"Inelegant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were low, and the passage above stairs gloomy, but the furniture was good. The table was well supplied, except that the fruit was bad. It was truly the dinner of a country gentleman. Two tables were filled with company, not inelegant. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... found them in the great doorway of the flat mansions, Redwood holding out the damp pink paper, and Bensington on tiptoe reading over his arm. Cossar was a large-bodied man with gaunt inelegant limbs casually placed at convenient corners of his body, and a face like a carving abandoned at an early stage as altogether too unpromising for completion. His nose had been left square, and his lower jaw projected beyond his upper. He ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Cleggett to the chauffeur. That person stopped his machine. He did more. He arose in the seat, applied his thumb to his nose, and vigorously and vivaciously waggled his outspread fingers at Cleggett in a gesture, derisive and inelegant, that is older than the pyramids. Then he started his machine again and made all speed in the ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... approach the age of puberty, seem possessed with the idea that the unfrequent action of the bowels is a desirable habit. They do not associate with the duty a proper regard for health, but consider it as an inelegant and repugnant practice. The consequence is, that at this susceptible period, constipation, induced by neglect, arouses a latent hepatic or pulmonary disease which has been lurking ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... minds had been trained in a world which had passed away. They gave place in no long time to a younger generation of wits; and of that generation, from Dryden down to Durfey, the common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman. The influence of these writers was doubtless noxious, yet less noxious than it would have been had they been less depraved. The poison which they administered was so strong that it was, in no long time, rejected with nausea. None of them understood the dangerous art of associating ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sunflower, in the children's esteem, and there is generated a taste for the exquisite. The copy of the masterpiece of art supplants the bizarre chromo; correct forms of speech take the place of incorrect forms; the elegant usurps the place of the inelegant; and the inartistic gives place to the artistic. The circle of their wants is extended until it includes their needs, and these, in turn, are transformed into wants. Thus all the pupils ascend to a higher level of appreciation of the things that make for a more comfortable and ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... which is a string of beads or pearls, with an amulet as pendant; while a long veil, surmounted by a diadem, hangs from the back of the head. This statue is in no respect narrow or flat, as may be seen especially from the side view given by Di Cesnola;[77] but it is short and inelegant, though not wanting in dignity; and it is disfigured by sandalled feet of a very disproportionate size, which stand out offensively in front. The figure has been viewed as a representation of the goddess Astarte or Ashtoreth;[78] but the identification can scarcely be ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... its music with it back and forward,—why should she not love these gracious outward signs of those inner harmonies which none could deny made beautiful the lives of many of her fellow-worshippers in the humble, yet not inelegant ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... "Your language is inelegant, friend Blenham," he said slowly. "Like yourself it is better withdrawn from public notice. As to your meaning—why, by thunder, I half believe you are right! And I ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... their poets made shipwreck.[27] Let us, however, rejoice for the sake of the critical reputation of Vauvenargues that he was unable to read Shakespeare. One for whom Moliere is too eccentric, grotesque, inelegant, was not likely to do much justice to the mightiest but ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... colostomy bag] An extension to an established hack that is supposed to add some functionality to the original. Usually derogatory, implying that the original was being overextended and should have been thrown away, and the new product is ugly, inelegant, or bloated. Also /v./ phrase, 'to hang a bag on the side [of]'. "C? That's just a bag on the side of C ...." "They want me to hang a bag on the side ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... accompaniments of a genteel salon. As you are an elegant person, of course you are ill-dressed: your coat is dusty, your boots speckled with mud, your hair uncombed, you exhale a strong odour of tobacco. At first glance, such things seem rather disagreeable, common, and inelegant. No such thing: this is exactly the most fashionable style we have; it seems to say: "I have just dismounted from the finest horse in Paris. I am a man of fashion, of that distinguished position in society, that I can go in a morning to call on a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... not of the mother of Andromache or of the sons of Niobe, but of the deeper causes of things human and divine; he who looks closely will see that even the barbarians had intelligence (mercurium), not on the tongue but in the breast.' Himself writing a vigorous and not inelegant Latin, and a master of clear exposition, he despised the purism of pedants and the current over-estimate of borrowed forms, especially when joined, as they often are, with one- sidedness, and involving indifference ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... accessories, would have been regarded and inveighed against as a popish and superstitious innovation; and a charge of this kind was at a later period preferred against Archbishop Laud. Parochial churches were, therefore, now repaired when fallen into a state of dilapidation, in a plain and inelegant mode, in complete variance with the richness and display observable in the style just ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... object was the large figure of S. Mary, often mentioned in the Rolls of the Custos Capellae, and which must have occupied a canopied niche, blocking up the whole of the middle light from sill to transom."[10] The design of the east window is inelegant, the transom is heavy, and the tracery in the large circle at the top spoils the effect of the window ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... first to come out of it, responding to her voice a good deal as if she dashed cold water in his face, his eyes breaking away from Barbara's, his lips parted in a nervous smile. He ran a hand through his hair—an inelegant gesture for him ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... Louise 500,000 francs for her toilet, but she never spent the entire amount. She had little taste in dress, and would have made a very inelegant appearance had she not been well advised. The Emperor was present at her toilet those days on which he wished her to appear especially well, and himself tried the effect of different ornaments on the head, neck, and arms of the Empress, always ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... he uttered now were not of classic heroism. They were simple, colloquial, inelegant. For Stern, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... knowledge of the tigers in India, as we sit here. Exactly what do we MEAN by saying that we here know the tigers? What is the precise fact that the cognition so confidently claimed is KNOWN-AS, to use Shadworth Hodgson's inelegant but valuable ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... to Koontie Mamadie's account, eleven thousand inhabitants. It has no public buildings, except the mosques, two of which, though built of mud, are by no means inelegant. The market place is a large square, and the different articles of merchandize are exposed for sale on stalls covered with mats, to shade them from the sun. The market is crowded with people from ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... poor fortunes and equivocal station of cadet in a noble but impoverished house, he had passed his existence in a round of lavish, but never inelegant, dissipation. Unlike other men, whom youth, and money, and the flush of health, and aristocratic indulgence, allure to follies, which shock the taste as well as the morality of the wise, Augustus Saville had never committed an error which was not varnished by grace, and limited by a profound ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 'good for sore eyes,' as you sometimes say;" and with this inelegant remark Miss Alfaretta walked away while laughing, happy Jim sped downwards to the vine-wreathed lodge at the great entrance gate. He had been happy all that summer, never more so; yet happier than ever now as he stepped into the freshly ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... character. He was a pompous little man to whom the inelegant applied the term of runt. He never could have passed the army examination, for he had no instep. He walked like a duck, flat-footed, minus the waddle. He was pop-eyed, and the fumes of strong drink had loosened the tear-ducts so that his eyes swam in a perennial ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... entertain of Pursers is expressed in a rather inelegant but expressive saying of theirs: "The Purser is a conjurer; he can make a dead man chew tobacco"—insinuating that the accounts of a dead man are sometimes subjected to post-mortem charges. Among sailors, also, Pursers commonly go by the name ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... attitudes, Inelegant for men to see, Will, to be candid, foster feuds Between yourself and me. On manners of the best this sport, By right of glory, makes a call, And he who will not as he ought Should ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... dame of about forty, and while all her aim is to appear an elegant woman of fashion, all her success is to seem an ordinary woman in very common life, with fine clothes on. Her manners are bustling, her air is mock-important, and her manners very inelegant. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... palaces by Michael Angelo, frescoes by Raphael, busts, mosaics, and gems just dug up from among the ruins of ancient temples and villas, these things were the delight and even the serious business of their lives. Letters and the fine arts undoubtedly owe much to this not inelegant sloth. But when the great stirring of the mind of Europe began, when doctrine after doctrine was assailed, when nation after nation withdrew from communion with the successor of St. Peter, it was felt that the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... off to see his mistress as I was strolling from the Forum: a little whore, as it seemed to me at the first glance, neither inelegant nor lacking good looks. When we came in, we fell to discussing various subjects, amongst which, how was Bithynia now, how things had gone there, and whether I had made any money there. I replied, what was true, that neither ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... from folks don't step so lively as they do up here, and old Colonel Tayloes, he used to say there ain't nothin' so inelegant as hurry, lessen 'tis worry. But of course I shouldn't have had no discussion in my mind about that bell. I got a ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... Schoolmaster (the perpetual translation and retranslation of English into the learned languages, and especially Latin) is exactly what would form such a style. It is, as the following examples from both works will show, clear, not inelegant, invaluable as a kind of go-cart to habituate the infant limbs of prose English to orderly movement; but it is not original, or striking, or characteristic, or calculated to show the native powers and capacities of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the purist in the next. On the other hand, expressions that once were not considered inelegant are looked at askance in the period following. The word "brass" was formerly an accepted synonym for money; but at present, when it takes on that significance, it is not admitted into genteel circles of language. It may be said to have seen better days, like ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... thumped away gaily with her iron in the noisy and stifling laundry. Her wages supported her even beyond the point of comfort; so that her dress profited until sometimes she cast a sidelong glance of impatience at the neat but inelegant apparel of Dan—Dan the constant, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... night of horror, Antwerp, to use an inelegant but descriptive expression, developed a violent case of the jim-jams. The next night and every night thereafter until the Germans came in and took the city, she thought she saw things; not green rats and pink snakes, but large, sausage-shaped balloons ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... a toothpick out of a match, decided that toothpicks were inelegant in his tragic mood, and longed: "Never did see her among her own kind of folks till now. I wish I could jabber about music and stuff. I'll learn it. I will! I can! I picked up autos in three months. I—— Milt, you're a dub. I wonder ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... extravagance, of the want of moderation and restraint, is, I think, destructive of all beauty whatsoever in everything, color, form, motion, language, or thought, giving rise to that which in color we call glaring, in form inelegant, in motion ungraceful, in language coarse, in thought undisciplined, in all unchastened; which qualities are in everything most painful, because the signs of disobedient and irregular operation. And herein we at last find the reason of that which has been so often noted ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... point, but he was not always judicious in his way of addressing solemn strangers, and in his rural manner he concludes his letter, "the whole thing is as simple as figuring out the weight of three small hogs," and this inelegant sentence conveys with little exaggeration one especial merit of his often austerely graceful language. Grave difficulties are handled in a style which could arouse all the interest of a boy and penetrate the understanding of ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... in any separate meals or attendance, and Jane and Elsie began as they meant to go on, and shared the homely meals in the homely home. They had never thought that they had any luxurious tastes; but the very plain fare and the inelegant service seemed to take away even the natural healthy appetite of youth. The noise of the children, and the querulous voice of their grandfather, with Peggy's sharp, decisive remarks, were all different from the respectful silence with which they had been attended ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence |
