"Unpretending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they came upon a hedge of American aloes, which, with their close array of massive leaves, each ending in a sharp point, protected an orchard. Following its course a few rods, they came to a rude gateway, which admitted them into a small cattle-yard, and a low, unpretending ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... the glory of light that surrounds the throne of Exhaustless Benevolence, and that the Deity cannot be worthily called upon by young hearts stricken by degrading fears, and fainting under a Moloch-inspired dread. Notwithstanding my eccentric life, I have ever been the ardent, the unpretending, though the unworthy adorer of the Great Being, whose highest attribute is the "Good." I have ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... turned and followed her across the lawn and into the house, whose internal arrangement was somewhat at variance with its unpretending exterior. ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... a metamorphosis in the bearing of the outer man, as a sudden change of fortune. The anemone of the garden differs scarcely more from its unpretending prototype of the woods, than Robert M'Corkindale, Esq., Secretary and Projector of the Glenmutchkin Railway, differed from Bob M'Corkindale, the seedy frequenter of "The Crow." In the days of yore, men eyed the surtout—napless at the velvet collar, and preternaturally white ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... going to and from the Peiraeus stops at this half-way house, that the horses may drink, and the coachman take "Turkish delight" and water. There is no exception made to this custom, and the traveler is bound to submit. At last we entered the unpretending ill-built streets at the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... and present. The general precepts and the dogmatic statements of religion acquire a singular and living force when we perceive them carried out and realised in the actual affairs of life in a degree to which our personal experience is a stranger. Influenced as human nature is by example, these unpretending narratives, whose whole strength lies in the facts which they record, and not in the art of the biographer, undeniably strike the mind with an almost supernatural force. They enchain the attention; they compel us to say, Are these things true? Are these things possible? Is religion, ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... an unpretending street organ than such abominations; and, indeed, some of the itinerant music is, to our unsophisticated ears, sweet beyond expression, especially when accompanied, as it is sometimes, by a rich Italian or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... great simplicity of manners. The dress of the upper classes was wonderfully plain and unpretending, presenting little variety and scarcely any ornament. The grandee wore, indeed, an elaborate wig, it being imperative on all men to shave the head for the sake of cleanliness. But otherwise, his costume was of the simplest and the scantiest. Ordinarily, when ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... Sir Francis Varney—"for a mansion it is, although under the unpretending name of a lodge—in this mansion there is a large apartment which was originally fitted up by a scientific proprietor of the place, for the purpose of microscopic and other experiments, which required a darkness total and complete, such a darkness ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... his flat cap and black-silk gown; and that of Sir Henry Smith, the General of the District, in full uniform, with a star and half a dozen medals on his breast. Mr. Browne himself, the hero of the day, was the plainest and simplest man of all,—an exceedingly unpretending gentleman in black; small, white-haired, pale, quiet, and respectable. I rather wondered why he chose to be the centre of all this ceremony; for he did not seem either particularly to enjoy it, or to be at all incommoded by it, as a more nervous and susceptible man might ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... boy Xury, and his man Friday. From these allegoric types, Mist might select a model for his own behaviour. When we consider the tone of these Serious Reflections, so eminently pious, moral, and unpretending, so obviously the outcome of a wise, simple, ingenuous nature, we can better understand the fury with which Mist turned upon Defoe when at last he discovered his treachery. They are of use also in throwing light upon the prodigious versatility which could ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... known. It is the fallow deer that chiefly people our parks. Red deer were also found at Blenheim, in Oxfordshire, when it was visited by Dr. Johnson, as may be seen in "Boswell."] As my father always retained a town-house in Manchester (somewhere in Fountain-street), and, though a plain, unpretending man, was literary to the extent of having written a book, all things were so arranged that there was no possibility of any commercial mementos ever penetrating to the rural retreat of his family; such mementos, I mean, as, by reviving painful recollections of that ancient Schreiber, who was ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... admonition: He, elated, Vindicated Clergyman's position. People round him Always found him Plain and unpretending; Kindly teaching, Plainly preaching, All ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... reflection arises, which, if it be less pleasing and poetical, is, perhaps, more useful—that the impetuous course of the mountain torrent, though gratifying to the lover of nature, is unaccompanied with any other benefit to man, while the stream that pursues its unpretending path through the plains, bestows fertility on a thousand fields. Such thoughts as these, however, only arise in the mind when it has become somewhat familiar with the surrounding scenes. The roar of the cataract, the savage appearance of the dark rocks that border the falling waters, and that painful ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... that every individual had the best of reasons for employing, under certain special circumstances, his or her particular manner of salute, could scarcely forbear smiling at the effect they all together produced in his own unpretending study. ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... of Dartmouth (1672-1750), was St. John's fellow Secretary of State. Lord Dartmouth seems to have been a plain, unpretending man, whose ignorance of French helped to throw important matters into ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... Shaftesbury Avenue, and parallel with it, is Gerrard Street, a dingy, unpretending place, but thick with memories and associations. It was built about 1681, and was called after Gerard, Earl of Macclesfield. Wheatley quotes from the Bagford MSS. of the British Museum to the effect that "Henry, Prince of Wales, son of James I., caused a piece of ground near ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... 5 feet 9 inches in height, but of compact build, his figure and gait characteristically expressed resolution and strength. His face, although in itself unpretending, was one that in the common phrase 'grew upon you.' Time had not streaked with grey the crisp, curly brown hair of his youth and traced lines of care on his ample forehead and strong clear face, bronzed ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... eyes to follow the motion of his elegantly formed aristocratic hand, now ungloved, one swift glance showed her that instead of the unpretending slender gold circlet she had placed on the little finger of his left hand the day of their marriage—a ring endeared to her, because it had been her mother's bridal pledge—he now wore a flashing diamond, in a broad and costly setting. Almost unconsciously her own left hand glided to the violets ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... during his absence, with full powers to carry on the war against the Scots; and the Earl of Surrey at the head of the army, as her lieutenant-general. It is curious to find Katherine—the pacific, domestic, and unpretending Katherine—describing herself as having "her heart set to war," and "horrible busy" with making "standards, banners, badges, scarfs, and the like."[97] Nor was this mere silken preparation—mere dalliance ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... of his own Thalaba. A "chevelure" like this, with black eyes, aquiline features, and figure tall and slender, without attenuation, assisted in presenting such an image as is seldom viewed in reality; while the effect of the whole was enhanced by easy, unpretending and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... these humble efforts of mine will commend themselves to your favorable notice. They are (as you will perceive from this letter) an unpretending mite given to aid in elevating us in the eyes of the foreign literary world. "Pulchrum est bene facere reipublicae; etiam bene dicere haud absurdum est." Deeming it to be the duty of every American thus to give his aid to so ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... acceptably as she could, her part of the stereotyped ceremony of receiving the guests, and exchanging with them the salutations and commonplaces of the evening. Mrs. Elwood, though not beautiful, nor even handsome, was yet every way a comely woman; and the quiet dignity and the unpretending simplicity of her manner, together with a certain intelligent and appreciating cast of countenance, which always rested on her placid, features, seldom failed to impress those who approached her with feelings of kindness and respect. She looked pale and fatigued, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... general defence, ordered the levy of an army, and set George Washington at its head. No nobler figure ever stood in the forefront of a nation's life. Washington was grave and courteous in address; his manners were simple and unpretending; his silence and the serene calmness of his temper spoke of a perfect self-mastery. But there was little in his outer bearing to reveal the grandeur of soul which lifts his figure with all the simple majesty of an ancient statue out ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... occupied the site of the present one, on Fifth Street. It was an unpretending structure, rudely built of boards, and of moderate proportions, but sufficient, nevertheless, to satisfy the taste and secure the comfort of the few who dared to face consequences and lend patronage to an establishment under the ban of the Scotch-Irish Calvinists. Entering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... unbounded kindness from men of science of all countries, and most profound was her gratitude to them. Modest and unpretending to excess, nothing could be more generous than the unfeigned delight she shewed in recognising the genius and discoveries of others; ever jealous of their fame, ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... from Coblenz, and past the island of Nonnenwerth, is the old tenth-century castle of Sayn, which stood until the Thirty Years' War, and below it, quiet, comfortable, large, but unpretending, lies the new house of the family of Sayn-Wittgenstein, built in the year 1848. As we push our way down the Rhine we soon come to the little peaceful town of Neuwied, a sanctuary for persecuted ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... means at work in the trial to raise the people from the condition in which they had been so many ages sunk and immovable, there has been of late years the unpretending but important ministration of an incessant multifarious inventiveness in making almost every sort of information offer itself in brief, familiar, and attractive forms, adapted to youth or to adult ignorance; so that ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... noticed, what is quite rare in the North, large square fountains or wells, at the intersection of all the principal streets. The impression which Drontheim makes upon the stranger is therefore a cheerful and genial one. Small and unpretending though it be, it is full of pictures; the dark blue fjord closes the vista of half its streets; hills of grey rock, draped with the greenest turf, overlook it on either side, and the beautiful valley of the Nid, one of the loveliest nooks of ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... "If she is without ambition, so much the worse for her—so much the better for me! And now, it is high time to think of my toilet—that is the most important consideration. To- day I must be not only amiable, but lovely. To-day I will appear an innocent and unpretending maiden." ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... building, and bears some resemblance to a toy Noah's Ark in red brick. Tall warehouses have arisen about it and hemmed it in, and the slim chimney-shaft of a waterworks throws a black shadow aslant its unpretending facade. I inquired the name of the present minister. He is called Jonah Goodge, began life as a carpenter, and is accounted the pink and pattern of piety. Oct. 4th. A letter from Sheldon awaited me in the coffee-room letter-rack when I ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... this service was a small party, commanded by Stawarth Bolton, a captain in the English army, and full of the blunt and unpretending gallantry and generosity which has so often distinguished that nation. Resistance was in vain. Elspeth Brydone, when she descried a dozen of horsemen threading their way up the glen, with a man at their head, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... and sweetness of her disposition, made her friends of all who knew her. Many a saint, of the present day, holds his character for sanctity by as slight a tenure, as Anastasio did his as an orthodox Catholic; and many a modest, unpretending female, has been, like Madame de Luna, regarded as an infidel, and a vessel of wrath, for not sounding a trumpet before her, in the exercise ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... musical composition and though unpretending and not on the level of Gounod's "Margaretha", it does not deserve to ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... moors begin, lying widely under the expanse of the sky, with the perpetual running of waters, and the lonely farms, from which the smoke curls up, blue against the brown hillside. There are the sombre and unpretending small villages, Parracombe, Brendon, Bratton-Fleming, each with its history and its little church, and the homesteads from which the young men have gone, in their humble twos and threes, to take their part in this war of millions. ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Harness's scruples with regard to sacred sinecures, he accepted. His means were always small, his charities great, and his genial hospitality unfailing. He was one of the simplest, most modest, unpretending, honorable, high-minded, warm hearted human beings I have ever known. Goodness appeared easy to him—the best proof ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... the mind. It is like the red "chigoe" which inserts his tiny head in the flesh and burrows until he causes a throbbing fester. For instance, I have never forgotten a speech which was addressed to me over twenty years ago. It was just after we had built an unpretending, but thoroughly cozy summer cottage, nestled in a grove of trees that threw long shadows into a silvery lake. The man in question told me he never saw our light at night from the other side of the pretty sheet of water ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... not, she lighted the lamp. Night after night, and month after month, that bright light streamed forth from the solitary cottage on the beach; and many a storm-tossed vessel owed its safety to that unpretending beacon. At length the Scottish Commissioners of Lighthouses heard of this volunteer lighthouse. An annual sum of money was voted for its support, and the widow received a lamp with reflectors, with a supply of oil to keep her lamp burning. The commissioners paid her and ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... earth dreamed her childish dreams, and from which she was hastily aroused one June morning to be saluted as Queen. So homelike and livable an air pervades the place, that one almost expects to see the lonely little girl of seventy years ago playing about the unpretending chambers. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... to admire the hotel, plain and unpretending structure as it was; it was so old and still and highly respectable. He descended from the omnibus nervously and went into the office. A clerk handed him a pen, and he registered his name in a clerkly hand, "A. Armstrong Webb." He had decided to acknowledge his debt to his uncle and ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... Pleasant homes are scattered about; a few animals feed leisurely in the grassy streets. One diminutive Episcopal chapel comes near to being pretty, yet stops just short of it. But there is a kind of unpretending prettiness in the bright and breezy heights environed by black forest ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... of the Middle Ages; that is to say, with Kabyle guns, the stock of which, flattened and surmounted with a hammer of flints, is ignited by a wheel-shaped lock, easier to be managed by a Burgundian under Charles the Bold than by an unpretending modern Roumi. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... promise constantly in mind, I never entered a secluded neighbourhood without being on the look-out for some unpretending photographic studio which would combine artistic excellence with ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... the meretricious artificiality of that of the middle of the last century. And in the deliberate double-skirted costliness of the female fashions of our own day,—fashions not intended for courts or wealthy aristocracies, but for everybody,—contrasted as they are with the sober-hued and unpretending habits which all men wear, and in which little more is sought than comfort and convenience, we have an expression of the laborious and the lavish spirit of the times,—the right hand gathering with painful, unremitting toil, the left scattering with splendid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... we call 'putting on airs.' Adolphus was at first rather quiet and unpretending. Didn't you think he might be a little stupid? And didn't you wish to give him the idea that you yourself were something ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... beyond that selfish bravado which mocks at death and exults in carnage—he scarcely gave his own position a thought. Bravery, with this man, was a principle, not an excitement. He was fearless because he was good; and, from this cause, also, was kindly and unpretending. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Possession, all Night, of the Fancy.——It has Witchcraft in every Page of it: but it is the Witchcraft of Passion and Meaning. Who is there that will not despise the false, empty Pomp of the Poets, when he observes in this little, unpretending, mild Triumph of Nature, the whole Force of Invention and Genius, creating new Powers of Emotion, and transplanting Ideas of Pleasure into that unweeded low Garden the Heart, from the dry and sharp Summit ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... there was much—much even of what was good and useful—to obscure it. The beauty of the English Church in this time was its family life of purity and simplicity; its blot was quiet worldliness. It has sometimes been the fashion in later days of strife and disquiet to regret that unpretending estimate of clerical duty and those easy-going days; as it has sometimes been the fashion to regret the pomp and dignity with which well-born or scholarly bishops, furnished with ample leisure and splendid revenues, presided in unapproachable state over their ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... hold upon me: Proeschke's "Fragments on Anthropology" (a small unpretending book), Novalis' Works, and Arndt's "Germany" and "Europe."[31] The first of these at one stroke drew together, so that I could recognise in them myself as a connected whole, my outer existence, my inner character, my disposition, and the course of my life. I for the first time realised myself ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... first retreat he had entirely wandered; and now, steering vaguely west, it was his luck to light upon an unpretending street, which presently widened so as to admit a strip of gardens in the midst. Here was quite a stir of birds; even at that hour, the shadow of the leaves was grateful; instead of the burnt atmosphere of cities, there was something brisk and rural in the air; and Challoner paced ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... scattered on different elevations. I lived there with my wife and my son Francis, who had just reached his fifth year. My friends often came to visit me. In all that surrounded me, there was nothing either rare or beautiful. It was nature with her simplest ornaments, and family life in the most unpretending tranquillity. But nothing was wanting. I had space, verdure, affection, conversation, liberty, and employment,—the necessity of occupation, that spur and bridle which human indolence and mutability so often require. I was perfectly content. When the soul is calm, the heart full, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... unsullied and unknown. No longer a child of the dust, thou steppest forth almost too delicately attired at such a season as this. Ye winds of heaven: "breathe on it gently." Ye showers descend on my Snowdrop with the tenderness of dew. Little flower, I love thy look of unpretending innocence: thou art the child of simplicity. Thou art a flower, even though colourless. Wert thou never gay as others? Where are the hues thou once didst wear? Hast thou lent them to the rainbow, or to gay and gaudy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... word, Tradition: how we inherit not Life only, but all the garniture and form of Life; and work, and speak, and even think and feel, as our Fathers, and primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, have given it us?—Who printed thee, for example, this unpretending Volume on the Philosophy of Clothes? Not the Herren Stillschweigen and Company; but Cadmus of Thebes, Faust of Mentz, and innumerable others whom thou knowest not. Had there been no Moesogothic Ulfila, there had been no English ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... natives, that his little chapel could not contain the numbers who resorted to his ministrations: to Father Marest, the first preacher against intemperance; and, finally, to Marquette, the best and bravest of them all, the most single-hearted and unpretending! ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... had clung to him in the darkest hours, until death had broken his hold in life, and he was laid away the wreck of his former self in a drunkard's grave. Gathering up the remains of what had been an ample fortune, she installed herself in an humble and unpretending home in the suburbs of the city of B., and there with loving solicitude she had watched over and superintended the education of her only son. He was a promising boy, full [of?] life and vivacity, having inherited much of the careless joyousness of his father's temperament; and although ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... opinions with hers, which I take to have been acquired in the country where she lives, and in the domination of a small circle. A singularly ordinary woman in appearance and manner. The dinner was very good and remarkably unpretending. Ourselves, Madame and her son, the Scheffers, the Sartorises, and some Lady somebody (from the Crimea last) who wore a species of paletot, and smoked. The Viardots have a house away in the new part of Paris, which looks exactly as if they had moved into it last week and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... it fame [Pope], hide one's light under a bushel, cast a sheep's eye. Adj. modest, diffident; humble &c 879; timid, timorous, bashful; shy, nervous, skittish, coy, sheepish, shamefaced, blushing, overmodest. unpretending^, unpretentious; unobtrusive, unassuming, unostentatious, unboastful^, unaspiring; poor in spirit. out of countenance &c (humbled) 879. reserved, constrained, demure. Adv. humbly &c adj.; quietly, privately; without ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... chief in his seat. At his side rode a far different figure. Mounted upon a slight-made, active thorough-bred, whose drawn flanks bespoke a long and weary journey, sat Sir Arthur Wellesley, a plain blue frock and gray trousers being his unpretending costume; but the eagle glance which he threw around on every side, the quick motion of his hand as he pointed hither and thither among the dense battalions, bespoke him every inch a soldier. Behind them came a brilliant staff, glittering in aiguillettes and golden trappings, among whom I recognized ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... mastership of Dr. Jenkyns, attained pre- eminence for success in the schools, and for the high standard required of its members, who formed 'the most delightful society, the very focus of the most stimulating life of the University,' within those unpretending walls, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have a singularly fine & aristocratic disrespect for homely & unpretending English. Every time I use "go back" you get out your polisher & slick it up to "return." "Return" is suited only to the drawing-room—it is ducal, & says itself with ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... entertainments' the Duke regarded as the 'chief studies of our youths at Cambridge,' and he made no secret of his opinion that his promising son was better without them. Lord John's father is described by those who knew him as a plain, unpretending man, who talked well in private life, but was reserved in society. He was a great patron of the fine arts, and one of the best farmers in England, and was, moreover, able to hold his own in the debates ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... feelings, to admire. No one seemed to miss him, however, and we five, who remained, were soon seated in the spot I have mentioned, and as much abstracted from the scene around us, as if we had been on the rustic bench, under the old elm, on the lawn—if I dare use so fine a word, for so unpretending a place—at Clawbonny. I had my station between Mr. Hardinge and Grace, while Lucy sat next her father, and Rupert next to my sister. My friend could see me, without difficulty, owing to his stature, while I saw the glistening ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... fancied she could hear the voice of Ethiopian troops hailing the Regent as king—could see Ani decorated with the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, seated on Rameses' throne, and herself by his side in rich though unpretending splendor. She pictured herself with her son and daughter as enjoying Mena's estate, freed from debt and increased by Ani's generosity, and then a new, intoxicating hope came into her mind. Perhaps already at this moment her daughter was a widow, and why should she not be so fortunate ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and said to him, "The law that will protect that flower will also guard and protect the hand that planted it." He knew that I had drank deep of the cup of slavery, was aware of what I meant, and merely nodded his head in reply. I never experienced hospitality more genuine, and yet more unpretending, than was meted out to me while at Hartwell. And the favourable impression made on my own mind, of the distinguished proprietor of Hartwell Park, was nearly as indelible as my humble name that the Doctor had engraven in a brick, in the vault beneath ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... church at the lower end, over the door: and the voices were led by the clerk, who, it was evident, derived no slight pride and gratification from this portion of the service. The discourse was plain, unpretending, and well adapted to the comprehension of the hearers. At the conclusion of the service, the villagers waited in the churchyard, to salute the clergyman as he passed; and two or three, I observed, stepped aside, as if ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... that is to say, the various agencies and machinery directed by the Vicar. It may be new to some readers, especially to Americans, to learn how much of the time and thoughts of our Anglican beneficed clergymen are wanted for things not directly religious. The church, a plain and unpretending edifice, built in the year 1838, is served by the Vicar and two curates. There are daily services, and on Sundays an early celebration. The average attendance at the Sunday morning mid-day service is about one hundred; in the evening it is generally double that number. They ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... respectable young Frenchwoman. This cap is made of some opaque white substance, tender yet solid, and the theory of its existence is that it should be stainless and incapable of disturbance. It is the badge of an order, the sign of unpretending industry. The personage who wears it does not propose to look like a "dame:" she contentedly crowns herself with the tiara of her rank. Long generations of unaspiring humility have bequeathed her this soft and candid sign of distinction: as her turn comes in the line ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... blessing. Miss Mary Safford is a resident of this town, whose life since the beginning of the war, has been devoted to the amelioration of the soldier's lot, and his comfort in the hospitals. She is a young lady, petite in figure, unpretending, but highly cultivated, by no means officious, and so wholly unconscious of her excellencies, and the great work she is achieving, that I fear this public allusion to her may pain her modest nature. Her sweet, young face, full of ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... regaling ourselves with country fare and looking at the strange place from the window of the little inn. Then Richard proposed that we should walk out while waiting for repairs to our vehicle. Together we strolled through the quiet lanes and open commons till we came upon a pretty, unpretending church, half hidden in ivy and creeping vines. The door stood open. "Come," said he, "let us go in." I followed him in. To my surprise I discovered a clergyman in his robes at the altar. Richard whispered in my ear some words which I could not understand and ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... the last page of a work, which though its form be light and unpretending, would yet aspire to suggest to its readers some considerations of a very opposite character. A year ago. I presumed to offer to the public some volumes that aimed to call their attention to the state of our political parties; their ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... any one who would do to take it, and it may be doubted whether the marquis of Abercorn would have sacrificed himself if the glittering prospect of a coronet all strawberry leaves (for he was created a duke while in office) had not been held before his eyes. The vice-regal lodge is a plain, unpretending building. It is charmingly situated in the Phoenix Park (1760 acres), and commands delightful views over the Wicklow Mountains. Within, it is comfortable and commodious. The viceroy resides there eight months ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... the verses is Miss Jane Montgomery Campbell, whose identity has not been traced. Hers is evidently one of the retiring names brought to light by one unpretending achievement. English readers owe to her the above modest and devout hymn, which was first published here in Rev. C.S. Bere's Garland ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... merely contained a fine table, two or three common chairs, a closet, a bed, and a harp—the relic of better and happier days. The uncarpeted floor was almost as white as snow—and certainly no snow could be purer or whiter than the drapery of her unpretending couch. ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... the physiognomy of this spare, sober, sallow, middle-aged person, who had nothing in common with Gertrude Wentworth's conception of a soubrette, by the most ironical scowl that had ever rested upon the unpretending tokens of the peace and plenty of the Wentworths. Fortunately, Augustine could quench skepticism in action. She quite agreed with her mistress—or rather she quite out-stripped her mistress—in thinking that the little white house was pitifully bare. "Il faudra," said ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... a cordial shake of Ned's hand, the two quiet, unpretending- looking men filed out and ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... times its present length, we should have read it to the end with the same interest which its perusal inspired, and arrived, with the same regret that there was not more of it, at its last page. It is simple and unpretending, but as life-like and spirited as any collection of descriptive sketches which we can recall. We realize in it all the vexations of mud, all the horrors of blood, and all the joys of occasional chickens and a good night's rest, which render the soldier's life ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of its proximity to the kitchen, with the thermometer at 85 deg. in the shade, as it was to-day, was doubtless duly appreciated by him, he having just arrived from Turin. We found him waiting for us, and he accompanied us to the President's residence, called the White House. It is a handsome but unpretending building, not like its neighbours, of marble, but painted to look like stone; the public reception-rooms are alone shown, but a good-natured servant let us see the private rooms, and took us out on a sort of terrace behind, where we had a lovely view of the Potomac. The house is situated in a ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... and unpretending it really deserves to be heard, the music is so full of sweetness, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... to be born surrounded by a natural horizon. The Old Gambrel-roofed House could not boast an unbroken ring of natural objects encircling it. Northerly it looked upon its own outbuildings and some unpretending two-story houses which had been its neighbors for a century and more. To the south of it the square brick dormitories and the bellfried hall of the university helped to shut out the distant view. But the west windows gave ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... injustice to one of the greatest of British heroes—certainly the most consummate, if we except Wellington, of British military commanders. No man has yet appeared who has done any thing like justice to the exploits of Marlborough. Smollett, whose unpretending narrative, compiled for the bookseller, has obtained a passing popularity by being the only existing sequel to Hume, had none of the qualities necessary to write a military history, or make the narrative of heroic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... will leave it as an historical work, brief, complete, profound, truthful—which will survive the time and occasion that called it forth and be esteemed hereafter, no less for its intrinsic worth than its unpretending modesty." [Footnote: Pamphlet edition with notes and prefaces by C. C. Nott and Cephas Brainerd, September, 1860. Quoted in Nicolay ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... reminds me of Worsley: there is the same look of Seelen reinheit, with far less thought and intelligence; indeed little thought, of course, and an additional childlike innocence. I suppose some medieval monks may have had the same look, but no Catholic I have ever seen looks so peaceful or so unpretending. I see in him, like in all people who don't know what doubt means, that easy familiarity with religion. I hear him joke with Omar about Ramadan, and even about Omar's assiduous prayers, and he is a frequent and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... general comprehension of which no others of those the priest knew around him could boast. He had met him first very frequently at Ballycloran, had since dined with him at Mohill, and had more than once induced him to join the unpretending festivities of the cottage. There was nothing, therefore, very singular in Captain Ussher's visit; and yet, from what was uppermost in the mind of each of the party, it ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... nor Iachimo detests the mot propre more than Sidney. Yet again, he is one of the arch offenders in the matter of spoiling the syntax of the sentence and the paragraph. As has been observed already, the unpretending writers noticed above, if they have little harmony or balance of phrase, are seldom confused or breathless. Sidney was one of the first writers of great popularity and influence (for the Arcadia was very widely read) to introduce ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... more habitual and so to speak chronic sense of God's presence the following sample from Professor Starbuck's manuscript collection may serve to give an idea. It is from a man aged forty-nine—probably thousands of unpretending Christians would ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... better. "Rangers of Connaught!" said Picton, as he passed the Eighty-eighth, drawn up for the assault of Ciudad Rodrigo, "it is not my intention to expend any powder this evening. We'll do this business with the cold iron." This was a very unpretending speech; nothing of the clap-trap or melodramatic about it; a mere declaration in the fewest possible words, of the speaker's intentions, implying what he expected from those he addressed. That it was just what was wanted, was proved by the hearty respondent cheer of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... met a man who so disarms opposition in discussion, as I have often seen him, without yielding an iota, merely by the unpretending simplicity and sincerity ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... been the personal merit of the wife of the great Conde, did the little she had justify the wretchedness of her destiny? No: some beauty, wit, virtue, courage, a timid disposition perhaps, an unpretending virtue, a courage even mediocre, easily overthrown, and which needed the pressure of circumstances and danger for its development,—in all this there was nothing to invoke the ire of the ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... now blossoming under the generous modern influences. Squire Oliver Montague, a lawyer who had retired from the practice of his profession except in rare cases, dwelt in a square old fashioned New England groves. But it was just a plain, roomy house, capable of extending to many guests an unpretending hospitality. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... present want of them, the two whose names are given above are the best that can be obtained. Mr. Gosse's is expensive, costing between four and five dollars. "The Common Objects of the Seashore," to be got for a quarter of a dollar, contains much accurate, unpretending, and pleasant information. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... BEAUCHAMP, an unpretending residence in the simple cottage style, on the right-hand side of the road, proceeding to Niton: we catch a glimpse ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... houses have a mellow look, and in Mrs. Glegg's day there was no incongruous new-fashioned smartness, no plate-glass in shop-windows, no fresh stucco-facing or other fallacious attempt to make fine old red St. Ogg's wear the air of a town that sprang up yesterday. The shop-windows were small and unpretending; for the farmers' wives and daughters who came to do their shopping on market-days were not to be withdrawn from their regular well-known shops; and the tradesmen had no wares intended for customers who would go on their way and be seen no more. Ah! even Mrs. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... object of ridicule when a man sets up for being handsome; and so must dulness when he sets up for a wit. They are not ridiculed because ridicule in itself is, or ought to be, a pleasure, but because it is just to undeceive and vindicate the honest and unpretending part of mankind from imposition, because particular interest ought to yield to general, and a great number who are not naturally fools ought never to be made so, in complaisance to a few who are. Accordingly we find that in all ages, all vain pretenders, were they ever so poor or ever ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... the custom-house, an unpretending wooden structure, our luggage was carefully overhauled by a courteous officer, attired in spotless, light-blue linen. Passing through the building I emerged on the street where crowds of negroes, Cuban and foreigners were engaged in smoking, chatting, and watching the newly-arrived travellers. ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... Aramis, turning in the carriage towards his companion, "weak creature as I am, so unpretending in genius, so low in the scale of intelligent beings, it has never yet happened to me to converse with a man without penetrating his thoughts through that living mask which has been thrown over our mind, in order to retain its expression. ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... undertaking a pilgrimage to London to obtain her pardon, are both represented as true by my fair and obliging correspondent; and they led me to consider the possibility of rendering a fictitious personage interesting by mere dignity of mind and rectitude of principle, assisted by unpretending good sense and temper, without any of the beauty, grace, talent, accomplishment, and wit, to which a heroine of romance is supposed to have a prescriptive right. If the portrait was received with interest by the public, I am conscious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... more. In externals, they were two unobtrusive women; a perfectly secluded life gave them retiring manners and habits. In Emily's nature the extremes of vigour and simplicity seemed to meet. Under an unsophisticated culture, inartificial tastes, and an unpretending outside, lay a secret power and fire that might have informed the brain and kindled the veins of a hero; but she had no worldly wisdom; her powers were unadapted to the practical business of life; she would fail to defend her most manifest rights, to consult ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte
... to adopt the phraseology and manners of those with whom an adverse destiny had so singularly connected us. In this we succeeded; for no one, up to the present moment, has imagined either my wife or myself to be other than the simple and unpretending Frank ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... situation—and here I mean the president and not the stag—are greatly increased in such an instance as this by the peculiar nature of the institution. In its unpretending solidity, reality, and usefulness, believe me—for I have carefully considered the point—it presents no opening whatever of an oratorical nature. If it were one of those costly charities, so called, whose yield of wool bears no sort of proportion ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... companions in arms were his occasional guests, and his friendships and connections linked him with some of the most prominent and worthy people of the country, who were sure to be received with cordial, but simple and unpretending hospitality. His marriage was unblessed with children; but those of Mrs. Washington experienced from him parental care and affection, and the formation of their minds and manners was one of the dearest objects of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Austria, Russia, and Italy. It is true that the population of Germany is increasing with immense rapidity, and that the question of expansion is becoming a burning one; but it is a question quite outside the strictly home politics of this unpretending chronicle. We are only concerned with the obvious fact that Germans settle in far countries in much smaller numbers than we do, and that those who go abroad mostly choose the British flag and avoid their own. It does not occur as easily to a German as to an Englishman ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... famous romance the 'Exiles of Siberia,' of Madame Cottin, we have had no account of these desolate lands more attractive than the present work, from the pen of the Lady Eve Felinska, which, in its unpretending style and truthful simplicity, will win its way to the reader's heart, and compel him to sympathise with the fair sufferer. The series of hardships endured in traversing these frozen solitudes is affectingly told: and once settled down at one ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... who it now appeared had never been legally divorced from the deceased; next by four of his cousins, who awoke, only too late, to a consciousness of his moral and pecuniary worth. But the humble legatee—a singularly plain, unpretending, uneducated Western girl—exhibited a dogged pertinacity in claiming her rights. She rejected all compromises. A rough sense of justice in the community, while doubting her ability to take care of the whole fortune, suggested that ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to the ultimate law of dramatic art. In the case of great plays, the dramatic representation is most successful from the genuinely artistic point of view—which is the only point of view worthy of discussion—when the just dramatic illusion is produced by simple and unpretending scenic appliances, in which the inevitable "imperfections" are frankly left to be supplied by the "thoughts" or ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... she asked with unaffected sincerity whether she had really sung "assez bien" on Monday night, and broke into a fit of the merriest laughter when she received the answer, "Tres bien pour une petite fille." "Alboni," writes this friend, "is assuredly for a great artist the most unpretending and simple creature in the world. She hasn't the slightest notion of her position in her art in the eyes of ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... for historical composition. He carries his love of effect far beyond the limits of moderation. He tells a fine story finely, but he cannot tell a plain story plainly. He stimulates till stimulants lose their power. Thucydides, as we have already observed, relates ordinary transactions with the unpretending clearness and succinctness of a gazette. His great powers of painting he reserves for events of which the slightest details are interesting. The simplicity of the setting gives additional lustre to the brilliants. There are passages in the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... there was but one other person on the outer or public side of the booking-counter; and he, sticking close in a far corner and inaudibly conferring with a clerk, seemed so slight and unpretending a body that Staff overlooked his existence altogether until circumstances ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... miles round. The hacienda itself, a fine large building, stands lonely and bleak in the midst of magueys. A fine chapel, left unfinished since her husband's death, attracted our attention by its simple architecture and unpretending elegance. It is nearly impossible to conceive anything more lonely than a residence here must be; or in fact in any of the haciendas situated on these great plains of Otumha ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... Compare this unpretending youth to one of Bulwer's heroes, or Disraeli's, or even Thackeray's! And his simple old duke of a father and his dowdy old duchess of a mother are almost as devoid of swagger as himself; they seem to apologise for their very existence, if we may trust these American chroniclers who seem ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... a keen sense of humour, though in other respects he was simple and unpretending. He was a great reader of old-fashioned novels, which indeed in those days were the only works of the kind to be met with. The Arabian Nights, Robinson crusoe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and such like, were his favourites, ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... reflection, accustomed deliberately to weigh every expression and analyze every sentence, and to be influenced by nothing which does not bear the test of the severest examination, may be most impressed by the quiet, unpretending reading of a well digested essay or dissertation. To some men the concisest statement of a subject, with nothing to adorn the naked skeleton of thought, is most forcible. They are even impatient of any attempt to assist its effect by fine writing, by emphasis, tone, or gesture. ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... certainly a wonderful winning way about her- there was a simplicity of manner almost like that of Babie herself, and yet the cleverness of a highly-educated woman. Mary Ogilvie did not wonder at what Mr. and Mrs. Acton had said of the charm of that unpretending ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... author was born, and has always continued in the wrong church for bigotry, the quiet, unpretending Church of England; a church which, had it been a bigoted church, and not long suffering almost to a fault, might with its opportunities, as the priest says in the text, have stood in a very different position from that which it occupies at present. No! let those who are in search ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... said I, with a start, as my eye ranged over the various articles of luxury and elegance around, so unlike the more simple and unpretending features of my uncle's ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... party, after leaving the Waterport, passed through the Casemate Barrack Square and entered Waterport Street, the chief thoroughfare of the town. It was a narrow, unpretending street, very foreign in aspect; the houses tall and overhanging with balconies filled with flowers; the lattice-shutters gaily painted, having outside ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... deserved the eulogies of the press which followed his nomination, among which were those of Colonel Donn Piatt—a judge of ability, to say the least—who had written: "The people will find his utterances full of sound thought, and his deportment modest, dignified, and unpretending.... Possessed of a high order of talent, enriched by stores of information, General Hayes is one of the few men capable of accomplishing much without any egotistical assertion of self." General James M. Comly had said: "More than four years' ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... like Goldsmith, by the force of unpretending but congenial merit, but by a course of the most pushing, contriving, and spaniel-like subserviency. Really, the ambition of the man to illustrate his mental insignificance, by continually placing himself ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... as talker, appreciating everything that others said, however humble might be their rank or pretensions, and was quick to testify his perception of any point in their discourse. He arrogated nothing to himself, but was perfectly unassuming and unpretending, entering with heart and soul into the business, or pleasure, or, I had almost said, folly, of the hour and the company. No one's concerns, no one's thoughts, no one's opinions, no one's tastes and pleasures seemed beneath him. He made himself so thoroughly the companion of those with whom he happened ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... very tidy little modern carriage bustled up the road, a brougham made for a pair of horses which was well known to all hunting men in these parts. It was very unpretending in its colour and harness; but no vehicle more appropriate to its purpose ever carried two thorough-going sportsmen day after day about the country. In this as it pulled up under the head tree of the avenue were seated the two ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... GROUND (fig. 687).—The peculiar charm of this most unpretending pattern is chiefly due to the variety of material and colour introduced into it. The netted ground is made of dark brown Cordonnet 6 fils D.M.C No. 25, worked over, in the first instance, with loop stitches in ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... than the graceful flowers are the drooping cymes of bright berries, turning from green to yellow, then to orange and scarlet, in the tangled thicket by the shady roadside in autumn, when the unpretending, shrubby vine, that has crowded its way through the rank midsummer vegetation, becomes a joy to the eye. Another bittersweet, so-called, festoons the hedgerows with yellow berries which, bursting, show their scarlet-coated seeds. Rose hips and mountain-ash berries, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... since you came home. I have done nothing but contradict you, and snap at you, whether right or wrong; and a pretty spectacle we must have made of ourselves. Now I see that you have twice the sense and understanding that I have, and are so unpretending as to be worth a hundred times more. I wish with all my heart that I had taken your advice, and that the Mechanics' Institute was at the bottom ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on his breast hung a silver medal with the figure of the Virgin Mary, and his scarf was as costly as those worn by rich lords. Every one could see that we were about to perform a solemn ceremony. When we entered the little, unpretending church, the evening sunlight streamed through the open door on the burning lamp, and glittered on the golden picture frames. We knelt down together on the altar steps, and Anastasia drew near and stood beside us. A long, white ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of his mind never forsook him. He was at all times ready to teach, and never found it difficult to detach himself from his own concerns, to attend to the wants and wishes of others. He was uniformly courteous and unpretending; and, if at any time he indulged in a vein of playful ridicule, it was only against the presumptuously ignorant, and those who were without foundation wise ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... riding in its mother's lap in the March to Finchley, (its careless innocent face placed directly behind the intriguing time-furrowed countenance of the treason-plotting French priest,) perfectly sobers the whole of that tumultuous scene. The boy mourner winding up his top with so much unpretending insensibility in the plate of the Harlot's Funeral, (the only thing in that assembly that is not a hypocrite,) quiets and soothes the mind that has been disturbed at the sight of so much depraved ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... struck me most was the sonorous and mellow voice which seemed to swell from the inmost depths of the soul, and a conversation the most extraordinary that I had ever met with. She threw out, in the most facile and unpretending fashion, thoughts full of originality and humor, where wit was united with simplicity, and acuteness with amiability; and into the whole a deep truth was cast, as it were out of iron, giving to every sentence a completeness of impression which rendered it hard for the strongest, in ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... belonged, were sent down to General Ashby, some ten miles, for picket service to supply the place of Chew's battery, which exhausted its ammunition in daily skirmishes with the enemy. Ashby himself was always there; and an agreeable, unpretending gentleman he was. His complexion was very dark and his hair and beard as black as a raven. He was always in motion, mounted on one of his three superb stallions, one of which was coal-black, another a chestnut sorrel, and the third white. On our first trip we ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... into admiring it; there is, indeed, nothing more here, than an approximately true rendering of a healthy youthful face, without the slightest attempt to give an expression of activity, cunning, nobility, or any other attribute of the Mercurial mind. Extreme simplicity, unpretending vigour of work, which claims no admiration either for minuteness or dexterity, and suggests no idea of effort at all; refusal of extraneous ornament, and perfectly arranged disposition of counted masses in a sequent order, whether in the beads, or the ringlets ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... language, and of tyranny or cruelty in any form. He entertained a love for the horse in the stable without bowing down to worship the stage-coachmen, the jockeys, and other ignoble heroes of "horsey" life. He loved his country and "the quiet, unpretending Church of England." He was ready to exalt the obsolescent fisticuffs and the "strong ale of Old England," but he was not blind either to the drunkenness or to the overbearing brutality which he had reason to fear might be held to disfigure the ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... My unpretending page shall fill, Their offspring's innocent flirtations By the old lime-tree or the rill, Their Jealousy and separation And tears of reconciliation: Fresh cause of quarrel then I'll find, But finally in wedlock bind. The passionate speeches I'll repeat, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... on the sea-shore, but a short walk from the village up one of those breezy uplands would bring the foot-passenger within view of the blue sea-line; on one side is Singleton, with its white cliffs and row of modest, unpretending houses, and on the other the busy port of Pierrepoint, with its bustle and traffic, its long narrow streets, and ceaseless activity. Sandycliffe lies snugly in its green hollow; a tiny village with one winding street, a few whitewashed cottages grouped round ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... miles long, which connects Venice with the land. The water is not deep, and most of this bridge is a mere bank of earth running into the sea. It was on account of my being disgusted at the general unpretending appearance of Venice, that I left her so soon. Among the objects of interest that I saw between Venice and Bologna, was a herd of a hundred deer on a hill-side, and the merry bells of stage-teams jingling like our sleigh-bells, ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... little Dutch city, on a dot of island a few miles southwest of Massachusetts. For a city entirely unobtrusive and unpretending, it has really great attractions and solid merit; but the superior importance of other places will not permit me to tarry long within its hospitable walls. In fact, we only arrived late at night, and departed early the next morning; ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... kept, if not to his own opinion, to that which Margery, at all events, entertained, and got two young shipmates, midshipmen, to join him in it. Hugh Owen, an enthusiastic Welshman, and Edward Elton, a quiet and unpretending English lad who had been three years at sea. He was pale-faced and small of his age, his eyes were blue and his features regular, and in a crowd he would have been the last selected to do a daring ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... Elwin to John Murray the elder, in 1876, "and the one man quite dissimilar from the other. To see him in company I should not have recognised him for the friend with whom I was intimate in private. Then he was quiet, natural, unpretending, and most agreeable, and in the warmth and generosity of his friendship he had no superior. Sensitive as he was in some ways, there was no man to whom it was easier so speak with perfect frankness. He always bore ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... had real satisfaction in looking over the book. There are some opinions with which I do not agree; but the main thing about the book is a good thing; namely, its hearty, wholesome love of English literature, and the honest, unpretending, but genial and conversational, manner in which that love is uttered. It is a charming book to read, and it will breed in its readers the appetite to read ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... with grace and naturalness. All these are portraits, and as the sitters were not persons of august rank, we may conclude that they did not employ the most fashionable artists. They, doubtless, had recourse to more unpretending craftsmen; but that such craftsmen were thus highly trained in knowledge of form and accuracy of execution, shows how strongly even the artisan was influenced by the great school of sculpture ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... of Denham, Crumps, and Company was small and unpretending, as was the street in which it stood. There was a small green door with a small brass plate and a small brass knocker, all of which, when opened by their attendant, a small tiger in blue, with buttons, gave admittance to a small passage that terminated in a small room. ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... development no longer occur. The credibility of this energetic but by no means ambitious man is not liable to the slightest suspicion, for, owing to his want of education, he had no knowledge of the phenomena in question, and his work evinces throughout his attractive and unpretending impartiality. ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... chest of drawers, beautifully grained and well polished, four chairs of the same wood, a large table with one of those green cloth covers sometimes seen in country cottages, a straw-bottom armchair, with a footstool—such was the unpretending furniture. There was, too, in the recess in one of the windows, the cage of the two canaries, faithful companions of Miss Dimpleton. By one of those notable inventions which arise only in the minds of poor people, the cage was set in the middle of a large chest, a foot in depth, upon the table: ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... unpretending stories the writer has attempted to give a faithful picture of life among the Indians and Spaniards in Nueva California during the early ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... to the Clicquot-Werl establishment, and conducting to a spacious trim-kept courtyard, set off with a few trees, with some extensive stabling and cart-sheds on the left, and on the right hand the entrance to the cellars. Facing us is an unpretending-looking edifice, where the firm has its counting-houses, with a little corner tower surmounted by a characteristic weathercock consisting of a figure of Bacchus seated astride a cask beneath a vine-branch, and holding up a bottle in one hand and a goblet ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly |
