"Uninviting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... alleys that led off from the street, thinking each might be a thoroughfare to take us back to the ramparts. They ended abruptly in a cul-de-sac or court. The culs-de-sac, uninviting to eye and nose, were as Italian as the church. The houses in the courts were stables downstairs. Man and beast lived together. Flowers and wee bushes grew up around the wells in the center of the courts. Everything was built of stone and red-tiled. But there ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... gentleman's credit, I must add to the narrative his apology. If even-handed justice were done throughout the world, some apology could be found for most offences. Not that the offences would thus be wiped away, and black become white; but much that is now very black would be reduced to that sombre, uninviting shade of ordinary brown which ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... this not too grand for his banqueting scenes. But to those who live, as most of us do, in houses of moderate dimensions, snug, comfortable, which the owner's presence fills sufficiently, leaving room for a few visitors, a vast marble palace is disheartening and uninviting. I never get into a very large and lofty saloon without feeling as if I were a weak solution of myself,—my personality almost drowned out in the flood of space about me. The wigwam is more homelike than the cavern. Our wooden houses are a better kind of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... brethren suspect the presence of an aristocrat. At the upper end, beyond the little black bar, there was a platform, upon it a table, a pianoforte, and a stool. Still he managed to conceal his repugnance to all these uninviting things and he sipped his diluted Rhine wine, ate his sandwich—an unpalatable one—under the watchful eyes of his companion. By eight o'clock the room was jammed with working-people, all talking and in a half dozen tongues. Occasionally Yetta left him to join a group, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... was necessary to reef main-sail and jib, the wind blew so hard and in gusts, and the adverse tide met me as it rushed out of Spithead with a heavy swell. Rain poured down slanting with the wind, and the rocks, uncovered at low water, looked very uninviting ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... and of Peru, in their palmiest and most prosperous condition. Nor, though only the frontier and threshold as it were to these swollen treasures, was the portion of country now under survey, though bleak, sterile, and uninviting, wanting in attractions of its own. It contained indications which denoted the fertile regions, nor wanted entirely in the precious mineral itself. Much gold had been already gathered, with little labor, and almost upon its surface; and it was perhaps only because of the limited knowledge then had ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... dismal evening, very like one in England at the end of November— the air cold and damp—and I found the chill from wet clothes and an east wind anything but agreeable. The country also was extremely uninviting, and I thought its aspect more gloomy than that of Nova Scotia. Sometimes we traversed swamps swarming with bullfrogs, on corduroy roads which nearly jolted us out of the vehicle, then dreary levels abounding in spindly hacmetac, hemlock, and birch-trees; ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... was uninviting. It had a furtive, dishonest look about it. Captain Cable saw this. He was a man who studied weather and the outward signs of a man. He rang the bell all the louder, and stood squarely on the threshold until the door was opened by a dirty man in a dirty ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... him that bare feet would make any thought of flight through that cactus country extremely uninviting. The men surrendered their boots. Roosevelt gave them a buffalo robe in return and the prisoners crawled ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... passengers, men, women, and children, exiles from the land of their adoption; driven forth by the hand of power to seek a place of refuge in unknown countries. In this case, there was a great loss of property as well as of comfort, and the future must have presented to this little band of exiles an uninviting picture. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... in La Fere to-day, for it is an artillery station, as it was when Napoleon got his training here, but the peace of the picturesque little fortress-town is less troubled by them than by the politicians. A little local newspaper published here, which I bought of an urchin at the uninviting but thriving station of Tergnier, was full of paragraphs deriding and denouncing the clergy, which might have been inspired by that model patriot and philanthropist Curtius, who proposed in the year one of the Republic that the Government should make a bargain with the Deys ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snows? What can we ever hope to do with that Western coast, a coast of three thousand miles, rock-bound, cheerless, uninviting, and not a harbour on it. Mr. President, I will never vote one cent from the public treasury to place the Pacific Coast one inch nearer to Boston than it ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... gold and silver spots and the glancing iridescent hues. The trout is dark and obscure above, but behind this foil there are wondrous tints that reward the believing eye. Those who seek him in his wild remote haunts are quite sure to get the full force of the sombre and uninviting aspects,—the wet, the cold, the toil, the broken rest, and the huge, savage, uncompromising nature,—but the true angler sees farther than these, and is never thwarted of his legitimate reward ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... door behind him. The room was chilly and uninviting, with a lofty ceiling and a hideous wallpaper. There was a gas stove at the far end of the room, turned very low, and hissing softly as if ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... wore a red ribbon with some sort of a medal upon it on his neck. There is no need to speak of the artisans and the peasants. The artisans of Skotoprigonyevsk are almost peasants, and even work on the land. Two of them also wore European dress, and, perhaps for that reason, were dirtier and more uninviting-looking than the others. So that one might well wonder, as I did as soon as I had looked at them, "what men like that could possibly make of such a case?" Yet their faces made a strangely imposing, almost menacing, impression; they were stern ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... very uninviting, consisting of a high range of barren limestone hills, ascending gradually from steep cliffs which form the coastline. These hills are of such equal elevation that they have a monotonous as well as barren appearance, and are rent in places by deep rocky gullies which run down into ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... asked you to dance?' she murmured. 'There—she is appropriated.' A young gentleman had at that moment approached the uninviting Miss Deverell, claimed her hand ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... mixture of alcohol, sugar, lactic acid, and water, is most unpalatable, sour, uninviting, and unwholesome. besides ruining the name of Australian wine ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... due the credit of recruiting and drilling this smart corps, and it was difficult to believe that these soldierly-looking men, very spruce in their dark blue tunics and caps, from which depend enormous red tassels, were only a short time ago idling away their days in uninviting native kraals. ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... find the golden bird, and this evening you will come to a village in which two taverns stand facing each other. One will be brightly lighted up, and there will be plenty of merriment going on inside; do not mind about that, but go into the other one, although it will look to you very uninviting." ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... outward appearance of the house is uninviting, the interior is warm and dainty. The odor of delicate hot-house plants is in the slightly enervating atmosphere of the apartments. It is a Russian fancy to fill the dwelling-rooms with delicate, forced foliage and bloom. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... are certainly not handsome; I know no peasantry so entirely uninviting. Occasionally there is a girl whose nut-brown complexion and sloe-black eyes are pretty, but their features are very rarely good, and they get plain quickly, so soon as the first flush of youth is past. ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... very noble one. Torquay would suit the health of my Wife and Children better; or else I should be glad to live here always, London and its neighborhood being impracticable."—Such was his second wandering winter; enough to render the prospect of a third at Clifton very uninviting. ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... of their chains breaking the silence that for months had lain like a smother upon the port. The Indian village gave sign of life only in thin, azure wisps of smoke that rose from the dirt roofs; the cannery buildings stood as naked and uninviting as when Boyd had last seen them. The Greek cross crowning the little white church was gilded by the evening sun. Through the glasses Cherry spied a figure in the door of her house which she declared was ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... pleasant domain on the banks of the Mersey almost opposite to Rock Ferry. Walking home, we looked into Mr. Thorn's Unitarian Chapel, Mr. B——'s family's place of worship. There is a little graveyard connected with the chapel, a most uninviting and unpicturesque square of ground, perhaps thirty or forty yards across, in the midst of back fronts of city buildings. About half the space was occupied by flat tombstones, level with the ground, the remainder being yet vacant. Nevertheless, there were perhaps more names of men generally ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the seepage; farther on a "skip", or shaft-car, lay on its side, half buried in mud and muck from the walls of the tunnel. Here, too, the timbers were rotting; one after another, they had cracked and caved beneath the weight of the earth above, giving the tunnel an eerie aspect, uninviting, dangerous. ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... Ind," immortalised by Milton's most majestic epic, the wealth of the Rand completely eclipses, and nothing imagined in the glowing pages of the "Arabian Nights" rivals in solid worth the sober realities now being unearthed along this uninviting ridge. It fortunately was not in the power of the Boer Government to carry off this as yet ungarnered treasure, or it would certainly have shared the fate of the cart-loads of gold in bar and coin with ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... narrow newspaper column, there is room for only five or six words to a line. A paragraph of 250 words, which is the average length of the literary paragraph, fills between forty and fifty lines of a newspaper column. Such paragraphs seem heavy and uninviting. Moreover, the casual reader cannot readily comprehend and combine the various thoughts in so large a group of sentences. Although there is no standard column width for magazines, the number of words in a line does not usually exceed eight. A paragraph of 250 words that ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... hundred years? He saw the huge form of the sheriff loom like an evil spirit a moment on the rise of the road and sink into the night. He turned slowly to his cheerless house shuddering as he entered the uninviting portals. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... spirits, prey on the spirits; bring one's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave; add a nail to one's coffin. Adj. causing pain, hurting &c v.; hurtful &c (bad) 649; painful; dolorific^, dolorous; unpleasant; unpleasing, displeasing; disagreeable, unpalatable, bitter, distasteful; uninviting; unwelcome; undesirable, undesired; obnoxious; unacceptable, unpopular, thankless. unsatisfactory, untoward, unlucky, uncomfortable. distressing; afflicting, afflictive; joyless, cheerless, comfortless; dismal, disheartening; depressing, depressive; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... arm he crossed the road, hurried down a by-street, and, by what seemed a round-about route, led me into a most uninviting part of the city. ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... the evening advances I have asked some of them to read to me a long poem by Clough—(the "Bothie") which I have no doubt will reach you. It does not look attractive to me, for it is in English Hexameters, which are to me very cumbrous and uninviting; but probably that may be for some want of knowledge in my own ear and taste. The poem is addressed to his pupils of last summer, and in scenery, etc., will have, I suppose, many touches from his Highland residence; ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... be requested to pass thro' the uninviting doorway of the adjoining public house; and he will be led by an easy ascent up to the mount, or perhaps the scite of the keep of the castle, which tho' lately lowered considerably for the purpose of converting it into a Bowling-green, yet affords a pleasant station for a view of the ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... any longer in the uninviting and uninteresting spot, we ordered our hammocks, set out at noon, and, following the line over which we had travelled, reached ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... the Barrens, the bad lands of the Arctic, the deserts of the Circle, the bleak and bitter home of the musk-ox and the lean plains wolf. So Avery Van Brunt found them, treeless and cheerless, sparsely clothed with moss and lichens, and altogether uninviting. At least so he found them till he penetrated to the white blank spaces on the map, and came upon undreamed-of rich spruce forests and unrecorded Eskimo tribes. It had been his intention, (and his bid for fame), to break up these white blank spaces and diversify ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... at Cornwall, and asking her to show me a chamber where we might pass the night, with a most ungracious air she pointed to a door which opened into a mere closet, in which was a bed divested of curtains, one chair, and an apology for a wash-stand. Seeing me in some dismay at the sight of this uninviting domicile, she laconically observed there was that or none, unless I chose to sleep in a four-bedded room, which had three tenants in it,—and those gentlemen. This alternative I somewhat indignantly declined, and in no very good ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... says the husband. He once tasted it in Berlin, and it must have given him a mental shock; for whenever his wife approaches him with a domestic difficulty, asks him, for instance, what he would like for breakfast, he suggests this inaccessible and uninviting dish. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... beef and brandy personage, scouted the idea, and thought the matter settled, by pointing to two or three young camels and asking the editor if he thought any man, Turk or Christian, would think of eating one so lank, meagre, and uninviting, as himself, when they had so much capital food of another sort at their elbow. "Take your share of the liquor while it is passing, man, and set your heart at ease as to the dinner, which I make no doubt will be substantial and decent. Had I known of the favour intended us, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... bridges, thrown over the streams which water them, arrived at Aix, in Savoy, famous for its baths, which, as disagreeable things are generally the most salutary, ought doubtless to be of the greatest efficacy; for more uninviting objects one seldom ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... must be understood the entire region, town, palace, quintas, forests, crags, Moorish ruin, which suddenly burst on the view on rounding the side of a bleak, savage, and sterile-looking mountain. Nothing is more sullen and uninviting than the south- western aspect of the stony wall which, on the side of Lisbon, seems to shield Cintra from the eye of the world, but the other side is a mingled scene of fairy beauty, artificial elegance, savage grandeur, domes, turrets, enormous ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... leagues of coast,—this loftiest hill did not much exceed the height of the ship's masthead! And where the shores are not of this exceedingly level character, they are usually sterile, sandy, and broken, so as to offer rather an uninviting aspect to the stranger. It is obvious that, in either case, whether the coast be flat or barren, there may be many beautiful and lovely districts within a day's journey inland; and nothing is more absurd than to take exception against the ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... that a narrow green ladder leant up against the smooth trunk; it looked as if an unwary step would send it flying, and she put a reluctant foot on the lowest rung. The ground below was hard and stony, most uninviting for ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... through with sunshine, was wine to him. Unconsciously he drank it in deep breaths. The prospect of the brickyard was uninviting. He was jaded with all things business, and the wooded knolls were calling to him. A horse was between his legs—a good horse, he decided; one that sent him back to the cayuses he had ridden during his eastern Oregon boyhood. He had been somewhat of a rider in those early days, and the champ of bit ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... hollow, out of sight of the village church, almost out of hearing of its little bell, stood the house of La Corriveau, a square, heavy structure of stone, inconvenient and gloomy, with narrow windows and an uninviting door. The pine forest touched it on one side, a brawling stream twisted itself like a live snake half round it on the other. A plot of green grass, ill kept and deformed, with noxious weeds, dock, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... chaise and opened the gate, and there stood still and prayed a little prayer that God would help her not to feel foolish or afraid when she was trying to do right. Then she went up to the door and knocked. Somebody said in a very uninviting tone of voice, ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... Etexts don't have to be austere and typographically uninviting. Most literature (as opposed to scientific publications, for example), is typographically simple and can be rendered beautifully into type without encoding it into proprietary word processor file ...
— People of Africa • Edith A. How
... gate by the lodge into a large forecourt strewn with small river pebbles, in front of a vast building of the seventeenth century. There were no flowers of stone-work, no sculpture, no decorative doorways—nothing but a frontage of shabby brick and stone, a bare, uninviting structure evidently neglected, with tall windows, behind which the shutters could be seen, painted grey. The entrance was on the level of the first floor; double outside steps led up to the door, and under the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... dreary, comfortless, uninviting place, and a greenish slime overspread the lower portions of the wall, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... the "Palace of Occupation" was seen; a large audience room was finely proportioned, but looked uninviting, as the rugs were rolled up and the furniture covered. The stables adjoining were, however, of great interest, as three hundred horses were in the collection, some of them of rare value. Later, we visited the elephant stalls and the leopard and tiger cages. In another locality ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... ineffaceable blight. To me, the thought of marriage comes no more than to one who knows death sits waiting only for the setting of the sun, to claim his own. That phase of life is as inaccessible and uninviting to me, as Antartic circumpolar lands; and even in thought, I have no temptation to explore it. My future and my past are so interblended, that I could as easily tear out my heart and continue to breathe, as attempt to separate them. I have a certain work ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... to go on doing these things all during life and at all moments of life. These duties are exterior, and are required as often as a contrary bearing would betoken a lack of charity in the heart. Just as we are not called upon to embrace and hug an uninviting person as a neighbor, neither are we obliged to continue our civilities when we find that they are offensive and calculated to cause trouble. But naturally there must be charity in ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... Corsica from Leghorn with a friend of mine who knew no more of the island than I did. We landed at Bastia, where, by the way, Nelson also landed and was severely repulsed, and found the town one of the most barren and uninviting places in the world. It is hot, glaring, sandy, stony, sun-burnt, a most unpleasing introduction to one of the most beautiful and interesting islands in the Mediterranean, or, for that matter, in the world. ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... TERRA AUSTRALIS to repay them for the trouble of taking possession. The French, too, saw little in the unclaimed portion of the country they visited to do more than threaten an occupation, which never took place, and it is doubtful if the uninviting shores of Botany Bay would have held out any hope to a ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... entitled, except when for a short time they were in pursuit, towards Ljuria, of certain invaders. Not only were they legally entitled to take up their position on the mountains to the west of the Black Drin, but the Moslem tribes, the Malizi and the Ljuri, who dwell in that uninviting district, were most anxious that the Serbs should come and should remain. For this the tribes had two principal reasons: in the first place, they recognized that their compatriots in Djakovica and Prizren were immeasurably better off than before they came ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... unpacked, that he might satisfy himself by actual inspection. The luggage, all ready for the journey, had to be unstrapped and examined, and the rags were displayed in succession; but so wretched and uninviting was the exhibition of the family linen, that he simply returned them, and said "they did not suit him." Beads he must have, or I was "his enemy." A selection of the best opal beads was immediately given him. ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... bestowed on Ovide as he came in with the smoking turkey will also never be difficult to conjure up. But the moment my eyes fell upon that unfortunate bird, my heart began to beat with renewed apprehensions. Never before had I seen such an ill-favored, uninviting-looking fowl placed upon a table; its naturally white, smooth skin was now as seamy, black and arid-looking as the mouth of ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... whole village into fairyland at a moment's notice. Then the trout stream, which at other seasons of the year is a never failing attraction, running as it does for the most part through the woods, in mid winter seldom reflects the light of the sun, and looks cold and uninviting. One may learn much, it is true, of the wonders of nature in the dead time of the year by watching the great trout on the spawn beds as they pile up the gravel day by day, and store up beautiful, transparent ova, of which but a ten-thousandth part will ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... seventeenth volume of the Library of Entertaining Knowledge; and, like the majority of its predecessors, it aims at rendering popular, and of obvious interest, subjects which had hitherto been abstruse and uninviting. It is the first of a series of volumes to be published on the Antiquities of the British Museum, so as in some measure to set them free from their national imprisonment; for such we must term any assemblage of works of art (the property ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... others see us, and rather pathetically. In days gone by, lured by reports of America's lawless free-and-easiness, Swinnerton says he craved to visit us. But no more. The wish is dead. We have become hopelessly moral and uninviting. "I see that I shall after all have to live quietly in England with my pipe and my abstemious bottle of beer. And yet I should like to visit America, for it has suddenly become in my imagining an enormous country of 'Don't!' and I want to know what it is like to ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... at twenty, like human Jargonelles, and must be made the most of, for their day is soon over. Some come into their perfect condition late, like the autumn kinds, and they last better than the summer fruit. And some, that, like the Winter-Nelis, have been hard and uninviting until all the rest have had their season, get their glow and perfume long after the frost and snow have done their worst with the orchards. Beware of rash criticisms; the rough and astringent fruit you condemn may be an autumn or a winter pear, and that which you picked up beneath the same ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... undertook; that was a part of his make-up. He was merely seeking the best place to unpack and a convenient spot to tether Buck. They were going to make camp either right here or nearer the cave, perhaps in it. She looked at the uninviting hole and shivered. She would know his decision when King saw fit ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... taken by surprise, when, on being summoned to tea, he took his place at the usually uninviting table, and saw before him a dish of well made toast, and a plate of nicely boiled ham. He said nothing; but a sensation of pleasure, so warm that it made his heart beat quicker, pervaded his bosom; and this was increased, when he placed the cup of well made, ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... legitimate trade for a good fortnight The accommodation paid for by the labour consisted, all told, in one hunk of dry bread—weight, I should say, about four ounces; one pint of stirabout made of Indian meal and flavoured with soot; and a particularly dirty and uninviting bed. Having bestowed these benefactions on the harmless workman, the British Poor-law in return insists that he shall become a hopeless pauper by stealing ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... relied on for a small supply, but would be of no use in watering cattle in large numbers. The ranges are composed of ferruginous sandstone and quartz conglomerate, and as to vegetation are of a very uninviting aspect. The plain to the south is covered with quartz and sandstone pebbles. About five miles to the north-east of the Kokriega is a spot where the schist rock crops out from under the sandstone, and the rises here have somewhat of ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... the gorge she beheld rising on the billows. The loud lunge of the sea was interrupted solely by the cry of the fisherman, and the "cockler's" whistle, plying his scanty trade among the shoals and sandbanks about the coast. It is scarcely possible to conceive a situation more desolate and uninviting. Hills of arid sand skirting the beach, without vegetation or enclosure, except where the withered bent and little golden-starred stone-crop gave their own wild and peculiar aspect to the scene. The shore is flat and unbroken to the very horizon, where ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... my design are they that treat of manners and rules of our life. But boldly to confess the truth (for since one has passed the barriers of impudence, there is no bridle), his way of writing appears to me negligent and uninviting: for his prefaces, definitions, divisions, and etymologies take up the greatest part of his work: whatever there is of life and marrow is smothered and lost in the long preparation. When I have spent an hour in reading him, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... to her very uninviting; a parlor with crimson plush furniture, smelling of varnish and opening into a bedroom. The blinds were down, and when the boy had left she went to the window and threw it up, letting light and air into the stuffy, unfriendly place. That was better and she leaned out, breathing ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the passengers. Ere long he conceived the plan of publishing a newspaper of his own. Having bought a quantity of old type at the office of the DETROIT FREE PRESS, he installed it in a spingless car, or 'caboose' of the train meant for a smoking-room, but too uninviting to be much used by the passengers. Here he set the type, and printed a smallsheet about a foot square by pressing it with his hand. The GRAND TRUNK HERALD, as he called it, was a weekly organ, price three cents, containing a variety of local news, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... the extraordinary youth by which 'she kept to the last the . . . freshness of a young girl.' Many of the 'famous writers' seem to have been very ugly. Thomson, the poet, was of a dull countenance, and a gross, unanimated, uninviting appearance; Richardson looked 'like a plump white mouse in a wig.' Pope is described in the Guardian, in 1713, as 'a lively little creature, with long arms and legs: a spider is no ill emblem of him. He has ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Pennell observes, 'the Government desires not to make any further annexation of this barren, mountainous, and uninviting region, but it is not always easy to avoid doing so; and it is an universal experience of history that when there are a number of disorganised and ill-governed units on the borders of a great power, they become inevitably, though it may be gradually ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... he looked at with distaste. It was a typical frontier meal—stereotyped, uninviting. There were meat and eggs and coffee, and various heavy little dishes containing dabs of things which were never eaten. He drank the coffee and realized that he had been almost perishing from thirst. He called for a second cup; and then he tried to eat the ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... chapters must be set the silence, the vigils, the fasts of La Trappe. This monastery stood in a gloomy valley, sunk among wooded hills. The church and the surrounding buildings were mostly old, and all sombre and uninviting. Each narrow cell was furnished with but a mattress, a blanket and a table, without chair or fire. The monks were clad in a robe and a hood, and wore shoes and stockings, but had neither shirt nor breeches. They shaved three times a year. Their food consisted of boiled vegetables, with salad ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... then foraged for breakfast. Persistence turned up a spirit-stove, a half-bottle of methylated, a packet of tea, a tin or two of biscuit, as many more of potted meats: left-overs from the artist's stock, dismally scant and uninviting in array. With these he made the discovery that he was half-famished, and found no reason to believe that the girl would be in any better case. An expedition to the nearest charcuterie was indicated; but after he had searched for and found an old raincoat of Solon's, Lanyard decided against leaving ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Bristol are, in a modern point of view, narrow and uninviting, yet if the visitor have a liking for the picturesque he will find much to interest him. There are plenty of streets crammed with old-time houses, thrusting out their upper stories beyond the lower, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... outward world uniting To that within him, he became Considerably uninviting 280 To those who, meditation slighting, Were moulded in a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... but because the books are "dry." Those which are interesting are apt to be lengthy, and the mind consequently becomes confused by the multitude of details, while the brief ones often contain merely the dry bones of fact, uninviting and unreal. An attractive book which can be mastered in a single term, is the necessity of our schools. The present work is an attempt to meet this want in American histories. In its preparation there has been an endeavor to develop the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... that I married you for your money; let me tell you now that I always bitterly repented the bargain; and if you were still marriageable, and had a diamond bigger than your head, I should counsel even my maid against a union so uninviting and disastrous. As for you, Mr. Hartley," she continued, turning on the secretary, "you have sufficiently exhibited your valuable qualities in this house; we are now persuaded that you equally lack manhood, sense ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... difficult places often enough to begin with, and a little special study of such shots at the outset will prove a very valuable investment of time. The ball should be thrown down carelessly at different places, and should be played from the spot at which it settles, however uninviting ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... vigorous intellect, varied talents, and accurate scholarship, Lockhart was impatient of contradiction, and was prone to censure keenly those who had offended him. To strangers his manners were somewhat uninviting, and in society he was liable to periods of taciturnity. He loved the ironical and facetious; and did not scruple to indulge in ridicule even at the expense of his intimate associates. With many peculiarities of manner, and a temper somewhat fretful and impulsive, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... still sound, than one unbroken and new. Nor has habit this power merely as to the movements of an animal, it prevails no less as to inanimate objects. We are charmed with the places though mountainous and woody, [Footnote: Therefore uninviting, for mountain and forest had not in early time the charm which we find in them. Indeed the love of nature uncultivated and unadorned is for the most part, of modern growth.] where we have made a long sojourn. But what is most remarkable in ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... distance off, some ten miles or so, till sundown, when they approached a little nearer and could be seen astern of us, through the middle watch, by the aid of the night-glass; but they sheered off again at the breaking of this third day, by which time we could see Pulo Sapata right ahead, a most uninviting spot apparently, consisting of nothing but one big ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... settled round me as I approached that dismal terminus. Then, when too late, I began to regret my folly. I seemed to wake as if from a dream, from a state of helpless infatuation, in which my acts were scarcely the effect of my own volition. The general out-look became decidedly uninviting. ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... talked with my uncle in the Hardingham for the last time. The atmosphere of the place had altered quite shockingly. Instead of the crowd of importunate courtiers there were just half a dozen uninviting men, journalists waiting for an interview. Ropper the big commissionaire was still there, but now indeed he was defending my uncle from something more than time-wasting intrusions. I found the little man alone in the inner ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... The narrow bed looked uninviting, the bureau-washstand was of the cheapest, and the reflection Michael saw in its warped mirror would have made any boy with a particle of vanity actually suffer. Michael, however, was not vain. He thought little ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... Scattered about the yard, which was very large, were corn cribs, hay racks, pig troughs, carts, wagons, old plows, horses, mules, cows, hens, chickens, turkeys, geese, negroes, and dogs, the latter of which rushed ferociously at Mr. Wilmot, who was about to beat a retreat from so uninviting quarters, when one of the negroes called out, "Ho, marster, don't be feared, 'case I'll hold Tiger." So Wilmot advanced with some misgivings ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... marvelous picturesqueness of every point of view, combined with the clear balmy atmosphere and the transparency of the ocean depths, must have delighted and deeply impressed" the early explorers. "If the rock-bound coasts, sullen, defiant, and lowering, seemed uninviting, these were occasionally broken into charmingly alluring coves floored with golden sand, clad with evergreen shrubbery, and adorned with every variety of indigenous wattle, she-oak, wild flower, and fern, from the delicately graceful 'maiden-hair' to the palm-like ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... its station by being called The Day Nursery and another room equally dingy and uninviting was known as The Night Nursery. The slice of a house was inhabited by the very pretty Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, its inordinate rent being reluctantly paid by her—apparently with the assistance of those "ravens" who ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and Medina in barren and uninviting Arabia. When it started on that expansion, whereby it overspread half of the known world, Syria, from its situation, was naturally the first country to tempt its restless and devoted Arab warriors. Within ten years of the Hegira, or commencement ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... mountain mining camps, and perhaps from beyond the Rockies; or, it may have been, from the unsuspecting admirer who lived just beyond the first sandhill. This was another surprising interior. There was plain living and high thinking in the midst of a wilderness that was, to say the least, uninviting; the windows rattled and the sand peppered them. Without was the abomination of desolation; but within the desert ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... structure, beneath which the Thames water whispered eerily; and Kerry and Seton disembarked, mounting a short flight of slimy wooden steps and crossing a roughly planked place on to a shingly slope. Climbing this, they were on damp waste ground, pathless and uninviting. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... against a tree beside him. His subjects approached him crouching, but he shook hands with us and smiled kindly at us. A noble gesture of the hand gave us leave to taste a meal prepared to welcome us, which looked most uninviting, but turned out to be beautifully cooked sago and cocoa-nut cream. We could not finish the generous portions, and presently signed that we were satisfied; the chief seemed to regret that we did not do more honour to his ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... he encountered Monsieur le Colonel once again, and suggested that they should split a bottle of wine together if he could spare the time. It was then nine o'clock, and the three hours till midnight loomed uninviting. His only hope, as he told him, was that the train at present standing at the platform was not going to be typical of the one he was to embark on. It seemed to be of endless length, and presented a most enticing spectacle. Four fortunates ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... and skiffs in front, lives the world-renowned author, Hans Christian Andersen. I say he lives there, but, properly speaking, he only lodges. It seems to be a peculiarity of his nature to move about from time to time into all the queer and uninviting places possible to be discovered within ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... way, to a place perhaps two hundred feet beyond the road, where what we would call a cyclone cellar in America had been dug out of the hillside. Like the others of the sort I had seen, it was muddy and uninviting, practically a cave with a ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... evidences. But these were often handled in an unsatisfactory way. The greater part of Soame Jenyns' little work was good, as far as it went; but it went only a very short way. It took a step or two, in the most difficult, doubtful, and uninviting part of the road, but it left the vast paradise of internal evidences unexplored, and even unapproached. His work was rather an apology for Christianity, proving that it was not open to censure, than a demonstration of its ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... burned on the great dressing-table. Faint, solitary pictures broke the blankness of each wall. The carpet was rich, the bed impressive, and the basins on the washstand as uninviting as the bed. Lawford sat down on the edge of it in complete isolation. He sat without stirring, listening to his watch ticking in his pocket. The china clock on the chimney piece pointed cheerfully to the hour of dawn. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... not exaggerated when she spoke of the settlement about the Works as a desolate, unpicturesque, uninviting spot, and Camille had skirted the truth, at least, when she referred to the inherited acres as "marsh lands." Had she named them a desert instead, though, she would have been nearer correct, for is not a desert a "great sandy plain?" So was the site of the great factories known as the Early ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... to the well he sloshed himself thoroughly in the horse-trough and went to the house. He found breakfast ready but his wife was not in sight. The older children were clamoring around the uninviting breakfast table, spread with cheap plates and with boiled potatoes and fried salt pork as the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... southward trended deeply in and appeared to be much broken in its character and very uninviting to us who had only one anchor to depend upon. This bight was named, at Mr. Montgomery's request, in compliment to the late Captain Sir George Collier, Bart., K.C.B., R.N. During the greater part of the night the wind was light, and by the bearings of a fire on the land ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... by this process that they were all together in Marion's den, as Eurie called her stuffed and uninviting little room. Never was mortal more glad to be interrupted than she, as she unceremoniously tossed aside school-books and papers, and made room ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... or are mysteriously suspended upon nothing; where all the warm and felt accompaniments which give such an expression of strength, and life, and colour to our present habitation, are attenuated into a sort of spiritual element, that is meagre, and imperceptible, and wholly uninviting to the eye of mortals here below; where every vestige of materialism is done away with, and nothing left but certain unearthly scenes that have no power of allurement, and certain unearthly ecstasies with which it is impossible to sympathise," The sensitiveness with which many ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... was now raised by the emirs to the titular sultanate; and Kotuz, a distinguished mameluke of Charizmian birth, persuaded to assume the uninviting post of vicegerent. The Eyyubite Prince of Kerak, in whose service many of the Baharite mamelukes still remained, attempting, with their help, to seize Egypt, was twice repulsed by Kotuz, and thus obliged to disband the Baharites, who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... of eating appears, indeed, very uninviting; but it is, in fact, not at all so; the hand is washed, and does not touch anything but the food. It is the same in drinking; the vessel is not put to the lips, but the liquid is very cleverly poured into the open mouth. Before the children have ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... to give capital and credit to take the place of the European supply which has failed. One need not fear that the returns will be uninviting, for Europe would hardly have been supplying credit and capital to Latin America as a mere matter of amiability. Thus our capital must regenerate Latin-American prosperity, while our bankers, merchants, and manufacturers ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... leaning to the study of political economy. Instead, she had always imagined any question relating to the government of her country to be inherently dry-as-dust and uninviting. But had John Hammond devoted his days to the study of Coptic manuscripts, or the arrow headed inscriptions upon Assyrian tablets, she would have toiled her hardest in the endeavour to make herself a Coptic scholar, or an adept in the cuneiform ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a deep exquisitely worked soil with never a weed in an acre. But children were kept from school because their parents could not get along without their help. Many of the school teachers seemed as poor as the farmers. As I passed the farm-houses in the evening they seemed bleak and uninviting. In the fire hole[214] of every house, however, there was a generous blaze and the bath tub out-of-doors was steaming for the customary evening ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Loevestein and Gorcum for the use of the prisoner. At first the trunk had been carefully opened and its contents examined every time it entered or left the castle. As nothing had ever been found in it save Hebrew, Greek, and Latin folios, uninviting enough to the Commandant, that warrior had gradually ceased to inspect the chest very closely, and had at last discontinued the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... him!—these men working in the dark, begrimed, half-naked, pent up in narrow galleries. He has gone to spy out hardships—he sees nothing else. Or perhaps he pays his first visit to the interior of the low-roofed crazy cottage of the husbandman, and is disgusted at the scant furniture and uninviting meal that it presents; yet the hardy labourer may find his rest and food there, with no greater share of discontent than falls to most of us—than falls, perhaps, to the compassionate inspector himself. We have sometimes endeavoured to picture to ourselves what would be the result if the tables ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... sun goes down the scenery, as we steam on, changes each moment. In the twilight the granite cliffs stand out black and uninviting, and the country looks cold and grey. It may be that we are tired of the long journey, for with the growing darkness comes the feeling that something to eat and bed would be pleasant things. Then the steamer's whistle makes us spring to our feet, and, peering ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... classes, white and black, are not thought to require clothing until they are about nine years of age. A few negresses were observed sitting on the ground, at the corners of the streets, beside their baskets containing sweet cakes, mouldy biscuits, bananas, and grape-fruit, the uninviting appearance of which seemed to indicate that they were in the last stage of collapse. Was it possible any one could eat such stuff? As we passed and repassed these patient waiters, certainly no purchasers appeared. How the forty-five thousand inhabitants manage to achieve a living ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... the stile-block had looked miserably uninviting,—a plough on the front porch, harness on the porch posts; all around the house the yard litter of cheap farm life, a broken-down harrow, broken-backed furniture, straw, corn-shucks, ghosts of past winters and past summers on the ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... "three chandeliers and patent oil lamps, the chandeliers having thirty-five lights each." Mr. White's description of this house after it had seen about a quarter of a century's service is certainly uninviting. Its boxes were like pens for beasts. "Across them were stretched benches consisting of a mere board covered with faded red moreen, a narrower board, shoulder high, being stretched behind to serve for a back. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... instructive. In one word, the grammar of Mr. Kirkham furnishes a clew by which the youthful mind is guided through the intricate labyrinth of verbs, nouns and pronouns; and the path which has been heretofore so difficult and uninviting, as to dampen the ardor of youth, and waste their energies in fruitless attempts to surmount its obstacles, is cleared of these obstructions by this pioneer to the youthful mind, and planted, at every turn, with friendly guide-boards ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... further. We crossed a ranch, and rode several miles on a highway, then turned abruptly, and climbed a rough, rocky ridge, covered with brush and aspen. We crossed it, and went down for several miles, and had to camp in an aspen grove, on the slope of a ravine. It was an uninviting place to stay, but as there was no other we had to make the best of it. The afternoon had waned. I took a gun and went off down the ravine, until I came to a deep gorge. Here I heard the sound of a brawling brook. I sat down for an hour, ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... This uninviting picture had the effect of making Lisbeth hurry into the courtyard of the house in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, where she found a man smoking a pipe colored in a style that showed him an ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... the platform—and left quite as uninviting a perspective on the other side of the track as had previously greeted Madison's restricted view. But now the man who had salvaged his baggage came down the platform toward him. Madison inspected the approaching figure with interest. The man ambled along without haste, ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... Time and again the flocks were stampeded into the grain by an approaching train, but immediately they returned to their places without taking a nibble. The voice of the shepherd and an occasional well aimed lump of earth only being required to bring them back to their uninviting pastures. ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... is a personal experience, but is told in spite of that fact and because it illustrates a side of war that is unfamiliar. It is unfamiliar for the reason that it is seamy and uninviting. With bayonet charges, bugle-calls, and aviators it has ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... walls of Castle Canon are yellowish-gray. But their forms are incomparably various and grotesque—in some instances sublime. The valley of Green River at this point is a cheerless sage-brush desert, as it is further north. To be sure, this uninviting stream, a couple of hundred miles further south, having united with the Grande, and formed the Rio Colorado, does indeed, by dint of burrowing deeper and deeper into the sunless chasms, become at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... no fish, but under favourable circumstances the two sometimes get fourteen shillings a week between them. In fine weather, when from Rame Head to Looe Island the sea lies calm and glistening under a summer sky, this smoke-blackened cave is an uninviting hovel; and in the winter, especially when there is a gale from the south-east, the women must be almost blown out of the hollow or frozen to death. On such occasions they are forced to leave the cave, and then ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... and steam-tugs laboured slowly against the stream, dragging behind the heavily-laden lighter. Warehouses and wharfs and timber-yards now begin to line either bank; yet the materials for a sketch-book are scanty and uninviting: an artist who, like Mr. Whistler, has etched at Battersea and Blackwell, would find by comparison on the Neva the forms without character, the surface without texture, the masses without light, shade, or colour. As the boat advances the imperial city ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... ago, the inducements to enter upon an industrial career were much more limited than they are at the present day. The industries of the West of Scotland were then few and comparatively uninviting. The iron trade was in its infancy, and those engaged in it lacked the resources for the acquisition of wealth that were evolved from the discovery of blackband mineral deposits by Mushet, the application of the hot blast by Neilson, and the introduction of other more economical modes of working. ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... gained ground by farther acquaintance. She was faded, but not passe, and was still handsome, and of a most graceful carriage, though distant and uninviting. Her loftiness had in it something so pensive mixed with its haughtiness, that though it could not inspire confidence, it did not create displeasure. She possessed also a claim to sympathy and respect in being the niece of M. de Malesherbes, that wise, tender, generous, noble defender ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... occasion I followed the mysterious stranger. He was a thin, cadaverous-looking Frenchman, hollow-cheeked, rather shabbily dressed, and wore pince-nez. I watched him back into the town, and lingered near him in a cafe until nearly one o'clock, when he entered his quarters at an uninviting, unfashionable hotel, the "Falcon," in the Via Vittorio. From the manner he had treated her I judged him to be a relation, probably her uncle. Yet why she should meet him clandestinely was ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... engaged would show a gross profit of even fifteen per cent. on their gross output. If more than fair or going returns are earned, then new capital flows into competition and the surplus again shrinks to an uninviting point. The same is true in wheat, corn, and cotton—big prices invite fresh investments and the planting of broader acreage. Hence the sorry spectacle of the cotton planter who, in 1905, will receive no more for his twenty per cent. increased crop, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... the eighteenth century one great independent state had established itself. The discovery of Australia and New Zealand came much later than that of America; but within one century from the first European settlement in Australia (A.D. 1787) the whole continent, though its interior is uninviting, had been traversed along many lines, and five prosperous European colonies had grown to importance. The slow progress of exploration and settlement in South Africa during so long a period is therefore a noteworthy phenomenon which deserves a ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... may be recognized by the color of its fat, which is pale white, and lies in thick folds beneath the skin along the lower half of the backbone. The entire surface of the body presents a more greasy, uninviting appearance than that of fowls permitted ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... appeared to me that it would be judicious, under such smarting injuries as mine, to throw myself into a certain pond which was in the meadow where I stood (my remedies had always rather an extreme tendency); but it was thickly coated with green slime studded with frogs' heads, and looked uninviting. After contemplating it for a moment, I changed my opinion as to the expediency of getting under that surface, and walked resolutely off towards London; not with any idea of seeking my father and mother, but simply with that goal in view, as the end ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... gorged almost to repletion, shade themselves under the oaks; superb "red" horses shine, not with grooming, but with condition; and thriving farms everywhere show on what a solid basis the prosperity of the "Golden State" is founded. Very uninviting, however rich, was the blazing Sacramento Valley, and very repulsive the city of Sacramento, which, at a distance of 125 miles from the Pacific, has an elevation of only thirty feet. The mercury ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... from rubesco, to become red. It is so called because of the dingy reddish color of the entire plant, and also because when the plant is handled or bruised it quickly changes to a reddish color. It is often a large bulky plant and rather uninviting. ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... higher ground to the north, where the climate was uninviting, so Beralsee said, and it was for that reason they made it a ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... gone Stepan Trofimovitch instantly sat down on the sofa and made Sofya Matveyevna sit down beside him. There were several arm-chairs as well as a sofa in the room, but they were of a most uninviting appearance. The room was rather a large one, with a corner, in which there was a bed, partitioned off. It was covered with old and tattered yellow paper, and had horrible lithographs of mythological subjects on the walls; in the corner facing the door there was a long row ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... usual hour and eats his usual leisurely breakfast. At, say, nine o'clock, he settles back behind the steering-wheel of his motor-car. Crossing the Hudson by the Forty-second Street Ferry, he climbs the Weehawken slope, and swings westward over one of the uninviting turnpikes that disfigure the marshy land between the Passaic and the Hackensack. Then he finds the real Jersey, the Jerseyman's Jersey, of rolling hills, and historic memories of Washington's Continental troops in ragged blue ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... Kabogo—not the terrible Kabogo around whose name mystery has been woven by the superstitious natives—not the Kabogo whose sullen thunder and awful roar were heard when crossing the Rugufu on our flight from the Wahha—-but a point in Ukaranga, on whose hard and uninviting rocks many a canoe has been wrecked. We passed close to its forbidding walls, thankful for the calm of the Tanganika. Near Kabogo are some very fine mvule trees, well adapted for canoe building, and there are no loud-mouthed ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley |
