"Inexcusably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at her handiwork. The forewoman was right: the sewing on of the spangles was inexcusably bad. What made her so much more clumsy than usual? Was it a growing distaste for her task, or actual physical disability? She felt tired and confused: it was an effort to put her thoughts together. She rose and handed the hat to Miss Kilroy, who ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... actor, don't run away with the piece by over-doing your fun. Never spoil another actor's points by trying to make the audience laugh whilst he is speaking. It is inexcusably bad stage-manners. ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... leave without regret, for Hammer's insistence seemed to him inexcusably vulgar. All men could not be like him, reflected Joe, his hope leaping forward to Judge Maxwell, whom he ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... their independent judgment—whether it was correct or erroneous, in a matter of this kind, and who indignantly refused all attempts to swerve them from their duty as they had undertaken to perform it by solemn oaths." The Chief Justice was also cruelly and inexcusably wronged by imputing corrupt motives to his official action. His integrity and courage had been amply demonstrated through many long years of thorough and severe trial; and yet many of his Republican friends, both in the Senate ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... Codrington, and which called the charges groundless, frivolous, and vexatious. It is generally thought that this sentence might have been spared, though the acquittal was proper; that Codrington behaved very foolishly, and in ever mentioning the round robin after he had forgiven it, very inexcusably; but that, on the other hand, the Admiralty had displayed a spirit of hostility and rancour against him which is very disgusting, and that Blackwood was sent down to the court-martial for the express purpose of bullying and thwarting him. I saw him after the sentence; he ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... give character to the outlines of her clouds, by perpetual angles and right lines. Perhaps once in a month, by diligent watching, we might be able to see a cloud altogether rounded and made up of curves; but the artist who paints nothing but curved clouds must yet be considered thoroughly and inexcusably false. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... exciting combats of outspread individualities. And in the second place it recalled a slight difficulty between Tom and his father. Osmond Orgreave was a most reasonable father, but no father is perfect in reasonableness, and Osmond had quite inexcusably resented that Tom on his marriage should take away all Tom's precious books. Osmond's attitude had been that Tom might in decency have left, at any rate, some of the books. It was not that Osmond ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... that—though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends—an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since, when I favored the reader—inexcusably, and for no earthly reason, that either the indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine—with a description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an Old Manse. And now—because, beyond my deserts, I was happy enough to find a listener or two on the former occasion—I again seize ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... controversy, would have assumed from the tone of this speech that the home government had been grossly wronged by the American colonists, or at least a powerful faction among them, and that their suppression was a matter of national honor as well as necessity. But the speech was inexcusably unjust to the colonists. The charge of design and double-dealing could not be laid against them, for the ground of their grievances had been the same from the outset, and their conduct consistent with single motives; and if independence had ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... to sit down just now, I distinctly saw the shape of your revolver in your hip pocket. You know as well as I do that with your name and the fact that you are only a naturalised Englishman, it is inexcusably foolish to be carrying firearms about ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that—though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends—an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since, when I favoured the reader—inexcusably, and for no earthly reason that either the indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine—with a description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an Old Manse. And now—because, beyond my deserts, I was happy enough to find a listener or ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of a village with its population is a more substantial loss than the unseasonable decease of one of its administrative agents; particularly when it is called to mind that such a decease will presumably follow only on such profligate excesses of naughtiness as are bound to be inexcusably unprofitable to the central authority. It may be left an open question how far a corrective of this nature can hopefully be looked to as applicable, in case of need, under ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Grove contributed little. She practically avoided speaking to Lee Randon; and he was certain that she was, cheaply and inexcusably, offended at him. Then, in moving, her gaze caught his, their eyes held fixed; and, as he looked, the expression he had seen on her face that afternoon in the library, drawn and white with staring black eyes, came upon her. It amazed ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... things that when I come to reflect I almost always go over to your side. . . . My mind is often perplexed, and such thoughts arise in it that I cannot pray, and I become bewildered. The wonder to me is, how all ministers and all Christians can feel themselves so inexcusably sinful, when it seems to me we all come into the world in such a way that it would be miraculous if we did not sin. Mr. Hawes always says in prayer, 'We have nothing to offer in extenuation of any of our sins,' and I always think when he says it, that we have everything ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... expressionless as before. Margot smiled at her radiantly every time that they met, and mentally decided to bequeath to her half her own wardrobe before leaving the Glen. In comparison with such a lot of drudgery, her own life seemed inexcusably idle ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own fault, how much Miss Havisham's, how much my sister's, is now of no moment to me or to any one. The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... refuse to hear another word. I said you were a foolish boy, and it will be inexcusably impolite in you to prove that ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... man must be inexcusably careless or simple," returned the spinster, "to allow a man to steal a ring from his finger. Do you ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... dependable. Sometimes there will be three or four days in a month when I can't get all I need, and if I ever want any extra, I always have to tell him two or three days before. The McGees seem to be able to supply a body at any time with any amount. But no one enjoys having such inexcusably dirty children bring their milk even if they know the milk itself is absolutely clean. Somehow it ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... no longer, and sprang to her feet, in the very midst of a long-winded story about—she had no idea what the duchess was saying to her, but she realized that she had done an inexcusably gauche thing, not only interrupting, but in starting to go before her chaperon made the move. And her discomfiture was increased by a quick sense of the Potensi's derisive criticism. Recovering herself, she exclaimed rapidly: "I am so much interested ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... refined drawing is needed to convey the idea of the picture, no school can furnish drawing more subtile and expressive. The head of the "Light of the World" is worthy in this respect to be placed beside Raphael and Da Vinci; and the "Ophelia" of Hughes, though inexcusably incorrect in the figure, has a refinement of drawing in the face, and especially in the lines of the open, chanting mouth, which no draughtsman of the French school can equal. It is where the idea guides the hand that the Pre-Raphaelites are triumphant; everywhere else they fail. But this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... newsmen were apprising us of a state of society all around us in which the grossest sensuality and intemperance were the rule; and not as now, when the ignorant, the wicked, and the wretched are the inexcusably vicious exceptions—a state of society in which the professional bully was rampant, and when deadly duels were daily fought for the most absurd and disgraceful causes. All this the newsman has ceased to tell us of. This state of society has discontinued in England ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... enjoyments, perhaps I should accuse him only of imprudence; but, when he injures the welfare of his neighbor,—a welfare which he should regard as inviolable, both from charity and on the ground of justice,—I say then that man is wicked, inexcusably wicked. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... yourself to monopolize a conversation. This is a form of selfishness practiced by many persons apparently unaware of being ill-mannered. It is inexcusably bad taste to tell unduly long stories or lengthy personal experiences. If you cannot abridge a story to reasonable dimensions, it would be better to omit it entirely. The habitual long-story teller may easily ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... the sewing and the clear bold type are still as serviceable as ever. The books seem to have been made to last,—to stand a great deal of reading. Contrasted with the aesthetically designed covers one sees nowadays, they would be considered inexcusably ugly, and the least popular novelist of our time would protest against having his lucubrations presented to the public in such plain attire. Nevertheless, on turning to the title-pages, you may see imprinted, on the first, "Fourteenth Edition"; on the second, "Twelfth ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... Judge Harvey. The sting and humiliation of his words she had now cast out of her system; she was really superior to such criticism. There remained only Judge Harvey's offense. Certainly he had been inexcusably outspoken and officious. Her resentment had settled down into a calm, implacable, changeless attitude. She would be polite to him, since they must continue to meet in the future. But she would keep ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... suspicion that Haydn, who was so dear and good a soul that he was commonly called "Papa" by his friends and disciples, was one of the souls that shrivel up inside the house. In any case he can never be forgiven for publishing his domestic miseries as he did. He talked inexcusably to his friends about his wife; he complained everywhere of her extravagances and of her quarrelsomeness. When Griesinger wished to make Haydn's wife a present, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... before her, looking down into her face with a curious intentness. "You really believe that?" he said. "You can't conceive such a thing as this—utterly and inexcusably wrong as I admit it to be—you can't conceive it to have been done ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... severe. During the night she had done a deal of thinking and her indictment spread over the entire male species—even now including Brent. In a hazy sort of way it was borne in on her that if gentlemen were unable to drink and at the same time keep their skins decent, they were becoming inexcusably degraded. In the circumstances, they could have no pretty gardens—ever! Above all, perhaps, was her intuitive knowledge that Brent had tried to harm this girl who, at the bidding of an old negress, came offering ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Such writing is inexcusably untrue. We cannot believe that any human being ever asked a direct question so elaborately lengthy. People do not talk like that. As a contrast, let us notice for a moment the poignant truthfulness of speech in Mr. Rudyard Kipling's story, "Only a Subaltern." A fever-stricken private ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... of county family, you are inexcusably vulgar, Jane. I don't know what I said; but she will never forgive me for profaning her pet book. I shall be expelled as certainly as I am ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... inexcusably rude, as he was to a member of the Russian Embassy who one day called at Hereford Square for a copy of Targum for the Czar, when he told him that his Imperial master could fetch it himself. Again, no one can defend him for affronting the "very distinguished scholar" ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Iron and Steel Company has been quoted to me, which was compelled to close down its steel works and to reduce the number of its iron furnaces in blast from four to two because the promises of support received from Government when the company took over the works proved to be largely and quite inexcusably illusory. For works of this kind cannot be run at present in India unless they can depend upon the hearty support of Government, which, through the Railways and Public Works Department, is the main, and, indeed, the only, consumer ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... more. He could not forgive Chenier for the Republican principles which pervaded his tragedies; and Ducis excited in him; as if instinctively, an involuntary hatred. Ducis, on his part, was not backward in returning the Consul's animosity, and I remember his writing some verses which were inexcusably violent, and overstepped all the bounds of truth. Bonaparte was so singular a composition of good and bad that to describe him as he was under one or other of these aspects would serve for panegyric or satire without any departure from truth. Bonaparte was very fond of Bernardin Saint-Pierre's ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... pause for a moment, dear Helena. I have inexcusably forgotten to speak of my father's personal appearance. It won't take long. I need only notice one interesting feature which, so to speak, lifts his face out of the common. He has an eloquent nose. Persons ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... of your courage, Arthur might have been alive, and safe in England, at this moment. I can't say any more; I daren't say any more; it maddens me when I think of it!" He abruptly changed the subject, and interested Iris by speaking of other and later events. His association with the Invincibles—inexcusably rash and wicked as he himself confessed it to be—had enabled him to penetrate, and for a time to defeat secretly, the murderous designs of the brotherhood. His appearances, first at the farmhouse and afterwards at the ruin in the wood were referable to changes in the plans of the assassins ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... their lives), and nearly all their credit with the public, to this duck-pond delineation. Now it is indeed quite right that they should see much to be loved in the hedge, nor less in the ditch; but it is utterly and inexcusably wrong that they should neglect the nobler scenery which is full of majestic interest, or enchanted by historical association; so that, as things go at present, we have all the commonalty that may be seen whenever we choose, painted properly; but all of lovely and wonderful, which we ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... the revenues but of one half upon pleasure, and they would be withdrawn, could I succeed in establishing the case that exists against him. I was forbidden before to mention this to you; the minister, not inexcusably, submitted you to the probation of unconditional exile. Your grace might depend upon your own forbearance from further conspiracies—forgive the word. I need not say I was permitted to return to Lombardy. I found, on my arrival, that—that your unhappy wife had been to my house, and exhibited ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unpunished." "The wicked shall be driven away in his wickedness." "The wicked shall be turned into hell." What a mercy that we are not receiving our merited punishment at this moment! And why are we not? Because the God whom we have so shamefully and inexcusably resisted and provoked "is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." Opportunity is afforded for repentance. He employs means to bring us to repentance. How good, how loving, God is! ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... point in the ceremony at which the wretched Nutty had broken down absolutely, and not inexcusably, considering the severity of the test. The surface of the frame was black with what appeared at first sight to be a thick, bubbling fluid of some sort, pouring viscously to and fro as if some hidden fire had been lighted beneath it. Only after a closer inspection was it apparent to the ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... a wholesome contempt for Kaiserism in Germany. He tried to express it by an imitation of Kaiserism in Canada. He had a sense of relative omnipotence. He put editors in jail, went over the heads of District commanders, inexcusably humiliated General Lessard in command of the most important military district in Canada, openly browbeat officers in front of their men, played Napoleon on a white charger at the crest of a mound in Valcartier, and trod on the official corns of ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... an inexcusably careless shot. It was under his hand to have turned an even forty on his string. He grounded his cue and stood back from the table. That was the way everything seemed to go; at tennis, at squash, at fencing, at billiards, it was all the same. The moment victory was ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... precisely such a mood one drizzly Wednesday night after having made an inexcusably long call upon her. Nothing whatever had occurred to put him in this agreeable humor, yet he went homeward humming as blithely as a barefoot boy ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... had been, not for purely altruistic motives, the kind patrons of the Bulgars, they had recently—when the Tzar Nicholas and the Tzarina came to the Constanza fetes—made open cause with Bulgaria's opponents. They were also forgetting, rather inexcusably, that the Bulgars were averse to the idea of the Russians securing Constantinople. On the other hand, the old pro-Russian sentiments of the people still survived: the Russian Legation at Sofia received numerous applications ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... official suggestion. This theory is the more plausible because Martin testifies further that he himself drafted the slavery provision which was finally adopted. The third point is that the President inexcusably abandoned his pledges to the Governor and adopted this Cobb-Thompson-Calhoun contrivance, instead of keeping his word and dismissing Calhoun, as honor dictated. This course becomes especially remarkable in view of the fact that the change ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... had not the strength to go on with my diary; like Poprishtchin, I lay, for the most part, on my bed, and talked to Terentyevna. What a woman! Sixty years ago she lost her first betrothed from the plague, she has outlived all her children, she is inexcusably old, drinks tea to her heart's desire, is well fed, and warmly clothed; and what do you suppose she was talking to me about, all day yesterday? I had sent another utterly destitute old woman the collar of an old livery, ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... only from the pen of his enemies. And yet according to their testimony, he, a pagan, manifested far more of the spirit of Christ than did his Christian opponents. In the war which he was then waging, there can be no question whatever that the wrong was inexcusably and outrageously on the side of Don Pedro. We cannot learn that Uracca engaged in any aggressive movements against the Spaniards whatever. He remained content with expelling the merciless intruders from his country. Even the fiendlike barbarism of the Spaniards could not provoke ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... dismiss Mr. Pattison's Essay. In doing so, I will not waste my time and yours by carping at the many errors of detail into which he has (not inexcusably) fallen. These are the accidents,—not the essence of his paper. The root of bitterness with the Author is, clearly enough, the Theory of Religious Belief in the Church of England. His concluding words shew this plainly. The sting of the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... her late, and I should go to bed. But Mary is so unfortunate in everything that happens to her, and her own melancholy talk about herself keeps hanging on my mind so, that I have fears on her account which would not distress me about any one else. It seems inexcusably silly to think such a thing, much more to write it down; but I have a kind of nervous dread ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins |
