"Disreputable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his purpose to draw Annie out he said, rather banteringly, "Miss Walton, I am astonished that so good a man as your father should have as an ardent friend the profane and disreputable character that I found living in the cottage opposite on the day ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... one might hope would draw down stores of grace upon their heads. Yet I hear from the inhabitants of other provinces, that they have a bad character among their neighbours, who love not the base Ligurian and accuse them of many immoralities. They tell one too of a disreputable saying here, how there are at Genoa men without honesty, women without modesty, a sea with no fish, and a wood with no birds. Birds, however, here certainly are by the million, and we have eaten fish since we came every day; but ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... history of the loves of lawyers would notice many scandalous intrigues and disreputable alliances, and would comprise a good deal of literature for which the student would vainly look in the works of our best authors. From the days of Wolsey, whose amours were notorious, and whose illegitimate son became Dean of Wells, down to the present time of brighter though not unimpeachable ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... on, and soon found the street where she had taken his lodging. At the corner of it was, as is too usual in London streets, a public house, about which more than the usual number of disreputable idlers were hanging. There were also one or two policemen, who were ordering the little crowd to give way to a group of ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... distance to walk, for the stables to which they were bound were situated in an old and rather disreputable part of the town. "It's not a nice quarter," said Mr. Lingard, "not particularly salubrious or refined," as bad smells and dirty women began to cross their path; "but they are nice people you've got to deal with, and the place itself is ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... was a long, unpainted cottage quite near the road. The woman who lived alone there was under a kind of indefinite ban in the village. Her husband, who had died several years before, had been disreputable and drunken, and the mantle of his disgrace had seemed to fall upon his wife, if indeed she was not already provided with such a mantle of her own. Everybody spoke slightingly of Mrs. Jim Sloane. The men laughed meaningly when they saw her pass, ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... referring to the tramp's existence. Feeling bound to speak to the policeman, however, I stopped to inquire the time, and he eyed me curiously as he took out his watch. My clothes were by this time covered with dust, and no doubt I appeared a disreputable figure. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... influence in New York, doubtless by way of expiation for the rigid democratical notions that so universally pervade its society. And here I may remark, en passant, that while nothing is considered so disreputable in America as to be "aristocratic" a word of very extensive signification, as it embraces the tastes, the opinions, the habits, the virtues, and sometimes the religion of the offending party—on the other hand, nothing is so certain to attract attention as nobility. ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... Welsh's well-known fondness in life for watching the progress of criminal cases. Of her husband, the late Mr. Sampson, there was very little said, and not much was known beyond the fact that having run away from school to marry him, Amanda had shared a shady and it was whispered rather disreputable existence for three years, at the end of which she was fortunately relieved from the matrimonial net by his timely decease; an event of which she sometimes spoke to her more intimate ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... have said nothing of the bailiff's own excuse), let it be enough to hint, that Jennings winked with a knowing and gallant expression of face; alluded to his private key, and a secret return at two in the morning from some disreputable society in the neighbourhood; made the men laugh, and the women blush; and, altogether, as he might well have other hats and coats, the delicate affair was ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... saw him waver; "I am rich—you are poor. I have farms, estates, vineyards—you shall choose amongst them wherewith to live happily for the rest of your days. Convey this letter safely, and exchange your comfortless and disreputable wanderings for a ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... this long withheld announcement of an increase in the family of Johnny's yellow and disreputable setter "Tiger," who usually accompanied him to school and howled outside, the master joined with marked distinctness. Then he said, with equally marked severity, "Books!" The little levee was ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... her capability. She was clever: anybody with half an eye or an ear might recognize that. And she would want all her cleverness—ay, and her will and temper—for what she would have to do. But she had undertaken the task, and it was not much to the purpose that if she had not been the daughter of a disreputable spendthrift she would doubtless as lief have touched live coals as have submitted to be his wife. Ah, well, it was his luck in his last toss-up, and he had never been lucky before; yet he had never felt so great a reluctance to conclude ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... tribunal was the governor of the fortress, a tried soldier, but a ruffian of low habits and cruel nature. He had risen under the Landgrave's patronage, as an adventurer of desperate courage, ready for any service, however disreputable, careless alike of peril or of infamy. In common with many partisan officers, who had sprung from the ranks in this adventurous war, seeing on every side and in the highest quarters, princes as well as supreme commanders, the uttermost contempt of justice and moral principle, he had fought ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... affair," he went on, looking up at her. "No power on earth will persuade me we're not two rather disreputable persons. You desert your home; I throw up useful teaching, risk every hope in your career. Here we are absconding, pretending to be what we are not; shady, to say the least of it. It's not a bit of good ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... known as 'Slimy' Cohen); I had given up an hour a day to studying the management of the concussor with the aid of a punching-ball; the alarms were ready for fixing, and I even had the address of an undoubtedly disreputable housemaid, when a most unexpected thing happened. I got a premature bite. A fellow actually walked into the trap without troubling me ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... except for hard cash or its equivalent. The untutored Kanakas also, with whom they came in contact, refused to become brother Socialists and go shares with the long-haired wanderers in their land or anything else. So from island to island the Percy Edward cruised, looking more disreputable every day, until, as the months went by, she began to resemble, in her tattered gear and dejected appearance, her fatuous passengers. At last, after being chivvied about considerably by the white and native inhabitants of the various islands ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... generally disliked by the men under him. The more evil-minded gossips in the bank said he was in league with "Old Nick." That, of course, was absurd, for it does not necessarily follow, because a man suggests a means looking to an end, disreputable though it be, that he has Mephistopheles for a silent partner. The conservative element among the employees would not openly venture so far, but rather thought if his satanic majesty and old Sanders ran a race, ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... pursued her, so that she asked for the horses to take her to the freshness of the high lying inland moors, for a boat to carry her across the tide-river to the less confined air and outlook of the Bar. Sight and sense of the black wooden houses, upon the forbidden island, hanging like disreputable boon companions about the grey stone-built inn, oppressed and strangely pursued her too. She could see them from her bedroom between the red trunks of the bird-haunted Scotch firs in the Wilderness. First thing, on clear mornings, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... succeeded in exhuming the treasure in a copse of hazel near the Red Chief turnpike,—adjacent to the spot where an unknown body was lately discovered. This body is now strongly suspected to be that of one Henry Cass, a disreputable character, who has since been ascertained to have been one of the road agents who escaped. The matter is now under legal investigation. The successful result of the search is due to a systematic plan ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... loosened it out and pulled it up over her forehead, and you wouldn't believe the difference it made. We found some wild strawberries, and ate them for lunch, and I wreathed the leaves round her head, and when her fingers were nicely stained with the juice, and she looked thoroughly disreputable, I held out the little looking-glass on my chatelaine, and gave her a peep at ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... he cried again, and started up sharply. "I say, Marcella, I'm off to have a bath. Wait here for me—" He peeped into her mirror. He had not shaved for a week and looked thoroughly disreputable. Holding out his hand he looked at it earnestly. It ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... package, big enough to hold a large kite, was carefully opened by Belle, who finally found in it, among the many tissue wrappings, a pretty set of hair combs set with stones. In a roughly-done-up parcel was a most disreputable old shoe addressed to Lluella. She was going to throw it out, but the boys advised her so strongly not to that she finally burrowed to the toe and found, to her amazement, ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... with whom we had spent the evening at Boulogne, and that the much-bejeweled old landlady had been sent to prison for the offense of keeping a gambling-house. It was suspected in the town that the General was more or less directly connected with certain disreputable circumstances discovered by the authorities. In any case, he had retired from ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... more disreputable people in the cities than Lot's two young daughters, we don't wonder that the vengeance of a just God sent a blasting storm of bursting flames to lick with their fiery tongues these wicked cities from the face of the earth. What does arouse our wonder is that those fair girls ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... But it came to pass, on the very day when Ham and Miranda were expected to arrive, by the last of the evening trains, as Dab Kinzer was coming back from the landing, where he had been for a look at the "Swallow," to be sure she was all right for her owner's eyes, that a very disreputable specimen of a worthless man stopped at Mrs. Kinzer's to beg something to eat, and then sauntered away ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... political magnate would do that Sir Richmond would not dream of doing, and a number of things that such a man would not feel called upon to do that he would regard as imperative duties. And mixed up with so much fine intention and fine conduct was this disreputable streak of intrigue and this extraordinary claim that such misconduct was necessary ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... suicide of an old friend. Is it strange to say that I have heard the news with an unfeigned relief, even gladness? He was formerly a charming and brilliant creature, full of enthusiasm and artistic impulses, fitful, wayward, wilful. Somehow he missed his footing; he fell into disreputable courses; he did nothing, but drifted about, planning many things, executing nothing. The last time I saw him was exquisitely painful; we met by appointment, and I could see that he had tried to ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the time of the gifted toxicologist, the residence of Lucrezia Borgia, who used to make poisonous little suppers there, and ask the best families of Italy to partake of them. It happened on one occasion that Lucrezia Borgia was thrust out of a ball-room at Venice as a disreputable character, and treated with peculiar indignity. She determined to make the Venetians repent their unwonted accession of virtue, and she therefore allowed the occurrence to be forgotten till the proper moment of her revenge arrived, when she gave a supper, and ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... 1766 he settled down in Edinburgh to the law, which he found intolerably dreary, and a love-affair, which he found too exciting. "The dear infidel," as he called her, besides being another man's wife, seems to have been an extravagant and disreputable young woman: ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... Of course—what else can a Photographer do with a disreputable old parent, who has been in a Penitentiary for making a fraudulent map? I shall leave this splendid banquet. The Chamberlains are not kind to me, and I feel the crushing hand of fate on my head! [Goes out ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... not a cheerful lot. The Major, a quiet man, married and having left his wife home, would adapt himself to anything; but the Baron Captain, accustomed to leading a fast life, a patron of low resorts, a wild chaser of disreputable women, was furious at having been confined for the last three months to the obligatory chasteness of this out of the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... sold, and the proceeds divided between the Jews, with certain remaining claims to them on Cousin George's personal estate. Such had been the story which in a vague way had reached Sir Harry's ears. It is not easily that such a man as Sir Harry can learn the details of a disreputable cousin's life. Among all his old friends he had none more dear to him than Lord Milnthorp; and among his younger friends none more intimate than Lord Burton, the eldest son of Lord Milnthorp, Lord Alfred's brother. Lord Burton had told him the story, telling ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... who knew why Quintana might come to America was James Darragh, recently of the Military Intelligence, but now passing as a hold-up man under the name of Hal Smith, and actually in the employment of Clinch at his disreputable "hotel" at Star Pond in ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... rocks and rapids of the last few months, though it had hardened his physique and left him in superb health, had played havoc with his clothes; and he was so disreputable and tattered a figure, that he smiled to himself, as he pictured Granny's distress could she have ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... was never much to his taste. It was "runaway stuff"; nervous and sensuous; it opened up too many vistas, philological and social, for his positive mind to assimilate with comfort. Those particles alone—there was something ambiguous, something almost disreputable, in their jocund pliability, their readiness to lend themselves to improper uses. But Latin—ah, Latin was different! Even at his preparatory school, where he was known as a swot of the first water, he had displayed an unhealthy infatuation for that tongue; he ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... good citizens to discountenance and prevent any such disreputable and criminal undertaking as aforesaid, charging all officers, civil and military, having lawful power in the premises, to exercise the same for the purpose of maintaining the authority and enforcing the laws of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... so as to afford scanty standing-room; it being Saturday, and therefore a kind of gala-day. I think I have never seen a populace before coming to England; but this crowd afforded a specimen of one, both male and female. The women were the most remarkable; though they seemed not disreputable, there was in them a coarseness, a freedom, an—I don't know what, that was purely English. In fact, men and women here do things that would at least make them ridiculous in America. They are not afraid to enjoy themselves in their own way, and have no pseudo-gentility to support. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... took Dad to task occasionally for letting me associate with him. Dad simply ignored them. As long as I was going to be a reporter, I'd have to have news sources, and Bish was a dandy. He knew all the disreputable characters in town, which saved me having to associate with all of them, and it is sad but true that you get very few news stories in Sunday school. Far from fearing that Bish would be a bad influence on me, he rather hoped I'd be a good ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... of insolvent traders includes an Englishman named James Bellbridge, formerly connected with a disreputable saloon in this city. Bellbridge is under suspicion of having caused the death of his wife in a fit of delirium tremens. The unfortunate woman had been married, for the first time, to one of the English aristocracy—the Honorable Roderick ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... disreputable in appearance. His hair, and it was his own, too, he had managed to dye to brick-red hue. His face and his hands were grimy, and there was a considerable growth of beard upon the former. He wore good ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... interests of one group distinctly before his mind, and the interests of all other groups thrown into the background. When I have read certain of these discussions I have thought that it must be quite disreputable to be respectable, quite dishonest to own property, quite unjust to go one's own way and earn one's own living, and that the only really admirable person was the good-for-nothing. The man who by his own effort raises himself above poverty appears, in these discussions, to ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... attics and trunk-rooms for those disreputable looking articles of wearing apparel dear to all sportsmen; oil soaked boots, water soaked and sun bleached woolen, corduroy, leather or canvas garments and hats, each looking too shabby from their wives' (or valet's) point of view to ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... in a row of high, disreputable-looking houses that were, however, picturesque enough, and across the pave in front of them commenced the docks. One walked in and out of harbours and waterways, the main stretch of harbour opening up more and more on the right hand, and finally ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... a description of the opposing party, the stranger might think it composed of only the degraded and disreputable portion of the nation, and its leader the scum of all its depravity. If curiosity should induce a perusal of some partisan paper of the other party, the same thing could be read in its columns, with a change ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... to him that this might be a good chance of pursuing some of the investigations he had planned. Since noticing the disreputable condition of the fence the afternoon of his arrival, he had kept his eyes open, and a number of other little signs had confirmed his suspicion that the ranch had very much gone to seed. Of course this might be merely the result of careless, slovenly methods on the part of the ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... carried me thus far when I became aware of a small, furtive figure, dodging from one patch of shadow to another. Leaning from the window, I made out the form of a somewhat disreputable urchin, who, dropping upon hands and knees, proceeded to crawl towards me over the grass with a show of ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... like at all. It was only on the supposition that no good nurse would have entered so irregular a household as Anna's that Darya Alexandrovna could explain to herself how Anna with her insight into people could take such an unprepossessing, disreputable-looking woman as ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... out of a bottle burnt like fire, but brought me new strength, so that, with Mapes' help, I got to my feet, and stared about at the group of faces surrounding us. They were those of typical river men, two negroes and three whites, ragged, dirty, and disreputable. Mapes was so bushily bearded, that about all I could perceive of his face was the eyes, yet these were intelligent, and I instantly picked him out as ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... woman to wander through an alley after dark, warns her of disreputable friendships and a stigma ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... she had in the bureau drawer. Everything came out—purse, tickets, gloves, handkerchief, the tiniest little looking-glass, a letter or two, a silver thimble, two coughdrops stuck together, a sample of ribbon which she had failed to match, a most disreputable looking ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... signs the caller's fine resolution and assurance seemed slowly oozing from him; perhaps he began to have doubts as to the correctness of his position, thus to storm a man in his own castle, or office—even if it were such a disreputable-appearing office! ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the back of his hand across his own face, not doubting that he must present an even more disreputable appearance. He leaned forward cautiously to look into the water, but that surface was not quiet enough ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... followers. His retirement to Antwerp, in close contact with Holland and Zeeland, but far removed from the Southern provinces, was also unfavourable to the maintenance of the Union under his leadership. Finally, the interference in national affairs of such disreputable adventurers as John Casimir and Anjou diminished, to a certain degree, the reluctance with which the Catholics envisaged the possibility ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... livid mark under your jaw. It is, indeed, terrible that my representative should be going about in so disreputable a condition. How did you receive ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... exercise, or given to deep draughts of old October when thirsty; but to see him with a long pipe, or dallying with ladies, or giving vent to unseemly expletives, or retailing scandals,—these and other disreputable follies are utterly inconceivable of Mr. Gladstone. A very serious man may be an object of veneration; but he is a constant rebuke to the weaknesses of our common humanity,—a wet blanket upon ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... platform all the time. Neither storekeeper nor key being found, he had feared to leave our luggage lying about unguarded. Crossing the river in the clear bright morning among tidy-looking women going to market, and natty men in clean white shirts and well-brushed clothes, made us feel more disreputable than ever. And we were disreputable! Our skirts, draggled and muddy half-way to our waists, clinging and wet still; our hair un-brushed, our faces bespattered with mud, and blackened with smoke and dust ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... they continued to discuss the matter, Peter was the only one who persisted in asserting that human agency alone had been employed, while Sandy MacGregor as strongly maintained that spirits of a very disreputable nature had a finger in the pie. That, however, like other matters of mystery, was one day ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... "So disreputable a lot as you are I never saw!" said a sleepy rat to the casks in a wine-cellar. "Always making night hideous with your hoops and hollows, and disfiguring the day with your bunged-up appearance. There is no ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... not console her for the absence of Wriggly. If the family go to the seaside, Wriggly must come too. She will not sleep without the absurd bundle in her arms. If she goes to a party she insists upon dragging its disreputable folds along with her, one end always projecting "to give it fresh air." Every phase of childhood represents to the philosopher something in the history of the race. From the new-born baby which can hang easily by one ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... task assigned to him. They all had some official duty to perform; while the gods of Olympus could amuse themselves as they pleased. While the Zeus of Greece spent his time in adventures, many of which were disreputable, the Jupiter Capitolinus remained at home, attending to his sole business, which was to make Rome the mistress of the world. The gods of Rome, says Hegel, are not human beings, like those of Greece, but soulless machines, gods made by the understanding, even when borrowed ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... all this was still somewhere in the background of her thoughts as she returned to Crownlands, and when she met Ward Carter, wrestling with the engine of his own rather disreputable racing car, out in one of the clean, gravelled spaces near the garage. His coat was off, his fresh, pleasant face streaked with oil and earth, his sleeves rolled up to ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... worthy of the legislature to obviate with the utmost caution; and, therefore, it is by no means improper to enact a punishment for those who shall, upon any false pretences, leave their station; for though such neglect of duty is, in the present state of our naval establishment, considered as disreputable and irregular, yet it does not appear that it has been censured with the detestation which it deserves, or punished with the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... imagined that we, the very ones who have brought and have been bringing these women to this condition for several generations, would take thought some fine day and reform all this. But, in the mean time, if I had only recalled my conversation with the disreputable woman who had been rocking the baby of the fever-stricken patient, I might have comprehended the full extent of the folly ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... gentleman in office at —— Bank had called on her and informed her that checks of my signing to a very large amount had lately been offered, and that the last made its appearance to-day, and was presented by a man with whom it was highly disreputable for one in my condition to be thought to have any ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... who dressed with shameful shabbiness and carried pearls in his pocket. The picture might easily apply to The Tigress: outwardly disreputable, but richly and comfortably appointed below. The flush deck was without wells. The wheel and the navigating instruments were sternward, under a spread of heavy canvas, a protection against rain and sun. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... fools, by the way. Their car was much more disreputable than you would believe a car could be and turn a wheel, and the Barrymores recognized the handicap of its appearance. They camped well out of sight of town, therefore, and let ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... conquer by a kind of supernatural stupidity. He pardons evil, but he will not ignore it. In other words, he is a Christian, and not a Christian Scientist. The distinction doubtless is partly explained by the problems severally selected. Mr. Jerome practically supposes Christ to be trying to save disreputable people; and that, of course, is naturally a simple business. Mr. Kennedy supposes Him to be trying to save the reputable people, which is a much larger affair. The chief characters in The Servant in the House are a popular and strenuous ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... before this calamity (April 5th, 1086), Maurice, chaplain and chancellor to William the Conqueror, had been consecrated Bishop of London by Lanfranc. Unlike most of William's nominees to bishoprics, Maurice's moral character was disreputable; but he was a man of energy, and he set to work at once to rebuild his cathedral, and succeeded in getting from the king abundance of stone for the purpose, some of it from the remains of the Palatine tower by the side of the Fleet River, which was just ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... extremely bad and dirty, and generally in the least attractive and most unsavoury quarters of the town. The food is generally unappetising and cooked with very little intelligence. There have been many cases of women finding themselves in disreputable houses; and even recommended lodgings have been found empty on arrival, the police having raided them. I feel very strongly that the only comfortable and dignified way to meet this difficulty is to have a regular chain of clubs, on the principle ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... and she is only a child yet, though well grown. Then, this younger Pilgrim has neither money nor farm; besides, I am told, that he has imbibed infidel notions, and has lately become the inmate of a disreputable country tavern. If you had a daughter, sir, would you not tremble to think of her linking her lot with so worthless a character?" Before the lawyer could reply, the old man called back: "Mother, I think you had better give the gentleman a rest; he must be tired of hearing your tongue go ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... to break loose, and as he did so a bobcat dropped from beneath his arm and fell, spitting and snarling, to the floor. Its fur was torn and matted, tufts were hanging loose, and the creature had a singularly disreputable and ferocious appearance. Blake made an attempt to recapture it, but, evading him easily, it ran along the floor with a curious hopping gait and disappeared among the pillars. Then he turned to his ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... to the world at large. Some go to the gaming-table, and ruin themselves and their families, and destroy the peace of their minds. But the Quakers are never found injuring their fortunes or their happiness by such disreputable means. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... he met a tramp or two, but none that he thought looked any more disreputable than he himself did. He passed the time of day pleasantly, with such, ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... place where you would expect to see a lady who lives in Ashley Street, Piccadilly. I saw her entering a house in one of the meanest and most disreputable streets in Soho. In fact, I had made an appointment, though not with her, and she was precise both to time ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... boy burst forth with a laugh likewise, showing two rows of ivory teeth. Somehow there was an imperial deviltry about him, an impudent wild spirit which had plainly made him conqueror, favourite, and plaything of the whole disreputable crew. ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... [Footnote: "Good health," or "Be in health," the Russian greeting.] we sat down awkwardly enough on our chairs, rolled our smoky hands up in our scarlet and yellow cotton handkerchiefs, and, with a vivid consciousness of our dirty faces and generally disreputable appearance, tried to look self-possessed, and to assume the dignity which befitted officers of the great Russian-American Telegraph Expedition! It was a pitiable failure. We could not succeed in looking like anything but Wandering Koraks in ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... it was in reality only two hours later when Lillian Gale returned from the apartment across the hall, heavy eyed and dishevelled, her gown splashed with water, her rouge rubbed off in spots, her whole appearance most disreputable. ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... might have written rather valuable books, containing his shrewd observations and intimate, underhand knowledge of political and economic conditions. But he was emphatically not of that sort, so continued to lead his disreputable, roving life for a period of ten years. At the end of which time he met a plaintive little Englishwoman, just out from Home, and she, knowing nothing whatever of Rivers, but being taken with his glib tongue and rather handsome person, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... points to evil practices in Barataria. It means that interested parties have made underhand arrangements with the Finance Minister, and that the Republic is going to be plundered, not in the fine full-flavoured style that ruled in earlier generations, but to an extent that makes the business too disreputable to handle. Any honourable English house would consider that the terms offered to itself and the conditions proposed by the emissary were such that the operation was suspicious, and that being mixed up with suspicious ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... as the Bully, a sobriquet he owed to his gruff voice, blustering tone, and skill as a pugilist and cudgel-player. He was member of a well-known and highly respectable English family, who had done all in their power to keep him from disgracing their name by his disreputable propensities. In dress and manner he affected the plain bluff Englishman, wore a blue coat, beaver gloves (or none at all), and a hat broad in the brim, spoke of all foreigners with supreme contempt, and of himself as honest Tom Ringwood. ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... "The market people," he says, "form a ring about the reciter, a stalwart man, affecting little raiment besides a broad waist-belt into which his lower chiffons are tucked, and noticeable only for his shock hair, wild eyes, broad grin, and generally disreputable aspect. He usually handles a short stick; and, when drummer and piper are absent, he carries a tiny tomtom shaped like an hour-glass, upon which he taps the periods. This Scealuidhe, as the Irish call him, opens the drama with an extempore prayer, proving ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... artist, was another to recognize its quality even before he fell in with Carson Chalmers, as outlined in "A Madison Square Arabian Night"; and also Marcus Clayton of Roanoke County, Virginia, and Eva Bedford, of Bedford County of the same State; and the disreputable Soapy, of "The Cop and the Anthem," when he sought a park bench on which to ponder over just what violation of the law would insure his deportation to Blackwell's Island, which was his Palm Beach and Riviera for the winter months. Here, to O. Henry, ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... stationed on the south side, looked at his watch many times. A little man, mingling with the disreputable rascals on the north ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... world. Theatrical attractions at high prices were patronized abundantly. Balls of great magnificence were given almost every night. Private carriages of really excellent appointment were numerous along the disreputable planked roads or the sandy streets strewn with ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... homesick for a model nursery, an artist with a bad conscience. For it is of course my bourgeois conscience which makes me see in all artistry, in all unusualness and all genius something deeply ambiguous, deeply dubious, deeply disreputable, and which fills me with this lovelorn weakness for the simple, candid, and agreeably normal, for ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... with reverence be it said, has some rather absurd notions, such as a mind of large discourse often finds room for: they slip about among his higher conceptions and multitudinous acquirements like disreputable characters at a national celebration in some vast cathedral, where to the ardent soul all is glorified by rainbow light and grand associations: any vulgar detective knows them for what they are. But Hinze is ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the reputable jobbing house of Joseph Hoxie. He was arrested early in the morning at his boarding house in Dey Street, and aroused from a sound sleep, under a charge of murder. The victim was an unfortunate woman, who was found slain in her bed, in a disreputable house in Thomas Street, and who had obtained an escape from youthful misery by the hand of an unknown assassin. But under what name should that assassin be found? It was undeniable that the prisoner had been one of her intimates, but was the crime limited to himself alone? Had he partners ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... incompetent, from some active sympathy with active wickedness, or from a grim sense of his own mental superiority at such moments. But the general belief leant toward his kindred sympathy as a "yaller dog" with all that was disreputable. And this was supported by another very singular canine manifestation—the "sincere ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... repairing. Nelly was conscious of the doubtful look with which she was regarded when she asked for Lucy, and she shrank from again encountering it, and perhaps bringing discredit on Miss Lucy in the eyes of her city friends by her own disreputable appearance. ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... breaking when I found myself in the street, and as I emerged from the slightly disreputable neighborhood where I had passed the night I felt sure that a glance in the mirror would show me up a haggard, white-haired wreck. The air was wonderfully reviving, though, and I felt a subtle change stealing over me. ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... imitation of a fierce and bloody orgy, such as the Bedouins indulge in after a great victory. They were to shout, grunt and brandish their guns, dirks, pistols and swords, and to behave generally in a very disreputable manner; in fact, Ali gravely intimated that it would be no place for timid ladies. This simply whetted our appetites and we promptly closed with him for the dance for a certain amount of "teep." The hat was passed and the tips put in. Then a row of about twenty-five as hangdog-looking Bedouins ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... falsehood in the hearts of men, in which they—the witnesses—could have no personal interest, they leave in the Egyptian darkness characteristic of their system. How can he account for American history and American institutions who denies the existence of Washington, or claims that he was a disreputable impostor? How, then, shall he account for the history and institutions of civilization who denies to Jesus of Nazareth existence as a man of that age and country, or makes Him a ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... had succeeded in establishing relations with Jackie Deeds through the medium of a half-crown. And now, as he waited beneath the rustling sycamores, it was with a sensation of quick, yet half-shy, pleasure, that he saw the disreputable figure lurch out of the inn yard, stand for a minute shading eyes with hand while making observations, and then hobble across the street, touching the peak of a battered, black-velvet cap ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... about this time that a disreputable clerk—a lewd priest, as Hall calls him—a hanger-on of the house of Howard, was guilty of an insult to a citizen's wife as she was quietly walking home through the Cheap. Her husband and brother, who were nearer at hand than he guessed, avenged the outrage with such good wills that ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... injurious to his mistress, more especially from the particular intimacy there seemed to exist between them: whereupon, in the tone of a guardian rather than a lover, he took upon him to chide her for the disreputable company she kept. Miss Jennings was haughty beyond conception, when once she took it into her head; and as she liked Miss Price's conversation much better than Talbot's, she took the liberty of desiring him "to attend to his own affairs, and that if he only came from Ireland to read lectures ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... by Hamilton, he ventured to ask if he were still offended with him. Hamilton coldly disclaimed any idea of offence, and declining all discussion on the matter, hinted that Louis' conduct was too disreputable to be noticed. Louis turned from him with a proud resolve never to speak to Hamilton again. Hamilton's conscience smote him when he saw him a short time after in company with Casson and Harris, whispering and laughing in a ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... suspicions, and yesterday I wormed it all out from a disreputable looking fellow, who came here to ask for his ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... discovering that he was in the land of the living with a joyful whinnying. If he had not been endowed with the suavity of a gentleman and the long-suffering of a saint, he would have walked off, for the yard was in a disreputable state of repair, and we were all shaky from the effects of nerve-shock. But no, in spite of abuse and misunderstanding, he was resolved at cost of whatever discomfort to himself to give us further lessons in the science of horse-breaking. He stood patiently while we ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... of Krishna's, would inflict such a wrong upon one that is heedlessly engaged with another in battle? The Vrishnis and the Andhakas are bad Kshatriyas, ever engaged in sinful deeds, and are, by nature, addicted to disreputable behaviour. Why, O Partha, hast thou taken them as model?" Thus addressed in battle, Partha replied unto Bhurisravas, saying, "It is evident that with the decrepitude of the body one's intellect also ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... fat and his own trousers were lashed about his bulging waist with a frayed belt; his coat was sun-faded, a greasy Scotch cap was pulled over to one side on his head with the peak hauled down upon his ear, and he scuffed along in boots that were disreputable. Surely, a most unseemly and unwholesome character to be wrapped in the habiliments of a judge! But just then, with that cursed inappropriateness of inanimate things, the ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... I'm afraid,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'Perhaps you will be kind enough to come to your cabin and take off that ball gown, and make yourself just a little less disreputable in outward appearance, while I get a ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... likely to do,' replied the widow; 'but still I regret to see a person, evidently intended for better things, employed in so disreputable a profession.' ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... of heart failure," said my father, "in a disreputable place. They tried to hush it up, but the facts came out. When I heard of it, I plumped right down in a chair and laughed till I was almost sick. I knew what he was," he said with sudden savageness, "all along. But there is no making a woman believe ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... the bottom of them lies a certain amount of truth. In the majority of such cases of wretchedness, if you sift out the facts, you will wonder not so much at the outcome, as that such a marriage could ever have taken place. When it happens that a nice, sweet, wholesome girl marries a disreputable nobleman, who is despised from one end of Europe to the other, American parents seem to feel no horror until she has become a mental, moral, and physical wreck. To us over here it was unbelievable that a decent girl could think of marrying him; ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... a bravo of old times, picturesque, disreputable, an operatic Sparafucile in tattered mantle and ragged plume. The other was in a black satin domino, and had the face of a crow, a great black beak ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... in more ways than one. In the first place, you can play him off against Mr. Thomas Wychecombe; and, in the second place, a lieutenant is likely, one day, to be a captain; and the wife of a captain in His Majesty's navy, is no disreputable birth. I advise you, girl, to use this youngster as a bait to catch the heir with; and, failing a good bite, to take up ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... miserable, who has haunted the chapel of the choir for many years, and sits with perfect unconcern, telling her beads at the foot of the great reading-desk that stands out in the middle and is never used. Great ladies crowd in through the gate when Raimondi's hymn is to be sung, and disreputable artists make sketches surreptitiously during the benediction, without the slightest pretence at any devotion that I can see. The lights shine out more brightly as the day wanes, and the incense curls up as the little boys swing the censers, and the priests and ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... demand never arise!" said the squire to himself, as he and his party trudged away, all looking as blackened and disreputable a set as ever walked homeward on ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... regulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling, and become at once, if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic, or casually associate. Thus, the Puritan elders, in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamor and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Juley, and Hester, in a soft grey hat—a soft grey hat, not even a new one—a dusty thing with a shapeless crown. "So, extraordinary, my dear—so odd," Aunt Hester, passing through the little, dark hall (she was rather short-sighted), had tried to 'shoo' it off a chair, taking it for a strange, disreputable cat—Tommy had such disgraceful friends! She was disturbed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... boredom. She said to Hugh, "We're two fat disreputable old minstrels roaming round the world," and he echoed ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... definite form, slowly. Evidently it was a scout, and the advance a reconnoissance. Feline artifice was in every line and motion. A ray of misty moonlight lay athwart the entrance to the garden. The gate was propped open. As the cat crossed it, we recognized a wily and wicked old Tom from the stable, a disreputable plebeian prowler, never tolerated in the house grounds. I hardly smothered an ejaculation as dainty Preciosa glided into the illuminated area and took part in the furtive inspection of the preparations made for the reception of last night's marauders. A third, and ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... happy one. By nature impulsive, capricious, and vehement, she had always longed for liberty; and she had never possessed it. She had been brought up among violent family quarrels, had been early separated from her disreputable and eccentric mother, and handed over to the care of her disreputable and selfish father. When she was seventeen, he decided to marry her off to the Prince of Orange; she, at first, acquiesced; but, suddenly falling ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... they had cast off when the work of fighting fire was begun, had been tossed about, trampled on, or scorched until they could no longer be called serviceable, and, half-clothed, dirty and disreputable-looking generally as they were, they started wearily for the town in search of rest, and, what was ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... or foxes, indeed, any creature within reach of the vicious grappling-hooks - must transport them on his clothing; for it is thus that these tramps have planned to get away from the parent plant in the hope of being picked off, and the seeds dropped in fresh colonizing ground; travelling in the disreputable company of their kinsmen the beggar-ticks and Spanish needles, the burdock ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... innocent and well-meaning people without the faintest shadow of warning, and as Mr. Bethany himself said, evil birds do come home to roost, and often out of a clear sky, as it were. But there, every fresh solution that occurs to me only makes the thing more preposterous, more, I was going to say, disreputable—I mean, of course, to the outside world. And we have our duties to perform to them too, I suppose. Why, what can we say? What plausible account of ourselves have we? We shall never be able to look anybody in the face again. I can ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... had given his son a monster (Renee) for wife. Guidobaldo acquiesced in this view and replied that he knew he had a father who would never compel him to take a wife like Lucretia Borgia, "one as bad as she and of so many disreputable connections."[247] Thus the impression grew and Lucretia Borgia became the type of all feminine depravity until finally Victor Hugo in his drama, and Donizetti in his opera, placed her upon the stage ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... distressing to observe how remote we were from proper surroundings. There was no shelter and no modern conveniences; not even a wash-hand-stand or water-jug. There was, of course, no central heating, and no electricity for one's smoothing-iron, so that one's clothing must become quite disreputable for want of pressing. Also the informal manner of cooking and eating was not what I had been accustomed to, and the idea of sleeping publicly on the bare ground was repugnant in the extreme. I mean to say, there was no vie intime. Truly ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Running Bear just at dusk, and went straight to the post office, which was in an ill-smelling grocery. Nothing more forlornly disreputable than "the Beast" (as the cowboys called the town) existed in the State. It was built on the low flat of the Big Sandy, and was composed of log huts (beginning already to rot at the corners) and unpainted shanties of pine, gray as granite, under wind and sun. There were two ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... thinking again as he re-read the article. "'Thinks are seldom what they seem,' as the poet says, which is as true as that 'Honesty is the best policy.' And as Shakespeare says, 'To what base ends,' for all this disreputable graft centers around certain brilliant objects that are not what the guilty bribers and bribees suppose them to be. While we shudder with horror at the temerity of the sinners we shake with laughter as we think ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... of one," she resumed, "to say that the Ladies' Aid Society have voted unanimously that they want you to preach on hell. The Church is goin' to rack and ruin, and we ain't goin' to stand it no longer. Even the disreputable characters will walk right in and stay all through the sermon—Andy Rogers and the rest. And I was particularly requested to ask whether you wished to have us understand that you approve of Andy Rogers ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... pretty pretext! Was it to benefit the poor that that odious Countess Strahlberg made all those disreputable grimaces? I have seen kermesses got up by actresses, and, upon my word, they were good ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... through the round holes of which the little children were accustomed to thrust their fingers, getting them caught sometimes, and howling until released. Now its back was of stout canvas, and its seat of cords, upon which a cushion rested. It was in general appearance, though stout enough, a most disreputable chair among the finer and more modern ones which stood along the porch upon either side. But it was this chair that the aging woman loved. "It was this chair he liked," she would say, "and it shall not be discarded. He used to sit in it and ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... of my disreputable appearance, I hung in the doorway, reluctant to fare forth in the cruel light of the thoroughfare. Hitherto I had had the street all to myself, so it had not mattered so much how I looked. But now an empty car hurtled by, its gong breaking for the first time the silence ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... your show," the Sheriff admitted, stopping before a disreputable-looking building. "This is the saloon. They've turned the place upside down since they've been here. You can hear the row they're making now. Free drinks to all the toughs in the town! They're pouring the ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nature seems to have stamped rectitude and high principle, living a life of hypocrisy, taking part in midnight invasions and daylight riots. It is one of his own friends who tells us this sad story: and it is for you to consider whether the Plaintiff was here also in pursuit of yet another disreputable game, holding out marriage as the bait: I seem to speak strongly, but I feel it would be impossible to ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... childhood about Mr. Royall's "habits": had seen him, as she went up to bed, sitting morosely in his office, a bottle at his elbow; or coming home, heavy and quarrelsome, from his business expeditions to Hepburn or Springfield; but the idea of his associating himself publicly with a band of disreputable girls and bar-room loafers was new and dreadful ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... cared so little about appearance. It is believed that the Dean would be indistinguishable from a tramp but for the constant admonishment and active benevolence of Mrs. Inge. As it is, he is something more than shabby, and only escapes a disreputable appearance by the finest of hairs, resembling, as I have suggested, one of those poor Russian noblemen whom Dostoevsky loved to place in the dismal and sordid atmosphere of a lodging-house, there to shine like golden planets by the force ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... the order—to go first and pretend that you have run away from a man-of-war, and want to be kept in hiding till she has sailed. You, of course, are to dress up as seamen in old clothes—the more disreputable and dirty you look the better. We know the houses where the men are stowed away, in the lowest slums of Cork, and we can direct you to them. You're to get into the confidence of the men, and learn ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... "Jim-Crow" waiting-room? There are always exceptions, as at Greensboro—but usually there is no heat in winter and no air in summer; with undisturbed loafers and train hands and broken, disreputable settees; to buy a ticket is torture; you stand and stand and wait and wait until every white person at the "other window" is waited on. Then the tired agent yells across, because all the tickets ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... no dream, dear. I am Allen Lawrence, and I have come for you. I know I look disreputable enough, but there has been fighting—surely ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... two small rooms in a disreputable part of town. Here they sometimes came at nightfall, here they sometimes slept, and after they had slept, they cooked oatmeal and departed in the morning for destinations unknown to each other. They sometimes slept, more often they talked, or looked ...
— Eeldrop and Appleplex • T.S. Eliot
... a job here, boss?" Joe looked up to see a somewhat disreputable figure of a man observing him. The fellow looked like the typical tramp, perhaps not quite so ragged and dirty, but still in that class. However, there was something about the man that attracted Joe's attention. As he said afterward, his visitor ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... alleys, feeling especially disreputable. He was not at all sure that his make-up was effective. His own self-consciousness convinced him that he was a glaring fraud, whose identity would be revealed promptly to any person who knew him. But while he sneaked in the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... sad state of things. The General "was much disgusted with the raw material out of which he was expected to manufacture serviceable troops." "Swaggering ruffians from the disreputable haunts of London" "were not the men to be intrusted with the honor of England at a momentous crisis." "Our simplest men in show have been our best men, and your gallant blood and ruffian men the worst of all others." (The Italics again are the author's.) Yet, said the muster-master, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... For example: one disreputable man, reeking of cheap liquor, came to me yesterday with the information that the story of Peter Grimm's return had converted him and that (with some slight temporary financial assistance from me) he was prepared to renounce liquor and ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... necessary articles, and took these opportunities of asking if they knew of any one in want of such assistance as he could give. But unpleasant as he felt it to make such inquiries, he soon found that to most people it was equally unpleasant to reply to them. There seemed to be something disreputable in having to answer such questions, to judge from the constrained, indifferent, and sometimes, though not often, surly answers which he received. "Can it be," thought Hugh, "as disgraceful to ask for work as ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... the contrary, I accept your invitation with pleasure. I should feel much more comfortable in a private house than in this disreputable tavern. ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... beer in Dresden is obtainable at the Bierstall in a little street off the Altmarkt, in a somewhat disreputable quarter of the town; it is not a suitable place for ladies, but is quite respectable for men. The beer is well worth sampling, but the air is ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... art. They have the same distaste for the word "art" as others have for the name of God. It has indeed been misused in certain aesthetic circles and discussed almost unctuously, so that it is often associated with long hair and cant, and seems nonsensical if not disreputable to plain and honest men. I remember an Oxford don, chiefly noted for his cricket and his knowledge of Homer, and in later life for his dyspepsia, abusing a distinguished Austrian critic who visited the University—"These foreigners are always talking about Art!" Foreigners and ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... father," Alice said, "'twould grieve you, would it not? To discover that I was a most disreputable lot! Of all unhappy sinners I'm the most unhappy one!" The padre said, "Whatever have you been and gone ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... Testament Pharisees with the utmost exactness and complete unconsciousness. One cannot imagine a modern ecclesiastic conversing with a Magdalen in terms of ordinary civility, unless she was in a very high social position indeed, or blending with disreputable characters without a dramatic sense of condescension and much explanatory by-play. Those who profess modern religion do but follow in these matters a course entirely compatible with what has survived of the authentic teachings ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... court proceedings now. But she's not that sort of woman at all. I had every opportunity of studying her character in the train, and I'm certain that she wouldn't mix herself up with anything of a disreputable kind. Whatever poor Lorimer may have had to complain of—and I don't in the least deny that he had a grievance—he'd have been the last man to accuse her of anything of that sort. I never met a woman who impressed me more ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... ruffian whom he stared at for a full minute before he accepted him as the man he had left there. The ragged trousers, the spotted "reefer" buttoned high around the neck, the dirty cap pulled over the eyes, and the wholly disreputable broken shoes Burke had brought with him completed the transformation of an immaculate young gentleman into a blear-eyed ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... direct evidence be obtained as to what she thought of things in general. There was, to be sure, the French book, and there were other circumstances already mentioned from which suspicion or certainty (suspicion, as we have seen, passing immediately into certainty in Langborough) of infidelity or disreputable conduct followed, but no corroborating word from her could be adduced. She attended to her business, accepted orders with thanks and smiles, talked about the weather and the accident to the coach, was ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford |
