"Disconcerting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disconcerting fact that the editor has been influenced by and has followed the example of Schuch by the adoption of his system of numbering the recipes. We do not approve of his inclusion of the excerpts of Vinidarius in the ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... machine, for instance. When those gentlemen paid the president of Princeton University an unsolicited call to suggest that he be candidate for the Democratic nomination for the governorship of New Jersey, Mr. Wilson, after thanking them for the compliment, with disconcerting directness asked, "Gentlemen, why do you want me as the candidate?" They replied, because they believed he could be elected and they wanted a Democratic governor. He asked why they believed he could be elected, he who had never held any public office. They answered that the people of New Jersey ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... the severe look, expressive at once of displeasure and astonishment, were most disconcerting, but Mr. ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... for a period of some thirty years after his death, Schubert cannot be said to have been neglected; and last year there was quite an epidemic of concerts to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of his birth. Centenary celebrations are often a little disconcerting. They remind one that a composer has been dead either a much shorter or a much longer time than one supposed; and one gets down Riemann's "Musical Dictionary" and realises with a sigh that the human memory is treacherous. ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... began to wonder if she knew anything at all about "The Idylls of the King." Miss Marlowe had a way of saying, when answers were given, "Yes—yes—what do you yourself think?" which Judith, accustomed to teachers who had spoken with a voice of authority, found disconcerting but highly interesting. ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... Wednesday morning. Late on the Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Knight brought the lad to the Charing Cross Hotel. There, having taken his ticket and made all other necessary arrangements, he left him, returning himself to Essex by the evening train. Their farewell was somewhat disconcerting, at any rate to the mind of ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... An auto picks them up and off they whirl to Jasper Avenue. The Lord o' the Tents of Shem disappears into his bank and Milady drives on to the Government house to read before the Literary Club a paper on Browning's Saul. To the tenderfoot from the South it is all delightfully disconcerting—oxen and autos and ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... been sent Indian Divisions for Suvla and if the New Army, Territorials and Yeomen had been sent instead to France! Each category would have given (let me put it mildly) double value. The heat, the thirst, the scrub, the snipers, all so disconcerting to our fresh contingents would have been commonplaces of frontier warfare to our Indian troops. See what the handful with us here have achieved. Yet in vain do I write and cable my personal entreaties to Beauchamp Duff, the all-powerful ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... of the book. You will ultimately like the book, and you will be justified in liking it. Honesty, in literature as in life, is the quality that counts first and counts last. But beware of your immediate feelings. Truth is not always pleasant. The first glimpse of truth is, indeed, usually so disconcerting as to be positively unpleasant, and our impulse is to tell it to go away, for we will have no truck with it. If a book arouses your genuine contempt, you may dismiss it from your mind. Take heed, however, lest you confuse contempt ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... he was wholly himself, having confidence in whatever mode of procedure his own thought approved, he had begun using methods that the politicians found disconcerting. The second conference with the Senators was an instance. Returning in the same mood in which they had left him, with no suspicion of a surprise in store, the Senators to their amazement were confronted by the Cabinet—or most of it, Seward being absent.(11) The Senators ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... peculiarities of temperament, as might have been seen by his manner and movements even in this staid assembly; for, as if disgusted with a tedious and profitless debate, and determined also not long to be troubled by the disconcerting news just announced, he had now evidently cast these cares from his mind, to indulge in the more congenial employment of gazing out upon the landscape, over which his kindling eye might have been seen to wander, till it rested, in rapture, on the broad empurpled ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... was an accomplished man of the world, and the fact that the fourth obviously regarded him as a hero helped Musa to behave in a manner satisfactory to himself in front of these English and American women, so strange, so exotic, so kind, and so disconcerting. Musa looked upon Britain as a romantic isle where people died for love. And as for America, in his mind it was as sinister, as wondrous, and as fatal as the Indies might seem to a bank clerk in Bradford. He had need of every moral assistance in this or any other social ordeal. For, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... to have some casualties, but the only one we had was one man who got a scratch in the arm with a piece of shrapnel. At 5.15 we decided to come back via a trench, as the shelling was still going on. All got back safely. But it is most disconcerting—one cannot go out on a little job like that in the afternoon without having the wind put up us vertical! I had tea and dinner. Then to bed. I felt very hot and could not get to sleep. Allen returned from a working party at 10.15 p.m. There was a strafe on ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... nothing like this since Mahomet and, accepted literally, it claims for the Kaiser the divine attributes attributed to the Caesars. Even the Caesars, in baser and more primitive times, found posing as a divine superman somewhat difficult and disconcerting. Shakespeare subtly suggests this when he makes his Caesar talk like a god and act with the vacillation ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... Sherman made an attack for the purpose of carrying the north end of Missionary Ridge. His success was not complete, although at the time it was reported throughout the army to be so. It had the effect of disconcerting Bragg, however, and caused him to strengthen his right by withdrawing troops from his left, which circumstance led Hooker to advance on the northerly face of Lookout Mountain. At first, with good glasses, we could plainly see Hooker's troops driving the Confederates ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Mr. Morrison's return meant the breaking up of the pleasant companionship of the winter, and she was not in the least glad to see him. Mrs. Morrison's exclamation as she entered was somewhat disconcerting. ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... warrior herself in her day and knew a warrior when she saw one. She had no desire to engage in a hand to hand conflict with Mrs. Tutts, whose fierceness she was well aware was more than surface deep, and she read in that person's alert pose a disconcerting readiness for action. It was a critical moment, one which required tact, for a single injudicious word would precipitate a fray of which Mrs. Jackson could not be altogether sure of the result. Besides, poised as she was like a winged Mercury on the threshold of Society, she could not afford ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... as very "practical," which in practice amounts to saying that nothing makes them feel so spiritually homeless as the discussion of values and an invitation to examine first principles. Ideas, most of the time, cause them genuine distress, and are as disconcerting as an idle office boy, or a ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... commanding H.M. surveying ship Albatross, had an unpleasant shock when he turned out of his bunk at daybreak one morning. The barometer stood at 29.41'. For two or three days the vessel had encountered dirty weather, but there had been signs of improvement when he turned in, and it was decidedly disconcerting to find that the glass had fallen. His vessel was a small one, and he was a little uneasy at the prospect of being caught by a cyclone while in the imperfectly-charted waters of ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... drew in her breath and gave a little gasp of exasperation. This unfailing faith in her goodness of heart, and unhesitating belief in her desire to "help everybody" was most disconcerting, and sometimes most annoying. At the same time it was a most difficult thing to disclaim—under the circumstances, especially with Pollyanna's happy, confident eyes full ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... interval from being named incessantly by Lady Crewe. My deep mourning, my recent heavy loss, and the absence and distance of my dear husband made me peculiarly wish to be unobserved. Peculiarly, I say; for never yet had the moment arrived in which to be marked had not been embarrassing and disconcerting to me, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... very funny and very disconcerting. Keith watched with bulging eyes and trembling heart, until at last a whole big man came out of the chimney. As he crouched for a moment on the fire-place before getting down on the floor, he turned on Keith a pair of eyes that seemed to be all white ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... from his camp stool leisurely, and with great composure told the man: "Certainly, I will be very glad to have some one along who knows the trail so well." To be told that he knew the trail must have been disconcerting to the man, but not one word did he ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... the day of the storm, all hands and the cook were summoned to Anzac Cove for salvage work. On arrival it was found that the piers had been washed away. Big baulks of timber were being thrown about by the sea, in a most disconcerting manner, amongst all sorts of stores. The first duty assigned the party by the Beach Commandant was to restore some semblance of order amongst the members of a certain Labour Corps who had run wild. This was achieved in an expeditious though somewhat ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... you are doing so well in your new business, father!" Vona's straightforward gaze was disconcerting. ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... so disconcerting that the inventor decided to change bookkeepers, but he never 'counted his chickens before they were hatched.' In other words, he did not believe that he had made anything till he had paid all his bills and had his ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... Alston that he had not read the letter aright; it was so amazing, so disconcerting, that he felt bewildered. What on earth is wrong? he thought, then he took the letter to the better light at the window and ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... a wood I could plainly see the smoke of the gun itself rising above the trees. Two more shells from the big gun exploded within twenty yards of each other, and then, with disconcerting suddenness, a French battery came into action within a hundred yards of our strawstack cover. They had evidently been there for some time, awaiting eventualities, for we had no suspicion of their proximity, and ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... making observations of their own to hear a single word of what he had uttered, and were probably totally unconscious that he had spoken at all. In a few seconds his breath came back in full blast, but the idea of talking when only deaf men were listening was so disconcerting as to leave him actually unable ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... disconcerting. Not only must I think of my fish all night, studying, without the object before me, what this unknown but most visible feature might be; but also, without reviewing my new discoveries, I must give an exact account of ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... in the highest degree disconcerting. They set down the coffin, and, after a brief and hurried conference in an undertone, the black-mustachioed ghost advanced to the footlights, singled out John from the audience, and with a terrific scowl demanded to know the reason of ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the public mind, such as voluntaryism, Free Trade, etc., etc. Responsible Government is the one subject on which this coincidence is alleged to exist."[7] The French problem he found peculiarly difficult. Metcalfe's policy had had results disconcerting to the British authorities. Banishing, as he thought, sectarianism or racial views, he had yet practically shut out French statesmen from office so successfully, that, when Elgin, acting through Colonel Tache, {196} attempted to approach them, he found in none of them ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... She had, in fact, been counting on that help for the last several years, after her mother became an invalid and she knew that it was only a matter of time before Julia's hands would be set free for other labor. It was quite too disconcerting now, after having got along all these years on the strength of the help that was to come, to find her capable sister snatched away from her by two young things in ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... disconcerting chuckle Radicofani suited his action to the word, and busied himself with preparations for the journey, taking care, however, as he strode from ante-room to bed-chamber to keep his prisoner constantly in sight. The latter's hope of escape had reached a low ebb when Malespini ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... bringing it round to the front a disconcerting thought struck me. I remembered that I had only a ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... The prospector had given him very little definite information, and it was disconcerting to recognize that he must now rely entirely upon his ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... gave a little giggle. There was a queer mixture of girlish coquetry and masculine strength about her that was disconcerting. Elizabeth paused, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... of Harkness, Incorporated. Dark hair that curled slightly as it left his forehead; eyes that were taking on the intent, straightforward look that had been his father's and that went straight to the heart of a business proposal with disconcerting directness. But the lips were not set in the hard lines that had marked Harkness Senior; they could still curve into boyish pleasure to mark the ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... absolutely normal night, without even a dream to worry him, and if he eyed Mahommed Gunga at all, he did it so naturally, and with so little interest, that no deductions could be drawn from it. He was neither more nor less than a sahib at his ease—which was disconcerting, very, to the ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... opinions rather from his heart than his head, and has lately developed a habit of firing explosive Questions at Ministers from his eyrie behind their backs. They will probably find his frontal attacks less disconcerting. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... your horse while I'm out," said Mr. Beecham. He was preparing, regardless of the storm, for his usual walk about his estate. He went out, and Mrs. Beecham turned to her household duties. Miss Marjorie and Tom were alone, standing before the blazing fire in the hall. There was still that disconcerting twinkle of ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... in silence for a space. He had, she reflected, a most disconcerting trick of silence, of ignoring quite without embarrassment leads, which in her code imperatively called for return. Annoyance stirred within her, and the eternal feline which is a component part of the eternal feminine ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... And the disconcerting strangeness of it was in this: that though she was no longer the woman child, yet with one flash of her gold-curtained eyes had she reduced me to my ancient schoolboy clumsiness. She was a woman, but, I was again an awkward, stammering boy, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... am I to connive at such outrages under my own windows because the chief offender is something of a handsome young gentleman who has the tact to apologise for a disturbance in my domestic affairs that must, as he puts it, be disconcerting to a man at my age? A man of my age—there's France!—toujours la politesse, if you please! At my age! ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... becomes more silvery in the increasing chilliness of midnight. The winter mist, exhaled from the artificially watered fields below, continues to rise, takes heart and envelops the great mute face itself. And the latter persists in its regard of the dead moon, preserving still the old disconcerting smile. It becomes more and more difficult to believe that here before us is a real colossus, so surely does it seem nothing other than a dilated reflection of a thing which exists elsewhere, in some other ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... slapping a hand to his face, believing that he had been hit. Then there followed a series of disconcerting snaps all around his head as the long lash began to work, but so skillfully was it wielded that the end of it did ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... in prison instead of him made it almost too real," said Sir Toady. He is a most disconcerting and ironical boy. One often wonders ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... intervals of the second, all produced by adding the ninth to the common chord—thus: C, G, C, D, E—with certain enharmonic changes. Its simplicity gives it, at a first hearing, a placid, pastoral aspect, somewhat disconcerting to the literalist, but the discerning will not fail to note the mutterings beneath the surface. It is first sounded by two violas and the viol da gamba, and then drops without change to the bass, where it is repeated fortissimo by two bassoons and the contra-bassoon. ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... a grip on himself again, and smiled at her. He noticed the amazing length of her dark lashes, but the violet eyes behind them did not smile back at him. The tranquillity of their gaze was disconcerting. It was as if she had not quite made up her mind about him yet and was still trying to classify him in the museum of ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... saw her, too, and was uneasy, for he knew that Miss Smith had a sharp tongue and a most disconcerting method of argument, which he, as a Southern gentleman, courteous to all white females, even if they did eat with "niggers," could not properly answer. He received her with courtesy, offered a chair, laid aside his cigar, and essayed some general remarks on cotton ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Sage suddenly looked up, flashing that keen, steely look through his gold-rimmed spectacles that many men had found so disconcerting. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... forms along the walls, looking over the tops of their spelling-books at the newcomer. In the farther corner two were kicking at each other as opportunity offered, looking very angry, but not daring to cry. My next discovery was terribly disconcerting. Some movement drew my eyes to the floor; there I saw a boy of my own age on all-fours, fastened by a string to a leg of the table at which the dame was ironing, while—horrible to relate!—a dog, not very big but very ugly, and big ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... she said nothing. She returned the kiss instead, without looking up from her needles, and a great big thing like an unborn child moved near her heart. He had not called her 'dearie' for so long a time, it took her back to their earliest days together at a single, disconcerting bound. She merely stroked his shoulder as he straightened up and left the room. Her eyes then followed him out, and he turned at the door and waved his hand. Rogers, to her relief, saw him to the end ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... one hesitates to discuss with one's family. It is easier to seek information from strangers or servants, who do not feel free to come back at you with the disconcerting question, "But ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... One morning the disconcerting news reached Harmony that Mrs. Naude's house had been surrounded by armed soldiers at break of day and that she had been taken away with her child, in a waggon, ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... "It was disconcerting assuredly, and it might have served if Linda hadn't written. That patched it up," I gaily professed. But my gaiety was thin, for I was still amazed at her violence of a moment before. "Do you really mean that ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... and, after reckless expenditure of Mr. Cashell's coal, drove some warmth into the shop. I explored many of the glass- knobbed drawers that lined the walls, tasted some disconcerting drugs, and, by the aid of a few cardamoms, ground ginger, chloric-ether, and dilute alcohol, manufactured a new and wildish drink, of which I bore a glassful to young Mr. Cashell, busy in the back office. He laughed shortly when I told ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... smile, and she had beautiful teeth. The nose was short and emphatic, the jawbone salient. It was, altogether, a disharmonic type, for the head was long and the face short, broad across the high cheekbones; and her large light eyes set in her small dark face produced a disconcerting effect on sensitive people, but more often fascinated them. Clavering had been told that in her California days she had possessed a superb bust, but long years of unremitting work in France and England had taken toll of her flesh and it had never returned; she was very thin and the squareness ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... does not barricade himself against you. But a man who puts up the shutters in front of his virtues and faults bothers me most terribly, and I always seem to be bumping my head against something invisible whenever I see him, which is a most disconcerting performance. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... correspond, that "the greater part of our crew consists of English subjects not naturalized in America." This incidental remark comes with all the force of a revelation to those who have fondly imagined that the sturdy jack-tars who manned the first frigates were genuine American sea-dogs. Still more disconcerting is the information contained in a letter from the Secretary of the Treasury to President Jefferson, some years later, to the effect that after 1803 American tonnage increased at the rate of seventy thousand a year, but that of the four thousand seamen required to man this growing mercantile ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... the great man. Mr. Bonner found him a terrible object in a terrible rage. In his late years, be it remembered, Lord Kitchener was not good to look upon. He appeared a coarse, a top-heavy person; and in anger, his cross-eyes could be painfully disconcerting. ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... Owen's declared the portrait to be that of a housekeeper on account of the shawl—a strange article of dress, difficult to associate with a romantic singer. All the same, Evelyn was very probable in this picture; her past and her future were in this disconcerting compound of the commonplace and the rare; and the confusion which this picture created in the minds of Owen's friends was aggravated by the strange elliptical execution. Owen admitted the drawing to be not altogether grammatical; one eye ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... only from his own exertions but by reason of the disconcerting notion which possessed him, he raced up the short companion-ladder leading from the fore deck to the bridge. Stump seemed to be awaiting ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... speak to the man at the wheel, and, above all, refrain from disconcerting the beer—— I mean seer. What do I see? A man—let him pass for a man—in motion. He moves. Yes," I said excitedly, "yes, it is a stable. The man moves across the stable. Lo, he leads forth a horse. There now." I turned to her triumphantly. ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... minutes, they found themselves face to face for the first time in their lives with a flight of steps. True, they each felt a soothing hand on their shoulders, a hand they knew and loved, but the thing was disconcerting none the less. At first glance these steps obviously called for small leaps and bounds as a mode of progression. And yet, when one took ever so small a leap, one's nose inevitably came into sharp contact with the legs of strange humans who climbed in front; a distinctly unpleasant ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... his state of health the inclement weather would be harmful. Before I could answer her we were startled to hear quite close to us a faint cry. I got up and looked around, and so did Devaka, for she is brave, my wife. But we could not find anything to account for the disconcerting sound. ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... down from the limousine. His eagerness had led him to mistake stupidity for cleverness. He had gone about the affair with all the clumsiness of a boy who was making his first appearance at the stage entrance. It was mightily disconcerting, too, to have found an honest man when he was in desperate need of a dishonest one. He had faced with fine courage all sorts of dangerous wild animals; but at this moment he hadn't the courage to face a policeman and endeavor ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... lady ingratiatingly passed him the bread. "You're a cowboy, aren't you?" was the disconcerting question ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... with America and yet one of the great barriers to friendship between the two peoples. We are not sure whether we are better men than Americans." Or this: "My mind is open, and when one says that, one generally means that it is shut." Disconcerting, very, and all to be found in Another Sheaf (HEINEMANN). Mr. GALSWORTHY'S chief object in his little book is to arouse us to the disgrace and destruction of our State and race if we continue to allow ourselves to be fed, not by our own resources, but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... little hasty, a little timidly spoken. The dark eyes thoughtfully regarding the wonder of red hair under the close fitting hat were disconcerting, for all there was ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... maiden's beauty, no less than her father's wealth, attracted suitors in plenty from the neighbouring strongholds, but the spirit of love had not yet awakened in her bosom and each and all were repulsed with disconcerting coldness and indifference, and they left the schloss vowing that the lovely Adeline was ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... be busying himself about the action or directing anything. Those who were not sleeping were chatting in little groups. The soldiers of different arms were all mixed together, which had, perhaps, a picturesque effect, but was disconcerting. ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... if the quietude of this woman, her dignity and Christian mildness, had not overawed him. Let us not judge this kind of conduct by our own; we shall never understand it. The ancient customs, especially the African customs, were a disconcerting mixture of intense refinement ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... remonstrance was curiously disconcerting. The mastery of his look had led her to expect something different. She watched him dumbly as he filled his pipe with ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... silent for a moment. Her great, dark eyes were fixed upon the threadbare carpet. What he told her was disconcerting, yet, knowing instinctively, as she did, how passionately Walter loved her, she could not bring herself to believe that ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... you—am I—paying the lady for her services?" Dick questioned in the disconcerting, tangential way that was already habitual to him, as his school companions and teachers had learned ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... take Blanche into his confidence; to tell her, frankly, that he wished to marry Helen. Yet some obscure instinct held him back. Women, even the most sensible women, are so damned sentimental! So he told himself. Lately he had had the unpleasant, disconcerting feeling that whenever Helen looked at him she thought of ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... the stage. There were others with them—notably a thin, elderly, resplendent lady whom Andre-Louis supposed to be Madame la Comtesse de Sautron. But at the time he had no eyes for any but those two, who of late had so haunted his thoughts. The sight of either of them would have been sufficiently disconcerting. The sight of both together very nearly made him forget the purpose for which he had come upon the stage. Then he pulled himself together, and played. He played, he says, with an unusual nerve, and ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... the fairy-land of idealism where only the miraculous seems a matter of course and every hint of what is purely natural is disregarded, for the truly natural still seems artificial, dead, and remote. New and disconcerting facts, which intrude themselves inopportunely into the story, chill the currents of spontaneous imagination and are rejected as long as possible for being alien and perverse. Perceptions, on the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... expecting to find Marie Louise showing her contemptuous amusement, but the look she saw on Marie Louise's face was disconcerting. Polly's loyalty remained staunch. She hated Lady Clifton-Wyatt anyway, and the thought that she might be telling the truth made her a little more hatable. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... back to the present and flushed. He dreaded admitting to a nightmare—especially to Ali whose poise he had always found disconcerting. ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... of colonial expansion, though equally within the letter of the treaty, were not less disconcerting. The reconquest of San Domingo appeared necessary in order to obtain a base for the effective occupation of the new French possession, Louisiana. The despatch of an expedition for this purpose in December, 1801, had excited grave suspicion, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... illustrating his philosophy and consolidating his position. Noting in myself that a regular contemplation of these pictures inspires a weariness of all other pictures that are not absolutely first rate, giving them a disconcerting affinity to the tops of chocolate-boxes or to "art" photographs, I have permitted myself to suspect that supposing some writer were to come along and do in words what these men have done in paint, I might conceivably be disgusted with nearly the whole of modern fiction, and I might have to begin ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... the startling fact broke upon him that the face of Deerfoot was toward him, and he was in the act of drawing a third arrow to the head: He had whirled about almost at the same instant that the Pawnee leveled his gun. To say the least, it was very disconcerting, and, anxious to anticipate the Shawanoe, the other fired before he could be certain of his aim. The bullet went so wide that Deerfoot heard nothing of its passage among ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... understand." The Candy Man's heart was beating in an absurd and disconcerting way, but he would keep his head ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... Reiss's characteristics is a disconcerting habit of making people repeat their remarks. This is deliberate and its purpose twofold—to gain time and to ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... added, "remember Tom was always harum scarum, and you must make allowances for this daughter of his. Her very name is—ah—disconcerting. I haven't seen him for years, and as for her...." A shrug epitomised his apprehension. He smiled with an effort at wit. "Just the same, they're as much your family as mine. If he is my brother, he is your uncle. And if she's my ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... rumor that was disconcerting came to Daylight's ears. It was also published in the Wall Street Journal, and it was to the effect, on apparently straight inside information, that on Thursday, when the directors of Ward Valley met, instead of the customary dividend ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... artificial "classicism." Immanuel Kant, whose deep and dynamic thinking led to a revolution comparable to a cosmic upheaval in the geological world, compelled his generation to discover a vast new moral system utterly disconcerting to the shallow complacency of those who had no sense of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... do you suppose, because we had a Scots mother that I find, deep down within me, that I am 'full of seriousness'? It is rather disconcerting to think oneself a butterfly and find out suddenly that one is a—what? A bread-and-butter fly, shall we ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... disconcerting to Kitty to find that he had not been taking in a word of what it had cost her such an effort to say. "I will do my best to look after the house and the servants," she ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... irritable too. Of course it was entirely because she was unhappy, but it didn't conduce to intimate conversation. Prickles would suddenly appear among the most innocent looking of flowers, in a way that was entirely disconcerting and utterly unpleasant. And the worst of it was, that there was no avoiding them. They darted out and pricked you before you were even aware of their presence. It was so utterly unlike Pia too, and so—Trix winked back a tear as she ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... be of cool Christian traditions and an Occidental, an inquisitive sightseer among these fervent pilgrims intent upon their pious duties and rapt in exaltation and unthinking inflexible belief, was in itself disconcerting, almost to the point of shame; while the pilgrims were so remarkably of a different world, a different era, that ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... direction and give a loud grunt which apparently struck a responsive chord in the other sleeping animals. They would grunt in unison, in more subdued tones, after which the old walrus would drop his head to resume his interrupted nap. Their contempt for us was somewhat disconcerting. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... some astonishment; the emphasis was unexpected. It seemed to suggest an aunt not hitherto hinted at, and a friendly feeling on Seaton's side that was more disconcerting than welcome. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... the more disconcerting for Charles, because of the speedy abatement of the enthusiasm that had hailed his first appearance. What had happened to him was what generally happens to a conqueror who has more good luck than ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... apparently a little nonplussed. The absolute imperturbability of the man who had once been his friend was disconcerting. ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... touched so deeply. If she loved a man, there would be no silly doddering; the voice of the petty laws that strove to hedge her in would be in her ears as a summer breeze. For one so young—and twenty-five was young—she possessed a disconcerting directness in her logic. So far he observed that she retained but one illusion, that somewhere in the world there was a man worth loving. His heart hurt him. He must see her no more after the morrow. Enchantment and happiness ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... particularly to the delegates from Delafield. Even Joe Carbrook had been impressed. He heard the General Secretary the morning after that little exchange of compliments on the library steps, and for an hour thereafter let himself enjoy the rare luxury of thinking. The results were somewhat disconcerting. ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... prominent citizens all testify to having seen it. Last night several hundred people, armed with clubs and guns, assaulted the specter, which appeared to be a woman in white. Clubs, bullets and shot tore the air in which the mystic figure floated without disconcerting it in the least. A portion of the town turned out en masse to-day and began exhuming all the ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... a palace, with plenty of money and servants and beautiful frocks, and all that sort of thing. You understand me, don't you?" I concluded a little lamely, for the steady gaze of those deep blue frightened eyes was a little disconcerting. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I burst out as loud as I could, with a boy's pleasure in disconcerting the inquisitive passer-by. She turned suddenly round to go away, waving her hand at me; at that moment Sora Lodovica swung the shrine-lamp back into its place. A stream of light fell across the street. I felt myself grow quite cold; ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... brakes and tyres. Tappings and clankings and strange rhythmic creakings awoke as the intrepid hirer pedalled out into the country. Then perhaps the bell would jam or a brake fail to act on a hill; or the seat-pillar would get loose, and the saddle drop three or four inches with a disconcerting bump; or the loose and rattling chain would jump the cogs of the chain-wheel as the machine ran downhill, and so bring the mechanism to an abrupt and disastrous stop without at the same time arresting the forward momentum of the rider; or a tyre ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... have been a sufficiently irritating interruption in the early life of Eugenette, and in the early establishment of Eugenics. But a far more dreadful and disconcerting fact must be noted. With whom, alas, did England go to war? England went to war with the Superman in his native home. She went to war with that very land of scientific culture from which the very ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... starship Number Thirteen suddenly appearing out of nowhere, and sitting itself calmly down in the middle of the Spaceport was somewhat disconcerting to the Spaceport officials. Especially since at the very moment it appeared, and even afterward, they continued to have visual and laser contact with its image, over three ...
— Subjectivity • Norman Spinrad
... Stuck in a room 800 feet from the ground with walls of glass that allowed observation of the whole island of Daem, which I assumed to be the only civilization in the world, while great events unfolded around me, of which I was supposed to be the primary actor, was very disconcerting, though I find in retrospect that fate worked so mysteriously in my situation that it is quite puzzling to think about, meaning, of course, my relationship with the doom of humanity as preventer and provoker, ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... face with Lady Saffren Waldon. She was the one surprised, not we. She probably thought she had spiked our guns in that part of the world forever, and the sight of us coming laughing from the very office where we should have been made glum must have been disconcerting. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... to trudge at the tail of the column. She dared to cast one shy, disconcerting little glance at Dave—and he suddenly felt he would burst into flame and consume ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... he do next? What sort of a man was this? The rough fellows in the circle around him insensibly drew back a little, and looked in each other's faces with surprise, as they tried to read the riddle of this disconcerting behaviour. The Quaker would not show fight! He was actually giving them leave to set upon him and beat him again! All in a minute, what had hitherto seemed like rare sport began to be ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... splintered flooring, the great, gaunt windows—and she gave in. She had met with snub after snub, and cut after cut, in her social climb, she had had the cook quit in the middle of an important dinner, she had had every disconcerting thing possible happen to her, but this—this was the last bale of straw. She sat down on a suitcase, in the middle of the ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... the strange figure before him in some perplexity, and the fat white-faced deaf man confronted him stolidly, with his black twinkling eyes fixed on his face. His gaze, which was directed to the mouth and did not reach the eyes, was so disconcerting to Mr. Cromering that he cleared his throat with several nervous "hems" before ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... confirmed in his democratic sentiments, in all his democratic sentiments, by the political position which has been made for him in France. It is a strange thing, a disconcerting anomaly, that the Governments of the nineteenth century (especially, we must do it this justice, the present Government), have very handsomely respected the liberty of professors of higher education, and of secondary education, and have not in the very slightest ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet |
