"Unpretentious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by people at home. The questions asked me about India, and our daily life there, showed in many cases such an utter want of knowledge, that I thought, surely there is room here for a chatty, familiar, unpretentious book for friends at home, giving an account of our every-day life in India, our labours and amusements, our toils and relaxations, and a few pictures of our ordinary daily surroundings ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... unpretentious poem, describing in six short cantos the six seasons into which the Hindus divide the year. The title is perhaps a little misleading, as the description is not objective, but deals with the feelings awakened ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... home, or on protracted drives when he made his round of visits, taking these new friends along. Dr. John was beloved by everybody in Edinburgh, everybody in Scotland, for that matter, and his story of Rab had won him a following throughout Christendom. He was an unpretentious sovereign. Clemens once ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the ladies, and the delicious odour of violets which his garments always diffused. Pascal's parents did not understand him any better than other people. When Felicite saw him adopting such a strange, unpretentious mode of life she was stupefied, and reproached him for disappointing her hopes. She, who tolerated Aristide's idleness because she thought it would prove fertile, could not view without regret the slow progress of Pascal, his partiality for obscurity and contempt ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... is Camelford House (Lord Hillingdon), an unpretentious building in a courtyard, once the property of the Pitts, Earls of Camelford. George Grenville occupied it in 1805, and subsequently H.R.H. Princess Charlotte and her husband, afterwards Leopold I. of Belgium. Adjoining it is Hereford Gardens, a row of handsome private houses built in 1870 ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... churches. It is not their poverty that moves us, because even when they are empty, they appear to be inhabited. Is it not, then, their modesty that appeals to us? For, with their unpretentious steeples, and their low roofs hiding under the trees, they seem to shrink and humiliate themselves in the sight of God. They have not been upreared through a spirit of pride, nor through the pious fancy of some mighty man on his death-bed. On the contrary, ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... The elegant, the unpretentious, the quiet soir,e to which the woman of fashion shall welcome the litt,rateur and the artist, the aristocrat who is at the top of the social tree and the millionaire who reached his culmination yesterday, would seem to be that Ultima Thule for which all people have been sighing ever since ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... antecedents and associations. But I have not known this story long. He only told it me this evening; just an hour or two before he died. Well, we all have our little romances, as you are pleased to call them!" "Yes, yes, all of us. Even I, unpretentious, plain Elizabeth Fairleigh,—but no matter." I mind me, reader, that I promised not to talk of my own experiences. Ah, there are no such phenomena in the world really, as "commonplace" lives, and "commonplace" persons! "Poor little old man!" I sighed again. "Did he tell you his story then ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... certainly a very attractive place for that amount of money. To be sure it was only an unpretentious cottage, but a pretty one, and the interior had been so successfully though inexpensively treated in decorations and appointments that the general effect attracted from ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... it is true that the ladies, "one and all," had spoken with entire enthusiasm of their afternoon at the unpretentious home of my neighbor, I, nevertheless, deemed it vital to hold plain speech with that impulsive woman immediately. I saw, indeed, that I should have acted after the incident of the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... average voter in tramcar or railway train," and the words had called up a haunting vision of disgust. He often said that he had no objection to the working classes as such. He rather liked them. He found them intelligent and unpretentious. He could converse with them without effort, and they always had the interest of sport in common. He felt no depression in passing through the working quarters of the city, and at Stennynge he was well acquainted with all the cottagers and farmers ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... children of the marriage, Dante Gabriel and Christina became poets of distinction. The eldest sister, Maria Francesca, a religious devotee who spent her last years as a member of a Protestant sisterhood, was the author of that unpretentious but helpful piece of Dante literature, "A Shadow of Dante." The younger brother, William Michael, is well known as a biographer, litterateur, and art critic, as an editor of Shelley and of the works of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... well explain here that Olaf Jansen, a man who quite recently celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday, has for the last half-dozen years been living alone in an unpretentious bungalow out Glendale way, a short distance from the business district ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... was one of those men whom modern England delights to honour, a man of unpretentious acquisitiveness, devoted to business and distracted by no aesthetic or intellectual interests. He was the only son of his mother, the widow of a bankrupt steam-miller, and he had been a delicate child to rear. He left Mr. Gambard's college at Ealing ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... must have a fund of information concerning every current Chicagoan of importance, and this fact alone was certain to be of value. Then the old man was direct, plain-spoken, simple-appearing, and wholly unpretentious—qualities ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... the distinguished Provider had been immersed in a most unenviable condition of despair, for his enlightened but exceedingly perverse-minded master had, of late, declined to be in any way amused, or even interested, by the simple and unpretentious entertainment which could be obtained in so inaccessible a region. The well-intentioned efforts of the followers of the Court, who engagingly endeavoured to divert the Imperial mind by performing certain feats which they remembered to have witnessed on previous ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... dusty road beyond it. As we drove along in the soft clouded sunshine I looked over the hedges on either side, and I could see fields and hedgerows and red roofs clustering here and there, while the low background of blue hills spread towards the horizon. It was an unpretentious homely prospect intercepted each minute by the detestable advertisement hoardings recommending this or that rival pill. 'Tongues in trees' indeed, in a very different sense from the exiled duke's experience! Then we come within sight of the running brook, uncontaminated ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... dined with the President was obscurely announced by the Washington papers as a routine item of White House news. Some days later, however, an enterprising correspondent for a Southern paper lifted this unpretentious item from oblivion and sent it to his paper to be blazoned forth in a front-page headline. For days and weeks thereafter the Southern press fairly shrieked with the news of this quiet dinner. The very papers ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... indeed been transformed! No one would have recognized it, covered as it was with a wealth of pure white blossoms and dark-green leaves, for it looked more like the throne of a fairy than like anything so ordinary and unpretentious. Mrs. Seabrook, who possessed exquisite taste, had so massed the blossoms around her and daintily perched an inverted one on her head that the effect was exceedingly beautiful and picturesque. Katherine, who had chosen to be "Lady ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... actually left New York. She looked forward with an unusual hopeful curiosity to the Lowries. To her surprise their house—miles, it appeared, from the center of the city—was directly on a paved street with electric cars, unpretentious stores and very humble dwellings nearby. Back from the thoroughfare, however, there were spacious green lawns. The street itself, she saw at once, was old—a highway of gray stone with low aged stone facades, steep eaves ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... stood in a side street in Kiel an unpretentious old frame house which had a forbidding, almost sinister appearance, with its old-fashioned balcony and its overhanging upper stories. For the last twenty years the house had been occupied by a greatly respected ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... were Hans Christian Andersen, and Fanny Kemble, with her sister, Mrs. Sartoris, and Lady Oswald, a sister of Lord Elgin. Thackeray's daughter, Miss Anne Thackeray (now Lady Ritchie), still finds vivid her girlish memory of Mrs. Browning,—"a slight figure in a thin black gown and the unpretentious implements of her magic," by her sofa, on a little table. Lady Ritchie turns back to her diary of that winter to find in it another of her early impressions of Mrs. Browning, "in soft, falling flounces ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... strokes was the west, or guest wing; the other contained his own private offices, a special reception-room, furnished in Chinese style—stiff chairs and rigid tables—for Chinese guests, and his living-rooms. It was characteristic of the man that these were the most unpretentious rooms ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... possess the necessary means, to set up a substantial and well-regulated household of their own. He had a large old-fashioned house in the neighbourhood of Russell Square, where he entertained rather frequently in a solid unpretentious fashion. At his Sunday dinners especially, one or two of the minor celebrities of the day were generally to be met, and it was to one of these gatherings that Mark was invited, as one of the natural consequences of the success of 'Illusion.' ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... once into a room, half library, half smoking-room, that opened out of the low-ceilinged hall. The Manor House gave the impression of a rambling and glorified farmhouse, solid, ancient, comfortable, and wholly unpretentious. And so it was. Only the heat of the place struck me as unnatural. This room with the blazing fire may have seemed uncomfortably warm after the long drive through the night air; yet it seemed to me ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... conclusively about it. Compared with this creative statesmanship, the administering of a routine or the battle for a platitude is a very simple affair. But genuine politics is not an inhuman task. Part of the genuineness is its unpretentious humanity. I am not creating the figure of an ideal statesman out of some inner fancy. That is just the deepest error of our political thinking—to talk of politics without reference to human beings. The creative men appear in public life in spite of the cold blanket the politicians ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... The unpretentious roadside inn still exists to-day, unaltered since the above-mentioned memorable occasion. It cherishes its Dickensian association by curiously and oddly announcing on its signboard that: "Charles Dickens and Party lunched here ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... first time Sylvia Bailey had met a duchess, and she was perhaps a little surprised to see how very unpretentious a duchess ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... year after her experience with the train robbers, Clyde Burnaby received a dinner invitation from the Wades. Kitty Wade was an old friend; her husband, Harrison Wade, was a lawyer just coming into prominence. They had an unpretentious home on the North Side, and such entertaining as they did was on a modest scale. Nevertheless, one met there people worth while, coming people, most of them, seldom those who had "arrived" in the French signification of the word—young professional and business ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... from Brooke Market, established here by Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, but demolished a hundred years ago. It was in Brooke Street, in a house on the west side, that poor Chatterton committed suicide. St. Alban's Church is an unpretentious building at the north end. An inscription over the north door tells us that it was erected to be free for ever to the poor by one of the humble stewards of God's mercies, with date 1860. Within we learn that this benefactor was the first Baron Addington. The church is well known ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... upon the estate was an unpretentious frame building, with gable roof, whose white walls, with their proverbial green painted window shutters overlooking the road, showed too plainly the absence of that care and attention which is necessary for comfort and essential to preservation. ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... outskirts of one of our large mill towns, at the very end of a narrow street lined on each side by a row of dwelling houses of the poorer class, stood a tiny cottage. It was a humble, unpretentious abode of only four rooms, but it was home to the weary girl struggling up the hillside. The tired eyes brightened and lagging steps quickened involuntarily as she turned the corner and saw the welcoming light streaming ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... colonist in the land. On his farm, moreover, a house had been built during these same years with the aid of two artisans, but chiefly by the labour of the owner himself. It was a stone house, about twenty feet by forty in size, a one-story affair, unpretentious and unadorned, but regarded as one of the most comfortable abodes in the colony. The attractions of this home, and especially the hospitality of Madame Hebert and her daughters, are more than once alluded to in the meagre ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... in Hyndsville, unlike the newer one in which folks take a sort of ghastly pride, one lot differing from another lot in glory, is an unpretentious place, enclosed by crumbling walls, the iron gates of which have rusted ajar. It is a grassy, bird-haunted, tree-shaded spot, with some dozen or so old family vaults, some modest monuments that bear stately names, some raised marble ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... rather feeble literature of the supernatural. On the contrary, the scenes enacted in houses that appear to be really haunted are generally very simple and insignificant, not to say dull and commonplace. The ghosts are quite unpretentious and go to no expense in the matter of staging or costume. They are clad as they were when, sometimes many years ago, they led their quiet, unadventurous life within their own home. We find in one case an old woman, with a thin grey shawl meekly folded ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... when he called. He could see by the weak-flamed, unpretentious parlor-lamp that she was dressed for him, and that the occasion had called out the best she had. A pale lavender gingham, starched and ironed, until it was a model of laundering, set off her pretty figure to perfection. There were little lace-edged cuffs and a rather high collar attached ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... public. Hence the rarity of their displays, and the better reason why we should seize, when they come, our chances of assisting at these delightful exhibitions of an art whose revival has done so much to restore to the countryside the unpretentious joys that gave its name to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... end of the twenty miles one comes to a small and unpretentious village and an equally small and unpretentious wayside tchai-khan, both owing their existence to a stream of fresh water as small and unpretentious as themselves. Beyond this cheerless oasis stretches again the still more cheerless desert, the rivulets of undrinkable salt water, the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... master of the original sources. Indeed, the use of the text of Homer, Herodotus, the dramatists, and the other contemporary writers is very effective, and very suggestive as to the right method of teaching and study. The style is delightful. For simple, unpretentious narrative and elegant English the book is a model. In my judgment, the work is far superior to any other text-book for high school or academic use which has yet appeared. Its value is enriched by the illustrations, as also by the reference lists and the ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... in life. Rough hemlock lumber, rudely put up and whitewashed, would be a cheap mode of construction, which might be tolerated on a merely commercial place, but would illy correspond with neatly-kept private grounds, however humble and unpretentious they might be. The plan selected may be devoid of mere ornament, which would increase the cost, without adding to the capacity or usefulness, but the proportions should be satisfactory, the arrangement convenient, the materials the very best of their kind, and the workmanship well ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... their estates are like ships in port—their value and magnitude are felt and acknowledged; but when at a distance, as their size seemeth insignificant, so their worth and importance are not duly estimated." There is a weak point in this simile, however; so, to cover it with a better and more unpretentious argument, I will quote a few lines from an old poem of Sir Richard Fanshawe on the subject ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... searching for blind paths—no stooping and looking for ancient tracks, grass-grown and dim. Each argument travels the highway—"the big road." It is logical. The facts and conclusions agree, and fall naturally into line of battle. It is sincere and candid—unpretentious and unanswerable. It is a grand defence of human rights—a brave and manly plea for universal justice. It leaves the decision of the Supreme Court without argument, without reason, and without excuse. Such an exhibition ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... That is, gentlemen who do not particularly care for the ball-room, and it is here we are sure to find wits and the aristocracy of intellect. In short, the very best elements of society are found in the elegant unpretentious soiree, where the intelligent woman of fashion has the tact to welcome and make at home the artist, the author, the professional man, and the man of business. The soiree has still another advantage: ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... short, and when the cab stopped he was distinctly taken aback to perceive the unpretentious aspect of the nobleman's abode. It was, indeed, nothing better than a lodging. A peasant admitted him, and the room to which he was ushered boasted no warmer hospitality than a couple of candles and a decanter of wine. However, the sconces ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... immense blocks of chiselled stone worked into the ephemeral Arab clay as doorsteps or lintels, or lying about at random, or utilized as seats at the house entrance; they date from Roman or earlier times—columns, too, some of them adorned with the lotus-pattern, the majority unpretentious and solid. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... judgment since coming under my command. The firmness and coolness with which he always met the responsibilities of a dangerous place were particularly strong points in Gregg's make-up, and he possessed so much professional though unpretentious ability, that it is to be regretted he felt obliged a few months later to quit the service before ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... But the "Little Giant" was neither a prince nor the son of a prince, though a "sovereign" in his own right, as is every American citizen. Through the open window, however, we had a glimpse of the scion of royalty, and saw a rather unpretentious looking young person, in the garb of a gentleman. The Duke of Newcastle stood on the platform, where he could be seen, and looked and acted much like an ordinary mortal. The boys agreed that he might ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... is a view of the entrance facade to Tiddington House, Oxfordshire, the residence of the Rev. Joshua Bennett. The house is an old building of the Georgian period, and though originally plain and unpretentious, its bold coved cornices under the eaves, its rubbed and shaped arches, moulded strings, and thick sash bars, made it of considerable interest to the admirers of the "Queen Anne" school of architecture, and led to the adoption of that style in the alterations and additions made last year, of which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... bound and modestly entitled Songs and Sonnets. After reading this with ever-growing surprise and delight, Rose never had another doubt about the writer's being a poet, for though she was no critic, she had read the best authors and knew what was good. Unpretentious as it was, this had the true ring, and its very simplicity showed conscious power for, unlike so many first attempts, the book was not full of "My Lady," neither did it indulge ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Armstrong's gate. A traveller, going in the opposite direction—that is towards the city—on clearing the skirts of the plantation, would see, near the road side, a dwelling of very different kind; of humble unpretentious aspect, compared with the grand mansion of the planter. It would be called a cottage, were this name known in the State of Mississippi—which it is not. Still it is not a log-cabin; but a "frame-house," ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... it, and it remained. It was a subject of ridicule with the two girls; but they had never ventured to urge its withdrawal, and after his wife's death Sir Thomas never alluded to the subject. Popham Villa it was, therefore, and there the words remained. The house was unpretentious, containing only two sitting-rooms besides a small side closet,—for it could hardly be called more,—which the girls even in their mother's lifetime had claimed as their own. But the drawing-room was as pretty as room could be, opening on ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... Jay Cooke & Co., in spite of its tremendous significance as a banking and promoting concern, was a most unpretentious affair, four stories and a half in height of gray stone and red brick. It had never been deemed a handsome or comfortable banking house. Cowperwood had been there often. Wharf-rats as long as the forearm of a man crept up the culverted channels of Dock ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... circle in their own length. While unable to sail as close to the wind as a yacht, their chief point is in running, when with huge sails set on either side they will tear along at a pace perfectly astounding for craft of their unpretentious build and rig. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... here to flirt and make acquaintances; as these cafes are frequented by male street prostitutes (Pupenjunge) the invert risks being blackmailed or robbed if he goes home or to a hotel with a cafe acquaintance. There are also a considerable number of homosexual Kneipen, small and unpretentious bar-rooms, which are really male brothels, the inmates being sexually normal working men and boys, out of employment or in quest of a few marks as pocket money; these places are regarded by inverts as very safe, as the proprietors insist on good order and allow no extortion, while the police, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... lay between the garden and the road. Above the hedge showed an occasional shrub; at the corner nearest to the car a chestnut flourished. The wooden gate, once white, which they had passed, was grimed and rickety. The road itself was still the unpretentious country lane that the advent of the electric car had found it. When Carrados had taken in these details there seemed little else to notice. He was on the point of giving Harris the order to go on when his ear caught ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... him in touch with his master, except when the latter offers him food. But there is always some penalty attached to the possession of anything really valuable. So, though I wasn't interested in the cattle, I was bound to follow them till I recovered my dog. Thompson's unpretentious stockwhip was in my hand at the time; and, judging it unlikely that Cleopatra had been broken in to the use of that disquieting implement, I was just turning Bunyip round, when Willoughby ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... a deep reverential, a keenly alert, love for God. He will be beautiful in person and, in sharp contrast with earth's kings, while marked personally with that fine dignity and majesty unconscious of itself, will be gentle and unpretentious in His bearing. His relations with God are direct and very intimate, being personally trained and taught by Him. Backed by all of His omnipotence, He will be charged with the carrying out of His great plans for the chosen people and ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... what it is to make up a story. The Engineer's Thumb (God forgive me) was narrated as a piece of actual and factual history. Nay, and more, I who write to you have had the indiscretion to perpetrate a trifling piece of fiction entitled The Bottle Imp. Parties who come up to visit my unpretentious mansion, after having admired the ceilings by Vanderputty and the tapestry by Gobbling, manifest towards the end a certain uneasiness which proves them to be fellows of an infinite delicacy. They may be seen to shrug a brown shoulder, to roll up a speaking eye, and at last secret burst ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been of the most unpretentious nice breeding and unaffected taste, Emily might have been ingenuously funny ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... at this list will show that, at least as regards animal life, the native word is likely to be the more familiar and unpretentious. But we must not leap to the conclusion that, taking the language as a whole, the simple, easy word is sure to be native, the abstruse word classic. In the following list one word in each pair is simpler, oftentimes much simpler, than the other; ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Hawthorne and her daughter were transforming their Concord home into a small repository of the fine arts. Without much that would pass by the title of elegance, they succeeded in giving it an unpretentious air of refinement, and one could not enter it without realizing that the materials of a world-wide culture had been brought together there. Hawthorne soon found the dimensions of the house too narrow for the enlarged views which he had brought ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... principally, as he informs us, from the New York Ledger, and partially from the Independent; were consequently written very much for the many, and very little for the student of elaborate literature. They are unstudied, unpretentious—true nugae venales, 'representing the impressions of happy homes, or the moods and musings of the movement * * fragmentary and careless as even a newspaper style will permit.' But, beyond this, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... stenographic reporter of the courts, Mr. R. A. West, for my guide, we came into a quiet locality where the ancient landmark reared its steeple, like the finger of faith pointing heavenward. Few indeed must be the fashionable Christians who worship under its unpretentious roof, but there is an air of antiquity surrounding it which interests every visitor who ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... to pleasanter prospects—the Joss House, for instance, one of the several temples whither the Chinese frequently repair to propitiate the reposeful gods. It is an unpretentious building, with nothing external to distinguish its facade from those adjoining, save only a Chinese legend above the door. There are many crooks and turns within it; shrines in a perpetual state of fumigation adorn its nooks and corners; overhead swing shelves of images rehearsing historical ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... of this local brother's unpretentious discourse:—It cheered us, one and all. Faces brightened and drooping heads were lifted up as the old man pursued his way. The last hymn was the heartiest of all, not because, as is sometimes the case, the people were encouraged by the thought of approaching ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... impression true and sound, so far as it goes, and also vivid and distinct. The style adopted has therefore been the opposite of the pedantic, utilizing any vivacities of method which are consistent with truth of fact." The same principles have guided me in the present equally unpretentious treatise. I agree entirely with Mr. Warde Fowler when he says: "I firmly believe that the one great hope for classical learning and education lies in the interest which the unlearned public may be brought to feel in ancient life ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... freezing look on his flippant protege and then commenced a very grave discussion of future ways and means, which ended in an immediate departure for Paris, where the two men entered upon an unpretentious career in the commercial line as agents and travellers for the patentees of an improved kind of gutta percha, which material was supposed to be applicable to every imaginable purpose, from the sole of an infant's boot to the roof ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... waste. Here and there a simple wooden cross indicated a grave, the burial place of some lone traveler who had been murdered and robbed by banditti, and over whose body a Christian hand had reared this unpretentious emblem. As we got further and further southward, the graceful pepper tree, with myriads of red fruit, began to appear, and afterwards became a prominent ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... peter out into brick-and limestone-kilns and great scars of unworked and overworked quarries, the first and more unpretentious of its suburbs take up—Benson, Maplehurst, and Ridgeway Heights intervening with one-story brick cottages and two-story packing-cases—between the smoke of the city and the carefully parked Queen Anne quietude ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a book with several leaves torn out Inoffensive tree which never had harmed anybody It was all delightfully terrible! Mild, unpretentious men who let everybody run over them Now his grief was his wife, and lived with him Tediousness seems to ooze out through their bindings Tired smile of those who have not long to live Trees are like men; there are some that have no luck Voice of the heart which alone has power to reach the ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... Farm, and we believe we have had access to them all, none contains the slightest evidence of sensuality, the least trace of the selfishness of the world, or even any sign of the extravagances of spiritual pride. There is, on the other hand, a full acknowledgment of the ordinary failings of unpretentious good people. Nor do we mean to say that they were purely in the natural order—who can be said to be that? They were the descendants of the baptized Puritans whose religious fervor had been for generations at white heat. They had, indeed, cut ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... to-night," he said to me. And from that day on, I often dined with him informally with M. and Mme. Lockrou, Meurice, Vacquerie and other close friends. The fare was delightful and unpretentious, and the conversation was the same. The master sat at the head of the table, with his grandson and granddaughter on either side, saying little but always something apropos. Thanks to his vigor, his strong sonorous voice, and his quiet good ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... is used by the class of thief about to be spoken of, a short description of it will not be amiss. To all outward appearance it is a very unpretentious traveling-bag. It looks honest, and does not differ, apparently, from any other bag of its kind. A careful scrutiny hardly discloses any variation from the ordinary valise; but, nevertheless, it has ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... in the most normal and unpretentious tone that she hated the moon. I talked to the same lady several times afterwards; and found that this was a perfectly honest statement of the fact. Her attitude on this and other things might be called a prejudice; but it could ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... had not, however, allowed his title to be used, as he shrank from the notoriety which the knowledge of his position and wealth would create among the settlers of that region. He had come there in an unpretentious way, and he wished to leave as quietly. There would be time enough, he thought, to resume his honors when he and his bride should go ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... sat for the first time around their own family dinner table, Mr. Farrington exclaimed, "Now this is what I call comfortable! It's unpretentious, but it's way ahead of that gorgeously dressed-up hotel, which made one feel, though well taken care of, like a traveller and a wayfarer. But I expect you were sorry to leave it, ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... as she followed her father from the house. "I hear the Citadel clock striking ten. I must spend the morning with Lizzie." Then donning the light Leghorn hat that gave her a gypsy-like appearance, she started forth toward Rev. Dr. Heartwell's unpretentious house. As she passed block and square that marked the distance, her heart was heavy and her thoughts were sorrowful. She realized that it was perhaps her final leave—taking of her most cherished friend. Her path led past the walls of the ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... orphan of New England extraction. Her father, the eldest child of a simple unpretentious country family in Western Massachusetts, had been a brilliant but erratic throw-back to Mayflower traditions and Puritan intellectualism. He had married a girl with much the same ancestry as his ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... was Chief George Mansion's silent, unpretentious little mother possessing all this power among her people, and she, Lydia Bestman, was shaking hands with her! ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... have such magazines now-a-days? We have philosophical and scientific articles on the one hand, and insipid stories and travels on the other, but no such unpretentious miscellanies which the ordinary person can read in comfort—such as Chambers's or Cassell's or the Strand in England—which supply the general reader with a simple, but satisfying fare and are of the greatest use ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... forcibly when I first saw him in the country; nor did he seem to feel any additional self-importance from the number and rank of his new acquaintance. His dress was perfectly suited to his station, plain and unpretentious, with a sufficient attention to neatness.' Principal Robertson has left it on record, that he had scarcely ever met with any man whose conversation displayed greater vigour than that of Burns. Walter Scott, a youth of some sixteen years at the ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... from the small, poorly lighted railway station there was an eating-house. Leaving the car in the shelter of a freight shed, we sloshed through the shiny rivulet that raced between the curbs and entered the clean, unpretentious little restaurant. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... striking originality of his own, is not an ordinary parrot, and the conviction was dawning on Travers that Nehal Singh was not an ordinary Hindu. The unusual simplicity of his dress, which nevertheless concealed a costly and refined taste, his firm though unpretentious bearing, the energy with which he had overthrown what Travers guessed must have been a fairly violent opposition on the part of his priestly advisers, pointed to a decided, interesting and perhaps, ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... a young Californian, Mr. Frank Norris, published a novel with the unpretentious title, "McTeague: a Story of San Francisco." It was a book that could not be ignored nor dismissed with a word. There was something very unusual about it, about its solidity and mass, the thoroughness and firmness of texture, and it came down like a blow from a sledge hammer ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... works (as may be noticed from the number of editions they have passed through) has called forth many imitations; but everybody will like the original, or prototype, rather than the copy. The Dictionary is famous as the most copious and correct extant; and the little catechism is as clever as it is unpretentious."—Vide ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... note 'chance and change' and to lament the loss of the days that are no more. The exceeding appropriateness of this in a narrative poem dealing with departed habits and customs must be quite apparent. The thorn grows to a very great age, and many an unpretentious Scottish homestead receives a pathetic grace and dignity from the presence of its ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... designs on our national wealth, our trade, or our vast protectorates. In recent years that view has been dissipated, and the plan of broadening the national goodwill to men has been adopted and encouraged by a body of sound, unpretentious thinkers who have taken pains to train important gifts in the art of good government in all its varied aspects and international complexities. The whole public have had to pay appalling penalties ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... grounds, its gardens, its entrance lodge, its entire surroundings had shown him that only a well-to-do man could live there. How came it, then, that the Squire's relations—his cousin and her mother—lived in a small and unpretentious cottage, and were obviously not well off as regards material goods? Copplestone had the faculty of seeing things at a glance, and refined and cultivated as the atmosphere of Mrs. Greyle's parlour was, it had ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... from the Burton home, was the wayside church with its small and unpretentious organ, and this afternoon Paul had been pumping its wheezy bellows while the young woman who contributed the Sabbath music practised. As he came out of the small building and took his way across the hills, Paul was exalted as he ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Lincoln, after the manner of the prophets, wrestled alone with the problems which he saw before him. From the little we know of his inward state, it is hard for us to conclude that he was happy. A story which is told by his former partner, Mr. Herndon, seems significant. As Lincoln was leaving his unpretentious law-office for the last time, he turned to Mr. Herndon and asked him not to take down their old sign. "Let it hang there undisturbed," said he. "Give our clients to understand that the election of a ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... such questions, that would have been commonplace long ages since if they could ever be so, that the Elegy deals. It deals with them in no lofty philosophical manner, but in a simple, humble, unpretentious way, always with the truest and the broadest humanity. The poet's thoughts turn to the poor; he forgets the fine tombs inside the church, and thinks only of the 'mouldering heaps' in the churchyard. Hence the problem that especially suggests itself is the potential ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... small town in France about midway between the ancient and romantic cities of Tours and Poitiers. To-day it is an exceedingly unpretentious and an exceedingly sleepy place; but in the seventeenth century it was in vastly better estate. Then its markets, its shops, its inns, lacked not business. Its churches were thronged with worshipers. Through its narrow streets proud noble and prouder ecclesiastic, thrifty merchant ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... is going to "the Labrador," or, to be more of a purist still, "the Larbadore." Having put you right on these rudiments—oh! I forgot another: "Fish" is always codfish. Other finny sea-dwellers may have to be designated by their special names, but the unpretentious cod is "t' fish"; and the salutation of friends is not, "How is your wife?" or, "How is your health?" But, "How's t' fish, B'y?" I like it. It is friendly and different—a kind of password to ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... unpretentious ceremony that took place inside the long, low house of logs, and yet it was a wonderful thing to the dark, shy maid who hearkened so breathlessly beside the man she had singled out—the clean-cut man in uniform, who stood so straight and tall, making response in a voice that had ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... It is always rather an awe-striking phrase. It seems as if one ought to be a philosopher, even to approach so august a subject. The kindergarten—a simple unpretentious place, where a lot of tiny children work and play together; a place into which if the hard-headed man of business chanced to glance, and if he did not stay long enough, or come often enough, would conclude that the children were frittering away their time, particularly ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... a famous club; the building itself has a very simple, unpretentious elevation, with nothing whatever about it to attract the attention of the passer-by; but its interior is fitted up in such a style of combined elegance and comfort, and its domestic arrangements are so perfect, as to leave nothing ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... village, and the "young doctor" from "over at Lakeside." Quiet Mrs. Holland walked in at the twilight, by herself, one day, to explain that her husband, the minister, was too unwell to visit, and to say her pleasant, unpretentious words of welcome. Squire Leatherbee's daughters made themselves fine in lilac silks and green Estella shawls, to offer acquaintance to the new "city people." Aunt Faith came over, once or twice a week, at times when "nobody else would be round under foot," and always with some dainty offering from ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... gardens that famous travellers have used in telling of the gardens of Italian princes; yet why should we not, when the one nature and the one art are mother and godmother of them all? It is a laughing wonder what beauty can be called into life about the most unpretentious domicile, out of what ugliness such beauty can be evoked and at how trivial a cost in money. Three years before this "garden to look out from" won its Carnegie prize it was for the most part a rubbish heap. Let me now tell ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... dew falling to refresh the earth. He had left Paris, and was now in a provincial town under the protection of the princess Margaret, who, loving the gospel, extended her protection to its disciples. Calvin was still a youth, of gentle, unpretentious bearing. His work began with the people at their homes. Surrounded by the members of the household, he read the Bible, and opened the truths of salvation. Those who heard the message, carried the good news to others, and soon the teacher passed beyond the city to the outlying towns and hamlets. ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... followed. It also was very easily discouraged; an unfriendly push would have knocked it over at once. But nobody seemed to want to push so unpretentious a thing, so it ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... unpretentious but comfortable. The hand of a careful and thoughtful housekeeper was in evidence everywhere. In the big living room, at the front, were several lounging chairs, and along one wall, between the front windows and the entrance door, stood two roomy bookcases. ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... from Tedworth Square to the Embankment, being cut almost in half by Queen's Road West. It is named after Sir W. Tite, M.P. The houses are modern, built in the Queen Anne style, and are mostly of red brick. To this the white house built for Mr. Whistler is an exception; it is a square, unpretentious ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... the same manner as French captures. A subsequent warrant was granted to the syndicate, who figure in it as the Earl of Bellamont, Edmund Harrison, William Rowley, George Watson, Thomas Reynolds, and Samuel Newton. Under these unpretentious names were hidden Lords Orford and Somers, and other Whig nobles. They were to account for all goods and valuables captured in the rovers' possession: one-tenth was to be reserved for the Crown, the rest being assigned to them to ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... cab and drove direct to 3A Bucklersbury. Mr. Pertwee was an unpretentious-looking gentleman, who had an unostentatious office on the third floor. He showed me a picture in water-colours of the Rogue flying before the wind. The deck was at an angle of 95 to the ocean. In the picture no human beings were represented on the deck; I suppose they had slipped off. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... situated on the site of the Saracen Al Kasr, and within a short tramway drive of the Hotel de France. It is an unpretentious, castellated building, well worth a visit, not so much for the beauty of its interior decoration, its paintings and frescoes, in which it only resembles other palaces in Italy, but for its interesting ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... somewhat like the man himself. But the solitary stranger "who looked like Grant" was miles away before this was realized, and when the procession started on his track he was safely out of reach. Doubtless, the sight of this unpretentious man in citizen attire was disappointing to many who expected to see a dashing hero in a gorgeous uniform, but his dislike of all military parade soon came to be widely known. His hosts at one village, however, were not well informed ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... the town. The older of the boys was a strong man of twenty; the other a sickly lad of eight. The old people earned a slender income by cultivating small fruits. This was helped out by the wages of the older brother, who was a machinist in one of the big factories. They were a quiet and unpretentious little family, devout Christians, and very much attached to ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... and to Baltimore belongs the credit of the erection of the first monument to the memory of Christopher Columbus. This shaft, though unpretentious in height and material, is the first ever erected in the "Monumental City" or in the whole United States. The monument was put up on his estate by Charles Francis Adrian le Paulmier, Chevalier d'Amour. The property is now occupied by the Samuel Ready ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... of wide range, at the same time thorough and unpretentious, is a rarity; a philologist who is neither perversely wrongheaded nor the victim of a preconceived theory is a still greater one; yet we find both characters pleasantly united in the author of these Lectures. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... adorning it with fanciful embellishments. One would say of him, as of many an author of the Talmud, that in writing his work he rested from his Talmudic studies; and one seems to hear in these unceremonious conversations, these unpretentious homilies, the same note that even in the present day is sometimes struck in synagogues on Saturday afternoons. What clearly shows that Rashi unbent a little in composing his Biblical commentaries are the flashes of wit and humor ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... I was in fault myself for refusing to treat him with proper respect. I was proud. This obstinate old fellow, who was really a very good sort, kind-hearted and hospitable, had had two wives, both dead. His first wife, who was of a humble family, left a daughter as unpretentious as herself. She was a young woman of four and twenty when I was there, and was living with her father and an aunt, her mother's sister. The aunt was simple and illiterate; the niece was simple but lively. I like to say nice ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... courtyard, which has a curious foreign aspect in its quiet simplicity, as if the Brunswick princes had brought a bit of Germany along with them when they came to reign here; and there are other red courtyards, equally unpretentious, with more or less old-fashioned doors and windows. Within, the building has sustained many alterations. Since it ceased to be a seat of the Court, the palace has furnished residences for various members of the royal family, and for different officials. Accordingly, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... was a mixture of old and new. Formerly it had been an unpretentious cottage like the others, but she had added a new wing of red brick built in the most approved style of the jerry-builder, and looking like the villas in the more modern parts of Rexton. The crabbed age and the uncultured youth of the ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... Dublin in May, and became at once a part of the summer colony which congregated there. There was much going to and fro among the different houses, pleasant afternoons in the woods, mountain-climbing for Jean, and everywhere a spirit of fine, unpretentious comradeship. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... from what is usual in middle-class houses. The clock on the mantelpiece was flanked with bronzes; engravings and autotypes hung about the walls; door and window had their appropriate curtaining; the oak sideboard shone with requisite silver. Everything unpretentious; but no essential of comfort, as commonly understood, seemed to ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... explain or to apologize for a book. I shall do neither: I have tried to explain my meaning simply and clearly in the book itself, and I am optimistic enough to think that my favourite game is too popular to require an apology for increasing its literature, however unpretentious the attempt may be. Moreover, I am still too much affected by the "brilliant and feverish glow" of enthusiasm to dream ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... son of a solicitor, and all his early circumstances were homely, unpretentious, and rather straitened. His mother died when he was eight years old, and when his father followed her five years later, two of his uncles provided means for continuing at Cambridge the education which had been begun in the rural grammar-school of Hawkshead. It was in ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley |
