"Embarrassing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... girl without smiles. She shut the door after me, and not only did that but in the incredible idleness of that morning she, who had never a moment to spare, started helping me off with my overcoat. It was positively embarrassing from its novelty. While busying herself with those trifles she murmured ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... question was embarrassing and I would not care to answer it before a Stanley," Aymer reflected, as he ascended the ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... acknowledged and published. It had been obviously impossible to announce, during the strenuous summer season, the engagement of the landlord to a young woman who lived under the same roof with him. The consequences of such an indiscretion would have been in various ways embarrassing. Hence not a word was said. Nor were definite plans for the wedding made until George remarked one evening that he would like to be married at Chichester, Chichester being the name of his new private hotel. Which exhibition of sentimentality had both startled and touched ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... and good; not easily excited; clever and penetrating, seeing things very clearly in her mind, and expressing herself well and in few but careful words; easily finding a way out of a difficulty, and choosing her line of conduct in the most embarrassing circumstances; light-minded and fickle; unstable, paying no attention if the same thing were said several times over. For this reason," continued the doctor, "I was obliged to alter what I had to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... overheard it was evident that Alberta Wicks and Mary Hampton had decided to make Elfreda the victim of some well-laid plot of their own. What the nature of it was Grace had not the remotest idea. To approach Elfreda was embarrassing to say the least. To warn her against the two mischievous sophomores without being able to state anything more definite than what she had overheard at Wellington House was ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... man was well outside, he stood shading his dim eyes with one bony hand, bending forward and gazing at Max, looking him up and down in a way which was most embarrassing to the visitor, but which made the boys' ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... ruin; but soon they resolved that the act should recoil on England, and began to be proud of frugality; articles of luxury of English manufacture were banished, and threadbare coats were most in fashion. A large and embarrassing provincial debt ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... child by such a name.' I bent over once more, and a third time asked the question. The answer was the same, and repeated louder and with an emphasis, as if the parents were determined to have that name or none. By this time my situation had become embarrassing, for there was I, in the presence of the whole waiting congregation, standing up with the baby in my arms, which, to add to my consternation, set up a squall as if to convince me that he was entitled to the name. My bachelor modesty could stand the ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... noble Lady, that one who is your next of kin and high in the royal favour has laid upon us a most difficult and embarrassing task. ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... San Francisco; but separate our common country into two nations, as designed by the present rebellion, and every man of this great interior region is thereby cut off from some one or more of these outlets, not perhaps by a physical barrier, but by embarrassing ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... Gilbert Elliott, Lord Chief Justice, Clerk of Scotland. Andrew was Receiver General of the Province of New York under the Crown and a most loyal Royalist to the last. When the British rule passed he, in common with many other English sympathisers, found himself in an embarrassing position. The De Lanceys—close friends of his—lost their lands outright. But Elliott, like the canny Scotchman that he was, was determined that he would not be served ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... the moral elbows of mine sticking out in every conversation, as if Heaven had made all my thoughts angular. It is a sort of horned integrity that grows up in a woman who follows the Gospel flag of the Methodist itinerancy. I am sure it is often embarrassing to Sarah and the girls, especially when they have company—not the kind of company William and I had, thinly-bred missionaries, and Bible pedlers, and tramps, and beggars, and occasionally, toward the last a little, sweet-faced, pod-headed deaconess—but Lilith ladies and one or two that William ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... Curious letters demanding aid or information. Claims to inheritances. Sundry odd applications. The "autograph bed-quilt.'' Associations with the diplomatic corps. Count Delaunay. Lord Odo Russell. The Methuen episode. Count de St. Vallier, embarrassing mishap at Nice due to him. The Turkish and Russian ambassadors. Distressing Russian-American marriage case. Baron Nothomb, his reminiscences of Talleyrand. The Saxon representative and the troubles of American lady students at Leipsic. Quaint discussions of ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the period was during which Mr. Gallatin held his seat, it was long enough for him seriously to annoy the Federal leaders. Indeed, it is questionable whether, if he had delayed his embarrassing motion, a majority of the Senate could have been secured against him. Certain it is that the Committee on Elections, appointed on December 11, did not send in its report until the day after Mr. Gallatin moved his resolution, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... indeed, I had quite reckoned upon her being fallen in with and captured by one of our cruisers, either while standing in for a fresh cargo of slaves, or when coming out again with them on board, to which chance alone could I look with any reason for the prospect of deliverance from my present embarrassing and disagreeable situation. True, there was just a possibility of our being picked up by one of the West Indian squadron; but I had not much hope of that, our vessels on that station being mostly ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... a moment, then the elder signified to Zulma that she would have to return to the city. She replied in the same language that she must go on. They insisted with some seriousness. She insisted with a show of rising temper. The position was becoming embarrassing, when a tall figure appeared at the edge of the bridge, and a loud word of command caused the soldiers to fall back. Zulma looked forward and an expression of mingled surprise and pleasure was discernible upon ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... the real game must have been played, because of the embarrassing scene between husband and wife, the sinister game was carried to its conclusion. Karen led the Jack of Hearts from the dummy, Penny played her seven, Karen contributed her own deuce, and Mrs. Drake followed suit ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... then they sat on opposite sides of the kitchen table, and communicated with each other exclusively by written notes of an excessively formal character, passed across the table. This stiffness of etiquette had its amusing side, but was occasionally embarrassing, since neither was uniformly intelligible with the pen. The result was that sometimes I got no dinner at all, and at other times, when I was dining alone, the board groaned with the profusion, and when I had ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and water of which his books are composed chiefly, make it almost impossible to discover what was the original nature of the materials he has boiled down in it. Mr. Shelley, too, is perhaps somewhat embarrassing to classify; as, though spirits are what he affected most, he made use of a large amount of vegetable matter also. We shall be probably not far wrong in describing his material as a kind of methylated spirits; or pure psychic ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman
... tiresome? It is embarrassing for some people to be left alone with themselves. They can no longer play a part, for there are none like themselves to play to. The sun and stars know you well enough—most likely, better than you yourselves do. I like this. I would ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... embarrassing. Still the pen scratched on. Was he writing my death-warrant, I wondered nervously, or only a milder order for my arrest? It was a relief when he finally sifted a spoonful of fine blue sand over the document, poured the remaining grains back into their receptacle, ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... sufficient to chronicle the result. I hastened homeward, and had my landlady, Mrs. Harrison, roused from her midnight slumbers; she was, as I knew, a woman of strong maternal instincts, who was fond of referring to her experience in that line,—a woman to whom your thought would naturally revert in embarrassing circumstances. She responded promptly and eagerly to my appeal; the situation evidently roused all the latent romance of her nature, and afforded her no small satisfaction. She spent a half hour in privacy with the baby, who re-appeared fresh and beaming ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... embarrassing nature was said, Worth soon recovered her self-possession and was able to enter into the conversation. She liked the Kirbys; still, under her enjoyment, she was conscious of a strange, disagreeable feeling that deepened as the evening wore on. It was not fear—she was not at all afraid of betraying ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... companion whom she had so dearly loved. Delicate management, gently yet resolutely applied, held the faithful little creature in check, when she tried to discover the cause of her governess's banishment from the house. She made no more complaints; she asked no more embarrassing questions—but it was miserably plain to everybody about her that she failed to recover her spirits. She was willing to learn her lessons (but not under another governess) when her mother was able to attend to her: she played with her toys, and went ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... not what to do; 'Twas very embarrassing to have her act so About "those carnal potatoes." So, ending his prayer, he started for home; As the door closed behind him, he heard a deep groan, "Oh, give ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... imperious wave of his ivory penholder. After that, he went on writing for some moments in solemn silence. Only the sound of his steel nib, traveling fast as it could go over the foolscap sheet, broke for several seconds the embarrassing stillness. ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... part. I have no doubt that he occasionally wished he had retained a share in the paper. He would hardly have been human if he had not done so; but he never showed any regret of a kind which would have been painful or embarrassing to me. Under conditions which might have been most trying we continued and maintained a close and unclouded friendship. It was unaffected by the slightest touch of friction. Take a small point: he even insisted on changing his room ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... too kind and frequent in your invitations. You puzzle me. I hardly know how to refuse, and it is still more embarrassing to accept. At any rate, I cannot come this week, for we are in the very thickest melee of the Repetitions. I was hearing the terrible fifth section when your note arrived. But Miss Wooler says I must go to Mary ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... thanks or good-bye or anything, only that he must hurry. Not even a word to his mother. But then, of course, men did not think of those little things, perhaps, as women did, and maybe it was just as well for him to take it all as a matter of course. It made it less embarrassing for her. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... embarrassing for the yachting party; and partly to relieve Oddington, partly out of curiosity, Virginia Howland leaned over the rail with a smile. "Please pardon us, Mr. Tugboatman. We didn't ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... Commissary Passauf expressed it. On 'change, at the town-hall, in the amphitheatre of the academy, at the sessions of the council, as well as at the reunions of the savants, a strange excitement seized the assembled citizens. Their relations with each other became embarrassing before they had been together an hour. In two hours the discussion degenerated into an angry dispute. Heads became heated, and personalities were used. Even at church, during the sermon, the faithful could not listen to Van Stabel, the minister, in patience, and he threw himself about in the pulpit ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... still remained on Miss Lavinia's face,— but, true to the instincts of an old-fashioned gentlewoman, she did not press enquiries where she saw they might be embarrassing or unwelcome. And though she now loved Innocent as much as if she had been her own child, she never failed to remember that after all, the girl had earned her own almost wealthy independence, and was free to do as she ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... friend is the detected plotter trying to lie out of an embarrassing situation. He is lineally descended from Tranio in the Most. Tranio has just induced his master Theopropides to pay forty minae to the money-lender on the pretext that Theopropides' son Philolaches has bought ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... Purchase was a second instance of bringing national prestige to the Union by the party originally afraid of giving it too much power. The action brought in its train as many embarrassing questions and as many demands for the fostering care of government as did the Louisiana Purchase. Yet precedent made the questions easier to answer in favour of centralisation and made the steps easier to take by the ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... was published the next morning in the Court Gazette; but at the moment it was said it was quite embarrassing to the poor king; and as he didn't know how to reply to it, he drew the princess one ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... The questions, instead of embarrassing him further, put Harold at his ease. He was on safe grounds now. He had prepared for just these queries, on the long walk to ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... which showed that he meant business. The American writhed, and had it not been for Brenda's gently but firmly restraining hand, he might have jumped to his feet and precipitated matters in a somewhat embarrassing fashion. The chairman looked up at the lecturer with elevated eyelids which had a note of interrogation under each of them, and then there came that sound of shifting in seats and breathing in many ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... any more or to speak to her on the old terms of friendship. He thought wholly of the letter that he had sent by Saunders the day before, and her coldness and changed attitude were set down by him to that cause, and not to the embarrassing position in which Winsome had surprised him when she came into the flower-strewn parlour. He did not know that the one thing a woman never really forgives is a false position, and that even the best of women in such cases think the most ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... however, either to the delay caused in hoisting the obstreperous cow on board or to the embarrassing episode that occurred after she was shipped. It was entirely owing to the failure of our moving spirit the wind; for we lay becalmed until morning under the lee of the giant Souffriere, whose dark shadow prevented the land breeze from reaching the vessel, ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... have fine racketing, of which I will, probably, get my share. I think of being in town some time next month, but whether for good and all, or only for a visit, I {p.216} am not certain. Oh, for November! Our meeting will be a little embarrassing one. How will she look, etc., etc., etc., are the important subjects of my present conjectures—how different from what they were three weeks ago! I give you leave to laugh when I tell you seriously, I had ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... and the good will and affection beaming in his honest blue eyes gave Mattie renewed courage to go on with her self-imposed and most embarrassing task, although before she ended her voice shook and dwindled away to such a low whisper that Jed had to bend his head close to hers to hear ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... different their politics, who love their country and wish to maintain its greatness. I am bound to add that there was an understanding at the time existing among men of weight on both sides of the house that the position in which the Reform question was placed was one embarrassing to the crown and not creditable to the house, and that any minister trying his best to deal with it under these circumstances would receive the candid consideration of the house. It was thought, moreover, that a time might ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... day. The women of the city disguise themselves as men, slip into the Public Assembly and secure a majority of votes. They then pass a series of decrees providing for community of goods and community of women, which produce, particularly the latter, a number of embarrassing ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the steep ascent, had come to a walk, and the chime of the bells was not sufficient to drown his words. If he had answered as his feelings dictated, the attention of the others would have been gained in a most embarrassing way. He could only say in a very low voice, "I ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... divided attention, Teacher replied—"Five cents, honey," and read on, while Patrick called a meeting of his forces and made embarrassing explanations ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... removed my apparel, everything except my lavender kid gloves. The President cast an inquiring look at these as if they, too, must come off, but I quickly forestalled any remark by saying, "With your permission, Mr. President, I will keep these on, otherwise it would be embarrassing if we should meet ladies." And so we jumped into the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... land oneself suddenly on new friends for a day or two was bad enough, but to be told that you must not return home for some weeks—indeed, for no one knew how long—was most embarrassing. ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... this address of the King of Prussia, Lady Hervey, in a letter of the 17th, says, "I think it very well and very artfully drawn for his purpose, and very impertinently embarrassing to our King. He is certainly a very artful prince, and I cannot but think his projects and his ambition still more extensive, than people ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... you shall have it, then; and a true history it is, as ever was said or sung in church, chapel, or conventicle, with only one little exception—by the free use of poetic license, the satirist has fixed his hero in a very embarrassing situation—just locked him up at Radford's steel Hotel in Carey Street, Chancery Lane, coning over a long bill of John Long's, and a still longer one of the lawyers, with a sort of codicil, by way of refresher, of the house charges, and a smoking detainer ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... This was not only embarrassing, but positively painful. There was a bump on my forehead, the rim of my hat was crushed, my new suit was soiled, my knee ached like Jericho, and there was a rent in my pantaloons right opposite ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... company with his four friends from Brown's. The coroner had been waiting at the foot of the stairs for them; and the party adjourned to the nearest drinking saloon, when the coroner, overjoyed at having got rid of a tedious and embarrassing case, stood treat for ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... acquainted, and with whom she had quite possibly whiled away many hours of the wearisome three months' voyage from old Plymouth. Alden and Priscilla may have been in love with each other already, when Captain Standish sent the youth on his embarrassing mission. Even the rigid rules of Puritanism could not prevent young men and women from falling in love, while their elders were engaged in more sedate occupations. It is to be said for Standish, also, that he evidently did not intend that the young man should state ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... liberty, and would either be surrendered to them by the people in order to expel the tyrant, or by the tyrant for fear of the people. He recalled the remembrance of the injuries done to the republic by the governor of Lucca; his malevolent disposition toward them; and their embarrassing situation with regard to him, if the pope or the duke were to make war upon them; and concluded that no enterprise was ever undertaken by the people of Florence with such perfect facility, more positive advantage, or greater ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... perplexed thereby when pressed by the Professor of Greek, that he could not conceal his annoyance, and the whole company were equally excited lest the professor should press the Rabbin so far as to mar the harmony of the occasion. It was beginning to be painfully embarrassing, when the doctor discovered beside the professor's plate a similar bill of fare equally well executed in Greek, and the doctor begged leave to inquire of him, "What is the difference between artos (bread) and azumos (biscuit), and in what ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... reason why nakedness in itself has nothing to do with modesty or immodesty; it is the conditions under which the nakedness occurs which determine whether or not modesty will be roused. If none of the factors of modesty are violated, if no embarrassing self-attention is excited, if there is a consciousness of perfect propriety alike in the subject and in the spectator, nakedness is entirely compatible with the most scrupulous modesty. A. Duval, a pupil of Ingres, tells ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a way of speaking his mind that is sometimes embarrassing to others. On one occasion an inexperienced young fellow was called upon to make a speech at a banquet at which ex-speaker ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... ammunition, and of material of war generally, for the army seems to have been inadequate; and heavy demands were made upon the fleet, not only for guns, which could be returned, but for powder and shot, the expenditure of which might prove embarrassing before they could be renewed. The troops also were not numerous enough, under the climatic conditions, to do all their own duty. In such circumstances, when two parties are working together to the same end, but under no common control, each is prone to think the other ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... now, with the same sweetness, and then rested them on her father. This gentleman seemed to respond to an irresistible appeal; he looked round at the company with all his teeth, and said that these flattering allusions were not so embarrassing as they might otherwise be, inasmuch as any success that he and his daughter might have had was so thoroughly impersonal: he insisted on that word. They had just heard her say, "It is not me, mother," and he and Mrs. Tarrant and the girl herself were ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... Dietrichstein, with another smile, "that is an embarrassing question; for there are cases, when even ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... him to explain to his host, just as Pip did when he was dining for the first time with Herbert Pocket, that he is unused to such things and beg him to give him a few hints as they go along. But it is less embarrassing to consult a book of etiquette about fundamentals and to pick up the other ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... distant future. For the succeeding six years he governed the Church in Scotland with prudence and leniency, but in 1558 he began a persecution of the reformers which kindled a religious strife, highly embarrassing to the Catholic party then holding the reins of power. His cruelties were borne in mind by the reformers when they got the upper hand. In 1563 he was imprisoned for saying mass. In 1568 Mary, after her escape from Loch Leven, gave the chief direction of her affairs into the hands of the ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... marriage,' she said, 'has one embarrassing circumstance connected with it. The gentleman whose wife I am to be, was engaged to another lady when he happened to meet with me, abroad: that lady, mind, being of his own blood and family, related to ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... Henry Blair was a "free person of color," as the language of those days would have phrased it; for the government seemed committed to the theory that "a slave could not take out a patent for his invention." And this dictum gave rise to some rather embarrassing situations on more occasions than one. For instance, in 1857, a Negro slave, living with his master in the state of Mississippi, perfected a valuable invention which his master sought to have protected by a patent. Now, in law, a patent is a contract between the government and ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... to do; for the purchases of provisions, with a few exceptions, had been left to the last. There were callers, too—an embarrassing number of them. We had camped on a small island near the town, not knowing when we did so that it had recently been put aside for a public park. The whole of Green River City, it seemed, had learned of our project, and came to inspect, or advise, or jeer at us. The kindest ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... grew louder, importunately seeking guidance in this unhappy church affair, the woman closed her lips and fell backward upon the seat crying weakly. The masculine voice rose higher and clearer and finished the petition with ringing clarity. Another embarrassing silence out of which came scarcely a breath. Augusta Hall caught a glimpse of the piercing blue eyes peering from under the shaggy brows of Bill Hopkins. The deacon was watching her, and Augusta knew that he exulted as one woman after ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... Father an' Bob," said Mrs. Gray; "dinner's sot." And Emily, glad of a respite from the embarrassing presence of the stranger, ran out, presently to return with her ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... went around the curve in the path. Well, maybe the Korental had been right, he thought. So long as they kept from bothering others, the clanless ones weren't molested. And they certainly didn't form any associations that might be embarrassing later ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... short, so he let out half a dozen yards boldly, and allowed the stream to draw it straight. Then, making a violent effort, he succeeded in causing it to descend in a series of circles close to his feet! This, besides being unexpected, was embarrassing. Determined to succeed, he made another cast, and caught the top branch of a small tree, the existence of which he had forgotten. There the ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... man over from head to foot as though studying a new species—possibly a species of insect-life. Under that embarrassing scrutiny Jase fidgeted his hands. Eventually he drew out a flask and having uncorked it he ceremoniously wiped the bottle's mouth with the palm of his hand. "Let's take a leetle dram ter better acquaintances," ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... the route lay through several large cities where many alighted and others came aboard. Only the little man from Beverly remained, quiet and unobtrusive but somehow haunting the girl's presence in an embarrassing manner. ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... her for some means of escape from her embarrassing position, when she had espied Eppie. The little girl, muffled in her grandfather's old tartan plaid, for the cold drive homeward, was slipping past, glancing wistfully at Elizabeth, the center of the grand group from town. Elizabeth instantly ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... The rebuff was most embarrassing. Ignorant as to how he had offended the Consul, and uncertain as to whether the Consul had not offended him, Roddy helplessly rubbed his handkerchief over his perplexed and perspiring countenance. He wondered if, as a conspirator, ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... beard is cut quite short with the clipper every Saturday evening; this is done not so much from motives of vanity as from considerations of utility and comfort. The beard invites an accumulation of ice, which may often be very embarrassing. A beard in the Polar regions seems to me to be just as awkward and unpractical as — well, let us say, walking with a tall hat on each foot. As the beard-clipper and the mirror make their round, one after the other ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... studied him. J. Horne Stevenson (do you know him?) is working this up with me, and the fact is—it's not interesting to the public—but it's interesting, and very interesting, in itself, and just now very embarrassing—this rural parish supplied Glasgow with such a quantity of Stevensons in the beginning of last century! There is just a link wanting; and we might be able to go back to the eleventh century, always undistinguished, but clearly traceable. When I say just a link, I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... before, and kept, by persons specially appointed, under lock and key. Some railway companies exercised their power of refusing express trains for rival projects, and clerks were obliged to make sudden and embarrassing changes of route, in order to travel by less hostile ways. A large establishment of clerks were in attendance to register the deposits; and this arrangement went on very well, until eleven o'clock, when the delivery grew so rapid, that the clerks were quite unable to keep pace with the arrivals. ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... underlying all this is the problem of problems: how to make that place attractive and joyous where hitherto the body has been tortured and contorted, and the blood poisoned by weariness! It is impossible to educate without doing harm; but we must do harm that will give pleasure! This is truly an embarrassing position! And this is why an interminable string of notes of interrogation serves as the decorative motive of this new science, which might be more ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... dearly love the poets, and always long to enrich my plain prose with gems from their verse, it is sometimes a little embarrassing, because one is obliged to disagree with them. If they would only look a little into the ways of birds, and not assert, in language so musical that one can hardly ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... the door was unlocked and I entered, accompanied by three enterprising reporters, whom, however, the sergeant summarily ejected and locked out, returning to usher me into the presence and to observe my proceedings with intelligent but highly embarrassing interest. ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... go to call on Jack one evening. It was a duty, a rather awkward and embarrassing one, and he took to himself great credit in the point of moral courage. He understood thoroughly now what Agatha had striven so sedulously to explain, the difference in social station. He was not likely in the future to make a blunder on that side, but it would not do to turn the cold shoulder ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... she has told him of her former life, and after the small-pox, caught on a ministration of mercy, has harrowed all the beauty from her face. But rapid consumption supervenes, and relieves the author from the embarrassing position into which he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... at ease under these embarrassing conditions must have given a certain sharpness to my tone; for, instead of replying, he remarked, with well simulated concern and a fatherly humoring of my folly peculiarly exasperating to one of my temperament: "You are displeased, Miss Butterworth, because ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... became a diligent student of the Word of God, and, under many embarrassing circumstances, made constant and ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... embarrassing questions," said Miss Rutherford, "though I'm almost consumed with curiosity about the secret. But are you quite sure that it's of a kind that will really prevent ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... an embarrassing question, and Ernest felt that he must be careful in answering. "Your papa wanted me to make you a visit," he ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... with the hallucination, that he had not thought what excuse he would have to make to the actress for his visit, and it was with an embarrassing shock that the necessity of speech came to him, when he had stumbled through some mechanical words of salutation. She looked at him with a little air of bewilderment, and motioned to her attendant to leave them alone. As the door closed, ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... wound up to fever point. To find a new French mistress in the shape of a pretty well-dressed girl, who was English at one moment, and at the next even Frenchier than Mademoiselle, was an unexpected joy, and Claire found the battery of admiring young eyes an embarrassing ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a mass-meeting to-morrow night, and they threaten to nominate me, whether or no. What can I do? I tell them I don't want to run, that my private business has already suffered by neglect, but they answer imploring me not to desert the cause of reform just when it needs me most. It is very embarrassing." ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... embarrassing than my attempts at public speech were my attempts to keep up with my squad in the gymnasium and on the parade ground. My fellow recruits were thinking in the terms of drill only, and I was thinking ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... they were taking through the woods and out along the beach, and somehow in the open air things simplified themselves. Finally, in the softness and the idle warmth, even an allusion to Monty, whose name usually meant an embarrassing change of subject, began to seem possible. It was inevitable that Peggy should bring it in; for with her a question of tact was never allowed to dominate when things of moment were at stake. She cowered before the plunge, ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Oh! Pretty embarrassing." Trigger was silent a moment. "Holati, could those things ever become as valuable as people keep saying? It's all sounded a little ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... from the embarrassing petition: 'Oh! now I know my man, you may be sure I won't waste a word on him. The fact is, he would not understand a word, and would require more—and that I don't do. When I fancied Mr. Austin was the responsible person, I meant to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to perform in a hansom cab, and it would certainly attract an amount of attention from passing bus-drivers which would be embarrassing.' ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... few minutes the ship was all their own. But having failed to calculate on such a result, they knew not what to do with their charge; and, acting under the advice of their new leader, who felt to the full the embarrassing nature of the position, they were content simply to demand the redress of their grievances as their terms of surrender; when, untowardly for their claims, a ship of war hove in sight, much in want of men, and, bearing ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... horse. He had been on the point of saying something which would have been far more disastrous than his reference to the troubles following marriage. Zoeth was apparently not curious. To his friend's great relief he did not wait for the sentence to be finished, nor did he ask embarrassing questions. Instead he said: ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... it so easily; he was so entirely unaffected, so perfectly unconscious, that there was nothing at all embarrassing for anyone. Even the Cabinet girl, with a grandmother in very humble life, who must be kept in the background, could ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... And from fear of embarrassing him she was hardly ever with him alone. She thought he was abrupt, more cool to her since their return, and guessed the reason; it was for fear of compromising her. How angelic of him; what a wonderful ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... of his wife, then, Mr. Wilkins expressed what she would wish to express, and remarking to Lady Caroline—with a touch of lightness, for so should gifts be accepted in order to avoid embarrassing the donor—that she had in that case been his wife's hostess since her arrival, he turned almost gaily to Mrs. Fisher and pointed out that she and his wife must now jointly write Lady Caroline the customary latter of thanks for hospitality. "A Collins," said Mr. Wilkins, who knew what was ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... returned, Natasha was impolitely pleased and hastened to get away: at that moment she hated the stiff, elderly princess, who could place her in such an embarrassing position and had spent half an hour with her without once mentioning Prince Andrew. "I couldn't begin talking about him in the presence of that Frenchwoman," thought Natasha. The same thought was meanwhile tormenting Princess Mary. She knew ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... those of the light veil that fell down from her shoulders. It was a costume that seemed well-suited to her striking beauty, and the effect of the coup d'oeil upon the heart of poor Tiburcio was at once pleasant and embarrassing. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... known that they are your wives, but our women are so closely veiled that if I should walk with my wife in the street, no one would know whether I was walking with my own wife or another man's! You cannot expect a respectable man to put himself into such an embarrassing position!" No Moslem woman or girl would dare go into the street without a veil, for fear of personal chastisement from the husband and father, and the Greek, Maronite and other nominal Christian women in Syria shrink from exposing ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... whole course of his life, Dr. Melmoth had never been placed in circumstances so embarrassing as the present. He was altogether a child in the ways of the world, having spent his youth and early manhood in abstracted study, and his maturity in the solitude of these hills. The expedition, therefore, on which ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on teasingly: "I assure you it was embarrassing, when the pheasants were bursting cover, to be under the necessity of inquiring at the nearest house if those were really pheasants or ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... Raleigh and Keymis could not fail to be an embarrassing one. Raleigh could not but feel that all his own mistakes and faults might have been condoned if Keymis had brought one basket of ore from the fabulous mine, and he could not refrain from reproaching him. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... superiority's obvious; that's the trouble. One hesitates about offering her the small change of compliments that generally went well at home. If you try to say something smart, she looks at you as if she were amused, not at what you said, but at you. There's an embarrassing ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... and his appointment as Privy Councilor can be realized. The Baron, though pleased, enters into the proposition with caution. But Muenchhausen, unable to execute his scheme, finds himself in an embarrassing dilemma from which he disentangles himself by mysteriously disappearing and never again coming to light. Emerentia has in the meantime fallen in love with Karl Buttervogel, whom she erroneously looks upon as a Prince in disguise. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... conspicuous; the trial of going among strangers, made greater by her Quaker costume and speech, and lastly, of the almost universal prejudice against a woman's speaking to any audience; and she asked her if, under all these embarrassing circumstances, added to her inexperience of the world, she did not feel that she would ultimately be forced to give up what now seemed to her so practicable. To all this Angelina only answered that the responsibility seemed thrust upon her, that the ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... at two o'clock, not only revictualled, but also re-fitted and re-painted for the troubled voyage of the afternoon; and boys not so entirely good as the Dowbiggins, and other models of propriety, still appreciated the home trip, because, although there might be an embarrassing review of garments, and awkward questions might be asked about a mark on the face, there was always a toothsome dainty for a growing laddie, weary with intellectual work and the toils of a snow-fight. As the business of a horsedealer took Mr. McGuffie senior in various directions, and as in no ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... uncomfortable and out of place, wouldn't they, if they stayed to the supper and the dance? They might be exposed to greater suffering among those whose manners and breeding were different, and it might be very embarrassing all round. Isn't there ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... in 1806 was similar to that of Jackson in 1833,—too much money in the treasury. The revenue then was fifteen millions; and, after paying all the expenses of the government and the stipulated portion of the national debt, there was an obstinate and most embarrassing surplus. What to do with this irrepressible surplus was the question then discussed in Mr. Jefferson's Cabinet. The President, being a free-trader, would naturally have said, Reduce the duties. But the younger men ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... he did not know. It seemed best to him to bide his time, to keep his eyes open, to hope for the way out of an embarrassing situation. He would willingly have made restitution himself, to save Terry from knowing and to save her name from the smudge which old man Packard would eagerly put upon it were he offered the opportunity. And right here was the trouble; he did not care to let his grandfather ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... she cried, as, at the fourth dance, five or six eager young men were bowing before her; "what shall I do? I'd have to be a centipede to dance with you all! And I can't divide one dance into six parts. And I can't CHOOSE,-that would be TOO embarrassing! Let's draw lots. Lend ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... of ready money for hosiery, and getting as much more on credit. Stockings is an article on which considerable genius might be displayed by any house intending to do stockings, and nothing else; but taken up in this small way by such a firm as that of 81, Bishopsgate Street, it was simply embarrassing. "Now you can say something true in your advertisements," said Mr. Brown, with an air of triumph, when the invoice of the ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... understand," I said, rather coldly, when the silence became embarrassing. "You want me to 'ghost' ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... this argument rather stumped Rose. It didn't seem reasonable, but it was true. Instead of embarrassing and distressing her, this talk with Galbraith was doing her good, restoring her confidence. The air between them was easier to breathe than ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... arrives. Where possible it is much better to make the booklet of such a size that it may be enclosed in the same envelope with the letter. Then you catch the prospect when his interest is at the highest point. It is embarrassing and ineffective to refer to "our booklet, mailed to you under separate cover." Put the book with the letter. Or, if you must send the booklet under separate cover, send it first and the letter later, so that each will arrive at about the ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... arms and comfort her, but Joan did it, and of course I said nothing. Joan did it well, and most sweetly and tenderly, but I could have done it as well, though I knew it would be foolish and out of place to suggest such a thing, and might make an awkwardness, too, and be embarrassing to us all, so I did not offer, and I hope I did right and for the best, though I could not know, and was many times tortured with doubts afterward as having perhaps let a chance pass which might have changed all my life and made it happier ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... guest. Hosts owe not only attention but protection to every person whom they ask to their home, and it devolves upon them to interpose and come to the rescue if a guest is disabled in any way from doing himself any sort of conversational justice. Swaying conversation round and over topics embarrassing to any guest requires the utmost tact and delicacy on the part of a host and hostess; for in keeping one guest from being wounded or embarrassed, the offender himself must not be made to feel conscious of his misstep. Indeed he may be, and usually is, quite unconscious of the effect his words are ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... the subject of the currency, and its present most embarrassing state, is discussed, I invite your attention, Gentlemen, to the history of executive proceedings connected with it. I propose to state to you a series of facts; not to argue upon them, not to mystify them, nor to draw any unjust inference from them; but merely to state the case, in the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... subdue Enrique. His efforts proved as fruitless as the preceding attempts, and in 1528 the King wrote still more urgently that the campaign must be brought to a successful issue. The Bishop-President, being in sore perplexity to devise means for satisfying the royal commands, showed this embarrassing letter to Fray Bartholomew. ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... his situation might become more embarrassing than it was, Warburton supported Mrs. Cross into the dining-room, and by dint of loudly cheerful talk in part composed her. She consented to sit with the door locked, whilst her rescuer hurried in search of a ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... deck of the tender, we were as completely one as we are now. I never could tell how I got aboard to him; whether he came down and brought me, or whether I was simply rapt through the air to his side. It would have been embarrassing if we had not treated the situation frankly; but such odd things happen among the English going out to their different colonies that our marriage, by a missionary returning to his station, was not even a nine days' ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... the casual introduction of her father with a quite sophisticated nod and sat down across from him. And there was a prayer at the beginning of the meal! Just as he was about to say something graceful to the girl, there was a prayer. It was almost embarrassing. He had never seen one before like this. At a boarding school once he had experienced a thing they called "grace" which consisted in standing behind their chairs while the entire assembled hungry multitude repeated a poem of a religious nature. He remembered they used to ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... Carson, he had decided upon the career of a "scout," as being more accessible and requiring less water. Yet, out of compassion for Susy's possible ignorance, he said neither, and responded with the American boy's modest conventionality, "President." It was safe, required no embarrassing description, and had been approved by benevolent old gentlemen with their hands ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... course of conduct, notwithstanding many hints and threats, placed the government in an embarrassing situation. Eight years before, the canton of Vaud had treated a similar sect (of which indeed, some of these very individuals had been members) with great severity; but with so little effect, that their number had been constantly ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... inquiry. The adversary explained with enthusiasm, and the other raven dropped everything and came. The two sat side by side on the limb and discussed me as freely and offensively as two great naturalists might discuss a new kind of bug. The thing became more and more embarrassing. They called in another friend. This was too much. I saw that they had the advantage of me, and so I concluded to get out of the scrape by walking out of it. They enjoyed my defeat as much as any low white people could have done. They craned ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... studies or work, for mere reward. Polly says she wants to study for the love of it, and Eleanor wants to go into business for the love of that! It is the only way one can succeed," ventured Mrs. Brewster, more to fill up an embarrassing gap in the ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... accumulated in the theater itself. Perhaps this book might be able to tell us why it is that tradition warrants the same rather trivial practical joke in the performance of the 'Merchant of Venice,' and in the performance of 'Romeo and Juliet,'—the business of embarrassing a servant by repeated bows of mock ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... could remember, he and his father and Frank had gone to the pasture to see about the cattle. But now old Frank was chained up. And when his father asked him to come along, he shook his head. He didn't want to be alone with his father. He had an idea that it would be terribly and silently embarrassing down there with no one around but the ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... and already I'm in possession of not a little Blaisdell data for my—er— book. I've seen Mr. and Mrs. James, their daughter, Bessie, and their son, Benny. Benny, by the way, is a gushing geyser of current Blaisdell data which, I foresee, I shall find interesting, but embarrassing, perhaps, at times. I've also seen Miss Flora, and Mrs. Jane ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... get her a leather-bound notebook next day. And when, after supper, instead of joining them on the porch, she brought tablet and pencil and a pile of books and placed them on the dining-table, there were no embarrassing comments, and she was left alone ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... infirmities of age, Mr Gladstone resigned early in 1894, and was succeeded by Lord Rosebery, who carried on the government of the country until defeated in July 1895. Lord Salisbury now formed his third administration, and had to deal with embarrassing situations in connection with the Armenian massacres; the Jameson raid on the Transvaal (1896), which led to a prolonged inquiry in London; a boundary line dispute with Venezuela, which led up to a proposed arbitration treaty with the United States; the Cretan insurrection, and the Greco-Turkish ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... look Potts felt himself cowering involuntarily; and he began to feel less confidence in his own power, and less sure that the stranger had flung himself into a trap. However, the silence was embarrassing; so at last, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... the dreen now," said Babe, interrupting her loquacious grandparent, who threatened to make some embarrassing ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... do so, he would have placed everything he owned at the disposal of the two who had so generously aided him to keep the home he loved so well; but George stopped the show of gratitude, which was really becoming embarrassing, by saying: ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... almost desponding spirits of his troops. Perfectly acquainted with the ardour and discipline of the Prussian forces, with the enterprising and impetuous disposition of that monarch, and sensible that his situation would prove irksome and embarrassing to the enemy, he improved it to the best advantage, seemed to foresee all the consequences, and directed every measure to produce them. Thus he retarded the enemy's operations, and assiduously avoided precipitating an action until the Prussian ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... certainly an embarrassing situation to be placed in, for, with no wish to conceal her engagement, to announce it herself alone, and unaided by even the presence of Adam, was a task she naturally shrank from. In the endeavor to avoid any direct reply she sat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... Beast in the letters composing it. Singularly enough, it happens that all which is needed to obtain the Apocalyptic number from the word imperator is the omission of the second letter; whence they say that Antichrist hides his accursed name behind the letter M. By an equally odd and embarrassing coincidence the Council of Moscow—which, after deposing Nikon, definitively excommunicated the schismatics—met in 1666. Here, plainly enough was the fatal number, and when the reform of the calendar attracted the attention of the Old Believers to the point, they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... the other wire from Joe? Heavens, was he on his way from Oxford to Wolverhampton? If my fake telegram were discovered too soon I should be in a very embarrassing position. Second, Joe was a cousin, was he! One of those annoying second cousins, probably, who are close enough to the family to be a familiar figure, and yet far enough away in blood to marry the daughter! And then there was this sinister person, ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... why do we not have chairs of our own? It is so embarrassing to sponge on other people all the time, and the expense of chairs is not very great," ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... This section is embarrassing from its fulness of material. We can but lightly touch points on which volumes might be, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... be as soon as we can get to town, I presume," she went on, watching him with brazen directness. "You see," she explained; "I have been here with you for about two weeks, you know, and my friends will ask embarrassing questions. You are so honorable that you cannot ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Worth Gilbert, bound for an informal dinner. The tall, unconscious lad who stepped ahead of me had been made safe in spite of himself. This weight off my mind, I felt kindly to the whole world, to the man under whose dining table we were to stretch our legs, whose embarrassing private affairs I had uncovered. He'd taken it well—seconding his wife's dinner invitation, meeting my eye frankly whenever we encountered. My mood was expansive. When Vandeman himself opened the door to us, explaining that he was his own butler for the day, I saw him quite other than ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... are not embarrassing; they are catastrophical. But, mercifully, catastrophes often produce a numbness in the victims. More as in a trance than actually William heard the outbreak of his young companions; and, during the quarter of an hour subsequent to Genesis's performance, the oft-renewed explosions of their mirth ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... bed, relieved in mind as to him but absolutely quaking at what she had done and at the impossibly embarrassing position she would have placed herself in, if he had awakened and ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... of me. The fact is, I had spent her money as well as my own—not on dissipation, I hasten to say, but on dinner and an installment of my roomrent. This was embarrassing, but I looked upon it merely as an advance—quite as if I'd had the customary drawingaccount—to be charged against my next commissions. My acceptance of the advance merely indicated my faith in ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... common, something of the importance of a mystery which drew them so often together, causing so many confidential meetings. Even when the two girls were in society, she could not but observe that Adeline often made some allusion, or whispered some remark that seemed both pleasing and embarrassing to Jane. Miss Taylor was evidently playing confidante, and occasionally Jane appeared to wish her less open and persevering in the affair. As for Mrs. Graham, she was too much occupied with the care of her younger children to pay much attention to her daughter's intimacies. She rather disliked ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... to the improvements and approbation of each component member. As soon as the work is printed, one or more copies shall be transmitted to you. Of the characters of the individuals who compose the party I find it embarrassing to speak; yet, vanity apart, I may assert with truth that they have each a sufficient strength of head to make the virtues of the heart respectable, and that they are all highly charged with that enthusiasm which results from strong perceptions of moral ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... before his first crossing Elbe: Henri at Sagan; he at Schlettau, scanning the waste of fatal possibilities). ... Embarrassing? Not a doubt, of that! "I own, the circumstances both of us are in are like to turn my head, three or four times a day." Loudon aiming for Neisse, don't you think? Fouquet all in the wrong.—"One has nothing for it but to watch where ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... go. I am not ashamed of my love for you, nor to have it known. I am glad there was man enough in me to love such a woman as you are. You are not one of those society belles who wish to boast of their conquests. I wish merely to leave in a manner that will save you all embarrassing questions and surmises, and enable you to go back to your father as if nothing had happened. The best I can do is to maintain the outward semblance of a gentleman with which I came. In regard to Charles Hunting—please listen patiently—I know that you will not believe any statement of mine. It is ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... said, "suppose there are some people who wish to perform only half of their task?"... Is that very embarrassing? Probably they are satisfied with half of their salary. Paid according to the labor that they had performed, of what could they complain? and what injury would they do to others? In this sense, it is fair to apply the maxim,—TO EACH ACCORDING ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... passionate disposition, who have stepped over a wide distance quickly, who desire each other ardently, and who, nevertheless, do not know each other. It is impossible that at first there should not occur certain discordant notes in the situation, which is embarrassing until the moment when two souls find ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... mustn't talk about it any more; because you know, if you do, I shall have red eyes, and then father and mother will want to know why they are red, and I shall not be able to tell them, and it will be very embarrassing. ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... of literary tastes, and a keen interest in all the events that were passing in his native country. During the Franco-Prussian war he sent words of encouragement to his suffering countrymen, and nobly refrained from embarrassing the affairs of France by any personal intrigues; but when the war and the Commune were over, and his chances of the throne grew bright, he issued a proclamation which has been called "an act ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... extravagances as love feeds on; the thought of that other letter, which told how beautiful and precious were the invitations to the weary and heavy-laden, had stilled resentment, and there came instead a keen desire to save Norman for the sake of Julia and justice. But how to do it was an embarrassing question—a question that was more than August could solve. There was a difficulty in the weakness and wrong-headedness of Norman; a difficulty in Norman's prejudice against Dutchmen in general and August in particular; a difficulty in the fact that August was a sort of a fugitive, if not ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... when the answer is so evident, generally infuriate me; and I probably would have told him I was skating if I had not been afraid he would get mad and walk off with his wife, and I had not yet given up hope of embarrassing her. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... himself, he began hurriedly the task of shaving and dressing. The candles on either side of the thick, bevelled swinging mirror presented a somewhat embarrassing contrast to the electric light he was used to—but upon second thought he preferred this ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... and the commerce of men is full of humanity. Civil society is, so to say, a divinity for him on the earth; he honours it by his probity, by an exact attention to his duties, and by a sincere desire not to be a useless or an embarrassing member of it. The sage has the leaven of order and rule; he is full of the ideas connected with the good of civil society. What experience shows us every day is that the more reason and light people have, the better fitted they are and the more to ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... clash with the manager, knowing that the place, the hour, and the conditions were ill suited to a scene. She had learned to smile and to consider swiftly, to cross the thin ice of an embarrassing situation with light steps. Quickly she turned to Mrs. Thompson-Bellaire, who was bowing effusively to ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... interrupted Jack. "I have not the slightest desire to place either you, personally, or your Government in an embarrassing position. If, therefore, you are fully satisfied that your information respecting me and my yacht was wrong, I am quite willing to regard the incident as closed, and to say nothing further about it. And in ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... yielding. Virtue and vice cannot be allied, nor can idleness and industry; of course if you resolve to adhere to the former of these extremes, an intimacy with those who incline to the latter of them would be extremely embarrassing to you; it would be a stumbling block in your way, and act like a mill-stone hung to your neck; for it is the nature of idleness and vice to obtain as many votaries as ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... the Hotel Meurice at noon, I was conducted with embarrassing ceremony to Madame de Verneuil's private sitting-room, and on my way I rehearsed, in some trepidation, the polite formula of condolence which Paragot had taught me. When I entered, the sight of Joanna's face drove polite formulae out of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... manner of speaking when there was something she wanted to conceal but not to deny. The question must have been embarrassing therefore. Moreover, these interrogatories were based on a good store of facts either true or false; and in the questions addressed to the Maid we may generally discern a certain anticipation of her replies. What were those letters from Saint Michael ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... his cast are the men that our sex do not naturally dislike: While I held, that such were not (however that might be) the men we ought to like. But what with my relations precipitating of me, on one hand, and what with his unhappy character, and embarrassing ways, on the other, I had no more leisure than inclination to examine my own heart in this particular. And this reminds me of a transcribe, though it was written in raillery. 'May it not be,' say you,** 'that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... representative. "What have you to give us in exchange for this and that?" "What have you to give us as reciprocity for the benefit of going to our islands?" "What assurance can you give that the States will agree to a treaty?" These were the embarrassing questions which Adams had to encounter. Baffled by the cool indifference of the English Ministry, Adams wrote home in despair that there was not the slightest prospect of relief for American commerce unless the States would ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... Directory summoned General Bonaparte to a private sitting. "They offered me the choice of any army I would command," said he to me the next morning. "I would not refuse, but I asked to be allowed a little time for the recovery of my health; and, to avoid any other embarrassing offers, I withdrew. I shall go to no more of their sittings." (He attended only one after this.) "I am determined to join Sieyes' party. It includes a greater diversity of opinions than that of the profligate Barras. He proclaims everywhere that he is the author ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... embarrassing. ARPACHSHAD slowly relieved himself of the burden of the three sods, dropped them on the ground with a disproportionate thud, and, producing a large pocket-handkerchief, whose variegated and brilliant colours were, happily, dimmed by a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... little circle really desired was simply good-fellowship and a high degree of harmonious clamor. Certainly all our doings, whether on Friday evening, or on the other forenoons, afternoons, and evenings of the week, were quite devoid of an embarrassing sex-consciousness. We "trained together," as the expression went—all the fellows and all the Gertrudes and Adeles—with no sense of malaise, and postponing, or setting aside, in the miraculous American fashion, all ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller |
