"Inoffensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conceded it to be quite exact in a descriptive sense, if its brick and mortar were intended to honor monumentally the tales of the host. His first name, August, was not an adjective of limitation as to time, for the proprietor was A. Stuffer every month and day in the year; and his son Emil, a quiet, inoffensive student of birds, a taxidermist, ornithologist and mechanical engineer, and a graduate of the neighboring Stevens Institute, world-famed for the breadth and thoroughness of its training, was a worthy son in practically applying to birds abundant ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... the families of those who die in the service. This fund is greatly opposed by the miners, from whose wages from 1 to 2 per cent. is deducted for its maintenance. In the absence of a fund of this character, the sick or infirm are abandoned by their companions and left to die. Generally miners are inoffensive when fairly dealt with. They are said to be indolent and dishonest as a rule. The managers of mines receive from 3,000 to 5,000 lire per annum; chief miners from 1,500 to 2,500 lire; surveyors, 700 to 1,000 lire; and weighers ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... water flashing between the stone arches of the bridge. The swarms of peasants and countrymen driving herds of lowing kine and bleating sheep toward the adjacent Forum Boarium seemed unsuspicious and inoffensive. A moment more and all Drusus's tremors and anxieties would have passed as ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... wanted to see it again from any place. To think of me, a decent God-fearing, seafaring man, at my time of life, turning soldier!" It is not in the power of written language to express the peculiar intonation of contempt which the old man laid upon that inoffensive word, "soldier." No one venturing to interrupt him, after staring at his particular aversion for a few moments, he went on more mildly, and in a ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Of this inoffensive but not brilliant prince (who, by the way, was Chancellor of the University of Cambridge) it is related that once at a levee he noticed a naval friend with a much-tanned face. "How do, Admiral? Glad to see you again. It's a long time since you have been at a levee." "Yes, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... dry enough; his manner, his tone, half gentle, half bold, with a curious inoffensive kind of boldness, took from them their dryness and gave them a certain sweet acceptableness that most persons knew who knew Mr. Masters. Diana never dreamed that he was intrusive, even though she recognised the fact that he was about his work. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... mad on rare occasions. It took something genuinely out of the ordinary to turn an inoffensive pink celluloid doll with one of its legs off into an angry Choolie. But when they were mad the family had discovered by painful experience that the only thing to do was to leave ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... Calliope generally began to drink. Finally, about midnight, he was seen going homeward, saluting those whom he met with exaggerated but inoffensive courtesy. Not yet was Calliope's melancholy at the danger point. He would seat himself at the window of the room he occupied over Silvester's tonsorial parlours and there chant lugubrious and tuneless ballads until ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... a great number of inoffensive and harmless people deprived of their possessions, robbed of their property, driven from their homes, and, at length, murdered by various means, only because they would not sacrifice their consciences to the superstitions of others, embrace idolatrous ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... opinion are doing God and their country a service. They never heap the ashes of charitable oblivion upon the coals of prejudice and hate, but continue to replenish it with the most exciting and fiery appeals. The Edgefield paper makes light of this dastardly violence done to aged and inoffensive women by ascribing it as the work of "rash boys." Manly pastime for these brave boys! a crime sir, that in any other State, and done to any other class, would have demanded and met with immediate punishment, perhaps in the Court of Judge ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... Rue Royale and the Boulevard de Waterloo with very considerable success. There were dinners, balls, dejeuners, and picnics in the Bois de Cambre, excursions to Waterloo, and select little parties to Bois-fort,—a charming little resort in the forest whose intense cockneyism became perfectly inoffensive as being in a foreign land, and remote from the invasion of home-bred vulgarity. I mention all these things to show the adjuncts by which I was aided, and the rattle of gayety by which I was, as it were, "accompanied," when I next ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... enough. She was left in unrestrained liberty outside of the little back-parlor, where her Aunt Martha held sway. Out of school-hours, her joy and delight were to join the school-boys in their wildest plays. She climbed fences, raced up and down alley-ways, stormed inoffensive door-yards, chased wandering cats with the best of them. She was a favorite champion among the boys,—placed at difficult points of espionage, whether it were over beast, man, woman, or boy. She was proud of mounting some imaginary rampart, or defending some dangerous position. Sometimes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... somewhat unsettling to her faith in Nevill Tyson. "Isn't it—for a young bride, you know—just a little—a little triste?" And being more than a little afraid of her son-in-law, she waved her hands to give an inoffensive vagueness to her idea. Tyson said he didn't care to spend money on a place like Thorneytoft; he didn't know how long he would stay in it; he never stayed anywhere long; he was a pilgrim and a stranger, a sort of cosmopolitan ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... was, by his natural temper, quick of resentment; but, by his established and habitual practice, he was gentle, modest, and inoffensive. His tenderness appeared in his attention to children and to the poor. To the poor, while he lived in the family of his friend, he allowed the third part of his annual revenue; and for children, he condescended to lay aside the scholar, the philosopher, and ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... can't spare the time from botherin' about interlockin' directors to suppress a few padlockin' aunties. Say, the way that old girl does keep the bars up against an inoffensive party like me is something fierce! I tries to call Vee on the 'phone as soon as I've discovered where she is, and all the satisfaction I get is a message delivered by a French maid that "Miss Hemmingway is otherwise engaged." ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... There Mary could tell her as much as she dared of the events in their little circle, but the lively and sometimes hoydenish little girl was often withheld from confessing a misdemeanor, or even an inoffensive piece of childishness, by sheer admiration for one who to her appeared nobler, greater ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of people being nicknamed from animals is also common and the metaphor is usually pretty obvious. An interesting case is shrew, a libel on a very inoffensive little animal, the shrew-mouse, Anglo-Sax. scr[e]awa. Cooper describes mus araneus as "a kinde of mise called a shrew, which if he go over a beastes backe he shall be lame in the chyne; if he byte it swelleth to the heart and the beast dyeth." This "information" is derived ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... these solitudes? It was difficult to get a satisfactory answer to all my questions, and quite useless to make a tour of inquiry in the village. One must speak the patois of the Caussenard to obtain his confidence, and though the population is inoffensive, even French tourists are advised on no account to adventure themselves in these parts without being accompanied by ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... to the knife thrust for which he had recently tended Dario. Who could be thus relentlessly pursuing that poor and inoffensive young prince? However no one heard the doctor unless it were Benedetta, and she was so full of feverish impatience, so eager to be tranquillised, that she did not listen but burst into fresh entreaties: "Oh! doctor, pray look at him, examine him, tell us that it is nothing. It ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Spencer to shoot the poor animal—but it was honorable in him to make up the farmer's loss, for it doubled the amount of wages he gained; yet to sum up the proceeding, it was wrong—for besides killing an inoffensive animal, it ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... strangers. Among them he found Wilson, an Englishman who had long been here and who was tattooed from head to foot. On first seeing this man Porter was strongly prejudiced against him, but found him extremely useful as an interpreter, and concluded that he was an inoffensive fellow whose only failing was a strong attachment to rum. With Wilson's eagerly offered help, Porter made friends with the people of Tai-o-hae, established a camp on shore, and set about revictualing ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... regarded him with contempt. Whoever he might be he looked upon a Quaker as a mild, inoffensive person, hardly deserving the ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... snakes just the kind of shelter that they like, and the wonder is that naked men, sleeping on the ground in such places, and poking about dark corners, among their stores of fuel and other chattels, meet with so few accidents. It says a great deal for the mild and inoffensive nature of the snake. Still, the total number of deaths by snake-bite reported every year is very large, and looks absolutely appalling if you do not think of dividing it among three hundred millions. Treated in that way it shrivels up at once, and when compared with the results of other ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... was changed to Santiago, and finally to Ave Maria; but the aboriginal designation has never been lost, Cuba being its Indian and only recognized name. The new-comers found the land inhabited by a most peculiar race, hospitable, inoffensive, timid, fond of the dance and the rude music of their own people, yet naturally indolent, from the character of the climate they inhabited. They had some definite idea of God and heaven, and were governed by patriarchs or kings, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... if her maid had given it one comb straight down and then rolled it up in a hurry round one finger. Malice would say carrots. It is called gold. Mr. Forth is in a glass house, and is wrong to cast his sneers at perfectly inoffensive people. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... will the character of a good clergyman always have upon even forward spirits, where he is known to have had an inviolable regard to it himself.—Besides, the good gentleman has, naturally, a genteel and inoffensive vein of raillery, and so was too hard for them at their own weapons. But after dinner, and the servants being withdrawn, Mr. Martin singled me out, as he loves to do, for a subject of encomium, and made some high compliments to my dear Mr. B. upon his choice; and wished (as he often does), ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... "Dungaree Jack"; or from some peculiarity of habit, as shown in "Saleratus Bill," so called from an undue proportion of that chemical in his daily bread; or from some unlucky slip, as exhibited in "The Iron Pirate," a mild, inoffensive man, who earned that baleful title by his unfortunate mispronunciation of the term "iron pyrites." Perhaps this may have been the beginning of a rude heraldry; but I am constrained to think that it was because a man's real ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... languid manner. I scrutinised him curiously. Except for a touch of melancholy in his expression, he was nothing out of the common. He was in the shirt-sleeves and tucked-up apron of his trade, and a pencil was thrust behind his inoffensive ear. Athwart his black waistcoat was a gold chain, from ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... untravelled thought a state of wandering was a conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring; and even a settler, if he came from distant parts, hardly ever ceased to be viewed with a remnant of distrust, which would have prevented any surprise if a long course of inoffensive conduct on his part had ended in the commission of a crime; especially if he had any reputation for knowledge, or showed any skill in handicraft. All cleverness, whether in the rapid use of that difficult instrument the tongue, or in some other art unfamiliar to villagers, was in itself suspicious: ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... friend, I would rather prove myself a gentleman by being learned and humble, valiant and inoffensive, virtuous and communicable, than by any fond ostentation ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... absurdity sufficiently contradicted by the smallness of its mouth. In like manner, the Goat-sucker is a persecuted bird, since, as its name implies, it has been thought to suck the teats of goats and other animals; whereas the form of its bill entirely precludes such an act, and it is an inoffensive bird, living upon insects. The superstition has probably originated from its being often found in warm climates under cattle, capturing the insects that torment them. It is supposed, in some places, that the Shrew-mouse is of so baneful and deleterious a nature that whenever ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... facilities for murdering or maiming the person injured. It is a weapon invented for us by Nature before Colonel Colt ever lived, and it has this advantage, that one is permitted to wear it in the most law-abiding communities as well as amongst miners and backwoodsmen. If inoffensive people were ever to cast it aside, then wicked men would have everything their own way and make life intolerable. Fortunately the evil-doers always have the fear of this intangible six-shooter before them; a wholesome feeling, which restrains ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... general of the crusade, acquired to himself a sovereignty in these provinces: the Count of Toulouse, who protected, or perhaps only tolerated the Albigenses, was stripped of his dominions: and these sectaries themselves, though the most innocent and inoffensive of mankind, were exterminated with all the circumstances of extreme violence and barbarity. Here were therefore both an army and a general, dangerous from their zeal and valour, who might be directed to act against John; and Innocent, after keeping the thunder long suspended, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... Advantage. His Parts were suitable to the rest: He had an Accomplishment fit for a Prince, an Air haughty, but a Carriage affable, easy in Conversation, and very entertaining, liberal and good-natur'd, brave and inoffensive. I have seen him pass the Streets with twelve Footmen, and four Pages; the Pages all in green Velvet Coats lac'd with Gold, and white Velvet Tunicks; the Men in Cloth, richly lac'd with Gold; his Coaches, and all other Officers, suitable to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... several pretty necessaries and fancies, as baskets, sieves, bird-cages, and cupboards, as also stools, beds and couches, no less useful than delightful; and now they live the most innocent and inoffensive creatures that ever were subdued in the world, wanting nothing but wives to ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... lying in the court-yard, he went to the adjoining house, in which Teligny lived. All the inmates were killed, but he escaped by the roof. Twice he fell into the hands of the enemy, and twice he was spared; he perished at last by the sword of a man who knew not his amiable and inoffensive character. His neighbor La Rochefoucault was perhaps more fortunate in his fate. He had hardly fallen asleep when he was disturbed by the noise in the street. He heard shouts and the sound of many footsteps; and scarcely awake and utterly unsuspicious, he went to his bedroom door at the first summons ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... complaisant. Now, it is not uncommon to observe traces of dissatisfaction in the unpopular characters, as if they felt themselves to be treated unjustly by the world. But can these persons reasonably expect to be received with the same favour as men who are at once gentle and inoffensive in their ordinary demeanour, and actively good among their fellow-creatures? Certainly not. Let us see here, too, the complaining party take an unprejudiced view of his relation to society. Let him understand that he only will be loved if he is lovable, and we may hope to see him taking ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... of paternage that's passin'," growled the Cap'n, kicking an inoffensive chair as he came back to his platform. "They talk about him as though he was Lord Gull and ruler of the stars. Jest as though a man that had sailed deep water all his days knowed all the old ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... rules the city. This is what Stendhal meant when, speaking of the "simple and inoffensive" personages in the Vicar of Wakefield, he remarked that "in the sombre Italy, a simple and inoffensive creature would be quickly destroyed." It is not easy to be inoffensive and yet respected in a land of teeth and claws, where a man is reverenced in proportion as he can browbeat his fellows. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... tell," answered Mitchington. "Harker's a quiet old chap who lives in a little house over there—just off that far corner of this Close. Said to be a retired tradesman, from London. Came here a few years ago, to settle down. Inoffensive, pleasant old chap. Potters about the town—puts in his time as such old chaps do—bit of reading at the libraries—bit of gossip here and—there you know the sort. Last man in the world I should have thought would have been mixed up in ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... office of treasurer of the household was bestowed on a son of Nuncomar, named Goordas. Nuncomar's services were wanted, yet he could not safely be trusted with power; and Hastings thought it a master stroke of policy to reward the able and unprincipled parent by promoting the inoffensive child. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... porch, except for the formidable points of a sham portcullis; but there was no denying that it greatly increased the comfort of the house, with its two sets of heavy doors, and the seats on either side. The great hall door had been closed up, plastered over within, and rendered inoffensive. Towards the west there was another modern addition of drawing and dining rooms, and handsome bedchambers above, in Gothic taste, i.e. with pointed arches filled up with glass over the sash- windows. The drawing-room ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Drina, about a hundred old men, inoffensive civilians, were massacred before the eyes of their wives and children. All the women and children were led over on the other side of the bank of the Drina in order to compel the Servians to stop ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... against whom he held no grudge whatsoever. The King was just an egotistic little man who liked notoriety and admiration. He was wont to refer to himself simply as "The Bravest Man," without reference to time or place—just "The Bravest Man." He was accustomed to demonstrate his bravery by shooting inoffensive people whenever the idea seized him. He never killed anybody save quiet and law-abiding fellow citizens who made no resistance, and the method he selected was to shoot them through the head. He seemed to feel that it was essential to his dignity thus to execute at least one human being every ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... red, but a dull orange, variegated with minute specks or spots. This was the mysterious piper, then, heard from May till November through all our woods, sometimes on trees, but usually on or near the ground. It makes more music in the woods in autumn than any bird. It is a pretty, inoffensive creature, walks as awkwardly as a baby, and may often be found beneath stones and old logs in the woods, where, buried in the mould, it passes the winter. (I suspect there is a species of little frog—Pickering's hyla ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... along Piccadilly, the more stately pace of the private carriages crossing the Park. Was it possible that in the world of today—the world of telegraphs and express trains, of the newspaper and the motor car—two inoffensive human beings could be done to death so shamefully and openly as would be the fate of Iris and himself if they fell into the hands of these savages! It was inconceivable, intolerable! ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... lives upon vegetable food such as fruits, roots, and grass. It has a great curiosity and is easily tamed. It is very inoffensive except when violently attacked; then it kicks like a horse. It is said that its kick will break a man's leg. Its flesh is eaten by the natives and is said to look and taste like beef. It can run very fast. It lays from 6 to 12 dark green coloured eggs and its ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... you are now going to make it, the finest prose work of fiction in the language, the finest biographical work in the language, would very probably have been suppressed. But I have stated my case weakly. The books which I have mentioned are singularly inoffensive books, books not touching on any of those questions which drive even wise men beyond the bounds of wisdom. There are books of a very different kind, books which are the rallying points of great political and religious ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... brought it upon them. They were ready for perjury, for they had renounced truth; and the gratification of their malice was probably a far stronger motive than the bribe for the capture of a bishop. The holy prelate was seized on the 6th December, 1679. Even Ormonde wished to have spared him, so inoffensive and peaceful had been his life. He was arraigned at the Dundalk assizes; but although every man on the grand jury was a Protestant, from whom, at least, less partiality might be expected towards ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... particular made a strong impression on his mind. It was a tale of circumstantial evidence, and about how it very nearly hung an innocent man for a murder which he had no thought of committing. It struck Joseph rather forcibly that this victim of circumstantial evidence was as respectable and inoffensive a person as himself, and probably had never any more thought of being in danger from the law. Circumstances had set their trap for him while he was quite unconscious of peril, and he only awoke to find himself in the toils. And from ...
— Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... poor Anna Leopoldowna from that fortress—no one could release her son, the poor little Emperor Ivan, from Schlusselburg! They were rendered perfectly inoffensive; Elizabeth had not killed them, she had only buried them alive, this good ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... immediately tightened his coils around his captive. Brought up in a rigid school of courtesy toward his elders, the Tyro sought some inoffensive means of breaking away; but when the other hooked an arm into his, alleging the roll of the vessel,—though not in the least needing the support,—he all but gave up hope. For an interminable quarter of an hour the marplot jurist ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... endurance seem to be the characteristics of this inoffensive people, so graceful in their rags, so mysterious in their age-old immobility, and so ready to accept with an equal indifference whatever yoke may come. Poor, beautiful people, with muscles that never grow ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... sufferings you will observe that our Lord is called a lamb in the text; that is, He was as defenceless, and as innocent, as a lamb is. Since then Scripture compares Him to this inoffensive and unprotected animal, we may without presumption or irreverence take the image as a means of conveying to our minds those feelings which our Lord's sufferings should excite in us. I mean, consider how very horrible ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... splendor which partly atones for its details. Besides this palace, Dresden possesses in the domical Marienkirche (Fig. 194) avery meritorious example of late design. The proportions are good, and the detail, if not interesting, is at least inoffensive, while the whole is adignified and rational piece of work. At Vienna are a number of palaces of the third period, more interesting for their beautiful grounds and parks than for intrinsic architectural merit. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... Nat, it's going to be a bad day for them, that's all," blustered Red, as he pounded his club against an inoffensive stone. ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... rabbit, or even a bird. All day long he would wander in unfrequented uplands, slinging stones at every object that tempted his eye, and roaring and dancing with delight whenever he hit the mark. He was inoffensive enough and had never been known to deliberately aim at a human being, though more than one shooting party had been considerably alarmed by the crash of Toller's stones among the branches, or by his long-range sniping of the ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... entrance, ready to peck at the monkeys, who often endeavour to destroy and eat the young. It is about the size of a Magpie, but the head large in proportion, to enable it to support its immense bill, which is six inches and one-half in length, but extremely thin. It is a mild inoffensive bird, and easily tamed, but cannot endure the cold of our climate. The feathers of the breast are highly esteemed ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... the inhabitants of Great Paxton, a village of Huntingdonshire, in England, within sixty miles of London, rose in a body, attacked the house of an humble, and, so far as appears, inoffensive and estimable woman, named Ann Izard, suspected of bewitching three young females,—Alice Brown, Fanny Amey, and Mary Fox,—dragged her out of her bed into the fields, pierced her arms and body with pins, and tore her flesh with their nails, until she was covered with blood. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... elder of the two, and general manager. Sophia contented herself with being the echo of her stronger-minded sister, and was very apt to assent to her remarks, either by repeating them, or by saying: "Just so." She was a mild, inoffensive creature, but very charitable and amiable, and so little given to opposition that there was always the greatest harmony between them. They kept a gardener and out-of-door servant of all work, who cultivated the land, sawed and split their ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... an enormous wild boar with long tusks bent backwards; the opossum, a kind of didelphis a little larger than our squirrel; the phalanger, a marsupial which lives in thick, dark forests, where it feeds upon leaves and fruit; and the tarsier, a kind of jerboa, a very harmless, inoffensive little animal with reddish-coloured hair, about the size of a rat, but whose body bears some resemblance to that of an ape. Among the birds, the most remarkable were the parroquets and cockatoos, the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... The bloodhounds vainly quested on the lost trail. Inoffensive ranchers in remote valleys were held up by armed men and compelled to identify themselves. While the remains of Jim Hall were discovered on a dozen mountain-sides by greedy claimants for ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... vicinity. inmediato immediate. inmensidad f. immensity. inmenso immense. inmortal immortal. inmortalidad f. immortality. inmotivado without motive, ungrounded. inmovil motionless. inmovilidad f. immobility. inofensivo inoffensive, innocent. insecto insect. insensato mad, senseless. insigne notable, great. insignia badge, insignia. insoportable insupportable. inspirar to inspire. instante m. instant. instintivo instinctive. instruir to instruct, educate. insultante insulting. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... felt to be an insuperable barrier to love, though it is effective in removing her to a suitable distance for idealization. The poet's worship is so supersensual as to be inoffensive. To confine ourselves to poetic dramas treating historical poets,—Beatrice,[Footnote: G. L. Raymond's and S. K. Wiley's dramas, Dante, and Dante and Beatrice.] Laura, [Footnote: Cale Young Rice, A Night in Avignon.] Vittoria Colonna, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... been able to survive to this day under conditions so unfavourable to its development. It should be mentioned, however, that apart from this characteristic devotion to their wearisome toil, they appear inoffensive and docile; and satisfied with the leavings of those who evidently are the guardians, if not the saviours, of ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... companions, carrying my prisoner, who tried neither to defend itself nor to escape. Lucien examined with curiosity the scales which crossed the back of the armadillo, and its pink transparent skin. I told him that this inoffensive animal, which feeds on insects and roots, belonged to the order Edentata—mammals in which the system ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... Mr. Ryan, once more banging the inoffensive music with his stick. "Scabs! We called out our men and they put in scab carpenters. The carpenters went out and the plumbers have gone out; they've all gone out, and now it's only fair—that—you should go out. Stick together and we'll win; in other words, 'united we stand, ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... caricature is the villain of art, and the popular draughtsman, like the popular actor, should, to remain popular in his work, always play the virtuous hero. If the leading actor must play the villain, he takes care to make up inoffensive and tame. So the villain caricaturist need not be "ugly"—but then he cannot be strong. Nor is it left to an actor—unless he be the star or actor-manager—to remain popular by being tame and pretty in every part. So is the caricaturist, if he is not the star, liable to be cast ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... place, some little perseverance, not to say persistence, of a mildly inoffensive sort, had been unavoidable, it was not with the best relish that the crowd regarded his apparent intrusion; and upon a more attentive survey, perceiving no badge of authority about him, but rather something ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... valour, it is easily restrained by the wholesome dread of the New Police, and a perspective view of a damp station-house, terminating in a police-office and a reprimand. They are still, however, a peculiar class, and not the less pleasant for being inoffensive. Can any one fail to have noticed them in the streets on Sunday? And were there ever such harmless efforts at the grand and magnificent as the young fellows display! We walked down the Strand, a Sunday or two ago, behind a little group; and they furnished food for ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a series of hotels in Western Canada, and is, I should imagine, a most praiseworthy and inoffensive captain of minor industry, but Miss Cresswell is rather interested in him," he laughed. "She found the name occurring in Canadian guide-books and was struck ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... broke it by saying, "Do you remember, Cecelia, how angry you were with Polly Parker because she copied your dress, and how you were going to have yours trimmed with daisies, and changed all that at the last moment? I can see you now, ripping off those inoffensive daisies and flinging them ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... decidedly good as an actor; but as a comic singer (with considerable powers of pathos as well) he is quite first-rate. His chief merit seems to be the earnestness with which he throws himself into the work. The songs (mostly his own writing) were quite inoffensive, and very funny. I am very glad to be able to think that his influence on public taste is towards refinement and purity. I liked best "The Future Mrs. 'Awkins," with its taking tune, and "My Old Dutch," which revealed powers that, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... is dangerous. People think that dreamers do no harm. They are mistaken: dreamers do a great heal of harm. Even apparently inoffensive utopian ideas really exercise a noxious influence. They tend ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... Lieschen the morning cares; and Miss Charlecote came in the forenoon and stayed till night, but slept at home, whither Maria was kindly invited; but Phoebe did not like to send her away without herself or Lieschen, and Robert undertook for her being inoffensive to Mervyn. In fact, she was obliging and unobtrusive, only speaking when addressed, and a willing messenger. Mervyn first forgot her presence, then tolerated her saucer eyes, then found her capable of running his errands, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... case. The prefect of the palace was ordered to give authentic information concerning Edelsheim's moral and political character. He applied to the police commissary, who, within twenty hours, signed a declaration affirming that Edelsheim was the most inoffensive and least dangerous of all imbecile creatures that ever entered the Cabinet of a Prince; that he had never drawn a sword, worn a dagger, or fired a pistol in his life; that the inquiries about his real character were sneered at in every part of the Electorate, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... little the party resumed its former tranquillity. Other guests had come in, among them a lame old Spaniard of mild and inoffensive aspect leaning on the arm of an elderly Filipina, who was resplendent in frizzes and paint and a European gown. The group welcomed them heartily, and Doctor De Espadana and his senora, the Doctora Dona Victorina, took their seats among our acquaintances. Some newspaper reporters and shopkeepers ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... yet another reason, which you will understand from what I am about to say. Before the war broke out, the Indians of this country, those very men who suddenly became so bloodthirsty and so formidable, were a quiet and inoffensive race, badly treated for the most part by the whites, and passively submitting to ill treatment without any appearance of feeling or spirit. When they at length resolved upon war, they concealed their families in the islands of the Everglades, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... only knows where, and had set himself up in business as a marine-store dealer, in a back street which ran down to the shore of the Tweed. He was a little red-haired, pale-eyed rat of a man, with ferrety eyes and a goatee beard, quiet and peaceable in his ways and inoffensive enough, but a rare hand at gossiping about the beach and the walls—you might find him at all odd hours either in these public places or in the door of his shop, talking away with any idler like himself. And how I came to get into talk with him ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... thus able to obtain, not only the attenuation of the virulence, but also its complete suppression by a simple method of cultivation. Moreover, we see also the possibility of preserving and cultivating the terrible microbe in an inoffensive state. What is it that happens in these eight days at 43 degrees that suffices to take away the virulence of the bacteria? Let us remember that the microbe of chicken cholera dies in contact with the air, in a period somewhat protracted, it is true, but after successive attenuations. Are ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... (p. 24,25 [p. 20 ed. 1684]), 'Since God has prescribed an inoffensive life, as that which only can give acceptance with him; and on the contrary hath determined never to justify the wicked, &c.—Will not the abomination appear greatest of all, where God shall be found condemning the just, on purpose ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of these occasions, the bully became unbearable in his behavior. He knocked down several weak and inoffensive persons, and swaggered back and forth through camp, boasting that he could trounce any one there. In the midst of his bluster, Carson walked up in front of him and said in a voice loud enough to ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... always lead. The life, the society, the formalities, the conventional observances are all part of our lives, and make for our happiness and self-respect; but they mean absolutely nothing to you. And you propose to invade our respectable and inoffensive seclusion with a conspicuous wife who has been a notorious professional model; and you demand of your family that they receive her as one of them! Louis, I ask you, is this fair ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... encountering the most popular prejudice of our time. It is not considered enough that law should be just, it must be philanthropic. It is not sufficient that it should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive exercise of his faculties, applied to his physical, intellectual, and moral development; it is required to extend well-being, instruction, and morality, directly over the nation. This is ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... who had committed murder, or manslaughter, and who, from their age and infirmities had missed being sent to Western Australia. I knew upwards of twenty of them, and generally speaking, they were quiet, inoffensive men, with no inclination to steal or to do wrong. Several of them had very hot tempers, all of them, indeed, who committed their crimes under the influence of anger; others I sympathized with a ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... countless generations before America was discovered. Indeed the true denizen of the Amazonian forests, like the forest itself, is unique and not to be forgotten." Elsewhere (3) Wallace speaks of the quiet, good-natured, inoffensive character of these copper-colored peoples, and of their quickness of hand and skill, and continues: "their figures are generally superb; and I have never felt so much pleasure in gazing at the finest statue as at these living illustrations of the beauty of ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... of the carefully selected little parties the Astors invited Eden. In the small drawing room banked with flowers the idea was broached about sending an emissary to talk the matter over with Hitler—some genial, inoffensive person like Lord Halifax (huge land interests) for instance. Eden understood why the Times had suddenly raised the issue of the lost German colonies to an extent greater even than Hitler himself, ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... Montalto. He was now upon the high way to the Papacy, amassing money by incessant care, studying the humours of surrounding factions, effacing his own personality, and by mixing but little in the intrigues of the court, winning the reputation of a prudent, inoffensive old man. These were his tactics for securing the Papal throne; nor were his expectations frustrated; for in 1585 he was chosen Pope, the parties of the Medici and the Farnesi agreeing to accept him as a compromise. When Sixtus V. was once firmly seated on S. Peter's chair, he showed himself ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... absurd, I suppose, but allow me to say I don't care!" Pickering spoke with an air of genial defiance which was the most inoffensive thing in the world. "I was very much moved; I was, in fact, very much excited. I tried to say something, but I couldn't; I had had plenty to say before, but now I stammered and bungled, and at last I bolted out of ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... out of the door, while the duke began pacing up and down the room, muttering and growling, and balling his fists, and jingling his shining medals. He kicked over an inoffensive hassock and his favorite hound, and I don't know how many long-winded German oaths he let go. (It's a mighty hard language to swear in, especially when ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... right sorry to see Mr. West go, for he was a right good teacher, and as harmless, inoffensive a creetur as ever lived. But I always told him every time I laid eyes on him that he was in consumption, if ever a man was. YOU look real healthy—though you can't aways tell by looks, either. I had a brother complected like you, but he was killed in a railroad accident ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... be understood, tossed off in the frenzied instantaneity of the American mode; before a tiny glassful of Curacao or sugar and water, the Gallic "knight of the round table" will sit for hours in utter content, reading the papers, talking, smoking, or clicking the inoffensive domino. Intoxication is almost unknown in the better cafes; their patrons may sear their oesophagi with hot Chartreuse, derange the nerves with Absinthe, stimulate themselves hourly with their little cups of black coffee and brandy; but ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... of stone which is not the least among the self-made impediments is the microscopic faculty which most of us possess for increasing small, inoffensive pebbles to good-sized rocks. A quiet insistence on seeing these pebbles in their natural size would reduce them shortly to a pile of sand which might be easily smoothed to a level, and add to the comfort of the path. Moods are stones which not only may be stepped over, but kicked right out ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... hot, painful swelling, which rapidly advances to the formation of matter (pus), and the raw, exposed surface, at first bright red, becomes dark red or black, soft, friable, and pultaceous. If the pus is white, creamy, and comparatively inoffensive in odor, the secondary formations in internal organs and joints are mainly of the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... departure of Mr. Bauer through the Athenaeum, in which an excellent notice of him appeared. He certainly was a man to whom I looked up with constant admiration: he was incomparable in several respects, and I am happy to find, that his death was so characteristic of his most inoffensive and meritorious life. It is also very pleasing to me to find that he continued to think well of me. How I should have been able to delight him had he ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... not a Cavalier," said Adrian, "and that's why you wonder your aunt selected him, no doubt? He's decidedly of the Roundhead type, with the Puritan extracted, or inoffensive, if latent." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... considering this a most serious charge of unprovoked attack upon an industrious individual, ordered the parties to find bail, in default of fully satisfying the inoffensive dealer in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... nice-enough, inoffensive young gentleman, now rapidly approaching my twenty-sixth year. It is unnecessary to state that I am unmarried. I should have been wedded a great many times, had not some fresh attack of my malady invariably, and in some ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... principle. Whatever tends to vitiate our literary taste, our morals, our religious or political principles, may be fairly at the mercy of criticism. So, whatever tends to introduce false science, false history, indeed, falsehood in any shape, exposes itself to the censor's rod. But harmless, inoffensive works should be passed by. Where is the bravery of treading on a worm or crushing a poor fly? Where the utility? ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... Helene Proces, had made complaint of on account of the indecent treatment to which she had been subjected, they burned the village and made a systematic massacre of the inhabitants. They began by setting fire to the house of an inoffensive householder, M. Jules Gand, and by shooting this unfortunate man as he was leaving his house to escape the flames. Then they dispersed among the houses in the streets, firing off their rifles on every side. A young man, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... season, will on provocation attack a man, and it is surprising how quickly the former covers the ground. But on the whole he is an inoffensive animal. It is, of course, impossible to venture into a rookery, as the cows are very savage when they have the pups with them, but one can approach within a few yards of its outskirts without danger. Their food consists of cuttlefish, crabs and fish, and it is probable that ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... you know perfectly well that their only chance to be happy is to be bad as anything and sneak off to go swimming in the East River. But it kept me from being very much afraid of the Bowery (we went down on the surface cars), but Olive was scared beautifully. There was the dearest, most inoffensive old man in the most perfect state of intoxication sitting next to us in the car, and when Olive moved away from him he winked over at me and said, 'Honor your shruples, ma'am, ver' good form.' I think Olive thought he was going to murder us—she was sure he was ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... think so too," said Joe, who had at length returned to gaze at the captive, when he ascertained that he was entirely meek and inoffensive. ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... have any part in the development of the head voice? This inoffensive thing is still the subject of a considerable amount of more of less inflammatory debate both as to what it is and what it does. Without delay let me assure every one that it is perfectly harmless. There is no other one thing involved in singing, immediate or remote, from which the element of ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... bad influence could come of such an inoffensive old man! Truth, I know and feel, is powerfully painful when brought home to the doors of our best people,—it cuts deep when told in broad letters; but they make the matter worse by attempting to enshrine the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... find food on their road. The heat as of a furnace arises above and around; an acrid smoke veils everything, and the frightened animals flee before the scourge. Travellers who have witnessed these magnificent scenes often insist on the panics thus produced, and describe the inoffensive lion fleeing in the midst of a herd of gazelles. All are seized by the same fear, because all are exposed to the same danger. But birds, whose wings can carry them at will afar from the furnace, preserve greater presence of mind, and profit by the public ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... been partially insane—these are charitable suppositions; but at all events, he had the impertinence to address Mrs. Tubbs in a low tone, audible only to herself. He muttered some compliment to her appearance—talked a little nonsense—inoffensive in itself, but intolerable as coming from a stranger. Mrs. Tubbs made no reply, but she was glad to spring from the conveyance when the driver pulled up at the Norfolk House. To her great joy she espied the faithful Tubbs, attired ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... and are relieved from the fear of having the accuracy of our conclusions doubted. The Quaker character has been made up from the acknowledgments of others. It has been shewn that they are a moral people; that they are sober, and inoffensive, and quiet; that they are benevolent to man in his religious and temporal capacity; that they are kind or tender-hearted to animals; that they do not make sacrifices of their consciences to others; that in political ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Brinsmade. "He has always seemed inoffensive, and I believe he is a prominent member of one of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... wrote "A Dissertation on the Growth of Wine in England", Bath, 8vo. 1786. Mr. Vispre died poor, between thirty and forty years ago, in St. Martin's Lane. He excelled in painting portraits in crayons: Sir Joshua much esteemed him. He was a most inoffensive man, of the mildest manners, and of the purest integrity. I have seen his portrait in crayons, in an oval, finely finished by himself, but know not now where that is. On his mode of training the vine very near the ground, see p. 757 of the ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... were tipplers, and gamblers, and profane swearers, in abundance; and Uncle Nathan felt, at the bottom of his philanthropic heart, a desire to lead them from their sins. Not that he was officious and meddlesome, for he believed in "a time for everything." In his modest, inoffensive way, no doubt, he sowed the seeds of future reformation in some ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... had turned on the lights, he had been subjectively busy trying to invest her presence there with some plausible excuse. But somnambulism had never once entered his mind. And in his stupidity, at pains though he had been to render his words inoffensive, he had ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Romeo was given to Mr. Abbot, an old-established favorite with the public, a very amiable and worthy man, old enough to have been my father, whose performance, not certainly of the highest order, was nevertheless not below inoffensive mediocrity. But the public, who were bent upon doing more than justice to me, were less than just to him; and the abuse showered upon his Romeo, especially by my more enthusiastic admirers of the male sex, might, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... be, all associated together by the same spirit of beauty that pervades all the Dale. Half way up, and in some places more, the enclosing hills and even mountains are sylvan indeed, and though there be a few inoffensive aliens, they are all adorned with their native trees. The mountains are not so high as in our Highlands, but they are very majestic; and the Passes over into Langdale, and Wastdalehead, and Buttermere, are magnificent, and show precipices in which the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... it. But it was a difficult thing to find any pretext for its capture. It was held by the Knights of St. John, the decrepit remnant of an order whose heroism had many times been the shield of Christendom against the Turk, and whose praise had once filled the whole earth. They were now as inoffensive as they were incapable. Their helplessness was their true defence,—and the memory of their good deeds. At last, in 1798, Napoleon, on his way to Egypt, partly by force and partly by treaty, obtained possession of it. So strong were its fortresses, that he himself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... having been burned, Bull and five families of his relatives settled what the whites called Bulltown, on the Little Kanawha. This was at a salt spring about a mile and a quarter below the present Bulltown P. O., Braxton county, Va. Capt. Bull and his people were inoffensive, and very friendly to their white neighbors, as ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the cruel alternative of either expatriation to a far-off, pestilential clime, with the prospect of a premature death, or perpetual slavery, with its untold horrors, in his native land. Against this most iniquitous system of persecution and proscription of an inoffensive people, for no other reason than that we wear the physical exterior given us in infinite wisdom and benevolence, I would record, nay engrave with the pen of a diamond, my most emphatic and solemn protest; more ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... quiet, thoughtful, inoffensive man, John Brown, an Englishman, moved from Boston to Flushing. He was a plain farmer, very retiring in his habits and a man of but few words. From curiosity he attended a Quaker meeting. His meditative ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... little wine-shop, a dark, evil, malodorous place on the street level of a five-story, alleged "new-law" tenement. Without hesitation Kennedy entered, and we followed, acting the part of a slumming party. There were a few customers at this early hour, men out of employment and an inoffensive-looking lot, though of course they eyed us sharply. Albano himself proved to be a greasy, low-browed fellow who had a sort of cunning look. I could well imagine such a fellow spreading terror in the hearts of simple folk by merely pressing both temples with ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... water for the horses, and then we fed them again, and proceeded on our journey. I won't tell what passed every day for a fortnight, by which time we had pretty well killed our horses, and we were compelled to stop among a tribe of Gorraguas, a very mild, inoffensive people, who supplied us with milk, and treated us very kindly. We had some adventures, nevertheless. One day as we were passing by a tuft of small trees, a rhinoceros charged upon my horse, which very narrowly escaped by wheeling short round and getting behind ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... man, who was murdered by the mob on the corner of Twenty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenue, was a quiet, inoffensive man, of unexceptionable character. He was a cripple, but supported himself and his mother, being employed as a coachman. A short time previous to the assault, he called upon his mother to see if anything could be done by him for ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... talk any more about it. If you want the shack pulled down and hauled away, you and your friends continue to tantalize this inoffensive little boy the way you have been. If you want to keep it, be polite ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... time. The gods are paid (gratified) by sacrifices, the Rishis, by study, meditation, and asceticism, the (deceased) ancestors, by begetting children and offering the funeral cake, and, lastly other men, by leading a humane and inoffensive life. I have justly discharged my obligations to the Rishis, the gods, and other men. But those others than these three are sure to perish with the dissolution of my body! Ye ascetics, I am not yet ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... idiot were, by the orders of Rudolph, conducted to Charenton; they were to have chamber treatment, and receive particular care and attention. Morel left the house without assistance; indifferent, he went where they took him; his madness was inoffensive and sad. The grand mother had hunger; they showed her food; she ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... largely on the sofa, continued to look down the row of his waistcoat buttons; but his cheeks became tinged by a faint blush. Of late even the merest derivative of the word science (a term in itself inoffensive and of indefinite meaning) had the curious power of evoking a definitely offensive mental vision of Mr Vladimir, in his body as he lived, with an almost supernatural clearness. And this phenomenon, deserving justly to be classed amongst the marvels of science, induced in Mr Verloc ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... inoffensive, harmless, entertaining, social, and useful tribe of birds: they touch no fruit in our gardens; delight, all except one species, in attaching themselves to our houses; amuse us with their migrations, songs, and marvellous agility; and clear our outlets from the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... was gray with a huge patch of yellow on one side and a black patch on the other. His tail was yellow with a gray tip. One ear was black and one yellow. A black patch over one eye gave him a fearfully rakish look. In reality he was meek and inoffensive, of a sociable disposition. In one respect, if in no other, Joseph was like a lily of the field. He toiled not neither did he spin or catch mice. Yet Solomon in all his glory slept not on softer cushions, or feasted more fully on ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... I do while you are hunting? I pray all the time that you may not get a fall and be hurt; and I pray God to forgive you and all the gentlemen for your cruelty in galloping with all those dogs after one poor little inoffensive thing, to hunt it and kill it—kill it twice, indeed; once with terror, and then over again with mangling its poor ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... the process. This last affair, however, made me seriously uneasy, because if his exquisite sensibilities were to go the length of involving him in pot-house shindies, he would lose his name of an inoffensive, if aggravating, fool, and acquire that of a common loafer. For all my confidence in him I could not help reflecting that in such cases from the name to the thing itself is but a step. I suppose you will understand that by that time ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... with one white spot on his chest. His fur lay sleek and soft, and shone in the sunlight. The claws were drawn in, and the eyes were a dull gray, with just a little narrow dark streak down the centre. The cat looked thoroughly good-natured and inoffensive. ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... shot by the police was named Padlalta, and was of so mild and inoffensive a disposition, that he was generally noticed by the settlers on that very account, several of whom I have heard say since, it was a pity that some other native had not been hit in his stead. The same man was captured last year by Major O'llalloran's party, but was set at liberty as soon ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... always say that! If you only knew him; but some day you will, and then you will wonder how you could have set yourself against us so. I can't help it, Deb. I did it for the best. Marry him I must and will, and I am only trying to do it in a way as inoffensive to you as possible." ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... his arm with a shout to his men and the other kicked savagely at an inoffensive stick and slouched back to his bunk ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... know the spite you have to that poor unfortunate animal! I know you intend to take his life away!' 'You are mistaken, upon my honour! (replied the squire, with a sarcastic smile) I should be incapable of harbouring any such cruel design against an object so amiable and inoffensive; even if he had not the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... assassinations, generally perpetrated at night by disguised persons, the victims in almost all cases being citizens of different political sentiments from their own or freed persons who had shown a disposition to claim equal rights with other citizens. Thousands of inoffensive and well disposed citizens were the sufferers by this ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... officers laughed among themselves at this inoffensive courage, and as the people in the whole country round showed themselves obliging and compliant toward them, they willingly tolerated their silent patriotism. Little Baron Wilhelm alone would have liked to have ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... began,—as gratuitous a butchery of innocent people as ever the Iroquois perpetrated in their worst raids. Two hours the massacre lasted, and when it was over the French had, to their everlasting discredit, murdered in cold blood thirty-eight men (among them the poor inoffensive dominie), ten women, {174} twelve children; and the victors held ninety captives. To the credit of Iberville he offered life to one Glenn and his family, who had aided in ransoming many French from ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Eskimo tribe at Bathurst Inlet, French secured many statutory declarations which established beyond all doubt that two Eskimos who were known to be quiet and inoffensive men, had been goaded by ill-treatment into turning on their tormentors and putting an end to them. French had fulfilled his mission and did not consider it necessary to arrest these men. But the patrol had impressed upon these "ends of the earth" ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... American who had approached us with the same inquiries. Even from a foreigner, the citizen of a republic founded on the notion, elsewhere exploded ever since Cain, that one is his brother's keeper, the things he asked seemed inoffensive only because they were puerile; but they certainly were puerile. I felt that it ought to have been self-evident to him that when a commonwealth of sixty million Americans based itself upon the great principle of self-seeking, ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... disappointed, I now consoled myself that it was all for the best; had I killed a giraffe at that hour and distance from camp, what good would it have been? I was quite alone; thus who could have found it during the night? and before morning it would have been devoured by lions and hyenas; inoffensive and beautiful creatures, what a sin it appeared to destroy them uselessly! With these consoling and practical reflections I continued my way, until a branch of hooked thorn fixing in my nose disturbed the train of ideas and persuaded me that it was very dark, and ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... him at first—her too, a little—to keep up this farce of indifference. But every now and then he turned and stared at some inoffensive visitor who was taking interest in them, with such fierce and genuine contempt that Gyp took alarm; whereon he laughed. When she had drunk a little wine and he had drunk a good deal, the farce of indifference came to its end. He talked at a great rate ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... an inoffensive snap, and Rex frowned. But he had not the slightest intention of relinquishing his purpose. With incredible coolness, he went to a corner of the room and took a box of perfectly fresh cartridges from the drawer where he kept his ammunition; ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford |
