"Unsociable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Rzewuski, was one of the most popular writers of Poland. In 1818 or 1822 she married the rich M. Vencelas de Hanski, who was twenty-five years her senior, an old gentleman of limited mind; pompous, unsociable, and often depressed; but apparently fond of his wife, and willing to allow her the travelling and society which he did not himself care for. Madame Hanska had many troubles in her married life, as ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... much over Lilac Lane and the words Mr. Richmond had given her, that Maria charged her with being unsociable. Much Matilda wished that she could have talked with her sister about those same words; but ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... intends returning at that stipulated time I don't know, as he never was very communicative, and is more unsociable than ever now. He is a man who never shows his feelings, but he must feel the loss of his old position deeply. He seemed surprised not to find you here, and says it was a pity to set you teaching, as it will take all the life ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... him before he had eaten it all. He preferred being beaten to going hungry, so they never caught him till he had fed full. But what troubled him most was the tramping, the long dusty stages afoot in country where the unsociable villages lay remote from each other, and the roads were hot and long. A man can outwalk any other animal. After thirty miles, a horse is nowhere and the man is still going, but even fifteen miles leaves the ordinary dog limp and sorry. And then, when every bone in him was aching, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... excite an enmity between soul and body, which Nature and Providence have designed to live together in union and friendship, and which we cannot separate like man and wife when they happen to disagree. The profound silence that is enjoined upon the monks of La Trappe is a singular circumstance of their unsociable and unnatural discipline, and were this injunction never to be dispensed with, it would be needless to visit them in any other character than as a collection of statues; but the superior of the convent suspended in our favour that rigorous law, and allowed one of ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... last with a smile. "I am very unsociable to-night," he said, tuning his face to the place where he knew Angela sat. "I have ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... them off entirely from ever attaining to the best kind of happiness whereof their natures are capable—and especially when they know that their natures are capable of attaining and appreciating a very high standard of happiness indeed. It may not be right to be unsociable because one is unhappy, but it is very human and most particularly masculine; and Christopher just then was both miserable ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... book to pieces and shakes hands with the author afterwards, and the victim must keep on good terms with his slaughterer, or run the gantlet of innumerable jokes at his expense. If he refuses, he is unsociable, eaten up with self-love, he is sulky and rancorous, he bears malice, he is a bad bed-fellow. To-day let an author receive a treacherous stab in the back, let him avoid the snares set for him with base hypocrisy, and endure the most unhandsome treatment, he must still exchange greetings with ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... The farmers have been unsociable and their homes have been lonely. They have been wasteful and careless. They have not been proud ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... as the office-boy, was so much pleased by the applause of her relatives, then so much agitated by the remarks of Cy Bogart, in the back row, in reference to her wearing trousers, that she could hardly be got off the stage. Only Raymie was so unsociable as to devote ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... they finde in them men of as great learning as any where els; but that they lie as it were dead and unknown to the whole world of other men of Learning; becaus they delight to live a retired and unsociable life: this humor therefore amongst other parts of our Reformation, must by som Gospel-principles and Rational inducements bee Reformed, not onely in Colleges but in other Associations. The Lord teach ...
— The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650) • John Dury
... good-naturedly as he passed them. Everyone knew him well by sight, yet Kenneth could not have named many of his neighbors, having held little intercourse with them. It struck him, this morning, that they had little cause to be interested in him. He had been an unsociable lad, and since he had become master of Elmhurst had done little to cultivate acquaintance with the people ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... Can't say why. He never talked of his private affairs, even with me, though we were friends, "Jack" and "Roddy" to each other still, and inhabited lodgings together in Jesus Lane. He owed money to no one. Unsociable habit, I used to call it; destructive of confidence ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... invention framed the lie of the day, the marvellous military leadership of Joan of Arc, and credulity stood as ready to receive it as little boys in nurseries the wondrous tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. Through this mist the figure of Cardinal Beaufort loomed largest, unsociable, disdainful, avaricious, immeasurably high-stomached (for he deemed himself on an equality with the king); and, in spite of immoderate riches, inordinately mean: along with these unamiable qualities, he upheld the policy of Martin V., which was to destroy ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... portions of mankind which are not, perhaps never have been, included in this Human Society; still they are outlying portions and nothing else, fragmentary, unsociable, solitary, and unmeaning, protesting and revolting against the grand central formation of which I am speaking, but not uniting with each other into a second whole. I am not denying of course the civilization of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... this spoiled child of ours until it masters us. We shut the door against cheerfulness, and surround ourselves with gloom. The habit gives a coloring to our life. We grow querulous, moody and unsympathetic. Our conversation becomes full of regrets. We are harsh in our judgment of others. We are unsociable, and think everybody else is so. We make our breast a store-house of pain, which we inflict upon ourselves ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... next circumstance is ready in my mind. One of the doctor's fellow-students (described as being personally an irresistible man) was possessed of abilities which even attracted our unsociable Benjulia. They became friends. At the time of which I am now speaking, my brother's disgusting wife—oh, but I repeat it, Mr. Mool! I say again, his disgusting wife—was the ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... marked the physiognomy of Pitt; harsh and unbending, like a settled frost, he seemed wrapped in the mantle of egotism and sublunary conceit; and it was from the uninviting expression of this great man's countenance, that I first drew my conceptions as to how a proud and unsociable man looked. With very different emotions I was wont to survey the mild but expressive features of his great opponent, Fox: there was a placidity mixed up with the graver lines of thought and reflection, that would have invited ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... 'You unsociable devil,' George's eyes seemed to answer. "Yes, that's all: Look him up in his mausoleum—the old chap might want to prophesy." The grin died on the rich curves of his face, and he added: "Haven't you attorneys ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the people more susceptible of humane feelings. For this purpose, said Montesquieu, music, which influences the mind by means of the corporeal organs, was extremely proper. It is a kind of medium between manly exercises, which harden the body, and speculative sciences, which are apt to render us unsociable and sour. . . . Let us suppose, for example, a society of men so passionately devoted to hunting as to make it their sole employment; they would doubtless contract thereby a kind of rusticity and fierceness. But if they happened to imbibe ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... was accounted unsociable; besides, he was ragged, uncouth, independent, and did not conform to the ways of society; so the select circle cast him out—more properly speaking, did ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... the Megalopolitans, and of those of the Thebans in the Third Olynthiac (Sec. 15). The early orations against Philip also show some misunderstanding of his character. And if, in fact, Demosthenes lived his early years largely in solitary studiousness and was unsociable by disposition, this lack of a quick grasp of human nature and motives is quite intelligible. But this defect grew less conspicuous as his experience increased; and though even to the end there remained something of the sophist about him, as about ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... He would stop at a favorite spring of his, kneel down and take a refreshing drink, right before my very eyes, and then, although my throat was parched, he would bar me even from wetting my tongue. He was decidedly unsociable, but from a training standpoint, he was ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... has become of Jack? He needn't have taken me so literally as never to send me a message even! You mentioned his having been at the Cape while you were there. Was he just as unsociable as ever? I can see him now lying flat on his back in the bottom of a boat reading poetry. I hate poetry, and when he used to quote his favorite passages I made parodies on them. Now you were always different. You'd rhapsodize with him ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... as one of the seamen of the Bussorah Merchant. He knew a little English already, and quickly picked up more. He was thus well able to understand the orders given him. He did not appear to be a favourite with the men. He was evidently retiring and unsociable. Perhaps he had been so long subjected to ill-treatment from others, that he was unwilling to place confidence in those among whom he was cast, until he had ascertained that they were well-disposed towards him. I observed, however, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... this small table to serve at once as a link of sympathy between the quiet men, who would fain silence him, and a means of making unsociable persons acquainted with each other. The five men were thus permitted to dine in a silence befitting their surroundings and their station in life. For they were obviously gentlemen, and obviously ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... interest in literature and politics of a woman whose life is very empty, and, it seems to me, from the tone of her letters, growing daily more indifferent to life, more desultory, more cynical, more misanthropic and tittle-tattling. And Alfieri, meanwhile, was growing more unsociable, more misanthropic, more violent in temper, hanging a printed card stating that he wished no visits (one such is preserved in the library at Florence) in the hall, pursuing and flogging street-boys because they splashed his stockings by playing in the ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... love Jollity, and what they call Good-Neighbourhood. A Man that is out of Humour when an unexpected Guest breaks in upon him, and does not care for sacrificing an Afternoon to every Chance-comer; that will be the Master of his own Time, and the Pursuer of his own Inclinations makes but a very unsociable Figure in this kind of Life. I shall therefore retire into the Town, if I may make use of that Phrase, and get into the Crowd again as fast as I can, in order to be alone. I can there raise what Speculations I please upon others without being observed ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... during her rather long and tedious journey. Various passengers got into her third-class compartment and got out again, but they were somewhat dull and commonplace folk, many of them being of that curiously unsociable type of human creature which apparently mistrusts its fellows. Contrary to her ingenuous expectation, no one seemed to think a journey to London was anything of a unique or thrilling experience. Once ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli |
