"Unpunctual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little too late, or a little too early, in everything they attempt. John B. Gough used to say "They have three hands apiece,—a right hand, a left hand, and a little behindhand." As boys, they were late at school, and unpunctual in their home duties. That was the way the habit was acquired; and now, when a responsibility claims them, they think that if they had only gone yesterday they would have obtained the situation, or they can probably ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... that wretched quarter of an hour, or half hour, which unpunctual guests make us pass in famine and fatigue while they keep dinner waiting. Upon my word, we waited till half-past eleven before dinner was announced. But for the tea, I must have perished; for, like the butler in Sir George Dasent's novel, ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... according to his own expression, he was "not at liberty to lose it himself, and still less to be the occasion of the loss of it to others." Therefore he would not, unless it was absolutely unavoidable, be unpunctual to engagements, or keep people waiting his pleasure. As a boy in college he never had to be urged to study; neither was he in any way an unmanageable boy. In spite of the intensity of his nature, he never deserved to ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... time I've 'ad to speak to you about this, Dick; you know quite well that the company is always unpunctual; you should come ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... little after seven o'clock to keep my dinner engagement at—-'s; for very young men are seldom unpunctual at dinner. We sat down, six in number, to a repast at once incredibly bad, and ridiculously extravagant; turtle without fat—venison without flavour—champagne with the taste of a gooseberry, and hock with the properties of a pomegranate. [Note: Pomum valde purgatorium.] ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... actual experience warranted. The roughness of the strong, uncultured young life grated upon him. It jarred upon his sensibilities. But of Italy he wrote with very different feeling. What though the places were dirty, the people shiftless, idle, unpunctual, unbusinesslike, and the fleas as the sand which is upon the sea-shore for multitude? It mattered not while life was so picturesque and varied, and manners were so full of amenity. Your inn might be, and probably was, ill-appointed, untidy, the floors of brick, the doors agape, the windows ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... without satisfaction; but if our friend's first sensation was one of gratification, the thought which followed had a drop of bitterness in it. "If I could only have had it before!" he said to himself; and indeed many of the disappointments of life, if not the greater part, come because events are unpunctual. They have a way of arriving sometimes too ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... unpunctual," Frank said, "and yet, mother, I never go out without making up my mind that I will be in sharp to time. But somehow there is always something which draws ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... Nihilist. Here from time to time on Sunday evenings it was my wont to put in an appearance towards ten or eleven, for the journey was deceptively long from Fitzroy Square, and Nekrovitch, like most Russians, was himself of so unpunctual and irregular a nature, that he seemed to foster the like habits in all his friends. The nominal hour for these social gatherings to commence was eight, but not till past nine did the guests begin to assemble, and till midnight and later they would come ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... I am sure, though I have received no letter from you since your leaving London; the post, and not yourself, must have been unpunctual. ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... vulgar to be unpunctual," said Adelaide with her calm good-breeding. "It seems to me only another form of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... fumbled for his spectacles, looked round with the most unconscious eye, observed that "Ware" had that day exceeded in his lecture by twenty minutes—"a bad practice," (Dr. Bower was himself notoriously unpunctual,) and took not the slightest notice of any event of greater importance, until Leslie's suspense had been so long on the rack that it began to subside into dismay, when glancing up for a moment, he observed parenthetically, as he ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... the school work is faultlessly done, who is tolerant to effort and a tireless helper, who is obviously more interested in serious work than in puerile games, will beget essential manliness in every boy he teaches. He need not lecture on his virtues. A slack, emotional, unpunctual, inexact, and illogical teacher, a fawning loyalist, an incredible pietist, an energetic snob, a teacher as eager for games, as sensitive to social status, as easy, kindly, and sentimental, and as shy really of hard toil as—as some teachers—is none ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... virtue. Late breakfasts and late dinners,—"too late" for church and market,—"cleanings" out of time, and "washings" protracted till midnight,—bills put off with a "call again to-morrow,"—engagements and promises unfulfilled,—what a host of little nuisances spring to mind, at thought of the unpunctual housewife! The unpunctual woman, like the unpunctual man, becomes disliked, because she consumes our time, interferes with our plans, causes uneasy feelings, and virtually tells us that we are not of sufficient importance to cause her to be more punctual. To the business man, time is money, and ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... passed into the highroad, at the lower end of the long village of Alverholme. He had an appointment with his curate at the church school, and, not to be unpunctual, he quickened his pace in that direction. At a little distance behind him was a young lady whom he had not noticed; she, recognizing the vicar, pursued with light, quick step, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... for a man like me to be married to a woman like you, unpunctual, careless, disorderly, a bad mother, and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... community, are sacrificed. In this, and many other matters, it can be shown that the well-being of the bulk of the people is, to a greater or less extent, impaired by this self-indulgent practice. Let any teacher select the unpunctual scholars—a class who most seriously interfere with the interests of the school—and let men of business select those who cause them most waste of time and vexation, by unpunctuality; and it will be found that they are generally among the late risers, and ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... have married princes,' continued the same lady, with an arch smile that had nothing of unkindness in it, 'for we both have married far above our original stations in life; we are both unpunctual in our habits, and, in consequence of this failing of ours, we have both had to suffer ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... unpunctual—those faces," Brodrick said. And while they were on the subject there was the clock. The clock that Gertrude always used to wind, that Brodrick sometimes forgot to wind, but that Jinny never by ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... I threw open the door with a triumphant "There!" The door hit the side-wall with a bang that upset the nervous systems of neighbouring boys, who felt a little faint, had hysterics, and recovered. Mr. Caesar, feeling that the class was a trifle unpunctual ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... is the result of the purely agricultural occupation of the people. Commerce was in the hands of the Jews, and these could not teach us accuracy; the cultivator of the soil is unreliable because the soil is unreliable, he is unpunctual because nature has no punctuality. Working in the soil, they gradually take some of its characteristics, which enters into their moral being, and in the course of time becomes ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... bloom as they are told; Unkempt about those hedges blows An English unofficial rose; And there the unregulated sun Slopes down to rest when day is done, And wakes a vague unpunctual star, A slippered Hesper; and there are Meads toward Haslingfleld and Coton Where das Betreten's not verboten.... Oh, is the water sweet and cool, Gentle and brown, above the pool? And laughs the immortal river ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... men with nothing to do, was most unpunctual. He never seemed to know what o'clock it was, and yet he had a watch, hung in chains, and gewgaws, like a lady's chatelaine. Hunting partook of the general confusion. He did not profess to throw off till eleven, but it was often nearly twelve before ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... don't personally believe in coercive discipline at all," said Father Payne. "I think it simply gets people out of shape. I believe in trying to give people a real motive for self-discipline: take unpunctuality, for instance. The only way to make an unpunctual person punctual is to convince him that it is rude and unjust to keep other people waiting. There is nothing sacred about punctuality in itself, unless some one else suffers by your being unpunctual. If it comes to that, isn't it ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... For the same reason it is bad manners to drum on a piano, or to drum on table or desk or chair, or to shuffle the feet, or to make any noise that distracts or obtrudes. Why is it bad manners to come late to meals, to be unpunctual, to keep people waiting? Because we inflict pain and inconvenience upon those who are in a certain measure dependent for their comfort on our promptness and punctuality. Why is it bad manners to sprawl in one's seat, to assume ungainly attitudes, to make grimaces, or to munch peanuts ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... from some infirmity, some weakness of character. Most men try to be punctual in any appointment with a man of rank superior to themselves, especially if they have any object, any interest, in conciliating his favour. And, on the other hand, too many persons seem to feel themselves at liberty to be unpunctual in an appointment with an inferior. It is not worth while, they think, to care about being exact with one so much beneath them. "Let him wait till I am at leisure to attend to him," exclaims such a man, in the proud consciousness of superiority; and, perhaps, ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... the other day that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been making enquiries as to the fact of Rothschild having sold his India stock at the time he did. The two Grants (Charles and Robert) are always together, and both very forgetful and unpunctual. Somebody said that if you asked Charles to dine with you at six on Monday, you were very likely to have Robert ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... exception of the chaplain) a red coat. The dinner-parties at Crompton—and there was a party of the most heterogeneous description daily—were literally, therefore, very gay affairs; the banquet was sumptuous, and the great cellars were laid under heavy contribution. Only, if a guest did happen to be unpunctual, from whatever cause, even if it were illness, the host would send for his bear, or his half-dozen bull-dogs, and proceed to the sick man's room, with the avowed intention (and he always kept his word) of "drawing the badger." ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... entrance all was changed. Presto, the by-laws were suspended, and the Western property was given away. Nobody stopped to converse with him. He voted, as I had charged him to do, in every instance, with the minority. I won new laurels as a man of sense, though a little unpunctual,—and Dennis, alias Ingham, returned to the parsonage, astonished to see with how little wisdom the world is governed. He cut a few of my parishioners in the street; but he had his glasses off, and I am known to be near-sighted. Eventually ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... heels, cool one's heels; faire antichambre [Fr.]; wait impatiently; await &c (expect) 507; sit up, sit up at night. Adj. late, tardy, slow, behindhand, serotine^, belated, postliminious^, posthumous, backward, unpunctual, untimely; delayed, postponed; dilatory &c (slow) 275; delayed &c v.; in abeyance. Adv. late; lateward^, backward; late in the day; at sunset, at the eleventh hour, at length, at last; ultimately; after time, behind time, after the deadline; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... companioned by the ruins of tea, in the depths of her great arm-chair; eyes and fingers intent on a square of elaborate embroidery; thoughts astray with her unpunctual son. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... know what mother tells us about the book where what we call secret things are written down, to be read on the great day when all things will be known. Something will stand against your name, there, worse than a mark for being unpunctual. Dear Marcus, do tell the truth, and not mind the prize. You will not care about the prize when you are happy with the beautiful angels in Heaven; but you will love to remember how you did right, when it came ...
— Hatty and Marcus - or, First Steps in the Better Path • Aunt Friendly
... the first to greet her when she entered the theatre at that first September rehearsal. The company was waiting for her. She wasn't late. She had just pleasantly escaped being unpunctual. She came in, cool, slim, electric. Then she hesitated. For the fraction of a second she hesitated. Then Sam Klein greeted her: "Company's waiting, Miss Fuller, if you're ready." And the leading man ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... true that when it did go off, it merely succeeded in blowing a housemaid to atoms, the Governor having gone out of town six weeks before, but at least it showed that dynamite, as a destructive force, was, when under the control of machinery, a powerful, though a somewhat unpunctual agent. Lord Arthur was a little consoled by this reflection, but even here he was destined to disappointment, for two days afterwards, as he was going upstairs, the Duchess called him into her boudoir, and showed him a letter she had ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... the Lilac to you, my dear Miss," said he, bustling in. "I am a business character; have fifty calls to make and so have commenced early, as you see. What a disgraceful thing it was for the Lilac to be so unpunctual. Really I lost all patience with it. Prompt is my word. 'Improve each shining hour,' you know, my dear Miss, as the poet somewhere says, so I bid you good-morning," and the corpulent fellow in his yellow coat buzzed ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... lady, and all the other workers, were earnest, enthusiastic, high-minded, and full of common sense. Henrietta was not one of these things. She was also very inaccurate, unpunctual, and forgetful, and if her failings were pointed out to her in the gentlest way she took offence, not because she was conceited, but because at her age she was beyond having things pointed out. She stayed at the work six months, and during ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... To be unpunctual is sometimes considered a mark of consequence by little great men, but the truly great have ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... caught a cold, and perhaps she would not be better in time. As for little Pierre, everybody knows he always misses the train. You cannot blame him for it. It is his misfortune, not his fault. His mother is unpunctual by nature. Everywhere and always little Pierre arrives after everybody else; he has never in his life seen the beginning of anything. This has given him a ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... unpunctual, and frequently kept his pupils waiting for their lessons. Even Madame von Breuning, for whom he had a strong affection, and who was one of the few people who could be said to have managed him, ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... in the world!— all ready to his hand,—what more could a human being desire? At the office, she swept through the morning business with a speed that took her people off their feet. Once or twice she glanced at the clock; Blair was always unpunctual. "He'll get that knocked out of him when he gets into business," ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... was given in exchange,—and carried it off in triumph. "Do tell him to be punctual," said Mr Magruin, when Vavasor took his leave. "I do so like young men to be punctual. But I really think Mr Fitzgerald is the most unpunctual young man I ever ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... it until it becomes with us a second nature, and we do everything, as the saying is, "by clockwork." In rising in the morning and going to bed, in taking up different kinds of work, in keeping appointments with others, we should strive to be "to the minute." The unpunctual man is a nuisance to society. He wastes his own time, and he wastes the time of others; as Principal Tulloch well says, "Men who have real work of their own would rather do anything than do business ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... his entrance all was changed. Presto, the by-laws were amended, and the Western property was given away. Nobody stopped to converse with him. He voted, as I had charged him to do, in every instance, with the minority. I won new laurels as a man of sense, though a little unpunctual—and Dennis, alias Ingham, returned to the parsonage, astonished to see with how little wisdom the world is governed. He cut a few of my parishioners in the street; but he had his glasses off, and I am known to be nearsighted. Eventually ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... at last was unpunctual in her visits to the Wilderness. One day I had waited from an early hour, and had strained my eyes to catch the first glimpse of her glorious figure as she tripped among the trees. I had at last sat down beneath the accustomed oak, and was fancying all manner of reasons for her not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... such, means for one moment to be selfish. But lack of attention does in very many cases indeed allow the real Christian to contract, or to continue, selfish habits. Many good men quite fail to realize how selfish, practically, it is to be unpunctual. You have your understood mealtimes in your lodging. It may not be always possible to keep strictly to them; the exigencies of work may make it honestly necessary now and again to be out of time. But let nothing ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule |
