing him in some office of no great responsibility. Upon this knowledge we framed the terms ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... iniquitous, arrant, corrupt, depraved, sinful, base, demoralized, sinister, licentious, unprincipled, abandoned, graceless, vicious, incorrigible, unscrupulous, miscreant, reprobate, disreputable, rascal, scoundrel, profligate, knavish, naughty, malevolent, malicious, unrighteous, degrading, dissolute, libertine, hardened, wanton; injurious, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... genius is no more rewarded; How wrong a taste prevails among us; How much our ancestors outsung us: Can personate an awkward scorn For those who are not poets born; And all their brother dunces lash, Who crowd the press with hourly trash. O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, Whose graceless children scorn to own thee! Their filial piety forgot, Deny their country, like a Scot; Though by their idiom and grimace, They soon betray their native place: Yet thou hast greater cause to be Ashamed of them, than they of thee, Degenerate from their ancient brood Since first the court allow'd ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... he live to be a beast, To pit some havins in his breast! [put, behavior] An' warn him, what I winna name, [will not] To stay content wi' yowes at hame; [ewes] An' no to rin an' wear his cloots, [hoofs] Like ither menseless graceless brutes. [unmannerly] 'An neist my yowie, silly thing, [next] Gude keep thee frae a tether string! O may thou ne'er forgather up [make friends] Wi' ony blastit moorland tup; But ay keep mind to moop an' mell, [nibble, meddle] ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... that the way ye talk?" said Brother Bart, who had a spirit of his own. "And it's only what I might look for, ye graceless young reprobate! God knows it was sore against my will that I brought ye with me, Dan Dolan; for I knew ye'd be a sore trial first to last. But I had to obey them that are above me. Stay, then, if you will against ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... school-boy and student Melchior had been one of the most gifted and most brilliant, and many a father, whose son took a wicked delight in wanton and graceless escapades, had with secret envy congratulated old Ueberhell on having such an exceptionally talented, industrious and obedient treasure of a son and heir. But later not one of these men would have exchanged ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... shares the royal bed And wears upon her graceless head The good queen's crown without chagrin— ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... glad that he hadn't heard my satirical description of "donation-parties" at Weston, nor the account I gave of our two boys, our salary of five hundred dollars, and the various comical shifts we had to make to live comfortably on that sum and support aged parents and graceless relations. Little touches told Mr. Lewis the whole story. I knew very well that Mr. Remington would be entirely abroad about such a social existence as ours in Weston, travel he ever so long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... they actually were what they ought to be. It is something of a reminder and a rebuke to them: and it is just as well that mankind at large should not know too much of the actual fact as to those above them. I should never object to calling a graceless duke Tour Grace: nor to praying for a villariously bad monarch as our most religious and gracious King (I know quite well, small critic, that religious is an absurd mistranslation: but let us take the liturgy in the sense in which ninety-nine out of every hundred who hear ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... gestures of their dance, and are proper to a Sepulchral rite such as they have been sent to perform by their Queen, terrified as she has been by a dream the night before, a dream signifying how the Dead were wroth with those that slew them. But the Chorus like not this graceless deed of grace: what ransom can be found for the overthrow of the lord of a house? with him Awe has been overthrown, and Fear takes its place, or yet more Success is ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... thine; but now am I overcome, and since I know that I must die, I have now no fear, and this is why I am bold to tell thee this that I have spoken, though I wot now I shall be presently slain. And now I tell thee I repent it, that I have asked grace of a graceless face." ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... what a pleasant time, and what a land of enchantment! Dingy, dilapidated, decrepit as it was, that graceless old Quartier Latin, believe me, was paved with roses and lighted with ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... there a woman laughed at the handsome, graceless fellows; here and there a burgher managed to pull a grin, spite ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... There are tens of thousands in our own heaven-blessed New England, and hundreds of thousands in these United States, who receive no religious instruction whatever at home, and whose parents are connected with no religious denomination. What is to be done? We can neither compel ignorant and graceless fathers and mothers to teach their children the fear of the Lord, nor to send them to any place of worship or Sabbath-school. I ask again, what is to be done? These neglected children are in the midst of us. Our cities swarm with them. They are scattered ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... wondrous world she has seen more Than you, my little brook, and cropped its store Of succulent grass on many a mead and lawn; And strayed to distant uplands in the dawn. And she has had some dark experience Of graceless man's ingratitude; and hence Her ways have not been ways of pleasantness, Nor all her paths of peace. But her distress And grief she has lived past; your giddy round Disturbs her not, for she is learned profound In deep brahminical philosophy. She ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... made the voyage with them was the best possible reason for declining to lay eyes on them for the rest of our natural lives. 'Mamma has such strong prejudices,' Cecily remarked, as she reluctantly gave up the idea; and I waited to see whether the graceless Tottenham would unmurmuringly take down the Bakewells. How strong must be the sentiment that turns a man into a boa-constrictor without a pang of transmigration! But no, this time he was faithful to the principles ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... of that graceless scamp, young Love, who is ashamed of his real pedigree, and swears to this day that he is ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... copies of it, and being taunted by the rivals whom he had thought to overwhelm, he died of chagrin. Even death did not end his misfortunes. The copies of the first edition having been sold by a graceless descendant to a Leipsic bookseller, a second edition was brought out under a new title, and this, too, is now much sought as a precious ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it,—else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... government let fools contest; Whate'er is best administer'd is best: For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight; His can't be wrong whose life is in the right: In faith and hope the world will disagree, But all mankind's concern is charity: All must be false that thwart this one great end; And all of God that bless ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... enables me to plead honourably 'not guilty' to one of the absurd charges of cruelty trumped up against me with respect to my stepson. Let my detractors apologise, if they dare, for the conduct of a graceless ruffian who trips up the heels of his own natural guardian ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... black leather. In truth, face, figure, and all included, he was as harsh and ill-favoured a person as could have been encountered even at that day,—one whose lips would have seemed to taint the blessing to which he might have given utterance; and graceless as Burrell undoubtedly was, there was excuse for the impatience he felt at such ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... London, where I have come, as a good, profligate, graceless bachelor, for a day or two; leaving my wife and babbies at the seaside.... Heavens! if you were but here at this minute! A piece of salmon and a steak are cooking in the kitchen; it's a very wet day, and I have had a fire lighted; the wine sparkles on a side-table; the room looks the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... these terrors of guiltiness. When he casts his eye back upon himself, he wonders where he was and how he came there; and grants that if there were not some witchcraft in sin, he could not have been so sottishly graceless. And now, in the issue, Satan finds (not without indignation and repentance) that he hath done him a good turn in tempting him: for he had never been so good if he had not sinned; he had never fought with such courage, if he had not seen his ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... in. But when it tore off their masks, lo! some were disappointingly commonplace, and others were gipsy quotations trying to conceal the punctuation marks that belonged to them. Memory was much chagrined to have had such a hard chase only to catch this sorry lot of graceless rogues. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... were friends—and why not? Friends! I think you laugh, my lad. Clive it was gave England India, while your father gives—egad, England nothing but the graceless boy who lures him on to speak— "Well, Sir, you and Clive were comrades—" with a tongue thrust in your cheek! Very true: in my eyes, your eyes, all the world's eyes, Clive was man, I was, am and ever shall be—mouse, nay, mouse of all its ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... him that she had been weeping. One forgotten tear hung tremulously on her lashes as though too reluctant to part with her grief. A fierce resentment seized him. He turned to leave the car, determined to drag back the graceless King by the neck ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... modesty, Mr. Landor, in quoting Virgil only to improve him; but your alteration is not an improvement. Dido, having just complained of her lover for putting out to sea under a wintry star, would have uttered but a graceless iteration had she in the same breath added—if Troy yet stood, must even Troy be sought through a wintry sea? Undosum is the right epithet; it paints to the eye the danger of the voyage, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... Along the graceless grass of town They rake the rows of red and brown, Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay, Delicate, neither gold nor grey, Raked long ago ...
— Later Poems • Alice Meynell
... that same graceless youth was in the habit of calling 'The Sentimental.' She was the darkest of the family, and the most beautiful also, where every one was more or less good-looking. She had soft brown hair, dark blue-gray eyes of the tenderest expression, and a beseeching innocent look. She was ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... dauntless thing, seeing that it brought him within wind of the gallows; whereas another of our wild workmen—a man of sense and intelligence—not unfrequently cut short the narratives of the weaker brother, by characterizing his spirited apprentice as a mean, graceless scamp, who, had he got his deservings, would have been hung like a dog. I found that the intelligence which results from a fair school education, sharpened by a subsequent taste for reading, very much heightened in certain ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... says Miss G.B. Rawlings in Coins and How to Know Them, a book rich in information, "was unfavourably received, owing to the omission of 'Dei Gratia' after the Queen's name, and was stigmatised as the godless or graceless florin." The florin, however, so called after a Florentine coin, had come to stay, but since 1851 it has been as godly in inscription as any of the other money in one's pocket. The coin has survived, but hardly the name. One can with an effort call a spade a spade, but ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... coming from the direction of the railway- station, you see it frame with its sharp compass-line the perfect picture, the reach of the Canal on the other side. But the backs of the little shops make from the water a graceless collective hump, and the inside view is the diverting one. The big arch of the bridge—like the arches of all the bridges—is the waterman's friend in wet weather. The gondolas, when it rains, huddle beside the peopled barges, and the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... have even been in these latter days some graceless ones who have asked whether the science of the nineteenth century after an equal interval will be of any more positive value—whether it will not have even less comparative interest than that which appertains to the ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... drag me from my promised resting-place, Hiding hard policy with courtly show. Strange kindness, to love men against their will! Suppose, when thou wert eager in some suit, No grace were granted thee, but all denied, And when thy soul was sated, then the boon Were offered, when such grace were graceless now; —Poor satisfaction then were thine, I ween! Even such a gift thou profferest me to-day, Kind in pretence, but really full of evil. These men shall hear me tell thy wickedness. Thou comest to take me, not unto my home, But to dwell outlawed at your gate, that so Your Thebe may ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... "'Twas a graceless trick—such a handsome girl, too. You ought to see her, Mr. Yeobright, being a young man come from far, and with a little more to show for your ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... "You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you, but you must be eating fire, and I know not what—what have you got there, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... raised Christ from the dead, and is capable of raising us up also. Then you will gradually be taught that all life is of the nature of a sacrament—that all food is to be taken because thereby we have health and strength to manifest forth the grace of God in a too often graceless world—you will be taught lessons which I cannot even suggest; for God knows so much more than any of us what unsearchable riches He has as an inheritance for us. Let us enter upon that inheritance. ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... and I know not what besides. Don't be ashamed of it, Baron!—these holes are honourable to you. Many a shirt of fine linen, ruffled and embroidered, according to the latest fashion, disguises the graceless person of some rascally parvenu—and usurer as well perhaps—who usurps the place of his betters. Several of the great heroes, of immortal fame, had not a shirt to their backs—Ulysses, for example, that wise and valiant ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Graceless Gallant in all thy lust and pride Remember this, that thou shalt one day die, Death shall from thy body thy soul divide— Thou mayst him escape not certainly, To the dead bodies (here) cast down thine eye; Behold ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... had been Sir Christopher Heydon's, who had wrote something of the conjunction of [symbol: Saturn] and [symbol: Jupiter], 1603; out of which, to bring my method in order, I transcribed, in the beginning, five or six lines, and not any more, though that graceless fellow Gadbury wrote the contrary: but, Semel et semper nebulo et mendax. I did formerly write one treatise, in the year 1639, upon the eclipse of the sun, in the eleventh degree of Gemini, May 22, 1639; it consisted of six sheets of paper. But that manuscript I gave unto my most munificent ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... than any other sculpture on the grounds. The most appropriate explanation was that since the figure lacked any visible means of support it probably was meant to represent "California Art." Even the recent alterations have failed to save it from seeming graceless ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... a graceless person, of the world worldly, I feel the utmost interest, I assure you, in what you tell me. I cannot possibly be hard upon your brother. I understand and share the wise consideration with which you regard ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... on both sides, but, in spite of the brilliant advocate who has pleaded Thorn's cause, I cannot but admit that he was decidedly the more to blame. He carried things with a high hand, indeed, treating the partners as he might a graceless lot ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... down, and sat down, and, graceless hussy as she was, laughed as if she was mad. The truth was, that 'vying with Israel' was a byword with us. We were always teasing Sally about her vying with Israel, as she certainly did, while they sung out of the same book, and thought a deal more of each other than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... other, while the Georges reigned—creeping in upon us with such pictures as we painted under the reign of West, and such houses as we built under the reign of Nash, till the English eye required to rest on that which was constrained, dull, and graceless. For the last two score of years it has come to this, that if a man go in handsome attire he is a popinjay and a vain fool; and as it is better to be ugly than to be accounted vain I would not counsel a young friend ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... graceless Mark, But Vivien, into Camelot stealing, lodged Low in the city, and on a festal day When Guinevere was crossing the great hall Cast herself down, knelt to the ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Tom Thornton was a villain, by his own confession. My uncle had declared that he had stained his soul with crime for his son's sake. Whichever was the greater villain, it was clear that the son was the more obdurate, graceless, and unrepentant of the two. I had no patience with him. I had no respect for him, and I certainly had no fear of him. Even policy would not permit me to treat him with a consideration I ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... range again lightened the horizon. In the foreground a lovely lake lay. On the shore of this lake stood a single Indian shack occupied by a half-dozen children and an old woman. They were all wretchedly clothed in graceless rags, and formed a bitter and depressing contrast to the magnificence ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... a grave and formal cat, and, in his way, a personage. He was decorous to a degree, unbended in no confidences with strangers, and hated Mr. Fopling, whom he regarded as either a graceless profligate or a domestic animal of unsettled species who, through no merit and by rank favoritism, had been granted a place in the household superior to his own. At sight of Mr. Fopling, Ajax would bottle-brush his tail, arch his back, and explode into that ejaculation peculiar to cats. Mr. Fopling ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... to unlatch for every graceless unthrift that chooses to pummel at Giles Dauber's wicket, I shall have but sorry ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... graceless scamp, I never could stomach him. I wondered then, as I have since, how he was the brother of such a sister. He could scarce bide his time until Mr. Swain should have a coach and a seat in the country with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... this, Dame Dorothy had no idea of parting with the graceless brute, but continued to pet and pamper him. She was even secretly proud of Nero, because he was the biggest dog in the village, and by far the most terrible. Once she told the neighbours over the palings that he was a great protection to her, especially at night, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the graceless one. "It is precisely that fact that makes me believe there is nothing ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... her spinster heart—they were so gay, so appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The longer Rebecca lived in the brick house the more her Aunt Jane marveled at the child. What made her so different from everybody else. Could it be that her graceless popinjay of a father, Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some strange combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows, the color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways and words, proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Miss Sticktorights disengaged,—great heiress. Her lands run onto Rood. At one time I thought of her for that graceless puppy of mine. But I can manage more easily to make up the match for you. There's a mortgage on the property; old Sticktorights would be very glad to pay it off. I 'll pay it out of the Hazeldean estate, and give up the Right of Way into the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... side, upon a low stool, was seated a fair girl, whose attire was as plain as that of the more aged woman; but that lovely form needed no aids of the toilet to enhance its beauty. The fair brown hair brushed off from the white brow, in the graceless mode of the day, hid nothing of a face which had all the purity of some beautiful Madonna; although the cheek was pale, and the lines of the physiognomy were already more sharpened than is usual at years so young. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... which men pay them off,—"Angelic creatures!" "Poet's theme!" and so on,—stuff that springs from what Diogenes calls the spooney view of women, and only applicable to the young and handsome,—a very small minority. It is sad to see the graceless, the "gone-off," and the downright elderly smirk complacently at a few phrases which are only aimed at them in derision. The others, too, one would think, ought to care little for adulation that fades away with their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... grace at a graceless face.' Mrs. Cameron was shut up with her husband to prevent her troubling any of the Royal Family or nobility with petitions in his favour. On June 8, Cameron was hanged and disembowelled, but NOT while alive, as was the custom. A London letter of June 9 says 'he suffered ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... bedroom, showed her his hoard of gold. He then begged, as his last request, that he should be buried privately, and that neither his son, nor indeed any one, should know that he died rich. Louise was to have everything, and the graceless son nothing. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... credentials showed—was an event of national importance. It was much more than this; it was the beginning of a new order of things in the relations of nations to each other. It is but a little while since any graceless woman who helped a crowned profligate to break the commandments could light a national quarrel with the taper that sealed her billets-doux to his equerries and grooms, and kindle it to a war with the fan that was supposed to hide her blushes. More ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... step to the ministry of the Church, the desire of his heart from the first. At school, his companions respected him heartily, and loved him for his unselfish kindness and sweetness, while a few of the more graceless were inclined to brand him as soft or slow, because he never consented to join in anything blameable, and was not devoted to boyish sports, though at times he would join in them with great vigour, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... clothes-brushes, for, he pertinently asked, how did she manage during her frequent business tours in the country? He gave it as his conviction that Malka merely took the clothes-brush away to afford herself a handle for returning. But then Ephraim Phillips was a graceless young fellow, the death of whose first wife was probably a judgment on his levity, and everybody except his second mother-in-law knew that he had a book of tickets for the Oxbridge Music Hall, and went there on Friday nights. Still, in spite of these facts, experience did show that whenever Milly's ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Mr. William, peace;—silentium, my graceless pupil. Urge the foaming steed, and strike terror into the rapid stag, but meddle not with matters ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... mid clouds of scattered rice, through all the wedding whirl A laughing fellow hurries out a certain graceless girl, Unless my hand have lost its strength, unless my eye be dim, I'll lift the shoe, the contract too, and ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... been like the drawing up of a curtain. Of course I remember you very well, and the Skye terrier to which you refer—a heavy, dull, fatted, graceless creature he grew up to be—was my own particular pet. It may amuse you, perhaps, as much as "The Inn" amused me, if I tell you what made this dog particularly mine. My father was the natural god of all the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... qualification in one who rules the Church of God. How is it possible for him to admit any to the Lord's table, when he is but a judge himself?" How is it possible to excommunicate, when he ought to be excommunicated himself? So, brethren, a graceless elder is a ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... no smiling humor, and yet, in spite of himself, he could almost have smiled at the very consistency of the fellow. It was egotism still: aesthetic disgust at the graceless contour of his conduct, but never a hint of simple sorrow for the pain he had given. Rowland let him go, and for some moments stood watching him. Suddenly Mallet became conscious of a singular and most illogical ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... one of these, angry and threatening, I recognized for that of Rinolfo—Messer Giojoso's graceless son; the other, a fresh young feminine voice, was entirely unknown to me; indeed it was the first girl's voice I could recall having heard in all my eighteen years, and the sound was as pleasantly strange as it ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... thank the Giver of all good that He had blessed her with sons so noble and distinguished, with daughters so lovely and so dutiful, with servants so singularly devoted. In the various garrisons in which the good lady had flourished, what mattered it that her boys were known to be graceless young scamps whom cudgelling could not benefit, or that her gentle daughters squabbled like cats and flew to the neighbors to spread the tales of their wrongs and mamma's injustice? What mattered it that her paragons of servants left her one ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... England, mark you, and there are those who serve and uphold it, who are the true men and the King's own lieges. Such a one am I. Then again, there are those who take such as me and transfer, carry or convey us into a bog or morass. Such a one is this graceless old man with the ax, whom I have seen already this day. There are also those who tear, destroy or scatter the papers of the law, of which this young man is the chief. Therefore, I would rede you, dame, not to rail against us, but to understand that we ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a graceless fool! There used to be a pane of class cut out in one of the south casement windows. Shall we ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... bog-heath has usually only one cluster of flowers to arrange on each branch. Take a spray of ling (Frontispiece), and you will find that the richest piece of Gothic spire-sculpture would be dull and graceless beside the grouping of the floral masses in their various life. But it is difficult to give the accuracy of attention {69} necessary to see their beauty without drawing them; and still more difficult to draw them in any approximation to the truth before they change. This is indeed the fatallest ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Pinchin, his career was not nearly so prosperous, nor his end so happy. You will learn, a little further on, what scurvy tricks Fortune played him, and how at last his poor little brains succumbed to the rough toasting of that graceless jade. I had always thought him Mad, and Mad, indeed, as a March hare he proved to be in ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... is about Miss Edith's marriage; and I ne'er saw a man mair taen down wi' true love in my days,—I might say man or woman, only I mind how ill Miss Edith was when she first gat word that him and you (ye muckle graceless loon) were coming against Tillietudlem wi' the rebels.—But what's the matter wi' ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... years have clinched its knot Too fast for mortal strength to sunder; The lightning bolts of noon are shot; No fear of evening's idle thunder! Too late! too late!—no graceless hand Shall stretch its cords in vain endeavor To rive the close encircling band That made and keeps us ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... mumbled metre, leaden pun, For slipshod rhyme, and lazy word, Have pity on this graceless one— Thy mercy on Thy ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... in the cause of the New Light controversialists, Burns was not unconsciously strengthening his hands for worthier toils: the applause which selfish divines bestowed on his witty, but graceless effusions, could not be enough for one who knew how fleeting the fame was which came from the heat of party disputes; nor was he insensible that songs of a beauty unknown for a century to national poesy, had been unregarded ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... admirably dressed, abundant hair, thickly sprinkled with white threads and adding to her elegant aspect the piquant distinction of a powdered coiffure—no wonder, I say, that she clung desperately to her last infatuation for that graceless young scamp, even to the extent of hatching for him that amazing plot. He was not so far gone in degradation as to make him utterly hopeless for such an attempt. She hoped to keep him straight with that enormous bribe. She was clearly a woman uncommon enough to live without illusions—which, ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... O thou best of the human race, Bring out a book which brought to graceless, grace. Thou showedst righteous road to men astray From right, when darkest wrong had ta'en its place:— Thou with Islam didst light the gloomiest way, Quenching with proof live coals of frowardness: I own for Prophet, my Mohammed's ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... stepping in And doing it as well. If one essay To pick a pocket he is sure to feel (With what disgust I need not say to you) Another hand inserted in the same. You crack a crib at dead of night, and lo! As you explore the dining-room for plate You find, in session there, a graceless band Stuffing their coats with spoons, their skins with wine. And so it goes. Why even undertake To salt a mine and you will find it rich With noble ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... and on the other, Westbourne Grove, two streets further, a blazing array of crowded shops, a stirring traffic of cabs and carriages, and such a spate of spending that a tired student in leaky boots and graceless clothes hurrying home was continually impeded in the whirl of skirts and parcels and sweetly pretty womanliness. No doubt the tired student's own inglorious sensations pointed the moral. But that was only one of a perpetually ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... had thrown down the barrier law had built; and law dared not, or neglected to—erect it again! "Rebecca," like Jack Cade, had pronounced her law—"sic volo, sic jubeo"—and we rode through, by virtue of her most graceless Majesty's absolute edict—cost free. It was really a very singular feeling we experienced on the first of these occasions. I assure thee, my reader; believe me, my pensive public! I never was transported—never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... out a most respectful ear, With snares for woodcocks in his holy leer: It tickles thro' my soul to hear the cock's Sincere encomium on his friend the fox, Sole patron of his liberties and rights! While graceless Reynard listens—till he bites. As when the trumpet sounds, th' o'erloaded state Discharges all her poor and profligate; Crimes of all kinds dishonour'd weapons wield, And prisons pour their filth into the field; Thus nature's refuse, and the dregs of men, Compose the black militia ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice, to their fate. I wonder, for it is hard for me to conceive how men who knew the word [-"I"-] {"I,"} ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... was [once] in a city of the cities of China a man, a tailor and poor, and he had a son by name Alaeddin, who was perverse and graceless from his earliest childhood. When he came to ten years of age, his father would fain have taught him his own craft, for that, because he was poor, he could not spend money upon him to have him taught [another] trade or ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... outweigh the grief of this one day? What clamor drown the hours' myriad tongues, Crying, 'Your son, your son? where is your son, Unnatural mother, timid foolish man?" Then Pheres gravely: "These are graceless words From you our daughter. Life is always life, And death comes soon enough to such as we. We twain are old and weak, have served our time, And made our sacrifices. Let the young Arise now in their turn and save the king." "O gods! look on your creatures! do ye see? And seeing, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... light. 'Let alone for that,' said the King, whose grating voice they heard above all the others; 'very soon we will have a fire.' He sent some of his men to gather brushwood, ling, and dead bracken; meantime he began to beat at the door with his axe, crying like a madman, 'Richard! Richard! Thou graceless wretch, come out of ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... sense, that he spoke with pleasant bonhommie about it. That done, he entered into his acted part, and towered in his conceit considerably above these aristocratic boors, who were speechless and graceless, but tigers ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... civilisation of Italy, and has so long disappeared from those of the younger civilisations of France and England—a paradox. The peasant's gravity, directness, and carelessness—a kind of uncouthness which is neither graceless nor, in any intolerable English sense, vulgar—are to be found in the unceremonious moments of every cisalpine woman, however elect her birth and select her conditions. In Italy the lady is not a creature ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... purple spots at a certain period after death, we would prefer him painted before corruption, and consequently hideousness, had begun. If women will wear gowns ugly in color and form, and will sit or stand in graceless positions, we can readily avoid such subjects, and bestow our careful finish upon more ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... accustomed to our native laisser aller so much as a well-brushed hat and shining boots. When abroad, it is easy to spot a compatriot as soon and as far as you can see one, by his graceless gait, a cross between a lounge and a shuffle. In reading-, or dining- room, he is the only man whose spine does not seem equal to its work, so he flops and straggles until, for the honor of your land, you long to shake him and set ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... anger. From that moment Harold was known as "that preacher's boy," the intention being to convey by significant inflections and a meaning smile that he filled the usual description of a minister's graceless son. ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... the shoemaker, in a doubtful case, would ask his customer whether he would have square-toed or peaked-toed. The distinction between young and old in this fashion was so general, that sometimes a graceless youth, who had been crossed by his father or guardian in some of his unreasonable humors, would speak of him with the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... high tree wherein holy men Hide their home from the harm of their foe And know no peril, neither with poison 450 Nor with treacherous token in time of evil. There God's warrior works him a nest, With doughty deeds dangers avoids, He distributes alms to the stricken and needy, He tells graceless men of the mercy of God, 455 Of the Father's help; he hastens forth, Lessening the perils of this passing life, Its darksome deeds, and does God's will With bravery in his breast. His bidding he seeks In prayer, with pure heart and pliant knee 460 ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... you, I love you with my heart, And grieve, sweet soul, thy fortune is so bad, That thou shouldst match with such a graceless youth. Go to thy father, think not upon him, Whom hell hath marked to ...
— The London Prodigal • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... trees. I was just on the point of turning back to the road when one of our batteries concealed in the place opened fire, and a perfect hell of flame burst out around me. I flopped to earth with graceless precipitancy, and wallowed in mud. "It's all up 3008, you've done it now," I muttered, and wondered vaguely whether I was partly or wholly dead. The sharp smell of cordite filled the air and caused (p. 171) a tickling sensation in my throat that almost choked me. When ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... loved upon your only altar? Would you not feel alone all day, and lonelier still all night, though the whole world pressed upon you, even at your rising and your lying down, to call you beautiful and gifted beyond compare, and a divine being on earth, and in return to beg a benefice for a graceless younger son, or a curacy for a starving cousin of a priest, or the privilege of providing the oil for the lamps in the Vatican? That is my life, if you call it a life! It is all I have, except my love for ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... and wondered aloud what he had done that he should be saddled with such a graceless nephew. It was in vain that Mr. Rushton offered to make good the ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... they minister unto "the heirs of salvation," as they did in the days of old, and as they will do, to the end of time. Were we not assured of this blessed fact in the book of books, reason would assert, that for a thankless, graceless generation alone, earth should not have been formed so divinely fair; but it is heavenly, that the immortal servitors of man may even here find records of the divinity, and themes for undying thanksgiving. Are we indeed visited, watched, and ministered unto, by beatific essences? Oh, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... be a sham," said De Lacy, dismounting. . . "Pasque Dieu! your belt will not be needed. The man is dead: his neck is broken. . . It is a graceless thing to do, yet . . . Here, my man, help me carry the body out into the moonlight yonder . . . now, search it for a letter—for a letter, mark you, ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... Joseph burst out. "Why all this ado? Why did you ever loose that graceless whelp from his ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... his elbows on the table and hid his face in his hands. It was harder, oh, damnably harder, than he had expected! Arguments, expedients, palliations, evasions, all seemed to be slipping away from him: he was left face to face with the mere graceless fact of his inferiority. He lifted his head to ask at random: "You've been here, then, ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... morning and evening, whatever the hurry might be. The Scriptures were read and a psalm was sung, and then the mother or Hamish offered a few words of prayer. They would as soon have thought of going without their morning and evening meals as without worship. It would have been a godless and graceless house, indeed, without that, in the opinion of those who had been accustomed to family worship all ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... be good, forasmuch as the hand that worketh it is defiled with sin; for in a good man, one spiritually good, that is "in his flesh, there dwells no good thing," but consequently that which is bad; how then can the flesh of a carnal, graceless man (and such a one is every Pharisee and self- righteous man in the world), produce, though it joineth itself to the law, to the righteous law of God, that which is good in ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... the strife of tongues, the blustering hate Of frantic Party raving o'er the realm, Sonorous insincerities of debate, And jealous factions snatching at the helm, And Out o'er-bidding In with graceless strife, Selling the State for votes:—O happy fields, I cried, where Herbert, by the world misprized, Found in his day the life That no unrest or disappointment yields, Vergilian ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... know their children? Would they own the graceless town, With never a ranter to worry And never ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... that secretly, in their hearts, the audience had flung themselves into the riot with her, the oldest and staidest of them, as perhaps they had often wanted to do when they heard a jolly tune like that. It was artless, graceless. One only needed to ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... home no note was taken of the change. His mother's thoughts were all concentrated on his scapegrace younger brother. For two years she had rarely spoken to Yan peaceably. There was a hungry place in his heart as he left the house unnoticed each morning and saw his graceless brother kissed and darlinged. At school their positions were reversed. Yan was the principal's pride. He had drawn no more caricatures, and the teacher flattered himself that that beating was what had saved the pale-faced ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... for a nice little stroll," continued the graceless Mr. Green, "and then I s'pose she found it was later than she thought, and she ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... with among Western lads of the same age,—is destined to undergo the strangest of transformations long before becoming a baccalaureus. You may meet with him a few years later, in the uniform of some Higher School, and find it difficult to recognize your former pupil,—now graceless, taciturn, secretive, and inclined to demand as a right what could scarcely, with propriety, be requested as a favour. You may find [432] him patronizing,—possibly something worse. Later on, at the University, he becomes more formally correct, but also more far away,—so ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... he knew their stay would be short, the captain bore these neighborly attentions with mild forbearance. It was guests more graceless than these who ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... of his host. "When I was in the Soudan, travelling through the deserts, I used to pass the white skeletons of camels lying by the side of the track. Do you know the camel's way? He is an unfriendly, graceless beast, but he marches to within an hour of his death. He drops and dies with the load upon his back. It seemed to me, even in those days, the right and enviable way to finish. You can imagine how I must envy them that advantage of ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... has resisted the tendency to represent this principle of Love as the only principle in nature. Unity somehow exercises an evil spell over metaphysicians. It is admitted that in real life it is not well for One to be alone, and I think pure unity is no less barren and graceless in metaphysics. You must have plurality to start with, or trinity, or at least duality, if you wish to get anywhere, even if you wish to get effectively into the bosom of the One, abandoning your separate existence. Freud, like Empedocles, has prudently introduced a prior ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... undeceived as to the cleanliness, and comfort, and beauty of the habitations; and many a house which looked so very picturesque at a distance was found, on a nearer inspection, to be a very dirty domicile. Still the views from them were beautiful. Nature has done everything; it is graceless man who is in fault that all is not in accordance with it. At the corner of one of the streets we saw a number of horses, and mules, and donkeys, standing ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... lived a graceless old infidel named MYERS, who was wont to entangle his simple neighbors in arguments sadly vexing to their orthodoxy. On one occasion he devoted an hour to prove to BULLARD that there was ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... when the old man was surveying his work, his graceless son Maui contemptuously asked him what he was doing there. Ru replied: 'Who told youngsters to talk? Take care of yourself, or I will ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... never meen[82] for me," she says, "Make never meen for me; Seek never grace frae a graceless face, For that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... last, full of years and honour; and I was summoned from school to attend her funeral. My uncle was much affected, for she had been an excellent mother. She might have been so; but I, graceless boy, could not perceive her merits as a grandmother, and showed a great deal of fortitude upon the occasion. I recollect a circumstance attendant upon her funeral which, connected as it was with a subsequent one, has ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat |
